New World: Aeternum’s Season 9 is officially live on July 29, 2025, and with it comes a handful of new changes. These changes range from an all-new PvP mode (Capture the Flag) to new artifact weapons (and revamps of older ones), combat changes, new maps, and so much more.
Season 9 primarily has PvP-oriented updates, but there are still many, many PvE updates included within these patch notes. If you’re strictly a PvE enjoyer, don’t worry – New World’s Season 10 looks like it has a LOT of new PvE content coming up, and even a potential gearscore increase!
Be sure to check out our New World PvP builds to help you along the way as you explore Outpost Rush, 3v3 Arenas, and of course, the new Capture the Flag mode!
All details included within New World Aeternum’s Season 9 Patch Notes can be found below.
New PvP Game Mode: Capture the Flag
Starting this season, Capture the Flag will be available on a permanent basis via the activities menu. Both maps that were previewed last season, Frozen Pass and Forbidden City, will be available on day 1! They will rotate on an hourly basis, as in other modes. Note that a fully featured scoreboard will not be available until the following season.
It is important to us to ensure everyone has a chance to enjoy this new mode. To that end, we are aiming for short queue times for Capture the Flag by temporarily limiting the number of PvP game modes available. Outpost Rush will be disabled from July 29 to August 8. The team will be monitoring queues afterward and taking necessary steps to keep queue times short for the best player experience.
New 3v3 Arena Map: Verdant Court
A new Arena 3v3 map, Verdant Court, also enters the hourly rotation this season! Following the preview we did last season, we’ve made changes to the timing of the fire ring and it now comes in even sooner to give the map more of the dynamic feel we wanted.
Free-For-All PvP Zone Updates
The FFA zone in Cutlass Keys now features a new mechanic, The Scallywag’s Curse! Being near other players for an extended time will give you a stack of the curse, and the longer you are near players the curse grows in strength. While under the effects of the curse, you’ll deal less damage/stamina damage and take more damage/stamina damage vs. other players (does not effect your damage vs. AI). To remove stacks of the curse, kill players or keep your distance from other players. Dying will instantly remove all stacks of the curse.
To go along with these changes we’ve updated the rewards in the FFA zone:
- Chest gather times were reduced and now drop 2x as much doubloons
- Large chests: 15s, 40-60 doubloons (was 25s, 20-30 doubloons)
- Medium chests: 10s, 30-40 doubloons (was 20s, 10-20 doubloons)
- Small chests: 5s, 20-30 doubloons (was 15s, 10-15 doubloons)
- Doubloon pouches also now grant 2x doubloons
- Max gear score on doubloon shop items were increased and the spread was narrowed (lower minimum gear score)
- Non-Apex Crate Ranges are now 720-725 (was 685-710)
- Grab bag rare loot ranges are now 690-700 (was 660-690 for epic or 625-690 for rare)
- Grab bag epic loot ranges are now 700-720 (was 685-705)
New & Revamped Artifacts
Moving forward, we’ll introduce fewer new artifacts that are higher impact, providing new gameplay while also adjusting older artifacts that aren’t used frequently.
To learn more about every available artifact in the game, check out our Artifacts Guide.
For Season 9. the team created three brand new artifacts:
- Hammer of Yeet (War Hammer) – Based on the Yeeterson’s hammer Conqueror’s Item from the seasonal server.
- Yeet: +300% Push distance and +10% base damage to all War Hammer knockbacks. Clear out will ignite the first target hit, turning them into a projectile causing 100% weapon damage to all targets they pass through along their path.
- Crescent’s Wave (Greatsword) – Based on the Greatsword Conqueror’s Item from the seasonal server.
- Parallax: +12% base damage to targets further than 10m away (works on both weapons).
- Crescent Wave: While above 50% health, heavy attacks cast a projectile dealing 150% weapon damage, however melee heavy attack damage is reduced by 50%. Each Wave Costs 20 mana.
- Plagueherald (Helm) – New artifact for those who would like to abolish those that group up and receive health.
- Plaguespreader: Abilities/Light attacks inflict a stack of 3% Disease (max 10 stacks). You are also inflicted with 1% Disease per stack applied. At 10 stacks on self, Heavy attacks will consume your stacks and trigger a cloud around the target for 7s that inflicts 30% Disease and 10% Weaken to all nearby enemies (12s Cooldown).
