New World's first major update adds new weapons, enemies, PvP options, and a novel's worth of minor tweaks

Varangian Knights.
(Image credit: Amazon Game Studios)

Amazon Games is about to release a bumper update for New World, introducing a new weapons and enemies alongside a boatload of fixes.

The Void Gauntlet is the first new weapon type to be introduced. It's intended to be a magic damage/support hybrid, scaling on intelligence and focus. The Annihilation mastery tree specs into more traditional close-range damage dealing, while the Decay tree favours ranged play with debuffs and healing. The developers suggest it'll pair well with the Life Staff and other magic weapons. New enemies are also coming in the form of the Varangian Knights—a group with a brutal leader and a desire for magical artifacts.

Apart from new content, there's a light novel's worth of bug fixes and improvements across the board. One of the bigger changes is a 10% movement speed increase when travelling on roads, which is a pretty decent sop while we all complain about the lack of mounts. The boost will only happen once you've been running on a road for at least three seconds and will cancel if you whip your weapon out, dodge, block or get hit with a debuff.

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The weight of repair kits is being knocked down from 2.0 to a measly 0.1, with Amazon saying the original weight was "too heavy" and that the change should now make it "easy to keep a few at the ready in your back-pocket." It'll also be clearer when your gear needs repairing and how to do it, with additional tooltips and a damaged gear indicator on the inventory screen.

Several changes have been made to weapons and tree masteries. The reason behind changes for each one has a nice explanation beforehand, like changes to the Life Staff to allocate for the fact that some healing power has now been shifted into light and medium equip loads. Weapons like the Hatchet and Spear have been tweaked to feel more viable, with certain weapons like the Fire Staff toned down in areas to make it feel less overpowered.

(Image credit: Amazon Games)

PvP fans will find themselves with new faction missions, plus an additional 10% luck bonus and 30% gathering bonus to anyone flagged for PvP. Durability lost from PvP deaths has now been reduced by 10%, and fellow faction members should now be notified when they're flagged.

Other changes include housing tax now being deducted every seven days instead of five and only being able to place items on the trading post for 14 days instead of 28 days. Tweaks have been made to some early quests, so new starters may have to re-fetch some missions.

It's worth giving the patch notes a small read over yourself as they're pretty damn beefy. The Into the Void update is set to release later today at 5 PM GMT / 12 PM ET / 9 AM PT.

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Mollie Taylor
Features Producer

Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she's not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.