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Forge & Fury

14 December 2020
Background game scene

Features include

Great Axes, PVP duels, & shield updates

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December 15, 2020
Greetings, Adventurers!

The land of Aeternum is a dangerous place and combat is key to survival in this wild and treacherous land. The December Alpha Release, Forge and Fury, focuses on improving the combat experience within New World (you can also read about our vision for combat in our new blog post). We’ve tuned core combat systems, added a new weapon and type of shield, and introduced the oft-requested PvP duel system.

Spotlight

New Weapon: Great Axe

The Great Axe is a new two-handed melee weapon that excels at large, sweeping attacks. While training with the Great Axe, adventurers will be able to progress two mastery trees: 

  • The Marauder weapon mastery tree focuses on high damage and multi-hit abilities to hack and slash your way through your foes.

  • The Reaper weapon mastery tree focuses on crowd control and escape prevention. These skills will help you control the flow of the battle while your allies dispatch those who have have caught in your grasp.

The Great Axe will have 2 crafted weapon perks specific to it in addition to the perks that are broadly applicable to other weapons.

A screenshot showing a player wielding the new Great Axe in combat.
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A screenshot showing a player wielding the new Great Axe in combat.
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A screenshot showing a close-up of a player wielding the new Great Axe.
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A screenshot showing a close-up of a player wielding the new Great Axe.
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A screenshot showing a player wielding the new Great Axe in combat.
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A screenshot showing a player wielding the new Great Axe in combat.
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A screenshot showing a close-up of a player wielding the new Great Axe.
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A screenshot showing a close-up of a player wielding the new Great Axe.
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Legendary Great Axe Quest

You can also go on an epic quest for the legendary Great Axe, The Reformation. 

  • Level 60 adventurers can speak to Ranger Herb in Edengrove to begin this quest. 

  • Recover the components needed to create this powerhouse and then deliver them to Ranger Madaki in Mountainhome.


PvP Duels

We want to give players a fun, consequence-free way to practice PvP combat and interact with each other:

  • Duels can be initiated by any player over level 10, regardless of faction or PvP flag status.

  • Duels cannot be initiated in settlements or during Wars or Invasions.

  • Players can initiate a duel by hovering over another player’s name in chat or a social menu and clicking “Invite To Duel,” or by entering “/duel [playername]” in chat.

  • Outside interference will end a duel.

  • You can duel solo or in groups of up to 5 players per side.


Shield Update

Tower Shield

Unleash your inner legionary with the the new Tower Shield. The biggest and most powerful shield in New World to date, the Tower Shield can tank all but the greatest of blows from your enemies. 


Legendary Tower Shield Quest

Players can gather components to craft the legendary Tower Shield Rook’s Defense. 

  • Level 60 adventurers can speak to Ranger Wardell in Edengrove to begin this quest.


Updated Shield Mechanics

We’ve updated the way shields work for both armor and equipment calculations to. 

  • Shields now add to your armor in addition to block chance.

    • Note: Shield armor bonus is only applied when the shield is unsheathed and being wielded.

  • Shields now always contribute to your total equipment weight.

A screenshot showing a close-up of the new tower shield while drawn.
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A screenshot showing a close-up of the new tower shield while drawn.
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A screenshot showing a player character wielding the new tower shield in combat.
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A screenshot showing a player character wielding the new tower shield in combat.
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A screenshot showing a close-up of the new tower shield while drawn.
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A screenshot showing a close-up of the new tower shield while drawn.
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A screenshot showing a player character wielding the new tower shield in combat.
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A screenshot showing a player character wielding the new tower shield in combat.
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Combat

Combat Systems

We made some large changes to address combat feedback from the Preview event. For more details on the feedback and why these changes were made, we suggest checking out our article about our vision for combat in New World.

  • Removed interrupts from light and heavy attacks for all weapons.

  • Light attacks now have chains, or strings of attacks that culminate in an ending attack, after which there will be a slight delay before the chain begins again.

    • For all weapons except for the Hatchet, light attacks chain together twice. Hatchets chain 3 light attacks together before resetting the chain.

