[2022] [Focus Feedback & Bug Reporting] Umbral System

Greetings Adventurers,

With this PTR release, we are introducing a new end-game resource: Umbral Shards!

Umbral Shard Equipment Upgrade System

With this release, we have added Umbral Shards to the game. Umbral Shards are a mysterious, powerful resource that enables you to take an item with a Gear Score of 600 all the way up to a Gear Score of 625. Raising your equipment’s Gear Score in this way is critical if you want to dive into higher-difficulty Mutated Expeditions or gain a competitive edge in PvP. We have also increased the Expertise cap to 625. There is an earnable soft cap at 600 which you can reach in the same ways as before, such as Gypsum Casts and defeating powerful enemies. With this update, crafting a Gear Score 600 item will also raise your expertise if you are not already at 600 for that item. Going from 600 to 625 requires Umbral Shards, which can be acquired in 3 ways:

• Completing Mutated Expeditions.
• Crafting a Gear Score 600 Item when your Expertise with that item is also at 600.
• Opening a Gypsum Cast when your Expertise for that item is also at 600.

Umbral Shards can only be applied to equipment if 2 things are true:

1. The equipment item is Gear Score 600.
2. Your expertise for that piece of equipment is also 600.

Did you encounter a new gameplay bug, stability issue, or performance problem with Umbral Shard content? Let us know below!

During your playtest of Umbral Shards, we’d like to emphasize feedback centered around the acquisition and usage of this resource.

Please report related bugs and pieces of feedback regarding this experience from the PTR here. Thank you!

If you are experiencing a bug, please utilize the following template:

• What is your character name in the PTR:
• What server/world did you experience your issue on:
• Describe the issue you are experiencing:
• Is this a bug or an exploit:
• (if a bug) How did the issue effect your gameplay:
• (if a bug) Were you able to recover from the issue:
• (if a bug) Please include a screenshot or video of the issue that you have experienced:
• What are the steps to reproduce the issue as you experienced:

You can find resources on how to leave good feedback in the How to Give High Quality Feedback post.

Your help in keeping feedback unrelated to the issue above regarding the Umbral System out of this focus thread is much appreciated!

Thank you for helping make New World the best game it can be!

See you in Aeternum!

As this intended for information gathering and not strictly for discussion, we are enabling slow mode for this post, thank you for your understanding!

Thanks for all the feedback so far on the Umbral system. One piece of feedback that is fairly unanimous and I think makes sense is limiting the ability to upgrade to GS 600 is pretty onerous. We wanted to keep the value of legendry 600s really high. But I can totally see how that is limiting, and can be disheartening when you get a lot of bad RNG and haven’t gotten your Legendary roll.

Therefore, we are looking into reducing the required minimum GS to upgrade to 590. You will still need to get to expertise 600 to unlock upgrading via umbral. But once its unlocked you could now upgrade from 590 to 600 at a moderate umbral cost. That allows those really good 590-599 rolls, to become great weapons, with a little extra Umbral.

We will try to get this change in as soon as possible.

They will not gain an additional perk. I think that would potentially devalue legendary items and the chase for them too much. Once players level up mutators or their Expertise, they will be able to earn a fair amount of Umbral Shards quickly. So they could potentially upgrade a lot of 590+ items in the hunt for a good perk roll. We don’t want the Umbral system to be a source for “new” gear, but rather a path to upgrade gear.

Yes attribute bonus and perks scale based on GS, so increasing GS from 599 to 600 will get you that +25 for armor and +30 for weapons.