Look, let us be honest: on September 7, Arthdal Chronicles held a developer live broadcast. With the New World Season 2 update just around the corner, Director Lee Jung-won, creator Sa-ttang, and MC Kim Su-hyun stepped up to share various perks and news. They also unveiled the second-half roadmap for the very first time and hosted both pre-submitted and live Q&A sessions.

The Distinctive Perks of New World Season 2

Opening on September 8 at 12:00, the New World comes packed with three rather distinct perks. First off, the New World Special Pass will be sold for in-game silver currency. You will even be able to purchase gold or silver passes using silver depending on your level.

The attendance event is getting a proper glow-up, too. Check in for a full month, and a legendary mount is yours; stick around for another month, and a legendary spirit is handed over. Basically, just showing up gets you a full set of legendary spirits and mounts.

Wrapping up the trifecta is a cheeky 50% discount on gem-related costs. Whether you are swapping spirits and mounts, resetting skills, liberating statues and granting symbols, or claiming extra dungeon rewards,the recurring gem expenses required for progression are getting nicely slashed.Just a heads-up, this is a limited-time perk, and it is rolling out to all regions including global and Krabon, not just New World Season 2.

Afterwards, the team outlined the progression path for New World Season 2. Naturally, tackling the main quests, progression guides, and adventure logs in order is the easiest way to grow. On top of that, you can aim for bonus progress through daily content like events, pass missions, rift dungeons, and mercenary tasks. By the way, you can breeze through these repetitive daily activities much more comfortably by utilizing the scheduler updated recently.

The Second-Half Roadmap for Arthdal Chronicles

Following that, the second-half roadmap for Arthdal Chronicles was unveiled, promising a massive wave of updates every single month from September through December.Kicking things off in September, a solo activity named Village Invasion Defense joins the fray. It is a weekly hack-and-slash affair where you simply wipe out swarms of incoming foes. Clearing this will net you a new sub-equipment piece and a new constellation colour. Furthermore, since many players in the global build have already maxed out their statue levels, the team is expanding the statue level cap and letting players enjoy even more dungeons solo.

October shifts the spotlight to island-centric updates. First up are the ultimate hunting grounds, the 6th Isle of Black Night, alongside a small-scale skirmish mode dubbed Isle Occupation. They also teased legendary equipment crafting recipes—bound to take some serious elbow grease, but well worth it as a fresh gear source. Plus, a weekly progression guide is in the works to give players a steady stepping stone for growth every week.

November brings the Integrated Competitive Match, a large-scale PvP mode designed to scratch that server-wide PK itch. Also in development is a spirit and mount dispatch system. This clever progression feature lets your spirits and mounts hunt and gather items on your behalf even when you are logged off. Finally, a gifting feature for passes and subscription bundles is on the way.

Rounding out the year in December is the introduction of a skill growth system. It is being cooked up to amplify class individuality and let players tailor their progression to fit their personal playstyles, even within the same class. Since it sits right at the very end of the roadmap, it is bound to launch with the biggest volume of content.

The developers noted that everything promised on the roadmap will stick as closely to schedule as possible. Features requiring mutual agreements, such as player-to-player trading, will be detailed once their launch dates are locked down. You can catch all the juicy details over on the official Arthdal Chronicles YouTube channel, and check out some snippets from the pre-show Q&A below.

Q. Progression feels bottlenecked at certain stretches.

We first eased this a bit back in August by introducing new hunting zones alongside more forgiving codex requirements. In September, we plan to alleviate these roadblocks by adding a new rift dungeon that rewards players with a fresh sub-equipment piece and a brand new constellation colour. Ultimately, the upcoming weekly growth guide will help keep everyone moving forward.

Q. The islands just do not feel worth the trouble.

It is true that the loot table for hunting zones can feel a bit underwhelming at times. However, once the update drops, primordial accessories will start rolling out from the Isle of Black Night to address that issue. We are also planning to make the materials for October's legendary equipment crafting recipes exclusively obtainable in the Isle of Black Night to seriously amp up its appeal.

Q. The island tax system desperately needs an overhaul.

We are looking to tackle three major pain points here: first, players getting locked out of other content due to spending 24 hours a week farming taxes; second, the sheer exhaustion caused by non-stop 24-hour monitoring; and third, the headaches alliance leaders face regarding tax settlements.

Do bear with us, though, as a lot of interrelated systems are involved, which might push things back slightly to ensure a stable update. We will definitely get this sorted before the year is out.

Q. We need more offline time and the ability to pick our hunting grounds.

We built the initial offline duration with typical sleep schedules in mind, so we reckon it is pretty reasonable for now. That said, we will gladly look into increasing the timer once we review the actual usage data.

As for picking hunting spots, we are well aware of the friction. Originally, we designed it to automatically snap to the most efficient hunting ground to keep things simple. Unfortunately, that sometimes leaves players missing out on the specific items they are actually chasing. To fix this, we are improving the system so you can manually select your hunting history.

Q. Finding treasure chests is just too much of a chore.

We wanted to sprinkle them around to give players that satisfying feeling of exploration and discovery, but we completely recognise how fiddly and frustrating it can turn out on mobile devices. If we conclude they are genuinely too punishing to hunt down, we will seriously consider tweaking their locations.

Q. During re-synthesis events, there is no way to check past failure history.

I personally ran into this headache while playing and ended up submitting a ticket to customer support myself. We are actively cooking up a fix slated for sometime between November and December.

Q. What is the overarching direction for class balance adjustments?

Back in August, we tuned hunting efficiency. Moving forward, numerical tweaks will continue on a rolling basis backed by ongoing data monitoring. However, revamping core class concepts or playstyles carried the risk of diluting what makes each class unique in the first place. To solve this, we are introducing the skill growth system in the latter half of the year. It is a framework designed to sharpen class identities and let you carve out your preferred style for hunting, PvP, or whatever direction you fancy.

Q. Stuttering and lag crop up during certain activities and general mobile play.

Ever since the late August update, we have been continuously rolling out technical fixes. We will keep refining this through January of next year to shrink lag down to an absolute minimum across all platforms.