New World is a game filled with complex features, some of which many players might be oblivious to. This state of affairs was only enhanced after a recent update added a host of unofficial changes to the game that don't appear to have been reported on. One New World player is compiling a list of all the unofficial changes they've discovered so far as part of Patch 1.1.
The list is already quite long, although the user has limited it by restricting the items on the list to actual unofficial changes, not including bugs. As New World is rather infamous for its bugs and the game encourages players to stay on the lookout for them, this helps to focus on the topic the list is actually meant to draw attention to.
Although New World has also made a number of official changes recently, Reddit user arias1101 has compiled a list of unofficial changes in a post which splits the hidden updates into five different categories: World, Reputation and Territory, Weapons, Armor, and Trading Skills and Gathering. The categories the most unofficial changes seem to have been made to were World and Trading Skills and Gathering with nine each, with Weapons in third place with five. Armor and Reputation and Territory seem to have had three and two unofficial changes made, respectively.
According to arias1101' list, many of the unofficial changes made are either cosmetic--such as replacing statues and wells with fountains--or small tweaks to mechanics and overall game balance. It's possible that some of these alterations were made to address misconceptions players may have about New World or to address unwanted habits like swarms of players descending into the same area. Other changes appear to have been made for convenience, such as the decision to reduce Musket reload time by about 10% or reduce the number of high-level components needed for some recipes.
As of writing, it appears that other fans are willing to contribute changes they've noticed to the list, whether or not they appreciate said changes. One user reported that a specific change to the difficulty elites found in New World's endgame location Myrkgard had basically killed their enjoyment of the game.
Another user caught arias1101 accidentally adding two officially announced changes to the list. A third noted that many young tree models in Everfall had been changed to mature trees, and a fourth noted that loot drops had been nerfed overall.
New World is out now for PC.