NewWorldMMO

Winter Convergence 2022 Guide

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Good Morning Friends! The Winter Convergence is upon us and all of Aeternum is feeling the chill of the Winter Warrior… or whatever this storyline actually is. Like much of New World’s story the winter event has the most loosely strung together of themes where basically two Yeti are duking it out… one wants to freeze the entire world and the other wants to protect us from this fate. What it means for the players is one of the most detailed events that take place in the game and features activities that everyone can participate in. This is the second time we have seen the Winter Convergence event and a number of things have been added to improve things. They seemingly have learned a lot from the recent Halloween event and carried forward some improvements.

Daily Presents

In the center of every town that can be held by a faction, you will find the Winter Convergence tree, as well as the entire town decked out in holiday-themed kitsch. One of the key benefits of this event is that you can go up to every tree in every settlement and collect a package each day. The first three packages will include bonus rewards that are effectively the same as the turkey bags that we just had from the Thanksgiving event. Essentially you are going to get some cash, Winter Tokens, and a chance for the various crafting patterns to drop. This is also how you are going to get your Diamond Gypsum for those who are level 60.

Town Board Quests

Every town has new projects that involve upgrading the tree through doing seasonal activities like crafting ornaments or baking cookies. As the town upgrades its tree, the daily rewards will keep getting better with higher token drops and a better chance at patterns. If nothing else they are a very easy way of getting some bonus town reputation each day.

Lost Presents

Scattered around Aeternum along its many roads will be piles of lost presents. You can reclaim these for faction with the Winter Wanderer, and then redeem them for Winter Tokens at the Winter Villages located in Monarch’s Bluff, Everfall, Brightwood, and Weaver’s Fen. Each package nets you 5 faction points so it isn’t a great way to complete the event, but it is the sort of thing you casually collect as you are roaming around and doing other activities.

Floating Packages

I remember when I first encountered a floating package last year I thought it was a bugged spawn. Essentially you will see a glowing pile of packages rotating in the air and if you shoot these down you get a whopping 250 faction with the Winter Wanderer. I am sorry that it is super hard to see in the screenshot, but keep your eyes on the skies and be watching for these. Well worth your time and worth me breaking out a crappy green bow I had in my inventory to shoot them down.

Gleamite Meteors

I’ve not seen one of these this year, but given that I see the ability to trade these in on the Winter Village shops I assume they still exist. Essentially if you hang out in lower-level zones at night time and watch the skies it is possible to see a meteor streaking across the sky. I found this video from last year showing what it looks like so you will know what to watch out for. Essentially when the meteor lands it destroys everything surrounding the impact crater and spawns a number of Gleamite nodes that can be mined for resources you can turn in at the Winter Village as well as some faction with the Winter Wanderer.

Winter Village and the Winter Wanderer

As I said above there are four Winter Villages that you can find spread throughout the world Monarch’s Bluff, Everfall, Brightwood, and Weaver’s Fen. They all for the most part function the same with a few carts in the town that let you trade lost presents and other doodads associated with the holiday event into friendly Yeti helpers in order to gain winter tokens. The Winter Wanderer himself will have a few quests for you. I believe since I did the original series in 2021 I don’t have access to those in order to do them again. However listening to a friend of mine talking about the event, makes me think they are still available. This year he has a new quest to hunt down the Winter Warrior and stop him in his tracks, which is a big boss fight that hops from zone to zone and is marked on your map similar to how the Halloween Boss and Turkulon were.

Winter Convergence Shop

Doing things associated with this holiday gives you a reputation with the Winter Wanderer aka a faction called the Holiday Regent. This works similarly to leveling your other factions, and there are various breakpoints, each unlocking different tiers of items available. At the highest tier which I reached last night, you have a number of somewhat ugly holiday-themed skins as well as a bunch of item-level 600 crafting patterns for every gear slot. You can also get a number of other skins like a replacement for our boring tent, and some extremely festive musical instruments.

