Aeternum is an ever-evolving world, and as such, we continue our efforts in providing our players with an assortment of ongoing new features, content, and changes. Similar to the activities leading up to our latest major update, we are approaching the release of our next large release and would like to once again invite you all to participate in the next cycle of our Public Test Realm (PTR)!
MAJOR UPDATES
SUMMER MEDLEYFAIRE EVENT
Amidst the tragedy and violence of Aeternum, a Medleyfaire Maestro has declared it’s time to party away from your woes! Summer Villages have been erected in Brightwood, Everfall, Weaver’s Fen, and Monarch’s Bluffs. Raise your reputation with the Maestro through quests, catching fish like the famed Aeternum Sturgeon with Maudlinbugs, and more to net special holiday rewards. You can even frame your favorite catches for your home at new Mount-A-Catch stations found in every village! Come let loose and celebrate life on the island of Eternal Life!
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Musical Instruments are a rhythm-action based trade skill coming to Aeternum that makes the world a stage! There are 5 instruments for players to pick up and learn, plus an initial 31 songs to collect and master! You can play solo, or as a group with up to 5 Adventurers.
- Guitar
- Mandolin
- Upright Bass
- Drums
- Azoth Flute
Songs are unlocked by salvaging pages hidden throughout Aeternum. Complete the Summer Medleyfaire quests to earn a special set of pages and starter instruments. Better instruments can be crafted through the Furnishing trade skill. Furnishing can also roll new Music trade skill-specific perks.
Press the F5 key to initiate a performance. Each one will reward players with trade skill XP and various buffs. Better performances receive stronger buffs and more trade skill XP. Spectators enjoying the show will also receive a buff and can toss a coin to the performers as a tip.
More buffs unlock as your trade skill XP increases. The buffs (in order of progression) are:
- Decidedly Dexterous: Gathering Speed increases by 75% for 30-90 min.
- Territorial Triumph: Territory Standing Bonus increases by 10%-30% for 30-90 min.
- All Together Now: Group Character XP Sharing Bonus increases by 4%-15% for 30-90 min.
- Song in your Step: Reduces Player Encumbrance by 200-1,000 for 30-90 min.
- Fortune’s Favor: Gathering Yield increases by 3%-10% for 30-90 min.
- Luck’s Labor: Gathering Luck increases by 2% – 5% for 30-90 min.
BARNACLES & BLACK POWDER
A dark tide rises in Aeternum with the arrival of Admiral Blackpowder and his dastardly crew! Quest givers in the Cutlass Keys settlement and the new docks on the territory’s eastern shore will be looking to offer you loot and renown for defeating the despicable evil within the new Barnacles & Black Powder expedition.
Rumors suggest there might be an even greater power within the Admiral’s hold. Not to mention, more than meets the eye… as with most things in Aeternum, of course. Barnacles & Black Powder is an endgame expedition. The entrance can be found at the small docks in southeast Cutlass Keys.
Expedition Mutators
- Barnacles & Black Powder will be mutated 2 weeks after it releases into the live game.
- 3 new mutations will also join the mutation rotation!
- Icebound: A mutation that focuses on Ice elemental effects related to incoming and outgoing damage. It can also apply Slow status effects!
- Oppressive: A promotion set that includes mana drains and zones of silence, which prevent ability usage for a short period of time.
- Frenzied: This variant applies Curses to players that dodge. Curses stack and deal damage over time. Max stacks also damage nearby allies.
EXPEDITION ENHANCEMENTS
New quality of life features have been introduced to alleviate some points of friction for our expedition explorers!
EXPEDITION GROUP FINDER (SAME WORLD)
Finding a group to run expeditions with while solo isn’t always easy when you need to ask through Chat. So Amazon is excited to release its first version of the Group Finder tool for expeditions! With this feature, you’ll be able to access a specific Group Finder for each expedition (accessed through expedition entrance UI or related expedition map icons), browse listings created by other players, or post your own request. The tool allows players to declare their preferred team role — such as DPS, Tank, or Healer — and recruit based on those roles. You can also set minimum Gear Score and Level, then inspect members to learn their average GS, weapons, and mastery levels.
EXPEDITION TUNING ORB REMOVAL
In this update, they have removed Expedition Tuning Orbs and replaced them with daily limits for Normal and Weekly mutated expedition runs to make all expeditions easier to access. This new system features:
- 15 Normal Expedition Runs per player per day or 105 per week, per player.
- 25 Mutated Expedition Runs per week.
- For concerned players, this is how they plan on introducing it after the PTR:
In order to honor the value you’ve put into acquiring existing Tuning Orbs, any orbs in your inventory upon the update will be replaced with caches that give loot appropriate for their expedition. While you won’t get a full run’s worth of coins and drops, the rolls will include boss drops for weapons and armor in addition to opportunities for Expertise bumps.
For Normal expeditions, caches will reward a roll from the sub-boss and main boss found in that specific expedition, and grant coins equal to 50% of the cost previously associated with buying that specific type of orb from the Faction Shop.
For Mutated expeditions, caches will reward 4 boss rolls off the final boss of 4 eligible mutators, and coin equal to 50% of the cost previously associated with buying that specific type of orb from the Faction Shop.
LOOT REBALANCE
With the accessibility changes to expeditions, Amazon has moved roughly 80% of coins generated from expedition bosses and has instead spread it out to coin drops from elite chests and darkness breaches completion bonuses to help compensate for the reduction. Twice a day, players can loot elite chests in the open world or complete minor and major darkness breaches to earn a bag of coins. Each bag contains 500 coins.
Along with that, they have introduced a new method to help the player overcome the randomness of Expedition Loot. Materia is a new type of resource, Materia, that can be used to craft your desired drop. There are two ways to obtain this resource. Any named item obtained from an expedition can now be salvaged into Materia of its corresponding expedition type (Amrine Materia, Depths Materia, etc.). The player will also receive Materia when defeating the main boss of an expedition.
