Greetings, Adventurers!

Survival or supremacy. Rebirth or ruin. These are the choices that define Season of the Divide, the latest seasonal update coming to New World: Aeternum on May 13. This season throws players into fierce competition with a focus on high-stakes risk, fast progression, and massive PvP encounters. Prepare for a Hardcore Seasonal World, the new Coral Divide Outpost Rush map, World Bosses, preview weekends for Capture the Flag and 3v3 Arena, a new Barbershop, and more. Whether you’re sprinting to max level or risking it all to remain “unfallen,” Season 8 rewards those who embrace the chaos — and survive it.

What’s New in Season 8 – “Season of the Divide”

Hardcore Seasonal World

Speed. Strategy. Survival. This season’s Seasonal World, Hardcore, introduces a thrilling twist to character progression. New characters begin in a “unfallen” state, gaining access to elite rewards if they survive without dying. Die once, and you will forfeit the ability to unlock the unfallen rewards. However, your character will remain, and your experience on the server will become easier. You’ll still have plenty of other rewards to chase and unlock for your account and primary characters, even after you’ve fallen. If you’ve never experienced some of the pinnacle group content, or struggled to find a group, this server is the perfect place to power up and dive into that content with ease.

Leveling and gearing up is faster than ever in this limited-time world with a completely different, streamlined main questline to follow. Artifact equip limits are lifted, allowing players to power up like never before. Push yourself to the brink or reroll to reclaim your unfallen glory. The choice is yours.

The Season 8 Hardcore Seasonal World will will only be available for a limited time and launch in early June. Look forward to more details closer to launch.

Outpost Rush New Map - Coral Divide

The Coral Divide Outpost Rush map makes its debut this season. Fight for control in a vibrant, ocean-themed arena designed to emphasize verticality, tactical flank routes, and intense center fort clashes.

PvP New Modes and Maps Preview Events

During Season 8 we will host a number of preview events featuring new PvP modes and new maps for existing PvP modes. These limited time events occur throughout Season 8 and each will be active for several days. Exact dates for the preview events will be shared during the season.

Capture the Flag Preview

Capture the Flag is a new PvP mode coming to New World: Aeternum that players will have a chance to test during Season 8. This exciting new mode pits two teams of 10 players against each other in a fast-paced fight to control the team’s flag. Score as many captures as you can in the limited time to win. Powerups and Jump Pads in this mode make it feel more competitive and unlike any other PvP mode in the game. We look forward to sharing all the details about this new mode before our test events, so stay tuned!

Outpost Rush: Barebones Preview

Outpost Rush: Barebones is a new spin on our most popular game mode that attempts to level the playing field completely. In this version, all gear perks are disabled and everyone is bumped up to max gear score. If you feel like your gear isn’t good enough for PvP or want to prove that you’re better than your gear, join us!

3v3 Arena Map Preview

We will also preview our latest offering for 3v3 Arenas that features our largest arena to date set in an ancient temple grove. The death fog closes in sooner in this map causing an early ranged advantage to quickly become a melee advantage.

Expeditions Unleashed: World Bosses

Take on colossal threats during limited-time, open-world events featuring iconic enemies from Expeditions. Players can rally together to defeat level 70 bosses for up-leveled loot (GS 715–725). Each event grants one guaranteed 725 GS item and multiple 710 items. Look forward to the bosses Mammoth Mahantaram, Scarab Boss Khepri, and Fire Naga Ifrit making appearances during Season 8.

Barbershop

Reimagine your character at the Barbershop, available now at every Stylemancer! Use Barbershop Tokens—earnable through gameplay or purchasable in the Store—to tweak your appearance. All players can earn a free token in the Season Pass!

Seasonal Events & Bonuses

Springtide Bloom

Celebrate renewal with refreshed rewards and seasonal cosmetics.

Faction Fest: Expeditions

Choose a Faction, compete in themed activities, and earn rewards.

Fury of the Spriggan

Battle nature’s wrath with updated event rewards.

XP Boost Events

Weapons (PvE & PvP)

Gathering (PvE)

Season Pass RewardsFree Track

2 Artifacts: Lich Gloves & Vampire Vestments

6 Tool Skins: Sinner’s Set

2 Helm Skins: Oblivion’s Herald & Corruption’s Witness

5 Sets of Dyes

Emotes: Brush Off Shoulder, Touch Grass

Premium Track (20,000 Marks of Fortune)

9 Weapon Skins: Fallen Set

5 Armor Skins: Blackguard Set

5 Additional Dye Sets

New Artifacts

Season 8 delivers 7 powerful new artifacts, including:

Old Crown (Head) – 10 to all attributes, comes with bonus gem functionality.

Relentless (Tower Shield) – Team armor aura and enhanced healing.

Vampire Vestments (Light Chest) – Lifesteal and mana synergy.

Wit (Sword) – Increased threat and damage mitigation on crits.

Chaos (Blunderbuss) – Launch enemies with fiery blast shots.

Runic Greaves (Heavy Feet) – Speed boost after using Heartrunes.

Lich Gloves (Light Hands) – Empower stacking with ability usage.

Tech Enhancements

Improved performance and visuals for Nvidia GPUs.

DirectX 12 – Enabled by default on Steam for better stability and graphics.

Combat & Quality of Life Updates

PVP Camps - Open world PvP is getting an upgrade! Players flagged for PvP will now be able to place or bind to faction-only destructible camps. Hunt down and destroy enemy faction camps to remove your enemy’s ability to respawn close to the fight, creating a more strategic experience in Influence Races and open world PvP combat.

Ready Up – Start PvP matches faster when enough players opt in.

Spectator Cam – Watch the battle after death in select game modes.

Survival Potions – 5 new potions to choose between to modify different aspects of survivability in combat:

Burst Regen Potion - A small burst of healing followed by a passive regen for a duration (Combination of Health and Regen potions)

Health Shot Potion - Similar to a health potion but provides with less healing, but can be used more often

Shield Potion - Grants damage reduction for 3 hits taken, lasts until timer runs out or until the hits are taken

Grit Potion - Grants the uninterruptible effect for the duration

Lifesteal Potion - Increases the power of all lifesteal effects for the duration.

Target Lock Updates - Target lock and aim assist were added primarily to assist controller players to compete with mouse and keyboard aiming, but when combined they made aiming almost completely unnecessary. In retrospect, we feel that removing aiming as a necessity on controller harmed the skilled nature of our combat so we’ve made some changes to target lock to bring back the skill.

We’ve reduced the amount of aim assist you receive when locked onto enemy players on controller, making it harder to hit moving targets, but have also tuned aim assist to work better with controller outside of target lock. The goal was for target lock to still be useful in certain situations, but players must now manage it more actively since it isn’t as simple as just locking on a target and expecting everything to hit.

Target lock now breaks when your target moves behind the camera. This was changed to add more counter-play to target lock as you can dodge through someone to break their lock and it’s now more difficult to track a target that is actively trying to disengage your lock.

Target lock also now breaks when entering aim down sights.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this feature in the future and will make more tweaks to dial things in as needed.

Stay tuned for more information in upcoming deep dives and release notes as we approach launch.

We’ll see you in Aeternum.

Apr 22 2025

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