The New World is due out on August 31 this year.

In the most recent patch for New World called The Empress of Ebonscale Reach, the Amazon Game Studios team introduces a new zone, along with a host of other new features and balance changes.

Ebonscale Reach is home to a forgotten dynasty that fights the demons of the past in the guise of the “Fallen Empress”. In this zone, players will have to deal with corrupt enemies such as Musketeers, warriors, spearmen, summoners, and even corrupt Tigers. It looks like Ebonscale Reach will be designed for more experienced players, as this area is designed for players of level 51 and higher. A New expedition, the Garden of Being, was also added. This expedition will have two encounters with the bosses, the Caretaker and the Cursed Greengrocer. While both sound like glorified gardeners, AGS wants players to be careful not to be taken care of, as the area’s mysterious disease has infected everything in the Garden.

And other notable changes to the game are in the form of a 20 vs 20 PvP endgame, new armor and weapon quests, and drop logic adjustments so that weapons are more likely to fall with the appropriate attributes. See the short list of changes cherry-picked below:

Common:

• The first version of Outpost Rush, a new PvP mode endgame 20v20, is presented. We will have more information about Outpost Rush in our next update.
• The main story quests are updated to level 40.
• English voice-overs were added for the main story quests and starting beaches.Progression.
  
• Reduced XP from Faction PvP missions by 5% to 18%.
• Players who kill weaker creatures now suffer a 40% reduction in XP gain returns for creatures 10-19 levels below them and 80% for 20+ levels below them.

           The mechanism.

• Adjusted the logic of falling large chests so that they fall between 2-3 gears.
• All equipable items are now either attached to the equipment or attached to the pickup truck.
• After level 10, the Armor and Weapon Reward Containers will always yield an item of unusual rarity or higher.

Potions now have a cooldown timer. Potions of the same type will have a shared timer when consumed (all health potions, all health recovery potions, all mana potions), preventing you from consuming another potion of that type until the cooldown expires.

These are just a few of the many changes in the latest patch. New World recently decided to expand alpha testing in the EU later this month. It should be released on August 31 this year.