MUTATOR LOOT SHIFT
Amazon has shifted the difficulty levels at which loot unlocks. The system was originally intended to give players a sense of rewarding progression as they play through the different difficulty levels — which it did accomplish — but the lower levels didn’t feel particularly good due to sparse rewards. They have therefore changed what items unlock at which difficulty level, which should result in a wider variety of lower-level rewards. No loot has been removed, as specific items have shifted to unlock at different brackets and in certain groups.
They also added another accessory to each mutator. Previously, each mutator dropped 2 of the 3 types of accessories. Now every mutator can drop all available types.
INSTANCED WARS
Previously while one or more wars were ongoing, server performance could become degraded. This could result in latency spikes for players in the war and surrounding areas of Aeternum. They have rearchitected the underlying technology for wars and are happy to report that wars should no longer pose risk of such a drastic negative performance impact to participants nor the world around them!
LOOT, PERKS, AND TRADE SKILLS
Note that all tuning values on the PTR are still in flux and may change before retail release into the live game.
PERK REBALANCE
amazon has examined the meta and its issues impacting endgame viability. With this update, they have adjusted over 150 perks to help make them more useful and competitive compared to the best perks in the game. Skill-specific weapon perks are now more powerful, with some receiving substantial rework to be more viable. For example, thhey buffed the Durability perk and renamed it to “Indestructible” because players will no longer take durability damage when it is equipped.
They also tweaked how perks are calculated in order to provide players with more options for better perk combinations. For example, the trade skill drop chance on earrings now has a very low drop chance on drops to increase the combat-focused perks players get from earrings. These perks can still be controlled via crafting using their specific craft mods to make specific items.
DUAL STAT CHANGE
In order to improve the quality of crafted and looted items, they have made some changes to dual stat attribute combinations. They changed the scaling of the primary stat to scale higher, giving these stats a larger impact. They also made a number of changes to the 50 threshold bonuses to encourage more stat splitting across all builds. This is a very experimental change and they are looking for feedback through the PTR to evaluate the balance and impact of these changes before going live.
LOOT QUALITY
The overall quality of drops has been improved based on player/expertise level. That means at level 60, players should earn more Epic and Rare loot than Uncommon loot. The Epic and Legendary loot also have a higher chance of receiving more viable stat combinations (e.g. increased chances for Keen, lower chances for Beast Bane). Perks that roll are all still random for non-named items, but players should see better combinations of perks overall. Amazon has also improved the chances that higher Gear Score items can drop from lower-level creatures, giving a small chance 600 Gear Score items can come from level 59+.
BONUS LOOT DROPS
The loot players rolled from Gypsum Casts was not very rewarding, so they improved the likelihood that you’ll roll Epic and Rare loot. They also increased the range at which Expertise can be gained off these rolls.
PERFECT SALVAGE
Amazon heard the feedback, and recognize that salvage became much less interesting at endgame. With this update, they made salvaging more rewarding through the introduction of Perfect Salvages. Whenever you salvage an item you will now have a chance to perform a Perfect Salvage. Perfect Salvages can reward players with the following:
- Research materials (such as weapon scraps) that can be used to gain crafting trade skill experience.
- Special orbs that can be converted into gypsum casts which bypass the normal daily limit.
- Materials to fabricate special items.
- Other valuable resources.
TRADE SKILL CHANGES
Improvements to trade skills are being made to reduce friction and speed up leveling for many Gathering, Refining, and Crafting trade skills:
GATHERING
- Reduced Logging XP required to level from 1 to 50 by 15%.
- Reduced Logging XP required to level from 51 to 200 by 20%.
- Reduced Fishing XP required to level from 1 to 200 by 50%.
REFINING
- Amazon is removing tiers from reagents (Tannins, Fluxes, Sandpapers, Weaves, and Solvents). Their goal is to simplify these to a single tier, giving them the potency of T5 reagents to help players progress trade skills more efficiently and reduce the friction of converting reagents. Plus, remove the confusion around what tier of reagent to apply when crafting.
- Reduced Leatherworking XP required to level from 1 to 200 by 10%.
- Reduced Smelting XP required to level from 1 to 200 by 10%.
- Reduced Weaving XP required to level from 1 to 200 by 15%.
- Reduced Woodworking XP required to level from 1 to 200 by 15%.
- Reduced Stonecutting XP required to level from 1 to 200 by 20%.
CRAFTING
- Improving the trade skill XP on tier 4 and tier 5 crafted items for all skills.
- Reduced furnishing XP required to level from 1 to 200 by 20%.
- Reducing the trade skill XP required for Weaponsmithing and Furnishing for levels 1-200(not yet in this build).
CRAFTING, GATHERING, & REFINING CLOTHING
Amazon has rebalanced the drop chance and locations of all trade skill clothing to better improve their availability.
PTR CLIENT ACCESS
This special preview client will be made available for download through the stand-alone Steam application, “New World Public Test Realm” (which should already be in your Steam library if you own the main game). When the test period is complete and the main New World game is updated with the previewed content, the PTR world will shut down and may be wiped clean. You will continue to see the New World PTR application in your Steam library, but there will not be an active server until the next time we announce a public test
PTR BACKSTORY LOADOUTS
Upon character creation on the PTR, players will be given multiple caches of special armor and weapons. Each cache has a designation based upon a general build and the main attribute: CON, DEX, INT, FOC, and STR.
To help manage the sudden onset of new items, do not open all provided caches at once, or you’ll risk becoming encumbered! Instead, equip all provided bags and then follow up with opening each cache deliberately. Any undesired caches can be dropped or deposited into your personal settlement storage.
