Amazon’s latest New World dev blog isn’t going to shake any foundations with breaking news, but it does deep-dive the new artifacts added in Season of the Guardian earlier this month. System designer Isaiah Cartwright goes through all eight new artifacts and more specifically why Amazon chose them for implementation. In most cases, especially for the weapons, they filled a need in player builds.
For example, the hatchet Sin was meant to synergize with debuff hatchet builds, while the spear Venom plays into heavy attacks with poison. The new great axe Tempest Fury, on the other hand, was intended to give players a way to “tap into that iconic whirlwind barbarian feel,” particularly in PvE.
The four new artifact armors may not be as flashy – do you really get excited for boots? Actually, don’t answer that because I do – but they still fill gaps in player loadouts. Or at least they were meant to it; as the dev blog explains, Amazon’s first design for artifacts didn’t quite work out and was simplified during development.
“Nature’s Wrath was designed to discourage Empower stacks and instead give a flat bonus,” Cartwright says of the swanky leather coat artifact. “We assumed there would be some fun ways this could work with non-removable Empowers as well, but wanted to set something up that goes against the gain of ALL THE BUFFS. Fun fact – this originally removed all food buffs until we fixed it during early tests.”
Incidentally, if the name Isaiah Cartwright sounds familiar, you might be remembering him from his extremely long stint working on Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 for ArenaNet, where he rose to lead designer and design director.
Take a deep dive on the design philosophy behind this season’s new Artifacts with System Designer Isaiah Cartwright.
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— New World (@playnewworld) April 23, 2024
