If you haven't heard of New World, a new Amazon released MMORPG, you've been missing out. I've had this game on the radar for the last two years and nearly forgot its release last week. I had the chance to play it for about three days and I must say, New World is bringing new meat to the table when it comes to traditional MMORPGs. In this blog post, I'll be sharing my first thoughts about the game and share my strategy when I'm going to play it once it goes live.
First things first, the game is in closed beta, and there might be much to be changed when it goes live. Therefore, the experience that I had while playing closed-beta might be outdated when you're reading this after the release.
My first thoughts
This game looks absolutely amazing, the world you're walking in looks great and very inviting. The details in it are great, once you focus on objects they sharpen and highlight even more detail. There is so much to do, you hardly won't be able to decide what to do first.
New World is bringing a competitor to the MMORPG space for sure. But what can you say: every game that includes fishing is simply great. That aside, New World introduced a completely new PvP mechanic that's well-thought-out and refreshing. As a gamer that never liked PvP, this was actually surprisingly great!
I'm looking forward to new updates and (hot)fixes.
Negative points
The two main things I didn't like while playing Closed Beta were not just annoying, but also a waste of time.
Hitboxes annoyed me the most, not just mobs, but also buildings. While clearly hitting a mob with a powerful skill, that has a long cooldown, it's no fun for anyone that the game calculated that as a miss. In the game, when you're playing range, it often happens that your projectile gets frozen in the air if you throw them close to rocks, or buildings. The hitboxes absolutely need to be adjusted, and this is the main thing I'm looking forward to that Amazon Games is going to fix.
It is in my opinion easy to grind, maybe too easy. It is making you feel as if you completed the game rather quickly.
While playing the game, it happened a few times that when I was exploring the world, a loading screen popped up, and I was suddenly dead and respawned in the nearest settlement.
Of course, the game is in closed beta, so I'll be leaving out the little diseases.
Exploits
I wouldn't be me if I would be digging for some efficient game mechanics, but some things are feeling more of an exploit rather than a proper mechanic.
The game has plenty of mountains that cover a lot of the landscape, you ought to be traveling around them, or take a leap of faith and take some fall damage. But there is a way how to decrease that fall damage to a minimum. If you run backward (facing the mountain) when you drop yourself, run forward as you fall. There you go. Little to no fall damage.
In every settlement there is a so-called Town Board, where players can extract multiple quests to help the settlement. Before I joined, I heard about it from other players who reached level 40+ in a single day by just doing Town Board quests. While this mechanic is cool and refreshing, lowering the XP reward and refresh-rate, even more, would make it less exploitable.
The awesomeness
You can respec, whenever, wherever, however, you want. If you have the gold to pay for it. This is a great add-on if you'd ask me because you can start maxing out all the skills available on one character, and, you are more likely to try out new play-styles that you haven't played before (ever).
Looking for a miner lvl 100+? No need, you can mine, skin, chop, fish, and harvest yourself. Yes, everything. If you're going to spend the time to get it all maxed out is up to you, but it's well worth it if you'd ask me as endgame/high-level gear requires almost everything in high levels. This makes this game playable, even if you're the only person in it.
Expiditions is another lingo that we're used to when we speaking of dungeons in other MMORPGs. The expeditions are rewarding, and a must-have for any MMORPG.
You can toggle your PvP on or off in settlements or sanctuaries. That's cool because you will have a PvP and PvE server in one, letting everyone play how they want to play. When you toggle PvP on and fight a higher-level player, you might assume you will lose. However, PvP is measured by the level of your gear (higher levels have a greater chance of finding higher gear, therefore winning might be more favorable for those), with this mechanic, it is possible to win from a higher level. I rekt lvl 40+ while I was level 27. Best feeling ever.
As a player, you can choose between three factions. Choose wisely, because this will determine a lot in your career as a player in the server you're joining. But no regret, you can switch from factions anytime you want. The penalty for switching is that you will lose all your points and ranks that you accumulated so far.
The whole map is divided into several regions that contain one settlement, and several forts. Territories are owned by companies, that are linked to a leader's chosen faction. Players within the same faction of that region gain small bonuses in the settlement, discounts for fast travel for example. If you're not in the same faction, you can level up the standing points that will allow you to get more storage, faster gathering, more exp, or lower tax rates.
Once you reach a standing level of 10, you are eligible to purchase a house in that settlement. Houses are instances, this means that anyone could purchase the same house, but will only be visible to groups. The default house that is being shown is depending on your points. Not sure how it works yet since I haven't had the chance to get into housing yet.
Every settlement in a territory have their own taxes. Every player that is crafting, or using facilities in that specific settlement has to pay taxes (starting from a specific level). The taxes will go to the company that owns the settlement.
