Weapon Overview for New World

In New World: Aeternum, there is no class system, and you are free to use whatever weapon combination you want. When you begin your adventure, you'll be prompted to select an archetype, but that is simply just choosing the first two weapons that you'll use when starting your adventure (which you'll be able to quickly change in and out once you get started). every weapon has its own unique weapon mastery, divided into two trees and 6 unique active abilities. You can have any 3-active abilities on your action bar at a time. Each weapon scales its damage off of at least one attribute, and a few scale off of a primary and secondary attribute.

It is best practice to find two weapons that generally scale together. For example, the Great Axe and the War Hammer pair well together because the weapon damage for both of these weapons scale directly with the Strength attribute.

Please note: There are now several artifacts that allow certain weapons to directly scale off of a unique attribute. For example, one of the Great Axe Artifacts, The Abyss, changes your Great Axe to scale directly with Intelligence, opening you up to a new set of compatible builds, such as pairing the Fire Staff or Ice Gauntlet with the Great Axe.

These melee weapons have fast attack speeds, but only the Sword and Flail is able to be used in combination with the Shield. Wearing a Shield without using a Sword or Flail will only increase your equipment load and repair costs and will not provide any benefits. There are no dual-wielding weapons in the game at this time.

The Flail is an incredibly potent support weapon that can be paired with a shield. This combination allows for four bonus perks that will either amplify one's offensive output, or provide defensive options for survival. While it may not be the best for overall damage output, it has crowd-control potential with almost every single one of its abilities. This, in combination with its potential to provide fortify, empowers, weakens, and additional healing, make it a premiere option for any PvP content. Its support is not limited to PvP. In it can be used well by tanks, or by healers who are looking to provide damage and maintain healing without swapping to their life staff.

For more information about the Flail (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

This weapon combo is New World’s premiere tanking weapon set. The Sword is unique in that it is currently the only weapon that is allowed to be paired with a shield. Since the Sword can use a Shield you are able to more effectively block incoming damage than with other weapons. The Swordmaster Tree focuses on providing damage and some mobility. Its Ultimate Mastery, Leadership, increases all group members' damage by 10% while you are holding a sword. The Defender Tree is focused on making you as tanky as possible. Its Ultimate Mastery Defensive Formation allows you to reduce the damage taken by nearby allies while you are blocking. Light attacks deal Slashing damage and heavy attacks deal Piercing damage.

For more information about the Sword and Shield (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

This weapon focuses on being quick, agile, and elusive. Evade allows players to move around their foes with ease and Riposte allows you to counter attack almost anything in the game. The Blood Tree focuses on applying bleeds and extending their duration for as long as possible before consuming them for instant damage with the Tree’s Ultimate Mastery Bloody End. The Grace Tree focuses around being light on your feet and having extremely short cooldowns. Its Ultimate Mastery Momentum grants a damage bonus on your next standard attack after performing an ability. The Rapier excels at moving quickly in and out of melee range and whittling down their foes while avoiding taking damage. Light and Heavy attacks deal Thrust damage.

For more information about the Rapier (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

Where the Rapier is evasive and agile the Hatchet is aggressive and relentless. The Berserker Tree focuses on damage, survivability, and speed. The Berserk Ability is extremely powerful and provides several buffs when completely supported with Masteries. Its Ultimate Mastery Defy Death allows you to cheat death for 3-seconds when you would die on a 75-second cooldown. The Throwing Tree focuses on turning the Hatchet into a ranged weapon that applies debuffs and even allows you to forsake blocking for a stamina-draining hatchet-throwing right click. Your hatchet will magically reappear in your hand after every throw making it the only ranged weapon that does not require mana or ammo. Its Ultimate Mastery Persistent Hindrance extends the duration of all hatchet debuffs on any target hit by your throwing axe. Light and Heavy attacks deal Slashing damage.

For more information about the Hatchet (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

These melee weapons have slower attack speeds but hit slightly harder than their one-handed brethren. These weapons also tend to have more crowd controlling Abilities than other weapon classes.

This weapon focuses primarily on stunning and knocking down its foes. With several ways to reduce its cooldowns, such as Aggressive Maneuvers, you are also able to spam your abilities more frequently than the typical weapon. Properly used the spear is a crowd controlling machine that always has cooldowns nearly up. The Zoner Tree focuses on Heavy Attacks, crowd control, and stamina. Its Ultimate Mastery Reserved Strength increases your damage done when your stamina is full. The Impaler Tree focuses applying debuffs, light attacks, and critical strikes. Its Ultimate Mastery Exploited Weakness increases the damage enemies take based on how many debuffs they have. The spear also attacks faster than the other two-handed weapons with fast thrusting strikes that deal Thrust damage.