We’ve also reworked the following four artifacts to encourage their use:
- Vengeance – Updated functionality to be similar to the conqueror’s item functionality “Life Support: Outgoing healing is increased by 25% when not affected by any Life Staff heal over time effects. When Basic attacks pass through allies, their stamina and mana regen rate is increased by 20%/30% respectively for 3s.”
- Grey Wizard’s Hat – Updated functionality to be “Quickened Casting: While above 50% mana, magic weapon ranged heavy attacks charge 25% faster.”
- Creed – Updated functionality to be “Ambush: Backstabs and headshots against targets will deal 20% increased crit damage and inflict them with 10% Weaken for 5s. You also gain 10% empower for 5s, and increase your crit chance by 10% for 5s. (Target cannot be Ambushed again for 15s.)”
- Trsna – Updated functionality to also grant lifesteal against rooted and stunned enemies.
Seasonal Event: Summer Medleyfaire
The Summer Medleyfaire returns to Aeternum and will be live throughout the entirety of Season 9! This seasonal favorite transforms settlements into festival hubs filled with music, fishing, and festive rewards. Players can once again participate in:
- Musical Performances — Team up with friends or go solo using the in-game rhythm mini-game. New songs and rewards may be available this season.
- Fishing for Fame — Catch rare fish, complete fishing-related tasks, and exchange them for exclusive cosmetics and furnishings.
- Event Tokens & Rewards — Complete daily and weekly Medleyfaire tasks to earn Summer Tokens, used to purchase unique skins, emotes, housing items, and consumables from event vendors.
Expect returning favorites alongside updated event rewards.
World Boss Events: Expeditions Unleashed
- Admiral Blackpowder: Aug 5-11
- Empress Zhou: Sept 9-15
- Mammoth Mahantaram: Oct 7-13
Boost Events
- Double Refining XP: Aug 19-25
- Double Weapon XP: Sept 23-29
- Double Refining XP: Oct 21-27
Season 9 Reward Track
Both Free and Premium Season Tracks return with new cosmetics, boosts, and seasonal gear.
Store Updates
New skins and cosmetics will roll out across July, August, and September. Expect summertime flair and returning fan favorites.
New Outpost Rush Map Preview
Following the recent addition of Coral Divide, our second Outpost Rush map, we are happy to announce that our third map will be previewed later in the season. Stay tuned for more information.
Combat And Mechanics Adjustments
Season 9 brings with it global adjustments to reduce haste across the board, core changes to the FFA zone in Cutlass Keys, increased mount speed in settlements, and much more. See below for more details.
Haste Updates
Haste has become an issue and can often lead to attacks not hitting targets, especially under heavy server load or higher latencies. We decided that reducing the haste clamp from 50% to 40% and doing a pass through most of the hastes in the game would be a good change to address these issues. In our pass, we tried to adjust them based on their up time, trigger condition, where the haste came from and what other benefits were provided, if any. Our hope is that since we made these haste reductions across the board, the overall balance of the haste mostly feels the same, but with an overall reduction in the increased speeds of players.
More specifics on the individual reductions to hastes listed in the patch notes below.
Flail Core Functionality Changes
Flail has been one of the least used weapons across all game modes for the majority of its time in the game. When developing the weapon, it was meant to be useful for both healing and tanking depending on how it was built, but concerns over pairing with life staff or sword/shield and causing those weapons to be even stronger led us to make many concessions that lowered the effectiveness of the weapon.
To address this, we’ve made some key changes to its effectiveness as a healing weapon and tanking weapon based on the other weapon it is paired with. Our hope is that these changes create a bit more viability with the flail in a broader range of gameplay situations. Currently, the flail combined with life staff or Sword and Shield tanky loadouts can create really powerful builds, but a good chunk of that power is amplified by the weapon it is paired with. So we are adding conditional buffs to aspects of the flail’s functionality for situations outside of those powerful circumstances in hopes that we can increase its viability with a broader range of weapon pairings. More specifics on updates to the flail can be found in the patch notes below.