  • The number of frames for which a player is committed to their own light and heavy attacks ("locked frames") has been reduced, allowing players to head into their next action or ability more quickly. Note: This patch note has been updated to accurately reflect the change made in the release. Our apologies for the confusion.

  • Adjusted input buffers so delayed actions happen much less often.

    • “Input buffers” are an invisible system that allows players to start inputting their next action before their current action has completed - as an example, if you press Q to use a ability right after using the Right Mouse Button to do a light attack, your Q ability may execute a short while after you pushed the button for it, because your character was still completing their previous action. The input buffer allows small windows of time where a next move can be queued to keep combat moving and feeling fluid. Today’s update made the time window for each input buffer shorter so that you’re less likely to wind up committing to a queued action that is no longer relevant due to changing battle conditions.

  • Reduced the amount of stamina damage that light attacks do versus blocking and Grit attacks.

  • Reduced the recovery time after certain abilities.

  • Players can now consistently cancel out of light and heavy attacks to begin abilities sooner - immediately after the attack’s active frames.

  • Players can now cancel out of light and heavy attacks to dodge sooner - a few frames after the attack’s active frames have completed.

  • Players can now cancel out of certain abilities sooner.

  • Players can now cancel out of dodges sooner.

  • Can now cancel out of attacks to begin blocking sooner.

  • Removed the locked animation frames from blocking to allow for more free-flowing combat.

A screenshot of two New World characters fighting.
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A screenshot of two New World characters fighting.
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A screenshot of two New World characters fighting.
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A screenshot of two New World characters fighting.
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A screenshot of two New World characters fighting.
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A screenshot of two New World characters fighting.
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A screenshot of two New World characters fighting.
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A screenshot of two New World characters fighting.
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Ability Differentiation 

  • We have adjusted a number of abilities in attempt to give each a primary focus. The goal is for each ability to have a clear purpose, such as sheer damage, applying a status effect or crowd control, damaging an enemy’s Grit, etc.


Critical Hit System (part 2)

  • Updated backstabs and critical hit indicators to match the visual look of headshot indicators for more visual consistency.

  • Added sound effects to help signal when critical hits happen.


Target Healing Updates

  • Added a visual effect to highlight that players can self-cast using CTRL + the ability hotkey.

  • Added new visual effects to highlight which player is currently being targeted.

  • Added options to the Gameplay Settings menu to allow players to customize their healing experience. Specifically, these settings allow players to refine their settings for how healing spells are targeted and how the camera behaves while targeting another player for healing.


Balance

Bow 

  • Spreadshot damage reduced 15% and cooldown increased to 22 seconds.

  • Rapid Shot cooldown increased to 20 seconds.

  • Evasion Shot cooldown decreased to 15 seconds.

  • Penetrating Shot cooldown decreased to 18 seconds.


Shield

  • Added 2 new Shield-specific perks. These are applicable to all types of shield.

UX/UI

Most of the UI team’s recent work has been on projects intended for future releases, but there are two areas seeing substantial updates in this release: 

Tooltips

  • We overhauled the presentation of tooltips. Our goal was to make them more compact, while making the categorization of information more clear and legible at a glance. We also show a few more combat stats, and we have taken a tuning pass at making tooltips more responsive.


UI Polish Pass Continues

  • We are continuing to add updates to the UI in key places like the NPC Dialog screen and Settings, but there are also small changes to various UI components across the game. We are striving to make interactive components more eye-catching and legible at-a-glance.


Progression & Rewards

Progression

  • Adjusted the leveling curve from levels 1 through 10 to better match the pace of quests.

  • Rested experience so that it now starts accumulating after 12 hours (increased from 8 hours) and accrues at 2% per hour (decreased from 2.5%).

  • Reduced XP from PvP Missions by 10%.


Economy

In this patch, we made a set of item changes to pave the way for future crafting system changes. We’ve added in new gathering milestones, resources, and crafting reagents. In a future update we’ll talk more about how these item changes fit into the overall crafting vision.


Thanks for following along!

In addition to these notes, we’ve shared an article about our vision for the future of combat in New World. We’re excited to keep listening to your feedback, iterating, and making New World the best it can be.

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