Crafting Patterns

One of the really cool things from this year is a number of item-level 600 patterns for pretty much every slot. The huge benefit of this style of the pattern just like the ones that came from the Halloween event is that they can be crafted by anyone without a base skill requirement. The negative is that the materials required for these patterns are going to be extremely costly if you can’t craft them yourself. Each item tends to sell somewhere in the neighborhood of 150-300 coins each so the Great Axe that I crafted yesterday would have cost me around 10,000 coins worth of materials if I was not already capable of making them myself. The benefit with these patterns however is since you crafted them… they operate much like a named item and do not suffer any expertise drain for not having leveled your expertise to 600. A huge boon over the Halloween-themed patterns is it seems like you can choose your primary stat, so you can tailor the item to fit your specific build needs. If you can afford it, this is a fast way to catch up on your gear at level 60.

The Winter Warrior

As I said before the Winter Warrior now spawns in various locations around the world and is marked on your map. This is a large raid encounter and requires a significant number of players in order to take it down. There seems to be some sort of a breakpoint on these each day where the first handful of them reward you 5 Warrior’s Hailspikes and the subsequent kills only reward you 2. At least that seemed to be the case for me… it could simply be RNG. Each one of these can be handed in at the cart in the Winter Village for 10 Winter Tokens, so this becomes the most efficient way to not only farm reputation for the holiday event but also rewards.

Join the Zerg

It is almost guaranteed that your server will have some sort of semi-organized zerg going on while this event is active. Getting everything is going to require copious amounts of farming and as a result, I think this is going to be the case for the majority of the event. Essentially look in your recruitment channel for discussion of WB or World Boss and what zone they are heading towards. Once you are running with the train stay on the sequence as long as you like. Word of warning, however, the Winter Warrior can spawn in multiple locations in every zone in the game, so it is going to pay off significantly if you already have all teleports unlocked. I did not have any of the ones in Brimstone Sands since I had not ventured out there yet, so I took a bit last night and unlocked all of them to make the farming more efficient.

Ice Caves

I guess one last thing I will mention in case the 2021 quests are in fact available. There are a number of Yeti Ice Caves that have spawned around Aeternum and these stay up year-round and were brought into the game after the first Winter Convergence. These are marked on the map with the silhouette of a Yeti, but one of the easiest ones to get to is in Windsward due east along the coast. The lower-level quest will involve going around and killing the Yetis guarding these caves and I believe they are all somewhere in the 25-35 level range. I believe you can farm these caves for reputation but since I capped mine last night I was not able to test this theory.

All told it is a fun event with a lot of stuff going on, and some pretty tasty rewards that can be had if you are diligent in farming over the next few weeks. In theory, this map link should provide you with the locations of all of the Yeti Caves, Winter Villages, and possible Gleamite meteor spawn locations. For me, I am mostly planning on farming the Winter Warrior whenever it suits my fancy and trying to get most of the permanent rewards from the event. Even though the cosmetics are fairly ugly… I am very likely to spend time trying to farm them.

Hopefully, this guide helps players who are unfamiliar with the event get started. If you have any direct questions feel free to drop me a line below or reach out over social media.

Successfully Merged

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I logged in this morning and it appears that the merger has been completed. I am now on Heliopolis instead of Themiscyra and our old server is no more. Because we were not the server being merged into, it means that none of the companies that held territory on our server kept it. I fully expect the next few weeks to be a time of strife as far as faction conflicts go as the companies from three servers ultimately settle into a pecking order. Sadly I had made quite a few friends in the group that previously controlled Everfall, which is where my tier 4 home is located. Positive however is it seems that Everfall is just as well taken care of on Heliopolis with all but one of the crafting machines sitting at Tier 5.

The map on Heliopolis is seemingly more competitive whereas on Themiscyra it seemed like the heavy hitters were all Marauder or Covenant after the biggest Syndicate company transferred off the server. In truth, I don’t much care about who holds a territory so long as they are not being slumlords and doing nothing to maintain the crafting machines. Sadly on Themiscyra we had reached a point where Everfall and Windsward were the only two territories that seemed to put any effort and pride into maintaining them. My hope as well is that with more players there will be more activity happening in the various open world farms since that seems to be the side of the game that I really enjoy doing.

