In this New World Blood of the Sands Guide, we dive into the Season 2 release date, huge changes to PvE/PvP including the Gladiator PvP Arena, the sandworm elite trial, new 10 person trials, free transmog tokens, and a whole lot more. 

New World Season 2 Blood of the Sands Guide

As things have slowed down in New World and as we are nearly completing season 1, we've now gotten the announcements surrounding season 2 - what it will include, when it will hit the PTR, and a lot of other exciting stuff, also a couple of things we are not so sure about. So let's have a closer look and see what's up.

New World Season 2 Release Date

The New World Season 2: Blood of the Sands releases on July 6, 2023

New World Season 2 Blood of the Sands Content & Changes (PvP & PvE)

Now let's take a close look at the new content and changes we expect to see in Season 2: 

• GLADIATOR PvP Arena (Brimstone Arena Map)

One of the PVP pieces of content coming with this particular season 2 that was announced is a new Arena map. This Arena will be themed like the new Corsica one, so we already know what that looks like apparently. It's going to be multi-leveled as well and you can knock people down somehow so that's going to be super exciting though. The Gladiator Arena could be one of the most exciting content for some players. 

• Crossworld OPR & OPR Changes

On the PvP content, here is also Crossworld Outpost Rush in the same patch. We don't know if all of this is actually going to be right at the start of the season, they didn't mention that in particular, but it sounds like it's going to be because they specifically pointed out other things that were not right at the start of the season. So there will be Crossword Outpost Rush which will have Regional leaderboards now, which means it's actually harder to get on top because you're competing with more players. 

They also score adjustments that push the scoring system more towards playing objectives instead of pushing damage which we've been asking for ages for the most part as well because stat padding is just too rewarding in OPR at the moment or in any PVP mode. And that includes things like defending points and capturing points, we don't know if it will also include holding points but either way, once again just a lot better than the current system. 

They also mentioned that the baroness will get a change but they didn't specifically explain that in the past they have already mentioned that they're going to change their walls, so basically it's going to be harder to snipe the baroness from outside. 

They're also making door resistance changes, so it's going to be harder to destroy doors for OPR in particular with ranged piercing weapons is what they mentioned here. 

But in return they're also going to make Siege equipment changes which should make this more interesting somehow they said, so maybe The Siege equipment will be used to destroy the gates as well maybe we placed in positions where you can just shoot directly at the gates and take them down very easily. 

• PvP Reward Track

As many of you probably already know, the PVP reward track is also getting reworked, and all of the existing drops will be overhauled. And they said they weeded out things players when selecting or that weren't performing well as well and are making sure that good rewards also show up a lot more frequently. From previous Dev talk, we also know that they're specifically reworking the rewards from Level 1 to 20 to be specifically very good drops and then afterward there will be just frequent good drops with better perk pools.

• First Light Takeover

First Light is going to be locked off, you cannot get into First Light because it has been taken over by Adriana for the main storyline and she's doing some new things there. We'll know that it's leading it towards the expansion, so we think we'll see the first teasers of what is happening there in the form of how that is locked off. We also would think it's probably going to be some vines that are just sealing it off and we are hoping for my Tropical Paradise behind it. If you have a house in First Light, they said nothing will be lost everything will be refunded, so you're not losing any property or at least you're getting the gold back for whatever he paid.

• Transmog

Transmog itself will not be in the main patch because the patch is essentially full enough but will be an off-cycle release, so it will be between season 2 and season 3. But the season 2 pass will include transmog tokens on both tracks the unpaid one and the paid one. So you can earn transmog tokens before Transmog comes out so that when transfer comes out, you basically have tokens ready already hopefully for at least nearly a full set.

• Season 2 PvE: Storyline & Solo Trial

On the PVE side of things, we're also seeing tons of content, so the general narrative for season two is that the June Walker Malik needs help from the Silver Cross to revive the ancient sect called Blood of the Sands with sandworm eggs, so everything in the season will play around that.  They said in the storyline itself, they will be doubling down on cinematics and fun encounters, and main enemies are now instanced as solo trials, so you no longer fight them with other players and they should feel a little bit more epic in general too. Part of the Season 1 questline will also still be available to new players or players that haven't played Season 1, which will allow you to hire the members that you get during the first season, but you won't be able to play the full first storyline anymore, also the Silver Cross will get a new team member.

