In my last piece, I provided my initial impressions of New World‘s Nighthaven update and its titular zone. Since then, I’ve had the time to reach level cap and begin exploring the much altered endgame experience. Also since then, Amazon announced it is laying off 14,000 people including the entire New World team and putting the MMORPG into maintenance mode on the heels of a massively popular expansion. It’s not great timing, but I had this piece ready to go, and I want to put it out there just how much the endgame was improved by Nighthaven, especially for players who are now considering whether they should return and play it while they still can.
As one would expect when so much has changed, there are a few pain points here and there, but I’m pleased to say that my impression of Nighthaven’s endgame is overwhelmingly positive so far. It feels like a desperately needed breath of fresh air after how stiflingly limited New World‘s endgame was following the Aeternum relaunch.
First, let’s talk about the biggest new feature, the Catacombs. This is the new rogue-like inspired extraction dungeon, and I know that sounds like a soup of over-played trends, but so far I’ve found Catacombs pretty fun.
Catacombs presents heavily randomized dungeon runs for three players featuring a wide variety of traps, enemies, and power-ups. Each time you kill a boss, enemies become more powerful, but your rewards also increase. After every boss kill, you have the option to open an extraction portal, at which point you’ll have to hold off waves of mobs until the portal opens and you can escape with your loot.
I say “loot,” but items don’t drop directly in Catacombs. You earn currencies that can then be spent at a vendor once your run is over. You’re limited in both respawns and time, so while you want to push your luck for better rewards, you have to be careful not to push it too far. You’ll lose 80% of your earned currency if you fail to extract successfully.
My favourite thing about Catacombs is how the three player limit breaks the usual trinity and allows unusual builds and group compositions to shine. A tank and two DPS seems to be the preferred composition, but matchmaking doesn’t try to balance roles, so if you’re not making your group manually, you’ll still get to experience lots of other fun and whacky group compositions.
I think this is a mode that will definitely reward a different set of builds than traditional endgame PvE. So far, I’ve found I have better luck DPSing with the void gauntlet build I usually only use for soloing than the glass cannon build I use for mutations, and I’ve had a lot of success with a flail and lifestaff healtank build, though I’m not yet sure it’s actually any better than a conventional tank build.
As I expected, the main downside of Catacombs so far is the social aspect. I’ve already had some awkward moments disagreeing with other players on when, or if, to kill any bosses. In contrast to the reckless speedrun meta seen in most other MMO activities, Catacombs seems to have made people extremely risk-averse, and it seems like people prefer to spend most of the run killing trash and only take on bosses once they’re very powered up, leading to a lot of boring backtracking. I think Amazon might want to incentivize taking on bosses sooner.
The power-ups could also use some work. There’s a lot of powers to help compensate for the lack of a healer, to the point where conventional healers seem to not have much of a place in Catacombs (hybrid focus builds like I’ve been using still seem viable), but there aren’t many powers that let people survive without a tank. And some powers are just dumb. Why would anyone ever take the one that makes you jump farther instead of something that actually improves your combat performance?
So there’s room for improvement, but overall I like how easy Catacombs are to quickly jump into, how their currency based rewards let you target gear for specific slots, and how they encourage builds that wouldn’t otherwise shine in group PvE.
Nighthaven also brought with it a huge revamp to how gear works in New World. No longer are attributes found on gear, so no need to scrap that big upgrade because it has constitution instead of dexterity. It’s all about the perks now, and perks have been completely redesigned with a dizzying variety of all new options.
Perks aren’t always immutable anymore, either. Gear can now drop with offensive, defensive, or skill perk slots, allowing you to slot in your choice of any charm of the corresponding type. Charms are mainly obtained through crafting (or buying from a crafter), but can also drop directly from endgame content, though the drop rate seems vanishingly low.
I am absolutely loving this. Perk charms let you really drill down and customize your gear to focus on what you want your character to be good at. My void gauntlet build was always about self-healing and stacking debuffs on enemies, but now it’s been taken to the next level with a new gauntlet that has three different lifesteal perks, rend on every hit, and a perk that extends debuffs whenever I cast Oblivion.
Adding even more options are the addition of gear sets. As in other games, these give bonuses if you equip enough pieces of a given set. The current sets feel pretty conservative in their effects, but I’d rather they be too niche than something that everyone needs in order to be competitive.
The gear revamp has thrown New World‘s endgame into chaos in the best way. While a stable meta may eventually arise, right now no one really knows what the best options are, and there’s total freedom to build as you see fit. Meta-slaves be damned; it’s the Wild West!
I have been disappointed to see a lot of negative feedback from players around the sheer variety of choices that exist now. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that — whatever they may claim — most RPG players do not welcome meaningful build variety and would much rather just have a singular best option they can glom onto.
That said, there are some genuine issues. The old perks are still in the game in the form of our gear from the pre-patch, as well as drops from some content, and that’s creating a lot of unnecessary confusion over whether the new or old perks are better, with the likely and unsatisfying answer being “it depends.” Probably would have been better to just replace all the old perks with their closest equivalents from the new pool.
Gem slots are also a sticking point, as they seem to be appearing on gear a lot less often now. There’s ongoing debate on whether gem slots are truly needed on armour, but they’re pretty essential on weapons, especially for tanks. Seems like gem slots should be guaranteed on weapons at least.
It also continues to be true that you’re constantly being inundated with mountains of loot, most of which ends up scrapped, and inventory management is a bit of a nightmare, but while that’s a real problem, it’s not a new one. New World‘s always been like that.
One final endgame change that is making a big positive impact is the return of umbrals. If you were around in the early days, umbral shards were a material that could be used to upgrade the item level of endgame items, and the new umbral crystals currency works much the same way but without taking up inventory space.
Not much to say about this; it’s a good system, I like it, and I’m glad it’s back. Not sure why they ever got rid of it in the first place. Since almost every form of endgame content drops umbrals in some form, you can be sure you’re always making some progress, even if your luck with drops is poor. This is exactly the kind of incremental reward system I was advocating for in the wake of the Aeternum relaunch.
My one criticism would be the balance of umbral rewards could use some tweaking. Right now elite chest runs are by far the best way to get umbrals, and while I love chest runs and am glad they remain rewarding, they shouldn’t be a better option than more challenging content. Ideally I’d like to see umbral rewards from things like Catacombs and mutations buffed rather than nerfing the amount you get from chests.
There are also a few things that don’t currently award umbrals that should, like soul and seasonal trials. On the plus side, soul trials do now award materials for crafting perk charms (and supposedly have a tiny chance to drop charms directly), so they’re no longer completely useless, but they’re still a feature that needed a lot more love.
There were some little things that needed cleaning up, but until yesterday, I would’ve said that I found the direction of Nighthaven’s endgame to be a massive, positive course correction for New World. I had hoped Amazon would keep up the momentum, but alas, now we’ll never know.
New World’s Aeternum is a land of many secrets. In MassivelyOP’s Vitae Aeternum, our writers delve those secrets to provide you with in-depth coverage of all things New World through launch and beyond.