Speaking of farms, I went back out to the camp with Pit Lord Daeshi and have now picked up all of the gear drops off that loot table. It seems like folks are regularly farming this camp because it is where the legendary corrupted trophy material drops, which is heavily needed for invasions. In fact, at two different times out there I was with groups from major companies on the previous server trying to far trophies. Of those drops the one I was seeking out the most of course was the tanking sword… or at least I am turning it into a tanking sword. I figured with two different life-stealing traits on it and a base constitution stat, that screamed sustain and tanking. It does not hurt that it also looks really cool.

Other than farming gear, I spent part of my last night on Themiscyra doing another invasion. It was doomed from the start but we fought valiantly. We had even less than we had the night before and I think we made it to wave 5 before a boss type made it into the base… which caused everyone to collapse in to deal with it… which caused the other gates to fall. Essentially this is sort of what seems to happen as a cascade failure any time you need to call an all-hands-on-point type scenario. Invasions are very much a “manage everything all at once” type thing but once the plates stop spinning and fall down… everything goes south really fast.

Now to sort of bury the lede… I have been up to some shenanigans or at least I am supporting an initiative that is. A handful of my friends have been working on a brand new Mastodon instance that is gaming-focused, given that this seemed to be a niche that wasn’t really well served. Elekk.xyz is a fine server but it is deeply sequestered from the rest of the Fediverse, and really didn’t seem to be all that gaming-focused in the first place. It is nowhere near ready for sign-ups yet, but those of us who are going to be helping with the day-to-day stuff on the instance now have our accounts. Expect more updates as I have them as to when this is going to be launching. I think for the time being I am probably going to keep my Masto.ai account at least in the short run until we have worked out all of the kinks and have federation relays spinning. At some point in the not-too-distant future however I expect to migrate my account once again, but hopefully for the very last time. I have a lot of faith in this team and it will be nice to have a place to suggest where I very directly know everyone involved.

I’ve known about the possibility of this happening for a while but did not want to say anything until it was actually “for seriously” happening.

Gone Fishin

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Sometimes my brain latches onto something and just won’t let it go… until I have obsessed my way through completing it. For this particular obsession, I am going to blame my friend PlayerVsHobbies. When she joined New World not too long ago… she sorta made a beeline straight for the fishing system and as a result, ended up in some areas of the game that her level range was not quite prepared for. I know Vernie at one point helped her I think with a run through some dangerous areas and the other day I happened to be on when she was attempting to sneak to a fishing hole in Shattered Mountain. For those unfamiliar with this game, Shattered Mountain is a deeply scary place with monsters well above the maximum level cap of players… so if you are not well geared and max level, you are probably going to struggle out there. So I played guard duty as we made our way to the fishing hole and then farmed Dryad Wolves for Wyrdwood while she managed to get the fish that was required for that step in the chain.

This all planted in my head that I too have been on this quest chain for a while, and never actually completed it on my original server Valhalla. I’ve admittedly never spent that much time fishing in New World, though of my limited experience of MMO fishing systems it seemed to be about the best. So for whatever reason, this flipped some bits in my brain and made it so that this became my all-consuming mission in life… to complete the fishing chain and walk away with a shiny legendary fishing pole. So other than farming my daily Gypsum, this has been the task I set forth in front of myself… and I have to say it was relaxing as hell. There is something extremely chill about fishing in these beautiful locations for the amount of time needed to complete the quest. I’ve never been most of a fisherman in other games, but I can absolutely see the appeal here.

Another huge benefit of this quest chain is that you pretty much walk away with a full set of Tier 4 and Tier 5 fishing gear, which only serves to help you out as the requests get a bit rare. The only time that I had to rely on bait was when trying to catch fish over 30 lbs, but thankfully what I needed was cheap enough to stock up before heading out into the field. I had always just chucked bait into the bank and in truth, I had quite a good stockpile of various sorts which I now am carrying around on me at all times. I guess I have been bit by the bug because I have found myself flipping over to my fishing set, hitting F3, and doing this while waiting on things to spawn.

