New World Season 5, Season of the Guardian, is coming next week, and the team is previewing the Winter Rune Forge Trial.
The new 10-person max-level Trial is designed to require teamwork. The Amazon team has included some teamwork-based puzzles in instances before, so that itself isn’t new, but they’re looking to challenge some of the most experienced players in new ways. There’s a new Forged in Aeternum episode where the team chats about the goals and mechanics in the new Trial, as well as a devblog featuring a deep dive on the art side, and reveals of the new rewards awaiting those who complete it.
There are some spoilers in the dev chat as well as the art descriptions, so if you want to be completely surprised, wait until the update lands next week.
The new Trial is based on the Hatchery, so those familiar with that should find some familiar elements in the structure of the Winter Rune Forge. This time, they start with a puzzle and you will find runes on the wall and you'll have to figure out what to do with them. The purpose of this is to help teach you some mechanics you'll need later. You can expect random enemy waves for variety's sake, a mini boss, the Ophidian Construct, you’ll have to strategize and work together effectively to not let it get out of control. Conquer this and keep going towards an eventual fight with the Ice Guardian, with some surprises along the way.
There are differences between the Hatchery and this trial, one of the biggest being that the Winter Rune Forge can drop gear score up to 700 for max level legendary items. Among those rewards are the Tempest Fury Artifact - Great Axe (10% drop chance), which gives a stackable bonus to movement speed and allows Whirlwind to spin up to 12 times without need for successive hits. There are also six named weapons and three named armor sets.
In terms of the difficulty, the team heard the feedback on the initial Sand wurm trial, so they are looking at making the Winter Rune Forge not quite as difficult, but still offering challenges. We'll have to organize groups manually at first, and the smaller size of the raid and the slightly lower difficulty should make this more accessible.
