I wouldn't normally be posting on a Sunday. I'd be at work. It's coming up Christmas, though, and my work pattern has been shunted around a little, so here I am. I thought I might do a little catch-up on where I am with New World.
Still playing, for a start. Every day, almost. Longer sessions than I've been used to lately, too, although that still only means a couple of hours, most days.
It's an incredibly comfortable game, New World. Cozy, almost. It shouldn't be, given the bleak lore, heavy focus on combat and over-saturated mob density, all things that usually make a game feel enervating after a while. And yet, somehow, it's always felt like a pleasant place to pass some time.
It has for me, anyway. Even back in pre-alpha, when Amazon Games still thought they were making a PvP sandbox, I remember trotting around the beautiful countryside, taking screenshots no-one but me would ever see, thanks to the very strict NDA, and generally enjoying the peaceful vibe.
Yes, there are zombies everywhere (Not what they like to call them but it's what they are, all the same.) but they move slowly and don't react until you're past them. Everything's a bit that way, slow on the uptake, except maybe some of the animals. Boars and big cats are particularly quick to engage and you really, really don't want to tangle with the bears.
But mostly you don't have to. There's an excellent road system. If you stick to the highways you won't run into much trouble. Not until you have to cross one of the many bridges, that is. They all seem to be positively infested with skeletons. And there are some checkpoints, gates, tollbooths and the like. They might need a detour through the shrubbery.
It's hard not to keep veering off the road, though. The pickings are so good. There's stuff just lying around everywhere for the taking. It's a kleptomaniac's paradise. There are chests and boxes and stashes of all kinds in and around every building. Not just the ruins. The intact homes, too. Go into someone's house and, provided they've been corrupted or tainted or whatever the hell it is, you can kill them and steal their stuff. It's not just socially acceptable, it's positively encouraged.
What with the sightseeing, the stealing, the murdering and the foraging (Did I not mention the endless supply of herbs, ores, skins and timber?) it's easy to while away hours without really doing anything much. That's mostly how I played on my first post-launch run, a couple of hundred hours, with sessions that lasted twice or three times as long as they do now.
Back then, I did somehow find the time to follow the main storyline as well. And do a bunch of side quests. But it was a rare session when I didn't lose track of the plot as I veered off course to see what I could fill my bags with. That, plus the crafting and the rep grind to buy a house and then decorating it... it all made for a slow meander to the level cap.
I must have been weeks, months, behind the bubble. In the end I did get there somehow but by then the game was out of fashion and I'd had enough for a while, so I moved on. And now I'm back, of course, the cap has gone up.
One of the perks of maintenance mode is that returning players only have to play catch-up once, I guess. I can't count the number of times I've had to do it in some MMORPGs that had the nerve to keep on adding content every time I took a break.
This time it didn't seem to matter much. I got all wrapped up in the mount questline, which didn't appear to care what level I was. Actually, that's not entirely true. It does give you a recommended level for each stage but I don't think it's hard-locked. In any case, at Level 60, I was well over the height limit.
Well, for a while. A few days ago, though, I finished the last of the wolf-riding races and the woman who set the courses told me I ought to go to Brimstone Sands to speak to the next race organizer. Brimstone Sands is that big zone they added a while back, the one before Nighthaven and it's designed for levels 60 plus. (I think when it was added 60 was still the cap, so it's probably all doable at sixty. Not easily, though.)
It didn't matter when the mobs were in the thirties and forties. If I had to, I could just hop off and slaughter them all. When the archers (And there are no shortage of archers in this game. And snipers.) took pot-shots at me as I rode through, they either missed me or did very little damage. I certainly never fell off my pony. Or my wolf.
In Brimstone Sands it's different. Arrows, bullets and musket balls hit hard enough to dismount me and you can't remount until you're out of combat. Killing the mobs takes a while. Running away on foot until they leash takes even longer. Get knocked off your mount more than once and there's no chance you'll finish the race before the timer runs out.
Time to get back on the treadmill, I guess. Gear and levels both.
One good thing that always happens when you've been away a while in many MMORPGs is that all the stuff you couldn't afford to buy on the auction house last time you were there is suddenly on sale at a fraction of the price. No-one wants gear for ten or fifteen levels below the cap.
Except me, of course. What is the cap now, anyway? 70? Let me check... yes, it went to seventy with the Angry Earth expansion that I didn't buy, which explains why I stopped at sixty. And now they're giving that expansion away for free, I have another ten levels to do.
Or, more to the point, I have another two levels to do right away, because gear in New World has level requirements and from browsing the traders last night it looks like there's a big step-change at Level 62. I ended up buying a load of very cheap upgrades with a minimum level of 56 or 57 just to be going on with but I'll be replacing those as soon as I do another level and a half.
Instead, I thought I'd go clear up my quest journal. I have a ton of old quests in there I can go finish up in lower zones. Mid-40s quests give decent xp and they're pleasantly unchallenging. Except for one.
Padre Nuñez. I hate Padre Nuñez! He's a Level 48 boss and I've needed him for a quest since... I don't know... it must be years now. I got the quest when I was in the mid-40s and I've tried to do it easily a dozen times.
Sometimes I can't find the bastard at all. He wanders along the roads on his estate but half the time I go there he's nowhere to be found. Those are the lucky times.
When I do find him, he kicks my ass. He pretty much one-shot me when I was the same level as him and it's barely gotten any better since I've outleveled him. He's one of those gravedigger mobs that walks around with a coffin strapped to his back, which means you have to break the damn box before you can hurt him if he turns his back on you.