I completed the quest chain and you get a random box that includes a level 600 Legendary Fishing Pole. I think PvH got one that was Angry-Earth-themed, and the one I pulled was Ancient-themed. It appears that the stats are largely randomized, which means that in truth… I think the one I crafted and happened to pull 4 tier 3 stats on is maybe a bit better as a daily driver. I know I will be spending a lot more time crafting fishing poles as that seems to be my best option for leveling Engineering, so I might even pull an even better quad/three in my next flurry of crafting. I think if I manage to get geared up enough to start crafting for item level 600 fishing poles, there is the rare chance that I could make my own version of a 5-stat.

What I found somewhat weird though… is that the quest chain only required me to get to level 100 in Fishing, and not 200 which is the maximum before you start getting into aptitude levels. So I also now have the title “Fishing Legend” which I don’t feel like is really something I should equip until I ultimately cap out that skill. It is a fun and relaxing way to pass the time, especially while watching a YouTube video or something like that. So I guess I am thankful to my good friend PvH for getting me started down this path. I wonder what other enjoyable grinds are out there that I have been avoiding.

Edengrove Seniab Ruins Farm

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Good Morning Friends! We are closing in on the end now. I have this farm and one for tomorrow… and then we are done. I committed to this process not realizing how many there would be and I have to admit I have gotten a bit tired of this “bit” as I am sure you all have been as well. The end is nigh however so we are going to push through. This is another good farm not too terribly far from the Taedas farm we’ve already talked about, this time focused around another shaman-type Dryad named Cael. This one also has a Void Gauntlet and a Life Staff and I think the jury is out on which are the best set for which purposes. I largely came here because it was a relatively easy bow to farm, and also had another trade skill set item.

To get to this farm we are best off using the spirit shrine that sits smack in the middle of the zone, but it is also a fairly reasonable run from Valor Hold. I would however suggest making a detour and picking up that mid-shrine if you don’t have it. This is a much higher-level farm than most of the others we have been doing, and everything surrounding Seniab is level 60, so adjust accordingly. I would suggest plopping down a tent just outside the area because it is a fairly long run from the shrine if you are trying to recover. If you happen to be there will a full group, at the top of the tower, is a true boss named Baines that is way too hard to be duo’d. If you had four of five people you likely could take him down on the same respawn timer as Cael. Cael however is easily solo’d and if you sneak up the tower you can loot both of the chests behind Baines without aggroing him pending you sneak and watch your approach angles.

I personally find this to be a much easier camp than Taedas, even though the actual level of the mobs inside of it is much higher. There is also more to do if you are willing to do it, in that each doorway to Seniab has a dryad in it, with two warrior-types and two prowler-types. You can get in a rhythm where you kill Cael and the one warrior-type that spawns with it, then go around the room killing the door guardians, and by the time you finish with all of that… Cael is likely to be spawning again soon. Additionally, there are I think four chests in the vicinity without climbing the tower, and even more, if you do choose to climb the tower up to where Baines is. So if you are at the farm for very long it is well worth taking a trip up the tower every hour to get the chests. Let’s dive into the drops:

As I said before this is a really easy camp if you are needing any of the weapons that are dropped and probably the only bow that is very easily solo’d. I’ve been out here several times with friends and the Life Staff seemed the most common, followed by the Void Gauntlet, and lastly, I have only seen a single bow drop. Again with the loot weirdness that happens in New World, it is entirely possible that you will have wildly different luck with what seems to be commonplace for you. Again all of these weapons can be taken up to 625 with Umbral Shards pending you cap out your expertise at 600 for that weapon type. I did not see this boss drop any Obsidium Gypsum, so I am not entirely certain what flags a mob for dropping that. If you need some the easiest way I have found is the Putris camp.

One more of these to go and I will be posting it tomorrow regardless of it being Thanksgiving. I will be EXTREMELY thankful to have this series behind me. Once I have wrapped everything up I will be adding a section to my New World Gametools page with these guides categorized by the weapons that they drop to make things a little easier going forward for someone coming along after this series has finished. I have collected them into a Loot Farms category on my blog. As always if you know any great spots that I have not visited that drop level 590 gear, please drop me a line below.