Musket Guide and Builds for New World

The Musket is one of the strongest ranged weapon options in New World. You can play at maximum range and still take out targets in a few shots. It is typically only used in PvP.

• Powder Burn — High damage over time effect and its perk will put a devasting slow on the target. This makes an enemy very vulnerable and easy to kill.
• Shooter's Stance — When you are safe, this can be used to shoot multiple shots in a row to pressure a single target and kill them, or pick up multiple kills. It will apply a large empower effect with its perk.
• Stopping Power — This will stagger a target and is used in combination with a basic shot. When used immediately after firing this will instantly fire and result in two bullets hitting a target almost simultaneously. This combination will open a window to fire a quick third shot to secure a kill.

Some players prefer using Sticky Bomb for its high damage and AoE potential.

Use this if you prefer to have a burst damage option. At times, this can be significantly better for players using damage builds. It acts similarly to Riposte by staggering the target, and it has a follow up ability that can deal damage or be quick mobility. This can be a great way to pick up quick kills on low health targets.

Use this if you prefer to have a survivability option with Riposte. This ability can be easily at times if used incorrectly. Nonetheless, it will give you a moment of invulnerability and will certainly save your life at times.

At times in PvP some players who are on the defensive side of a War will use both a Musket and a Bow. This will allow the player to use all of their high damage abilities, and secure kills at any distance. While it lacks mobility, it is not needed when you are playing on the walls of a fort.

For more detailed information on Bow usage and other aspects of its gameplay, please refer to our Bow guide

This split will give you the most damage output and still maintain survivability. The Musket will scale off both Dexterity and Intelligence. The important passive to make sure you have is the 150 Intelligence passive so that you can increase the elemental split of your Musket, and so you can increase damage from abilities like Powder Burn.

Most perks for the Sword and Shield are utility options and are not needed to play its builds.

• Crippling Powder Burn — This is highly recommended so that you can easily kill targets.
• Empowering Shooter's Stance — Significant empower that will allow for more burst damage.

• Enchanted — This will add significant damage to every basic Musket shot.
• Attunement Perks — This adds a great burst of damage to every attack.
• Keenly Jagged — This will not only add a dot, but a potential spike of burst damage. When this procs, it will instantly deal damage along with the DoT on your Runeglass, and Attunement. All of this comes together for one quick burst of damage, and then leaves its DoT effect to secure kills.

• Health — This provides free damage reduction against all sources and is one of the most beneficial PvP options.
• Shirking Heals — Incredible source of self-healing and allows for great survivability regardless of build.
• Shirking Fortification — Can be a great complement to Shirking Heals. Will add increased armor to improve overall defensiveness.
• Freedom — This will allow you to play more aggressively by reducing the duration of crowd-control. You should play with either 3 or 5 stacks.
• Elemental Aversion — Use this perk for elemental damage reduction from weapons like the Fire Staff.
• Refreshing — This can be an optional third perk when you want a source of cooldown reduction in your build.
• Harnessing Perks — Stack these for increased damage if you chose to forgo defensive options.
• Mortal Empowerment — This will be the preferred option for maximum damage output in PvP.

A Musket will almost never be used in high-end PvE. But if you choose to use one, these perks will help.

• Bane Perks — (PvE) Use a Bane perk on your weapon in PvE for more damage.
• Elemental Aversion — This perk is a viable alternative in PvP as well, but is overshadowed by other PvP options. It provides great defensein mutated expeditions to help mitigate magical effects.
• Physical Aversion — Only projectiles that do physical damage will be mitigated by this perk. As such, it can be useful in PvE as another potential option. It alsoprovides a small amount of PvP value, but Elemental Aversion and enemy Ward perks are certainly more defensive options.

• Health — This is the standard pick for all builds, it is free health that will add to the defensiveness of your kit.
• Stamina Recovery — This is a backpocket save when being focused and taking heavy damage. You will receive a burst of stamina that will allow you to potentially get a quick dodge that can save your iife and continue the fight.
• Thrust Protection — This acts as a third perk slot that provides more defensiveness against other Dex and ranged weapons.

• Thrust Damage
• Nature Damage or other Elemental Damage Perk
• Mortal Empowerment
• Hearty
• Refreshing

• Refreshing Toast
• Healing Heart
• Nimble
• Refreshing

• The Mechanic
• Finisher

• Tumbler Feetwraps
• Featherweight

• Ankh

For Bow players in PvP you have plenty of burst damage, so your best Heartrunes focus on survivability. Using Minor Heartrune of Stoneform allows you to break out of crowd-control effects, remove debuffs, and provide defensive buffs.

