Hey everyone, Locurian here,
After dropping more than 400 hours already into New World, back with another post regarding alternate ways to play New World, no clickbait this time, more suggestions.
With the existence of faction-to-faction war exploits, dupes and all that jazz, I’ve found Factionless to be an enjoyable alternative way of playing New World, so far reaching 37 with exclusively crafting and small time investment over the last week or so.
The Factionless experience currently is very similar to a lighter version of Ironman or Solo Self-found in other games, currently person-to-person trading and give coin is enabled, hopefully that can change and be restricted even for just solving the botting crisis.
This will cover some of the features and issues regarding this style of play that defines it as unique, and with a little engagement could be an incredible feature for New World.
It’s been a very compelling way to enjoy some of the mechanics that New World has currently, there are a handful of issues in regards to progression this way, but the game offers some unique challenges especially relating crafting.
But first Factionless disables the following:
No Tradepost
[Feature]
No tradepost is a pretty obvious challenge like many of the same vein, very simple, glad they introduced it even as a solution to prevent issues regarding botting.
It was a recent change for tradepost to be disabled for Factionless, but I feel that restricting all trade/give coin would be beneficial to current issues and promote Factionless as a “self found” playstyle.
An interesting non-issue is gold being remediated from quests, however gold generation is an interesting issue, but normal without interacting with the economy of a game.
No Runes of Holding or Chisels
[Debatable issue]
This is an interesting dichotomy in which you are unable to craft any tuning orbs or bags, originally with a lot of the earlier Factionless players this is circumvented with the trading post being available earlier, or partying with players for expeditions.
But currently it adds an extra layer of difficulty with inventory management until you are able to receive the quest bags.
Personally I’d love to see the faction required items added as either an in game recipe with insane crafting material resource cost, or alternatively as rare drops from bosses or expeditions.
So that the items are still obtainable by Factionless players but are so resource inefficient that regular players are not affected.
The other items available in the faction stores are more adding to the challenge that Factionless has, especially with resource conversion simplifying the progression.
No Azoth Staff
[Not an issue]
Much like the previous issue with Tuning Orbs, Azoth Staff is a very tame problem, as it can be circumvented with group play.
It doesn’t really affect the game-play loop in an extreme way, only disables solo corruption events.
No faction-board questing and issues with early zone questing
[Feature with issues]
Much like before the faction related questing being disabled is perfectly accepted, the main issue that arises is with side-quests in level < 30 regions being gated behind main story progression.
This is not an issue with many later regions, Brightwood/Cutlass Keys beyond all have quests available and are able to get the regions respective jewellery, the fishing quest chain also being available.
If quests that are not for progression of the main story, should not be gated by the main story, region faction level requirement could be an alternative.
Azoth Travel cost has no faction discounts
[Feature]
One of the charms in terms of resource management is, Factionless disables the discounts of travel-fee for region warping, meaning Azoth matters alot for gameplay progression rate.
When playing on my main original character, I found that what faction you were ultimately changed how fast people could travel, and I am all for that when there’s competition on a server, but when a server loses population or is just grouped with one faction, the costs become comparable to a Factionless play.
I should note, I am not an active war player, I find the exploits in PvP to be undermining it, however I do support people that play it, dueling is more something I prefer, following this point into the next.
Open-World PvP outside of dueling is disabled in Factionless
[Bizarre issue]
This feels feels against the idea of New World ultimately, while I’m fine passing on faction related questing including the PvP quests available, it feels strange not being able to flag to fight in this New World.
War being disabled is a more reasonable explanation, I could foresee botting infesting issues relating to war manipulation, but it sucks that I can’t mercenary for war combat, more just a personal grievance than anything.
Crafting, Luck and Gear in Factionless
[Complex Feature with Criticism]
This will be a very technical part relating to the backend, in terms of self found gameplay the gameplay loop with trying to understand progression is completely unique, and feels like the crux of why I’m currently sticking to Factionless.
Crafting has a very interesting feature with the chance of randomly being able to craft named items, normally this isn’t much than a random gamble, but with a little know how and a lot of pre-reading and data pooling, you’ll find hints that:
Crafting named gear is deterministic
(to some extent at least how I’ve interpreted it currently with information provided from players collectively)
A good example is:
Miner’s Set being a T3 Medium Armor set with exclusively the Strength and Mining Luck perk.
If I was to craft a T3 Rugged Leather Gloves with a Iron Battle Medal and Azoth for bonus Perk, the only named item I can generate is the one closest, which also happens to be the Miners set, a very elegant idea.
If a developer or a community manager can verify whether this is true or not, would be incredibly helpful.
The problem is when comparing this to alternative ways of obtaining it, it is heavily unlikely to occur and combat is far superior, grinding the same range named mobs was more likely for me to generate a partial Miner’s set.
This leads into an issue that should be solved overall, beyond this factionless discussion.
Gathering Luck is far less useful and impractical to self found gameplay or self crafted gameplay than combat is.
Gathering materials that craft gathering boosts requires such an increase of gathering luck% that it isn’t feasible especially with the odds of you actually getting them from their source, even with increases to luck with Cooking recipes.
So if I we’re to obtain a Shard of Adderstone , I would need to mine explicitly Lodestone Veins with heavy investment into Mining Luck already, which isn’t even obtainable without extreme luck or without combat.
End-game luck is used for Void Ore or Essence and generally isn’t an issue, especially with luck being very accessible and likely to occur naturally on tools and trophies, enough to craft yourself.
Personally I would love to see perk materials regarding their own requirement of luck to be lowered, or just have crafting materials affected greater by sources of luck when in excess of their drop rate.
Target Farming is a blessed idea, and I'm glad that unique named mobs have their own items and drop tables that can be dropped semi-regularly, it genuinely helps with progression on a Factionless character, and promotes player engagement with information.
I’m currently readying up for an Undertow, for when I hit level 40 for my earrings, with this method.
Aesthetic reasons
[Superficial Feature, but mad flex]
It’s nice having a form of pseudo-reward for what you’re trying to achieve, even though currently it’s shared with bots in the majority, I can visualize it having more respect in the future, assuming it gets any form of support.
Skills Grandmaster is the endgame I think, or meta crafting gear.
Just a nice flex y’know, standard ironman mentality.
I think that covers all the major issues and love for the Factionless playstyle.
There is a bit that I decided to withhold, mainly with ideas like optimal methods of playing Factionless, I’d prefer people either write/make content on it or discuss it than just outright state it.
It’s an incredible way of playing New World, that avoids all the current issues regarding economy manipulation and forces you to think about how you use materials, would recommend people to give it a shot if you’ve run dry or are burnt out competing with gold sellers, or want to push for Skills Grandmaster achievement in a genuine fulfilling way.
Cheers,
Locurian (Buzhou)
Buying gf 2k (Lagado)
tldr;
Factionless is very close to being in an ideal state for an equivalent ironman or self-found playstyle , just a few issues