After weeks of testing on the PTR and a couple of developer videos about the changes and player feedback, New World has its January update. The update focuses on adding endgame level options and introduces the recently announced Expedition Mutators and the new Umbral Shards-based gear upgrades. Fast travel and tax rates also get improvements.
The Umbral Shards are a new resource and can be obtained from doing the new Expedition Mutators. The higher difficulty levels you reach for these challenges will earn you more and more shards. You can also collect shards by opening Gypsum Casts if the expertise of that type is at least 600 expertise. Expeditions have also been changed to reflect the new mutators and in general have updated, increased, rewards and drop rates. There have also been reductions across all different materials that you can use to craft Expedition keys. This way there should be better access to even taking part in the new systems.
Fast Travel has also gotten an overhaul to reduce cost and increase efficiency. This update reduces the distance factor in the amount of Azoth you need for each trip. There are also new fast travel shrines all over Aeternum that should help you travel around more consistently and frequently.
The Winter Convergence may be over, but the yetis have been converted from an Elite Boss to just Elites after the event. There are also a series of fixes to AI, the addition of various perks for the new Mutator system, changes to Outpost Rush including an increased cost of Brute tokens from 500 to 750 Azoth and many extensive fixes touching the whole game..
Another thing the team learned from player feedback was that the housing taxes were too high and led to a serious imbalance in wealth disparity due to both the rates and a series of bugs and exploits. For a while, tax rates were only 10% but this has been reverted back to 100% with the tax rate bands now reduced going forward.
The January update is a huge one, and you can read all of the changes including the full descriptions of all the new systems and everything fixed, over at the New World site.
