new-world Major New Content Coming to New World: Aeternum

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Season 8 of New World Aeternum introduces MAJOR updates, including a new hardcore seasonal world, capture the flag PvP modes, new OPR and arena maps, new open-world bosses, new artifacts, a barbershop, and much, much more.

New World: Aeternum players around the globe are sharing their excitement on the recent developers' update that was shared this week, highlighting what's coming to season 8 of New World: Aeternum. In this season, called "Season of the Divide", players must make certain choices, ranging from survival or supremacy to rebirth or ruin. This new season kicks-off on May 13, 2025, and introduces a Hardcore Seasonal World.

This season introduces more than just a unique new seasonal world. There's some major new content coming to New World: Aeternum, reigniting a lot of excitement around the game as a whole. This new content includes the new Coral Divide OPR map being launched, new open-world bosses to take down (with 725 Gearscore rewards), previews of the new Capture the Flag PvP game mode, new maps for 3v3 arenas, a new barbershop, and of course, new artifacts to be collected. A quick preview of what to expect in Season 8 (and beyond) is below in the living roadmap.

A full overview of what we know today is highlighted below, and can be found from the official New World: Aeternum article here. 

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 equipment 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 only be available for a limited time and will launch in early June. Look forward to more details closer to launch.

Outpost Rush (OPR) New Map LIVE: Coral Divide

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

New PvP Modes & Maps (Capture the Flag)

During Season 8, there will be 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

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 Weekend

The team will also preview their latest offering for 3v3 Arenas that features the 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.

Expedition Unleashed: New Open-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

There will also be a handful of returning events coming in Season 8, including the Springtide Bloom, the Fury of the Spriggan, and some all-new Faction Fest activities.

New Artifacts

Season 8 introduces a handful of new weapons, including the following:

• 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.

Combat & Quality of Life Updates

Additionally, there are a handful of combat and quality of life updates coming to Season 8, including: 

• 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.