New World is getting a blunderbuss

Amazon Games has shared a look at what's coming to the New World public test realm in March, which will see the conclusion of the story of Isabella and the addition of a powerful new weapon, the fearsome blunderbuss.

The blunderbuss is a ranged weapon, of course, that promises "high mobility coupled with potent close-to-mid range damage." Damage output will actually scale based on the player's strength and intelligence—the first weapon in New World to do so, apparently—which makes it especially good for "bruiser or mage builds."

Two weapon mastery trees will be available, each supporting a distinct playstyle:

• The Containment tree is all about closing the gap and unloading hot lead into your enemy’s face.    
• The Chaos tree focuses on keeping your distance and bombarding areas with explosive AoE damage.

The blunderbuss will also have its own legendary weapon quest series: After reaching level 60 and the maximum blunderbuss skill level, hit up Wang Tang Zhi in Ebonscale Reach to kick things off.

On the narrative side, Tempest’s Heart - The Myrkgard Expedition will continue the main storyline with a pursuit of Isabella back to Shattered Mountain and into "a corrupted dimension of reality." Tempest's Heart is an endgame expedition for five players with a recommended character level of 60 and gearscore of 550 or higher.

The PTR update will also include "new encounters in the wild, impactful balance changes across a variety of weapons, and a huge swath of bug fixes," Amazon said. A date for the PTR hasn't been set, but it's expected to begin "soon," before going live in the main game "eventually." The timeline isn't exactly carved in stone yet, as you can see, but the full PTR announcement is up at newworld.com.