Combat Changes
General
- Haste Functionality Changes – Reduced the haste status effect clamp from 50% to 40%. Also reduced haste from all sources:
- Consumables
- Haste Elixir – Reduced haste from 50% to 40%.
- Zephyr Cakes
- Reduced haste from 15% to 7%. (Previous value was incorrect and showed 10% instead of 15%). Updated tooltip to use a dynamic table reference instead of using a value via text so it will update if value changes happen again.
- Heartrunes
- Detonate’s Accelerating Charge – Reduced Haste from 30% to 20%.
- Firestorm’s Accelerating Storm – Reduced haste from 15% to 12%.
- Life Staff
- Speed of Light – Reduced haste from 20% to 15%.
- Accelerating Light’s Embrace – Reduced haste from 13%/31% to 11%/20%.
- Fire Staff
- Combat Speed – Reduced haste from 10% to 7%.
- Accelerating Flamethrower – Reduced haste from 20% to 15%.
- Hatchet
- Berserk On the Hunt – Reduced haste from 20% to 13%.
- Quick Power – Reduced haste from 20% to 15%.
- Aggressive Approach – Reduced haste from 20% to 15%.
- Bow
- Go The Distance – Reduced Haste from 15% to 12%.
- Archer’s Speed – Reduced Haste from 10% to 7%.
- Dodge and Weave – Reduced Haste from 10% to 7%.
- Musket
- Hustle – Reduced Haste from 10% to 7%.
- Accelerating traps – Reduced haste from 16%/33% to 13%/22%.
- Rapier
- Allegro – Reduced Haste from 20% to 12%.
- Sword
- Critical Precision – Reduced Haste from 20% to 15%.
- Accelerated Resolve – Reduced haste from 22%/36% to 13%/21%.
- Blunderbuss
- Lingering Flow – Reduced haste from 25% to 18%.
- Delayed Escape – Reduced haste from 20% to 15%.
- Ice Gauntlet
- Quick Shower – Reduced haste from 25% to 20%.
- Quick Frost – Reduced haste from 10% to 7%.
- War Hammer
- Expedite – Reduced haste from 30% to 20%.
- Swing Away – Reduced haste from 30% to 20%.
- Flail
- Accelerated Advantage – Reduced self haste from 7% to 5% per stack and ally haste from 25% to 20%.
- Oppressive Advantage – Reduced haste from 10% to 7%.
- Accelerating Barrage – Reduced haste from 21%/36% to 16%/26%.
- Perks
- Potent Alacrity – Reworked to be Potent Vivacity. It now increases the potency of Energized status effects. Also increased power from 9% to 12%.
- Hasted Vigor – Reduced haste from 10% to 7% and fixed issue where the max value was longer than intended.
- Keen Speed – Reduced value from 20% to 15%.
- Sandlion Tarsus’s Keen Speed – Made it so Keen speed on these boots is 20% weaker than the standard perk value. (12%).
- Hardcore Parkour – Reduced haste from 18% to 15%.
- Desperate Empower – Reduced haste value from 10% to 7.2%.
- Grace Artifact’s Offensive Speed Perk – Reduced haste from 20% to 15%.
- Runic Greaves’s Expeditious Perk – Reduced haste from 33% to 23%.
- Consumables
- Equip loads – Removed Block Stability modifier from Heavy and Light.
- Added armor penetration to siege weapons in Wars and OPR.
- Updated melee weapons that don’t have a throwing ability to change reticle color in melee range when pointing at an enemy. Melee weapons that do have a ranged attack will still change reticle color at further ranges.
- Fixed an issue where status effect icons could disappear during combat if a seasonal token effect was active.
Perks
- Keen Beacon – Updated functionality to increase crit damage instead of crit chance, and updated max values to be 4.5% armor / 7% weapons, and reduced duration from 6s to 4s.
- Fixed an issue where the Trencant Rend cooldown could be removed when swapping weapons.
- Fixed the way Mortal Lifesteal’s on hit lifesteal was triggered.
- Adjusted healing breeze to only trigger on the first application of a heal.
- Fixed an issue where Mending Sticky Bomb could not heal the player in certain circumstances.
