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New World is back. After a long year of content updates and quality of life changes, the game is receiving its first major content expansion in the form of Brimstone Sands - releasing sometime soon, either in late September or early October.

RELATED: New World Brimstone Sands Preview: A New Frontier One Year One

This is a complete guide and walkthrough to New World. We've recently updated a bunch of these guides to be applicable in 2022 (a lot has changed), and we're still working on bringing you the latest guides for everything you need as a returning player.

Brimstone Sands Expansion Is Live! Here's A Patch Notes Breakdown

New-World-Brimstone-Sands-Pyramid-1

Brimstone Sands is now live in New World! The update brings a brand-new revamped starting experience, a new level 60+ zone (Brimstone Sands itself), a new weapon, the Great Sword, and a massive host of other tweaks and changes. Here are some of the key highlights from the patch notes.

  • The Ennead Expedition - The new zone also has a new Expedition. We will cover this in a guide coming up soon.
  • New starting quests - Ahead of the fresh start servers that launch on November 2, the revamped early leveling experience is now live. In addition, there have been substantial changes to experience required to level. It is now much, much easier to level up throughout the process, with a significant percentage reduction for level 45+ requirements (160% less experience required to hit 60!)
  • Great Sword - It's big, it's powerful, it's the Great Sword. This is an effective, versatile weapon that can be used alongside a variety of other weapons, including the Sword, Bow, or Warhammer.
  • Heartgems are new "Ultimate" abilities in New World - they are Detonate, Grasping Vines, Stoneform, Cannon Blast, and Dark Ascent.
  • Hundreds of fixes and tweaks for quests, quality of life, particularly in expeditions and Mutators. Scoring has been changed for Mutators too - you will get more Umbral Shards at lower levels, chests are at the end, and gatherables now add to your overall score. This will hopefully balance out that it is harder to reach certain ranks.
  • Bears no longer hit as hard. Anyone who has played New World knows that these pesky creatures basically used to act as mini-bosses. They should be easier to take down now as a solo player. There have been loads of other tweaks to AI damage, behavior, and more - it seems that mostly they have been nerfed to make the game easier for solo players.
  • Nerfs to the Rapier. The game has definitely seen a lot of meta Rapier builds over the past few months, and these nerfs have hit it pretty hard. Allegro and Breathe are no longer triggered immediately, but only after evading an attack (massive!), and Riposte has received several nerfs.
  • A bunch of perks has also received nerfs - things like Empowering Explosive Arrow and Keenly perks will no longer persist on weapon swap. This is also a big, big change. Shirking Energy has also been nerfed to provide 15 instead of 20 stamina, a 6-second cooldown, and reduced stamina range.
  • Gear Score is now balanced in Outpost Rush, i.e if you enter with gear score less than 600 it will be equalized across the board for all players at 600. Perks and other boosts remain the same.
  • Taxes have been locked for all territories. Housing is set at 1%, Crafting is set at 0.5%, Refining is set at 0.5%, and trade is locked at 2.5%.

There are so many more tweaks and changes to look at for yourself - the patch notes are huge! - so if you want to read the rest, head over to the official website to get more info.

New World FAQs

New World Brimstone Sands Pyramid

Here's everything you need to know ahead of jumping into New World for the first time, or as a returning player.

Is Worth Buying New World In 2022?

We've stayed in the know with New World over the past year, and a lot has changed. The game has been packed full of QoL changes - the new seriously reduced fast travel costs and storage improvements are so much better than they used to - and new content in the form of expeditions. The endgame gear grind has been vastly improved by the Gypsum and Expertise sytems, too. It's the best time yet to revisit the game.

Do You Need A Subscription To Play New World?

No, you don't need a subscription to play New World. You just need to make a single one-time purchase to own the game and play it.

Is New World On Xbox or PlayStation?

New World is currently not available on Xbox or PlayStation.

Is New World a survival game?

Technically no, although the game boasts an extremely robust crafting system that does share similarities with large, open-world survival games. New World is an MMORPG with a focus on PvP. You don't need to eat, sleep, or drink to survive.

Is New World an open-world game?

Yes. The world of Aeternum, the setting for New World, is huge. It's currently only explorable on foot or via fast traveling.

Are there classes in New World?

New World has no classes. It has a classless leveling system where weapon mastery and attributes are earned by using a weapon, such as the Fire Staff or Hatchet. You can still build your own classes (like a Healer, or a PvP build) but these are not restricted. You can spec and re-spec by using some in-game currency.

Are there microtransactions in New World?

Yes, there are microtransactions in New World, although the store is completely cosmetic. At least, for now. There were rumors that there would be paid boosts to the game, but the developers have addressed these problems by saying that the microtransactions will only be cosmetic. Only time will tell how true this is.

Mounts Confirmed!

Yes, Mounts are coming to New World. This was confirmed by the team in the recent dev stream. We know nothing more at this time, except they are quite early on in the design phase.

Fresh-Start Servers - When?

Soon! That's all we know so far, but we do expect that the fresh start servers will go live in October alongside or just before the Brimstone Sands patch.

Endgame Raids

Yes, the game will be getting much harder endgame PvE to balance out the fact that the majority of endgame gear is considered BiS for PvP. This means 10-20 player raids.

More Solo Content

Alongside the future raids, there will also be more content that can be enjoyed as a solo player. Apparently there is an area in Brimstone Sands that is an example of this.

Recent New World News

New World Group Of Players Brimstone Sands

Brimstone Sands is now live, here is our recent coverage of the game and its expansion.