Greetings, Adventurers!
The foggy southwest reaches of Cutlass Keys are a lawless place, where the “Golden Greed” curse of La Esperanza’s treasure drives fortune-hunters to murderous madness. Even the closest of companions are liable to lethally betray one another. Gather Cursed Doubloons and resources, but you’ll have to escape before other looters steal your spoils.
Get an inside look into the Cursed Mists before it releases on October 15 alongside New World: Aeternum.
Massive Murder Balls of Allied Players
Any new feature this complicated is going to require a lot of playtesting. During all of that testing, we discovering unexpected, but entertaining, issues. Early on, it was possible for PvE players to ranged attack or heal lawless, free-for-all PvP players from outside the zone border. You can imagine the shenanigans that followed.
We were delighted to find that many of the riskier features worked as well or better than imagined, often with hilarious results. Trying to collude with other players isn’t a bad strategy, but it’s horrifyingly easy to accidentally, or “accidentally,” catch friends in AoEs when the fighting gets hectic. I fondly recall lots of laughing, yelling, and sometimes sincere apologies.
It’s also a bittersweet treat to see the person who just murdered you pop up at a respawn point seconds after you, having perished to something like your Bleed or Smolder. “Well, we BOTH lost that one, didn’t we?” I actually partnered up with someone that way. We rushed back across the border to see if our dropped loot was still on the ground. It wasn’t. Someone luckier, or smarter, than us had come across it, but hey, it’s the friends we made along the way, right…?
We want to discourage massive murder balls of allied players. There’s always going to be collusion, but we don’t want to make it easy.
We implemented a new free-for-all system that eliminates all group, Company, and Faction ties. Even if you’re fighting alongside friends, it’s very easy to accidentally harm or kill one another.
We also implemented a new crowd control system that keeps players from lingering in large packs for too long.
Lastly, loot chests function like normal resources. Once looted, they’re unavailable to all other players until the respawn.
The Unique Thrill of PvP
We believe in the strength of our PvP combat, not to mention the unique thrill of PvP, and always look for more ways to engage both PvP and PvE players with enticing rewards. This time, we wanted to deliver more free-form, always-available PvP experiences, rather than relying on instances, scheduled events, and matchmaking queues.
That desire to bring new forms of gameplay to Aeternum culminated in a voluntary free-for-all, open-world space. There are light extraction mechanics, extra room for those who prefer to sneak around, and a surplus of loot for every Adventurer. Our hope is the easy access and bountiful spoils tempt even the staunchest of PvE players to take a dip in the pool. It’s full of treasure, after all.
It’s really its own animal as a high-stakes, on-the-fly experience without strictly structured times or reward caps. Cutlass Keys’ Cursed Mists zone is one of three ways to acquire new 700+ gear, and potentially the best option for solo players. There are also some fantastic Named Items and Artifacts that reward the greater risk.
Cursed Treasure Economy
Building a new currency with fresh ways to acquire resources, determining how many you’ll lose with each death, and designing new rewards to spend them on, is always a challenge. It is crucial to the ultimate success of the experience. No matter how fun content is from a gameplay standpoint, most players need compelling incentives too.
Despite simultaneously updating, improving, and adding to New World for the release of New World: Aeternum, the team’s done a great job building a gorgeous, unique set of spaces, assembling new free-for-all crowd and population control systems, and building Cutlass Keys' new cursed treasure PvP/PvE economy.
A Revamped Cutlass Keys
There were a few zones in the game we thought could benefit from updates, as well as serve as proving grounds for new types of gameplay: Cutlass Keys, Mourningdale, Restless Shores, and arguably even Reekwater. Cutlass Keys’ pirate theme tied in wonderfully with our new game mechanics, specifically valuable, greed-cursed treasure that must be carried away from the zone and cleansed before the curse drives even the fastest friends to paranoia and, possibly, murder.
This gave us the opportunity to add new varieties of Lost pirates, inspired by the infamous Ottoman corsairs of the Barbary Coast. We also crafted new, gorgeous points of interest for exploration, combat, and loot. Beyond the PvP zone, these gold-cursed Lost took over the formerly Ancient and Corrupted parts of Cutlass Keys, providing a variety of new PvE quests.
We knew we had to significantly expand the size of zone in order to allow hundreds of players to fight without server boundary issues. Our solution was to implement a new population cap system that limits the zone’s player count to something fun for both player experience and performance.
The Future of the Cursed Mists
This free-for-all PvP zone a bit of an experiment, so based on how players engage with the experience, we’ll see how it evolves going forward. Right now, players can look forward to new rewards after release. We’ll also keep an eye on the Cursed Mists to tune for what players adore most.
We hope everyone has as much fun playing in the Cursed Mists on October 15 as we did building and playtesting it. Check out our other major updates coming in the Season of Opportunity alongside New World: Aeternum. Thanks for your support and we’ll see you in Aeternum!