• Season Pass Changes

When it comes to the season pass, they want to optimize the time it takes, making cards a more equitable and rewarding loop, and also continually optimizing activities even before season 2. There will also be New Journey tasks and generally more Journey tasks to choose from for each level, so you don't have to do more for the progression that will be the same but you have more options between what you can do for progression.

• Raide 1: 10-People Season Trial - Hatchery

The first season trial is the Hatchery, this is a 10-man raid with the goal of collecting sandworm eggs. You'll be fighting five waves of enemies, first, you have some trash mobs then you have the horde master and his hordes of fire Grunts and then you have Haddish Kaza - The Keeper of the Flame. They're using a very interesting new reward system here, so the rewards of the event will have Constitution as their attribute by default, but you can get seals from the trial, and that allows you to respect those items into other attributes - kinda like items from the faction shop if you remember those seals. We have a strong feeling that these rewards will likely be very useful for the sandworm. 

• SOLO Alternative

By popular demand, there will be a solo route through this piece of content as well keep in mind this doesn't necessarily mean that you can do the whole trial solo, but maybe that there's an alternative way to get past this point of progression, we'll see.

• Raid 2: 20-Player Elite Trail - Sandworm Type

Now we have the elite trial - the Sanworm, this is a 20 people trial and they said this is going to be super hard content. They mentioned in this context that when they once tried to make hard content it was invasions which were originally really hard, the original invasions were only beaten by very very few groups they were a very small percentage of players that actually beat those. So apparently this or harder is the level that we can expect. They say that this will need coordination and optimized gear and they predict that in the first week around 100 players will be able to beat it. The trail is meant to be difficult, unlike murkart which they made a little fun of here and all the rewards are going to be really strong as well. The sandworm is now confirmed to be a beast enemy, in other words 99 of the player base won't have gear for this boss and gear is not easy to come by at all, so there's going to be a lot of crafting happening as well. Additionally, acid damage will also be a factor in this fight, this is probably not surprising to most of you.  The Sandworm will provide its own Heart Rune as well. 

• Raid Groups

Along with this, they're releasing raid groups as a feature. With a maximum of 20 players per group so far, so it's not something that could be used in Wars yet. And it's usable in the open world too, so for example, you can use this for chest runs in PvP, they didn't mention OPR here, we could imagine that they're testing it for other things first and then see if it works for OPR too. And this also includes being able to see everyone on the map so it's going to be great once it hits OPR.

• Less New Heartrunes

They also had an important remark on the heartrunes here, they say they're feeling like they were leasing them too fast, they're still planning to release another one in season 3 but are thinking of scaling back afterwards unless the players want more and more heartrunes. We are in the camp of them, please not adding more heartrunes, as we think they should rather focus on balancing the ones that currently exist instead of adding more and more and more. Heartrunes like Dark Ascent have very limited use, so we'd rather see those reworked first before we get others especially because every part is a balanced concern in itself as well.

• Siege of Sulfur Event

There will also be a new event called The Siege of Sulfur. In this event, you have to defend eggs that are being attacked and the rewards scale with the number of eggs defended so this is very fun kind of like a mini Invasion we suppose. And the reward here includes a really cool helmet they say, which is a mini Devourer head with a sandworm on your head.

• Long-term plans & LOTR MMO

They make mention of The Lord of the Rings MMO and talk about the plans for New World in that context, they say New World is something they're heavily invested in and the next year they'll probably have more content on it than this year's plan. There's no taken foot off the gas or New World again,  we also know that they are using the same engine and we think they're going to use New World to test all of the things for a lot of the Rings, so we think this is going to be absolutely fine, we also don't expect a lot of the Rings to release in the next year or something.

Now you may have already seen the New World Summer Roadmap, there are a few things on there that they haven't mentioned yet that we predict they will still mention, but what they didn't do in this particular announcement is talk about the balance segments yet. So they didn't talk about weakest ability balance and block changes, and we think those things will come in the next balance of power video and that's probably why they didn't touch up on them. The one thing they didn't mention that surprised us is The Invasion rework, because it sounded like that is going to come next season as well but then again they have so much other content. They also didn't mention the trophy improvements and the fishing improvements, but those are smaller things that could just be in the patch notes later and are also less guaranteed for season 2 in general.

It seems like the next season is going to be absolutely brimming with content and we are very much looking forward to it of course. We will update you once they're further news.