New World’s latest Forged in Aeternum episode is all about The Savage Divide, the new Expedition coming in the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion next week. The team details what you can expect, the goals, and story premise in the new content, as well as some of their adjustments to Expeditions overall.
This new video features Associate Art Director Rosie Strzalkowski and Expeditions design lead Darren McKinsey. The Savage Divide is set in the new zone of Elysian Wilds, formerly First Light. Now the area has been transformed by invasive growth and passage is choked. In deciding to completely overhaul an existing zone, the team needed to update the existing art in line with the new story content, and also make sure that it didn't just feel recycled but instead felt distinct and somewhere new to (re)discover.
The new expedition will feature a host of new creatures to encounter, so it’s fitting that the new Expedition features Beasts. Beasts are a huge part of the new Expedition and since they’re not going around building new structures, that invasive growth had to set the stage for the new encounters. The art team had to use the growth and flora they used to indicate the invasion that took over to create not just different areas for different Beasts, they had to use all of that to create an overall sense of immersion.
You’ll be confronting Mahantaram, the Mammoth Lord in the Savage Divide. He has gone mad and headed deep into the terrain, leaving a variety of beasts for you to encounter. Each of them also carries part of Mahantaram’s power, so taking them down will only help you break his influence. If this sounds like a completely different experience from any New World expedition you’ve ever entered, you’d be right. For Strzalkowski, the chameleons stood out, since they can disappear, creating a challenging encounter.
Since there aren’t going to be the usual structures, the team had to be resourceful with the art of the growths and paths. It might be otherwise easy to get lost, so this was a big challenge for the design team.
Overall, with the coming update, Expeditions are being tuned to offer varying difficulty and to be smoother and more approachable for all players. Normal mode should be something most can take on, while Mutators are going to be for those who want a challenge.
Rise of the Angry Earth arrives October 3rd, and you can get a peek at The Savage Divide in the full video.
