New World PTR Is Now Testing Its New Expedition Mutator System

Endgame Expeditions in Amazon's MMO New World are about to get a whole lot harder, if players are willing to accept the challenge. Expedition modifiers called Mutators, and 10 additional difficulty levels for each Mutated Expedition, are currently being tested on the game's public test realm.

As detailed by Amazon in a new blog post, Mutators augment enemies within Expeditions--New World's versions of dungeons--with various affixes in a system that isn't all that dissimilar to World of Warcraft's Mythic+ dungeon system. Upon completing a Mutated Expedition, players are scored based on speed, the number of enemies killed, and how many times players died or wiped during the Expedition. Players can unlock higher difficulty levels (and earn better rewards) by earning a high enough score.

Amazon states that it expects higher difficulties to be "extremely difficult." Given that more than a few players have complained about New World's lack of endgame content, the introduction of Mutators and multiple difficulty levels will hopefully give New World's most dedicated fans more goals to work towards.

The other major addition being tested on the PTR is the new Umbral Shard system. This new resource provides a means for players with items of 600 gear score to increase the power of those items up to 625, with Amazon stating that doing so will be "critical if you want to dive into higher-difficulty Mutated Expeditions or gain a competitive edge in PvP." The shards can be acquired in a number of ways, including completing lower level Mutated Expeditions. Players will need a corresponding Expertise level of 600 to apply an Umbral Shard to a given piece of gear.

While Mutated Expeditions and the Umbral Shard system are the big talking points, the PTR does feature a few other changes as well. The Azoth cost for fast traveling long distances is being reduced significantly and Expeditions are also seeing their loot tables adjusted, alongside other minor changes.

No word yet on when Mutated Expeditions or Umbral Shards will be arriving in the live version of the game, but it's likely to be within the next few weeks. New World received its first holiday event in the form of the Winter Convergence Festival last month. Amazon has recently started merging low population New World servers into one another in an effort to create servers with healthier populations.