There are two viable upgrade options:

• Cunning Heartrune of Stoneform provides two defensive buffs to reduce damage.
• Stalwart Heartrune of Stoneform provides one defensive buff and a significant healing over time effect.

When using Cunning Heartrune of Stoneform, or other variants, you should save this for times where you are stunned or affected by other forms of CC. Alternatively, you can use this right before pushing through a doorway or chokepoint to negate the potential of being affected by CC.

As a Musket or Bow player, you should be using your Cunning Heartrune of Stoneform, or other variants, if you have been hit by another Musket or Bow and have taken significant damage or have a Crippling Powder Burn on you. Otherwise, use this whenever you are being pushed or are affected by crowd-control.

Take advantage of down time to charge your heartrune. For instance if you are far away you might as well continue to try hitting targets or structures to build charge.

Your heartrune will charge fast. While it is obviously beneficial to hold for times where there are large clusters of enemies. Do not wait too long and continue to waste your cooldown when you would have had the time to get another one recharged. Get familiar with how quickly you can get it back online and do not hesitate to use it to secure high priority kills.

For more information on how to manage your cooldown hotbar, what consumables to use, what foods should be eaten, or tips on how to be more effective with your consumables in PvP and PvE, please refer to Musket Consumables guide.

Dexterity players will often use an elemental damage gem that matches the Attunement perk on their weapon. This will still deal significant damage because of the primary scaling with base weapon damage. The gem will then split that value by 40% and scale with Intelligence or Focus (Nature). Since you then use an elemental damage Runeglass and perk on your Ring, this will increase the elemental damage dealt by the weapon, its Attunement, and its DoT effect. This also avoids some players increased resistances to Thrust and Physical damage sources.

In PvP combat, it is highly recommended to use a specific elemental Runeglass, such as Runeglass of Arboreal Amber. You could also use something like Runeglass of Arboreal Opal.

In PvP combat your optimal resistances will focus on a mix of Slash and Thrust damage. Since you are playing farther back your only real threats are Musket, Bow, or a melee who has Slash damage. While you will also be pressured by elemental damage, you will have Elemental Aversion to compensate. This makes your optimal gem setups use Runeglass variants of Cut Pristine Moonstone or Cut Pristine Emerald.

Due to the number of empowers a Musket has, along with Mortal Empowerment, it is best to use Sighted Runeglass because of empower cap. As a Musket you will not have to worry as much about Slash damage, so it is better to put more of an emphasis on Thrust. You can decide how many Runeglass of Sighted Emerald or Runeglass of Sighted Moonstone you have.

Additionally, you should always have Thrust Protection on your Amulet.

In PvE combat, more specifically mutators, elemental resistance is the main concern.

You can use the following gems in your gear:

• Elemental Resistance Gem x8 + Amulet Protection Perk (Based on mutator elemental effect.)

For more information on how to manage your cooldown hotbar, what consumables to use, what foods should be eaten, or tips on how to be more effective with your consumables in PvP and PvE, please refer to Musket Consumables guide.

In PvP, a Musket will be focused on trying to kill squishy targets, or healers.

• Pre-reload your Crippling Powder Burn. This will allow you to have a second one ready immediately.
• Fire Crippling Powder Burn at a target.
• Dodge for instant reload and fire again.
• Immediately after dodging use Stopping Power while still aiming down sights for an instant fire.
• Use Shooter's Stance and continue pressuring squishy or low health targets.

You may also use Powder Burn and go into Shooter's Stance to have an empowered DoT effect.

To learn how to use your second weapon properly, and complete rotation, please refer to our PvE and PvP build pages:

You should do your best to fire as many shots as you can as closely together as possible. If you can fire off 2 shots close together it is almost guaranteed that both will hit a target and you will get a quick kill.

You can do this two ways. You can use Stopping Power right after firing a shot and quickly stagger them, and then because of Tactical Reload you can dodge and instantly reload so that a third shot can be fired. Alternatively, you can just fire, dodge, and fire again if you are not using Stopping Power.

You could also use Crippling Powder Burn, then dodge, and fire for a very high damage combo as well.

A Musket is a hitscan weapon that will instantly hit the target when you are aiming at them, most simply put, there is no travel time on your bullets.

You should try to consistently aim, even while reloading, to maintain your empower effect passive if possible.

Any ability that will load a special bullet into your Musket can be "pre-loaded". You can load it into your Musket and even swap weapons. By doing so, this will start the cooldown of the ability and allow you to use the ability again right after firing it.

