The Brimstone Sands zone features Egyptian ruins built to honour god-like ancients present on the island many years ago, as well as Roman legionaries who travelled there to discover a way to revive the Roman Empire to its former glory. You’ll have to fight past them, plus sand demons and a variety of Egyptian foes to get your hands on new loot added in the update. To help you power through all that nastiness, you can use the new Greatsword weapon. This uses both strength and dexterity, meaning it should fit snugly into builds featuring other martial weapons available. The weapon has both an offensive and defensive tree, allowing for both tanking and DPS capabilities. But, let’s say you’ve never booted up New World before. The devs have revamped the early game for fresh faces in New World, as well as those looking to level up new characters with the Brimstone update. The quest flow has been streamlined, new puzzles and challenges have been added, revised onboarding that better explains the narrative of each zone, and a variety of other new additions to start zones to make the overall experience a bit more exciting. However, with all these additions, there are a few absences that stand out to those familiar with early gripes with the title. We, among other members of press and influencers, were invited to a pre-briefing prior to the announcement where a Q&A took place. In this, it was confirmed that there were no plans for expeditions that allowed for a larger number of players to participate (think raids in World of Warcraft), as well as no server cap increase or server mergers. In addition, there was no current plans for a faction control reset. This means that new players jumping in for the first time could join a server where one of the three factions have majority or total control of the map. On top of this, there’s no new mechanism for stopping players from all joining the same winning faction, a practice that only snowballs the issue. There will be some additional endgame features to keep players interested, such as a brand new expedition and two elite endgame points of interest, but with a lot of ongoing issues untouched it remains to be seen if Brimstone Sands can win back many of the players who fell off the game over the last year. But what do you think? Are these changes enough to win you back? Let us know below! If you want to hear from the devs directly about this update, check out their dev vlog here.
