Exploring Catacombs in New World

Catacombs is a new end-game mode that was released in Season 10 of New World: Aeternum. This game mode allows up to three players to join up and explore a randomized dungeon, battling a wide variety of bosses and enemies. These randomized dungeons introduce new challenges, mazes, hidden treasures, and brand new resources to the game. The goal of Catacombs is to kill as many bosses as possible, while also safelty existing the mode within 30 minutes.

As long as one member of your team succesfully exists safely, you will all receive your rewards. If you all fail though, you will lose a large majority of the rewards you gathered, and will leave the game mode with minimal rewards. With that being said, it's important to understand the ins and outs of Catacombs to ensure you maximize your rewards and get out safely.

You can access Catacombs from the in-game Activity Finder.

Every time you join Catacombs, it will be a unique experience. Every room you enter will somehow be unique from the last map you entered, introducing unique mobs, jump puzzles, bosses, corrupted portals, or even Rafflebones (New World's version of a Loot Goblin)!

Although each room is unique to every time you join Catacombs, you will quickly be able to determine the type of challenge you're facing as soon as you enter the room. In some cases, when you clear the room, you and your team will be rewarded with an in-game buff (or an opportunity to gain buffs)

It's recommended to start playing the Catacombs game mode once you hit level 70. When entering this game mode, the overall difficulty will not be too intense right away. However, as you continue to defeat bosses within the dungeon, the overall difficulty will increase. However, so will the rewards!

As mentioned, you will eventually be provided your choice of specific buffs as you explore throughout your unqiue Catacombs experience. Some of these buffs (such as the Idol of Ascension) require you to spend a limited currency (Splintered Souls) to get buffs, while others are full rooms of multiple options of buffs, allowing each member to select one before moving to the next rooom. Additional information on these Catacombs buffs can be found below.

As you explore throughout Catacombs, you will eventually find a room that spawns an angel-like statue in the middle of the room (pictured below). When this statue appears, you can interact with it and exchange 100 Splintered Souls in exchange for an increase in your damage and max health. These Splinted Souls cannot be extracted from Catacombs, so you should be spending these as much as you can every time you encounter an Idol of Ascension. You will naturally receive these Splintered Souls every time you kill a mob within the Catacombs, so be sure to keep an eye on how much you have!

Keep in mind that every time your team defeats a boss, the overall difficulty of Catacombs increases, so you may even want to back-track to revisit a closeby Idol of Ascension to get additional buffs depending on where you're located within the Catacombs.

Another buff-providing opportunity you'll encounter are called Aspects. In some cases, you will enter a room within the Catacombs that have multiple statues that are glowing a specific color (pictured below). When you walk up to the statue, it will show a preview of what buff it provides you once you interact with it. Keep in mind though that once a buff from an Aspect is taken, no other member of the team will be able to grab it. Keep this in mind, and try to prioritize damage-related buffs to your DPS members, defensive buffs for your Tank, and healing-related buffs to your healer.

As you continue to explore the Catacombs further and further, you will begin to see a meter with a red icon appear below your character. This meter indicated Corruption, which will slowly increase over time. If that meter gets full, you will receive a major debuff, and will slowly take damage over time until you are killed. In order to prevent this, you will need to consume items known as Golden Tinctures. These Golden Tinctures can be gathered from small chests that you'll encounter as you explore the Catacombs, but be sure to only consume them when your Corruption is built up!

When you open your map while within the Catacombs, you will see large skull icons, indicating the location of a boss. Many times these bosses will be hiding behind large, locked doors, which require you to run around the other rooms within the Catacombs in order to find a lever to unlock the door. When you enter the room, you will see a large purple-like circle surrounding the boss (as pictured below). Once a member of the team enters that circle, the battle begins (so make sure all members of your team are within the room before doing so).

Each boss you encounter will be unique, and many of them will represent an enemy that has similar mechanics to the end bosses in many existing expeditions. To learn a bit more about the boss mechanics for each of these, be sure to check out our Expeditions Guides.

Once the boss is defeated, you will receive a handful of rewards. However, you will not really receive these rewards until you succesfully exit the dungeon. You and your team will have to determine how many bosses you try to kill before you lose all of your respawn chances, or run out of time! If you run out of time or use all of your respawn chances, the Catacombs mode will end, and you will barely receive any rewards.

There are two unique types of currencies that you will be awarded from completing Catacombs. These include Sterlings and Crowns. Sterlings are earned all over the dungeon (from killing bosses, opening chests, defeating mobs). Crowns, however, are only earned from bosses (only the second one and beyond). Both of these currencies can be used within a specific Catacombs shop by speaking with the NPC named Rikkar, who is located within the Inn in the Nighthaven settlement.

With Sterlings, you will be able to purchase caches that will randomly roll a 750 gearscore item. You can select from a wide variety of cache types, ranging from chest pieces, gloves, trinkets, two-handed weapons, ranged weapons, and more.

With Crowns, you will be able to purchase gear pieces from one of two unique gear sets: the Overcharged Set and the Elementally Charged Set. Each time you open one of these caches, you will get several randomly selected perks, including a chance at one of the unique Infix perks that are associated with that specific set. Additionally, you can purchase some exclusive cosmetics using shards if you'd like to!