Aiming for headshots is the best way to increase DPS in both PvP and PvE. At times this can be difficult, if you are not confident in your aim you can focus on hitting targets in the chest and you will still deal high damage. Do not aim for the head if you are not confident, you will miss significantly more shots and not secure kills.

One of the major contributors to the strength of a Bow or Musket is Mortal Empowerment. These weapons will allow you to easily pick up kills and then snowball your stacks to have up to 30% increased damage. These stacks are your lifeline. You should be playing your life at all costs once you hit 15 stacks because it will be difficult to re-stack.

To easily secure stacks watch for healers or other squishy players. Once they exhaust themselves you will want to do your best to hit them with all possible burst because they are unable to dodge or jump.

One of the most difficult things to learn can be how to hit a target with a Bow or a Musket because of how invulnerability frames work. I-frames come when you dodge and a short duration right after you complete the dodge and it prevents the target from taking damage. When trying to hit an enemy, wait for them to dodge, and wait until they have taken one step after dodging to guarantee they will not I-frame your shots.

The Musket is able to be played at incredibly far distances. You can go to the edge of what the game is capable of rendering and play at the absolute farthest distance away. This allows you to play in locations that other players cannot easily access. Make sure that you are always maintaing space between you and targets, and playing on elevated terrain such as hills or mountains.

Effective movement is incredibly important in a build like this, especially when playing in medium. Do not panic and use your entire stamina bar and exhaust yourself, as it may result in death. You can take advantage of jumping, diving (going prone while moving), and changing direction by quickly moving your mouse or taking advantage of quick inputs on your movement keys.

There are many movements in New World that will stagger you in place for a moment when quickly changing direction. If you move left and right or if you jump left and right you will notice there is a momentwhere you will be standing still. To prevent this you will need to use a key input while your character is in the animation. For example, if you hold your left directional key and jump then right before you land you hit your right directional key and jump, you will quickly jump left and right. If you simply run left and right using your directional keys your character will respond similarly. To avoid this you can move left and then right before you pivot to go right, hit the backward directional key and instantly follow up with your right directional key. If you continue doing this back and forth you will avoid the sliding animation.

This weapon pairing makes for incredibly mobile PvP builds that are difficult to catch. The Rapier has unmatched mobility with quick damage options and supplemental crowd-control.

To learn more about ability usage and the intracies of the Rapier, please refer to our Rapier guide.

This weapon combination is generally only used in defensive Wars where you can play on the walls of the fort.

Please refer to our Bow tips for how to use it properly.

With a Musket you have cooldown reduction passives. This makes Refreshing more effective because these passives apply to max cooldown, not the adjusted cooldown. By using Refreshing you will make the passives more significant because it will apply a large reduction to a shorter cooldown.

In PvP combat your optimal resistances will focus on a mix of Slash and Thrust damage. Since you are playing farther back your only real threats are Musket, Bow, or a melee who has Slash damage. While you will also be pressured by elemental damage, you will have Elemental Aversion to compensate. This makes your optimal gem setups use Runeglass variants of Cut Pristine Moonstone or Cut Pristine Emerald.

When determining if you should use Runeglass of Arboreal Moonstone (Or other elemental damage) or Runeglass of Sighted Moonstone, it depends on empowerment cap and your skill level. Technically, if you have a maximum 15 stacks of Mortal Empowerment, then you reach empower cap due to passives. The elemental damage bonuses on Runeglass count toward this cap. As such, only when you are at 15 stacks, it is a damage increase to use Sighted Runeglass, such as Runeglass of Sighted Emerald, since this is a flat damage increase. This is a very marginal top end damage increase that applies when you are at very high stacks. For all purpose content, it is better to pursue elemental variants.

It is suggested that you should be around 30% Thrust resistance. You can decide what is best for you and what other resistances you prefer.

In your weapon you will often want to use an elemental damage gem that matches the Attunement perk on their weapon. This will still deal significant damage because of the primary scaling with base weapon damage. The gem will then split that value by 40% and scale with Intelligence or Focus (Nature). Since you then use an elemental damage Runeglass and perk on your Ring, this will increase the elemental damage dealt by the weapon, its Attunement, and its DoT effect. This also avoids some players increased resistances to Thrust and Physical damage sources.

It is best practice to use a magic damage type that is the least likely to be countered. While most players tend not to focus on a specific magic damage type like they do for physical damage, it is still possible. In most cases, players may use extra Ice damage protection due to the Ice Gauntlet, or Fire due to the Fire Staff or Blunderbuss. As such, Nature, Arcane, or Lightning damage can be beneficial options. Nature specifically is beneficial because it will always work in PvE environments because it is never weak to any enemy types.