From September 9 to September 12, Amazon Games’ New World will be an open beta. With the new open beta, players get to test the content once again before it officially releases on September 28. Players can test out the content from the Closed Beta again. The main difference is the massive balance changes made to weapons and content. Amazon Games has released the New World Open Beta Patch Notes. These notes target the worst offenders and include many bug fixes. This is a list of all the major changes.

New World Open Beta Patch Notes

These patch notes contain many changes to the New World Open beta. Most importantly, the patch addresses the many outrages streamers and players experienced during the closed beta.

New World PvP Scaling

PvP scaling is one example. It is much more difficult for lower-level players to kill higher-level players. While it rewards higher-level players for being more skilled, it does not change that skill is important.

According to the New World Open Beta patch notes, “PVP scaling was reduced.” Your encounters will be more affected by the level difference. This means that it will take more hits to kill a player of lower level than a player of higher level.

New World Weapon Balancing

It was quickly apparent that certain weapons were stronger than others. The New World Closed Beta had some weapons that were either bugged or outright broken. It was so evident that we had no choice but to create a New World weapon tier list.

These are the New World Open Beta Patch Notes that hugely address weapons.

Sword

• The passive effect of Freeing Justice will only remove one debuff and not all.
• Fortitude has been replaced by Invigorating Bulwark. This passive grants 15 stamina upon hitting the shield bash or shield rush abilities.
• Reduced Leaping strike frame startup frames from 16 to 14.
• Increased leaping distance from 4 to 6 meters
• Counter Attack can now stack to get a higher bonus. You can now get a 3% Empower for 5 seconds after blocking an attack. This bonus can be stacked up to 5 times, and you can receive a maximum of 15% Empower bonus. It used to grant a 10% Empower bonus for 20 seconds after blocking an attack.

Life staff

• Sacred Protection passive has been modified to grant a 5% increase in incoming healing efficiency for all group members. This can be used to increase max HP.
• Orb of Protection Fortify’s effectiveness is reduced by 15% to 10%

A Great Axe

• Reduction in the effectiveness of Gravity Well Fortify Upgrade from 15% – 10%
• Great Axe Enduring Strike Bonus Reduced Damage from 20% to 15%
• Reap’s 2nd hit no longer has stagger

Bow

• Bow Unbreakable Focus passive fortification has reduced effectiveness from 20% to 10%

You can see that most of these balance changes affect a weapon’s ability to keep it alive. Fortify buffs have the largest nerfs. Some weapons also have annoying stagger mechanics that are used to counterplay. The Hatchet’s Berserker Healing has not been nerfed, which is a weapon that lots of players have tilted to.

Amazon Games has nerfed Fortify even more, so we want to emphasize how many perks nerfs there are for Fortify.

• Fortified Recovery effectiveness decreased from 30% to 10%
• Effectiveness of Keenly Fortified reduced from 30% to 10%
• Effectiveness of Mortal Fortification has been reduced from 30% to 10%