New World is adding a lot of things when the Season of the Guardian begins on March 12th, and one of those things is a refinement of the game’s cooking profession. But what does that all mean for in-game gourmands across Aeternum? That question is being addressed in Amazon’s latest video roundtable.
The ultimate goal of simplifying the cooking profession is to remove some of the bloat in terms of recipe numbers without losing its utility or crafting “fantasy.” This means that a lot of the recipes that players just aren’t using will be removed, especially dual-stat foods. Fewer recipes don’t mean less XP earnings, as food items will now be crafted in bundles of three; players will need a few more ingredients than usual, but XP gains will be commensurate to the new item amounts.
Incidentally, any existing foods or recipes that have dual stats will be adjusted to focus on the primary stat instead when the season goes live, while dual-stat foods on the trading post will have their listings cancelled and the items returned to their respective sellers.
In addition to food item consolidation, the revamp will remove the tiers of crafting and gathering food, making those types of buff-granting meals Tier V while also reducing the level requirement to use these foods from level 60 down to level 15.
Finally, fishing will be getting adjusted, with a main focus on legendary fish catches being “exceptionally rare” and an “almost impossible occurrence,” thus making food made with the ingredient more impactful and more valuable. These adjustments will ultimately mean fishers will need to seek out hotspots and have better fishing gear on hand, but that said, the devs do stress that there will be alternatives that bring some helpful boons.
The video then closes with word that consolidation and simplifying will be coming to other professions later down the line, as the devs feel that the game doesn’t need “seventeen different versions of the same shirt.” A timeline for that wasn’t shared, but many of the cooking tweaks coming in March are outlined in the video below – or you can just go check them out yourself as the PTR opens today.
