I thought I was no stranger to the grind of video games. Those arduous tasks you must complete to participate with the engaging activities. I thought running strikes and the new seasonal activity was a grind in Destiny 2. Apparently, I was but a sweet summer child, still babbling at and crawling around the ankles of adults who laugh at me as I cry when I bump my head into having to play three Crucible matches. I don’t know what I am now in this analogy, maybe some kind of child or teenager, but New World has opened my eyes to a level of grind I didn’t realize was a thing.
I’ve been enjoying elements of New World. I think the weapon systems are neat, I like improving my skills with the spear the more I use it. I’m looking down the skill tree and formulating a build to minimise cooldown times. I’m also enjoying the crafting, running between the forge and tannery as I work out what bits I need for armor or a new weapon. But boy howdy, do I not enjoy the mind-numbing chore that is walking between locations or the long time it takes to gather resources.
My journey started in the territory of Everfall, which is kind of right in the middle of the map. As far as starting locations go, I think I lucked out. I wasn’t sequestered away in the corner in First Light, I had a lot of states bordering my little slice of Aeternum. As I set off from the beach to the town, I thought, “This is a bit of a walk.”
Cut to 30 hours later, and I’ve rebound the auto-run key to a button on my mouse. I’ve had to use auto-run so frequently that I grew tired of reaching across my keyboard to tap the Equal/Plus key. I spend the majority of my time running between locations, ignoring the trash mobs and the resources along the way because they’re just going to slow me down and I don’t need to kill or collect them right now. When I do get to the location, it’s always the same: kill x-enemies or collect x-items. Sometimes the items will be in a chest, sometimes on the ground. Sometimes I’ll need to kill a corrupted farmer, sometimes it’ll be a draugr. But it feels exactly the same as the last quest.
To make matters worse, some of these quests require me to kill a specific boss. So I’ll schlep across the map only to find what I assume to be a group of players engaged in a bout of PVP. But upon closer inspection, they’re actually just waiting for the boss to spawn so they can get a hit on it before it instantly dies. And so I stand there, for 20 minutes, my phone timer ticking down to warn me when Zane is going to respawn, so I can try to get a hit on it. I fail for 20 minutes before I tap the auto-run button on my mouse and stroll out of the cave, pissed off at the game for wasting my time. I’ll come back to it later. Maybe.
“But Sam, just use the fast travel system!” I hear you, and I’ve started using it more. But to fast travel I need to have a valuable resource, Azoth, which has its own cap. Plus, Azoth is used in crafting to boost the power of your gear. So I get to choose between fast traveling or getting better gear. I don’t like that.
I’m going to keep playing New World, even though I feel like it’s disrespecting me. I want to dive into the PVP aspect a bit more, but I don’t really have high expectations. If the 20 players standing in a cave spamming abilities is a good representation of New World’s PVP, I don’t know if this is it, chief.
But please, if you’re enjoying New World, let me in on the secret sauce. What’s keeping you gripped and how are you handling the quest design and the far-flung locations you’re sent to explore?
