Earlier this week, New World developer Amazon Game Studios shared some nuggets of information about how the upcoming open-world RPG game’s character progression system will work. Now, the studio’s also posted an in-depth look at crafting in the MMORPG – and there’s a twist. Creating equipment has a little luck thrown in, in the form of “random” perks and enhancements, meaning success isn’t just about honing your smithing skills.
In a new blog post, Amazon goes into New World’s crafting in a lot of detail, explaining that when you arrive in its mysterious land – Aeternum – you’ll “immediately face challenges to overcome”, and crafting will help you tackle them. “Trading and crafting skills in New World are powerful tools and progress endlessly,” the dev says, and the more you level up these, the more you’ll be able to spot, harvest, refine, create, and sell awesome goodies, as you’d expect from the RPG.
However, according to the blog, “any time you craft a piece of equipment, it has a small chance of gaining one or more perks during the crafting process. Occasionally, you may even get an item with a socket for a gemstone.
“These outcomes are random,” the dev says, “but during the crafting process, there are steps you can take to gain some control over the outcome.”
Related: Where to find gems in New World
To increase the possibility of crafting equipment with a gem socket, you can increase the “amount of that item’s primary resource used in the craft”. For example, if you’d like to make a steel sword fitted with gem slots, popping more steel into the recipe when you’re crafting it can help make that happen – though it’s not guaranteed.
Learn about 🔨trade skills and how to become a crafting master in New World!
Read up!
📖 https://t.co/lyGEyjEJ6P pic.twitter.com/2EiPr6BzwU— New World (@playnewworld) June 10, 2020
Similarly, dropping more Azoth – a “mysterious substance sought by all for its immense power” – into your recipe when crafting items can influence the number and level of random perks it’ll have at the end. In addition, you can add special perk modifiers to your creations by chucking certain powerful, magical, and often rare resources – like the Dragonglory flower, which can unlock additional fire damage in weapons – found from around Aeternum in there, too.
This suggests there’s a pretty big interconnection between the crafting, trading, and gathering skills underneath the progression system – levelling up crafting alone won’t guarantee you the very best kit, but harvesting rare and plentiful resources to help nudge those odds in the right direction might.
There’s a lot to know about crafting in the game, so head to the dev post here to learn all about it ahead of the New World release date, which is set for August 25.