Greetings, Adventurers!
Gear up for a fresh selection of sandwurm themed loot. The Blood of the Sands Season Pass will feature new rewards like Transmog Tokens, cosmetics such as the Dry-Blood Armor Set, and emotes, including the Worm Dance. There are two reward tracks — free and premium — each with 100 tiers of unlockable rewards. Check out the highlights below and then read on to learn how player feedback influenced the Season 2 rewards.
Season 2 Reward Highlights
Transmog Tokens
Premium Welcome Pack
Briar Rose Weapon Skins
Dry-Blood Armor Set
Sun-Bleached Armor Set
Desert Prowlers Tools
Free and Premium Season Champion Packs
Worm Dance Emote
Pocket Sand Emote
Expedition Chests
Mutator Chests
Marks of Fortune
Dye Packs
Gypsum Orbs
Umbral Shards
Coin
Premium Furniture Chest
Decor Box
Perfect Salvage Scrap Box
Jewelry Gift
Corrupted Wards
AE Coating
Azoth Vials
Perfect Salvage Fragment Chest
Reward Selection Process
System Designer Joel Clift walked us through the reward selection process:
“We use feedback and data from previous seasons to update our rewards and improve their quality,” Joel said. “Each season’s theming also helps identify what makes sense as both fun and functionally appropriate rewards. The Pocket Sand emote is a thematically appropriate and hilarious example.”
“Another factor is the content being added to the game. For instance, we added a few chests with chitin themed rewards to go alongside the release of the sandwurm.”
Fixed Rewards
“In Season 2 we want to give players more fixed rewards,” Joel said. “As an example, the furniture chests from Season 1 had a chance at some really valuable furniture items but the randomness of these chests caused frustration. One of our first changes here was to update the furniture chests so that the free reward track gives everyone the same static furniture pieces and the premium reward track gives schematics for those same pieces. All players can still earn these furniture pieces in the world as drops but the season pass becomes a guaranteed way to get these items.”
Personal Highlights
Game Designer Patrick Smedley discussed his personal highlights, the team’s inspiration, and the importance of player feedback:
“I’m excited for the Worm Dance emote, the seasonal skins, and the Transmog tokens on the pass.” Patrick said. “I’m a player who enjoys collecting cosmetics and the Season Pass gives me a wide variety to collect over the course of a season. I like the silly nature of the worm dance and I fully expect to be worm dancing while capturing Faction Control Points in the near future. Transmog is a feature I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while, so having some tokens ready to go prior to the launch of the feature means I’ll be ready to Transmog my Neishatun’s armor set the day the feature goes live.”
Reward Inspiration
“When we’re planning our skins and emotes for any given season, we look at the theme and work backwards from there,” Patrick said. “With Blood of the Sands, we wanted to tell a story that took the player back to Brimstone Sands and explored the mysterious sandwurm. That meant the skin concepts leaned heavily on the fantasy of a desert wanderer that might reside within Brimstone Sands or be apart of the Blood of the Sands sect. For the emotes, we like to lean into ideas that are more on the fun side. Doing the worm and throwing some pocket sand both felt like natural fits for the season.”
Player Feedback
“As with Season 1 rewards, we’re eager to hear your feedback,” Patrick said. “Player feedback on the Season 1 Pass directly impacted the development of the Season 2 Pass and we learned some great lessons. Please use the in-game feedback tool or reach out on the New World Discord to give us your thoughts on the Season 2 Pass.”
Look forward to the full reward list in a future article and the launch of Season 2 on July 6. Thanks for your support! We’ll see you in Aeternum.