New World adds Daggers despite being on Maintenance mode after layoffs

The development team, still working with Amazon Games Studio, has dropped a surprising content update to New World. It turns out the player base has got a brand new weapon, the Daggers, the long-awaited melee DPS weapon for players looking to play a more traditional rogue character archetype.

The weapons come as a surprise to many, with the game officially entering maintenance mode last week. The news of Amazon Games Studio layoffs hit hard, with Amazon laying off nearly 30k people.

With the AGS team hit hard, Amazon Games got put into maintenance mode. It seemed like Season 10 was going to be what was left until the 2026 announcements about the server state and what is next for the game. However, the daggers getting added at least gives some players who are sticking around some new content to play as. As of right now, the Daggers were not actually finished and ready for the game, likely being a Season 11 patch feature. But considering the integrity of the game does not really matter that much anymore, might as well drop some buggy or broken weapons as a send-off to the players still on the game.

If you’re interested in giving them a go, you can expect two trees, focusing on stealth gameplay or dagger combat builds:

Blades Tree

• Double Neck Stab: Leap towards and stab down at the target, dealing strong damage to the target.
  • Deal bonus damage per combo point consumed, and if at full combo points, it is a guaranteed crit.
• Frenzied Slashes: Deal a flurry of 7 rapid slashes attacks, alternating main hand and off-hand attacks.
  • Deal bonus damage per combo point consumed, and if at full combo points, main hand attacks inflict Scoundrel’s Venom, dealing DoT stacks of damage to targets.
• Thrusting Slice: Dash forward, dealing damage to all targets you go past.
  • If you hit an enemy with the dash and have sufficient combo points, you can consume some combo points to repeat the dash. With upgrade,s it can be repeated up to 3 times per use.

Blades Ultimate: Critical hits inflict a stack of Scoundrel’s Venom, and heal for 2.5% of your base health when hitting a target with an attack that would inflict Scoundrel’s Venom.

Stealth Tree

• Stealth: Enter a state of stealt,h making it harder for enemies to see you. Attacking enemies from stealth will surprise them. Further upgrades to stealth will grant bonus damage when attacking surprised enemies.
  • Stealth does not consume combo points.
• Ambush: A low double slash that deals strong damage, and if triggered from stealth or if the hit is a backstab, the hit will root enemies.
  • Deal bonus damage per combo point consumed. If at full combo points, root is applied without stealth or backstab.
• Crippling Sling: Throw a dagger forward, dealing damage to the target it hits, and if triggered from stealth or if the hit is a backstab, the hits will slow enemies.
  • If you have sufficient combo points, you can consume some combo points to repeat the throw. With upgrade,s it can be repeated up to 3 times per use.