Weapons – Bow
- Reduced cooldown of Poison Shot to 20s from 30s.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Bow to be rapid fired.
- Fixed an issue with hip fire unintentionally triggering after Rain of Arrows.
Weapons – Fire Staff
- Smolder – Reduced weapon damage to 4.5% from 5% per tick.
- Fiery Restoration – Reduced cooldown reduction to 7% from 10%.
- Pillar of Fire – Increased cooldown to 15s from 10s.
- Fixed smoke flickering for Meteor Shower.
- Fixed an issue that allowed light attacks to fire faster then expected.
Weapons – Flail
- Flail Core functionality changes:
- Added a buff to its outgoing healing by 15% if the flail user doesn’t have the life staff equipped. Added a buff to its outgoing healing by 15% if the flail user is not in heavy equip load. Added a base damage increase of 15% if the flail user doesn’t have a shield equipped.
- Deflecting Frailty – Increased the lifesteal power from 10% to 15%.
- Supportive Blessing – Reduced self healing portion from 50% of base damage to 35% of base damage.
- Fixed an issue where the Barrage “Flailure to Launch” upgrade would sometimes trigger twice on a hit.
Weapons – Great Axe
- Fixed an issue where Gravity Well would sometimes not reach the max slow value when combined with other slows.
Weapons – Hatchet
- Berserk – Reduced duration to 5s, Hitting a target will extend duration by 1s up to a max of 12s total.
Weapons – Ice Gauntlet
- Updated Entombed description to clarify inputs that exit the ability.
- Updated the Entombed tooltip to clarify that the player is unable to heal while entombed is active.
- Reduced Refreshing Frost cooldown reduction to 15% from 20%.
- Increased the knockback of Wind Chill.
Weapons – Life Staff
- Fixed an issue where aiming throwable items while LifeStaff was equipped, would only allow target locking onto allies instead of enemies.
- Fixed an issue where the Bend Light passive status effect was showing the incorrect icon and description.
- Fixed an issue that allowed light attacks to fire faster then expected.
Weapons – Musket
- Sticky bomb – Fixed an issue that caused Reload to be delayed after throw.
- Trap – Fixed an issue that caused Reload to be delayed after throw.
- Updated Musket’s Shooter’s Stance ability to no longer allow target lock.
Weapons – Rapier
- Fixed an issue that caused Deadly Flourish to grant stamina.
- Flourish and Finish – Fixed an issue where Finish would often fail to hit certain AI, such as lions, wolves, boars, and gorillas. In addition, the pushback from Flourish has been reduced to 1.5 meters, down from 3 meters, for AI. Note: This pushback change is specific to only AI, and it has no impact on Player vs. Player combat. Adjusted Rapier’s Finish ability hitbox size to make it easier to hit quadrupeds.
Weapons – Sword and Shield
- Leaping Strike – Removed stagger.
Weapons – Void Gauntlet
- Updated Leeching Blade to scale on Focus only.
- Void Blade – Reduced weapon damage to 95% from 100% for light attack and 145% from 150% for heavy attack.
- Added cooldown to Invigorated Rupture.
- Fixed an issue where Oblivion would cause damage to the caster.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the character to get into a bad state after falling when using void blade.
- Fixed an issue with Void Blade disappearing when blocking.
- Fixed an issue where void damage icons in the weapon mastery menus were showing the incorrect icons.
Weapons – War Hammer
- Adjusted the window in which rotation is possible for the Wrecking Ball and armor penetration abilities to make them feel a bit smoother.
Heartrunes
- Stoneform – Reduced duration to 4s.
- Fixed an issue with the Devourer Heartrune that allowed rapid fire with some weapons.
Mounts
- Mount speeds in settlements has been increased – you can now use your trusty steed to get around town faster.
Mechanics
- Fixed an issue where the Desert Sunrise consumable could increase the duration reduction of DoTs more than intended.
- Fixed an issue where the burst regen potion was granting mana regen.
- Fixed an issue that allowed the player to jump higher than normal after certain abilities.
- Fixed an issue where players would drown when they disconnected or logged out while swimming.
- Fixed an issue where the player would not put away their fishing pole when switching to a musical performance.
