New World Season 5: Season of the Guardian is coming next week
The new 10-person max-level Trial is designed to require teamwork. The Amazon team has included some teamwork-based puzzles in instances before, so that itself isn’t new, but they’re looking to challenge some of the most experienced players in new ways.
There are some spoilers in the dev chat as well as the art descriptions, so if you want to be completely surprised, wait until the update lands next week.
There are differences between the Hatchery and this trial, one of the biggest being that the Winter Rune Forge can drop gear score up to 700 for max level legendary items. Among those rewards are the Tempest Fury Artifact – Great Axe (10% drop chance), which gives a stackable bonus to movement speed and allows Whirlwind to spin up to 12 times without need for successive hits. There are also six named weapons and three named armor sets.
In terms of the difficulty, the team heard the feedback on the initial Sand wurm trial, so they are looking at making the Winter Rune Forge not quite as difficult, but still offering challenges.