WAR! Never enjoyed it, but the hassle you have to go through it, or to activate it is genius. It makes you think why no other MMORPG has ever thought of this before.
Companies are a different lingo for clans. Whereas you can join a company to play as a team. Or, to initiate a war. And with war, you have the chance to take over a settlement and reap its daily rewards from taxes and minor bonuses for faction members. Only companies are allowed to initiate a war, so it makes sense to join a powerful company, or to start your own if you know enough people to play with.
There is a push-to-talk button to communicate with anyone in the game. I have seen this option only in shooters so far, so adding this to an MMORPG will make this game quite a new experience.
I think I haven't covered all the awesomeness in the game there is, but if this didn't trigger you to try it out yourself, I don't know what would.
Strategy
During the closed beta, I wanted to capture as much content as possible. Because I had limited time to play, I kinda rushed through everything. I probably missed out on some lore, but that's ok. I am assuming they will change things and update the game after it goes live. The goal for rushing was to find a strategy. A strategy to see where to grind, what to level up first.
Solo build
Since you can equip two different weapons, I will be making an offset tank and go full DPS. I think an aggressive DPS build would be a great start to level up the character that could easily take you to end-game content.
Tools
When you start the game, you have no tools. You have to gather flint and wood from bushes and rocks that you can find pretty much everywhere you go. After getting some iron and hide, I would suggest getting iron tools as soon as possible as you will be using them a lot, if not all the time. Upgrading toward iron tools will increase the speed of gathering resources.
One tool that you can't craft is the Azoth staff, this is what you will need to be able to go on your first expedition (dungeon).
Faction
At the start, it doesn't really matter what faction you'll be choosing. The main focus is to get more quests that you can turn in for quests
Territory
I'll be focussing on leveling up two different settlements in early. One for maximum storage, another for maximum tax reduction on crafting. The third will be in mid-game, maximizing exp gain. I'm looking at 30+ areas to do so. I'll probably level up other settlements in higher-level areas as I go, but won't spend the points until I know what faction I'll be playing in.
Weapons
If you kill, or contribute to a kill, you'll gain points in the weapon you're holding. This leveling mechanic is pretty cool, as you can basically master every type of weapon in the game. Getting some levels in both the sword and hatchet as soon as possible is a must. Both the sword and the hatchet can provide you with heals, which you need to fight higher-level or elite mobs solo.
Hatchet
The hatchet is fast, and will be the main focus to level. The berserk mode it provides is insane. Berserk mode provides you with heals, and uninteruptable strikes. It's great for pvp as well.
Sword & Shield
Playing with the sword and shield will make it able for you to play as an offset tank. This is great when you go to expeditions or war and people look for tanks or DPS. Easily to switch. You can also respec and become a full tank when you put all your attribute points in Constitution.
Attribute points
For DPS, I'll be focussing first on strength, as both the sword and hatchet scale damage when allocating points to strength and dexterity. Dexterity will be less, but you want to get the bigger nodes for both (100 for strength and 50 for dex). To increase your survivability, you want to allocate at least 50 points to Constitution. If you're going to play as a tank, you can easily respec to put everything in Constitution.
Trade skills
Before hitting level 30, you want to have at least the following:
As you level up, you'll encounter higher level materials and resources. A few times I noticed that my trade skills were below the level for the area that I was grinding in. This made me go back to lower areas to get my trade skils up to the level I needed it to be.
Tracking and skinning have been the most rewarding in my opinion. You basically get experience for everything you do in the game. This includes gathering resources, which is amazing. This MMO isn't just about grinding mobs, but also about crafting and gathering. In 30+ areas, you can skin and get decent skinning levels, netting you about 100 or more exp per 1-2 skinning actions.
As you can see, weaponsmithing, fishing, furnishing, and jewel crafting are pretty low. You will find strong weapons and gear during the game, so you can focus on that when you reach level 40 or maybe even level 60 to craft that end-game gear.
Level 40+
While I haven't been to LVL 40 yet, I'm already facing an LVL 40 required main quest. Since I rushed through the game, I'm not quite sure if I speeded too much, or that I skipped too many quests to get exp.
Strategy adjustment
Since I have been playing this game, it will be good to say that I'll be sticking around in some specific area's a bit more to level up my trade skills. Focusing more on mining and harvesting (herbs and stuff). And of course, to take on more quests to reach level 40.
Who's up for creating a HIVE company at New World?!
Thank you!
Thank you for reading, if you think this game is interesting and you'd like to play it as well, it would be awesome to create a company that promotes the hive blockchain! I'll be waiting for you in-game :P
Cheers,
Ruben