So he's fun...
Still, I thought at Level 60, with the best gear I could find for my level on the Trading Post, surely I'd be able to get the better of him.
Nope. I found him (Eventually.) and launched a full-on frontal assault. Shock and awe tactics. It was a lot closer than usual but when it came down to the wire and we had about 5% health each, he outlasted me and I died.
I was not happy. When it's that close, you know it's just a matter of either luck or slightly better tactics so I tried again. And this time, for the first time ever in all the times I've visited his estate, I discovered he has a fixed spawn at some kind of outdoor shrine or altar.
Well, he is a priest...
How I never saw it before I can't explain. I also don't recall ever seeing it mentioned in any walk-through I read. There he was, though, with two guards. He had his back to me. I think he was praying.
Having learned nothing from all the other times, I launched myself at him from behind. I killed his two guards and backed off as he dropped his stupid blue lights. And this time, for whatever reason, he followed me without reeling me in or breaking combat. His health was dropping fast! And he didn't self-heal! Or turn around so his coffin would protect him!
He just fought like a regular person, face to face, no tricks and I kicked the crap out of him. It was super easy. Barely an inconvenience!
Maybe that's how you're meant to do it. Fight him at his altar. Maybe he buffs himself there and I caught him before he had time to finish. Maybe the leashing is more generous in that area. Maybe I just got lucky.
Don't know. Don't care. Never have to see him again. Well, unless I ever level up another character but I don't think there's much chance of that...
What with that quest and a few others much less stressful, I made it about two-thirds of the way through Level 60. I can't say it feels quick but it's certainly enjoyable. My plan now is to trundle steadily through a bunch of mid-40s/low-50s quests until I ding 62, then buy a whole new set of gear and get back to the races.
Looks like I'm playing New World again. For a while, anyway.
At the risk of discouraging you, gear upgrades might not make as much a difference as you may expect, at least not if level is all you're paying attention to. The raw armour and weapon damage will help some, but since gear doesn't have attributes anymore, its really the perks that matter. You want perks that will synergize with your build, and below level 70 it's not generally worth the effort to find ones that do, since you'll be replacing stuff so soon.
ReplyDeleteThat said, you should still be able to get by without good gear. Make sure you've got your attributes set up to support your chosen weapons, with at least 100 Constitution as well. I could recommend some very easy solo builds for you if you like, but I know not everyone appreciates unsolicited advice, so I don't want to presume.
Also, something that can help a lot is consumables. Buff food will help some, and you can get consumables called weapon coatings and ward potions to boost you against specific enemy types (IE to help with Nunez you could have used a Lost Weapon Coating and a Lost Ward Potion). You can also get Honing Stones to buff your weapon damage.
Also, minor correction because I'm a pedant: There is another zone between Brimstone and Nighthaven (in terms of level and story progression): Elysian Wilds, the zone added by Rise of the Angry Earth.
I thought of mentioning Elysian Wilds but I was mostly thinking of the geographical proximity of Brimstone Sands and Nighthaven, which I only noticed recently are weirdly next to each other - a baking North African desert and a middle-European forest - in that way that only happens in video games.
DeleteLeaving aside the removal of attributes from gear, which is new since I
last played, I remember the rest of the system with all the perks and tinctures and so on, although it sounds as though the perks part has been buffed considerably. The problem there is that I find all that sort of thing intensely irritating. It's fun maybe once, when you first get to see all the possibilities and play around with a build, but just the thought of having to apply different coatings or drink different potions to deal with different kinds of mobs is enough to make me give up and go play a game that doesn't require that degree of babysitting just to do basic combat.
As I remember it, though, with the very rare exception like Nunez, it never seemed to mater much what I had equipped. It's a pretty forgiving game when it comes to combat and the penalties for losing a fight are small. Thanks for the build offer - if you want to give me a link I'll be happy to take a look - but I'll probably just muddle along until I get to 70, if I ever get that far, and worry about fixing a build then. As you say, it rarely pays to put too much effort into that sort of thing while you;re still leveling. Just enough to get by!
The obviously chilly Nighthaven being south of baking Brimstone Sands is definitely odd. The launch zones have a pretty logical cohesiveness, with tropical zones in the south and increasingly cool and temperate zones the farther north you go, but they seem to have abandoned that commitment to realism after a while.
DeleteIf you find yourself in need of a better solo build, here's my recommendation: Get yourself a greatsword, invest your skill points mainly in the Defiance tree (taking only the heavy attack boosting passives from Onslaught), wear heavy armour, and split your stats evenly between Strength, Dex, and Con. You could take hatchet as your offhand weapon to have a ranged option for pulling mobs (hatchet has similar attribute scaling to GS), but you'll probably never need to use your offhand weapon, so it doesn't matter much. The playstyle is just hit all your abilities on cooldown and then spam heavy attacks. You'll rarely if ever need to block or dodge. It's a little slower to kill things, but extremely safe, and you'll win the war of attrition every time. It's New World on easy mode.
Thanks! I might try that. I've been using Hatchet most of the time since launch because it was OP at the start and I just never really changed. I did try out a few other weapons for a while, including Greatsword, but I can't remember much about any of them. And it's true that I almost never use range in New World, which is odd. I use it a lot in most games. In NW I mostly just run up to things and go berserk. It really isn't subtle!
Delete