For more information about the Spear (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

This weapon excels at getting up in its foes face and cleaving them down with area of effect attacks. While most other weapons can hit multiple foes with well placed Light or Heavy attacks, the Great Axe easily hits multiple foes with its broad side-to-side swings. The Reaper Tree focuses on gap closing and life leech. Its Ultimate Mastery Blood Lust increases your movement speed and damage while you are facing a foe within 15 meters. The Mauler Tree focuses on crowd control and getting in the middle of multiple foes. Its Ultimate Mastery Mauler's Fury causes attacks to increase the damage you deal by 3% for 3-seconds stacking up to 10 times. Light and Heavy attacks deal Slashing damage.

For more information about the Great Axe (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

This solid hunk of metal does a great job dishing out area of effect damage and crowd control. If you want to knock foes around with thunderous attacks then this is the weapon for you. The Juggernaut Tree focuses on applying near-instant, close-range area of effect crowd control and debuffs. Its Ultimate Mastery, Justice For All, adds an additional heavy attack to the Mighty Gavel Ability. The Crowd Crusher Tree is all about area of effect knock-backs, stuns, and staggers. With the ability to leech from abilities in this tree, the Crowd Crusher stays healthy by keeping its foes unable to attack and recovering any damage that gets through. The Ultimate Mastery, Aftershock, slows foes affected by your crowd control further cementing the control power of this tree. Light and Heavy attacks deal strike damage.

For more information about the War Hammer (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

This is the only two-handed weapon that acts as an exception to the rules, it can swing heavy attacks incredibly fast. The Greatsword shines with its single-target burst damage and its ability to close gaps with movement speed and crowd-control abilities. It is a unique weapon, as it functions in a stance system. When abilities are activated within its Onslaught Tree you will gain Path of Onslaught which will increase damage and speed up heavy attack swing times, but comes at the cost of increasing incoming damage. It has abilities such as Relentless Rush that will provide mobility and crowd-control, or Skyward Slash that will have both a potent burst of single-target or AoE damage. If an ability is activated that is within its Defiance Tree, you will gain Path of Defiance which will reduce incoming damage and provide passive blocking while charging heavy attacks, but comes at the cost of reducing your outgoing damage. It is a defensive tanking focused tree that has abilities for reducing incoming damage, or providing defensive buffs, like Calamity Counter or Roaring Rupture. Its light and heavy attacks will deal slash damage.

For more information about the Greatsword (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

These weapons focus on doing damage from a distance and maintaining the distance between yourself and foes. Each weapon in this category consumes ammo, arrows for Bows and bullets for Muskets, which can be equipped into their corresponding item slot. Ammo that is equipped in this way will not count towards your carry weight and you can equip up to 500-arrows and 500-bullets at a time. You can make ammo at the Workshop crafting station in any town or buy it from the Trading Post. There are multiple tiers of ammo that you can craft for increasingly expensive materials that increase your damage accordingly.

This arrow shooting weapon does a good job dishing out both single-target and area-of-effect damage at range. Bows fire arrows which are affected by projectile drop, so you will have to aim above where you intend the arrow to go if shooting from a distance. Rain of Arrows, Poison Shot, Splinter Shot, and Penetrating Shot can all hit multiple foes. Arrow Range helps your arrows travel farther before being affected by gravity. Overall the bow is a great ranged option that has several area-of-effect Abilites but does slightly less single-target damage when compared to the Musket and you must aim to account for gravity. The Skirmisher Tree focuses on making you faster and slowing your foes. Its Ultimate Mastery Knee Shot slows down foes that you shoot in the leg. The Hunter Tree is about dishing out lots of single target damage and headshots. Its Ultimate Mastery Concussion increases your damage dealt after a headshot and gives a chance to refund your arrow. Its Light and Heavy Attacks deal Thrust damage. You can hip-fire the weapon or aim down sights by holding right mouse. To fire a Heavy Attack simply hold right click and then hold left mouse to charge up a shot.

For more information about the Bow (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

Shooting bullets, this weapon is primarily focused on delivering single target damage from a distance. The Musket shots are all hitscan so you do not need to account for gravity when aiming. Ballistic Advantage allows you to ignore most of the damage fall off from range when using standard Musket shots which allows Musket to be a threat to nearly anything you can see. The Sharpshooter Tree focuses on increasing Headshot damage and its Ultimate Mastery Sniper allows you to zoom in to make accurate shots from a distance. The Trapper Tree focuses more on doing damage while moving and provides several crowd control options with Traps, Stopping Power, and Sticky Bomb. The Musket has a 2-second reload animation for every shot that can be interrupted by dodging or falling victim to crowd control. The Musket is also the only weapon that can be used from the prone position which allows you to fire while hidden. Its Light and Heavy Attacks deal Thrust damage.

For more information about the Musket (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

Although not from extremely far away, the Blunderbuss is a ranged weapon that delivers significant amounts of single-target and AoE burst damage. It shoots a spread of six bullets, each one adding individual damage contributions. It has abilities like Azoth Shrapnel Blast for single-target and medium ranges to quickly kill enemies in just about any armor weight. Then it has Splitting Grenade or Mortar Charge for long distance AoE. Its damage is supplemented by crowd-control from abilities like Net Shot or Claw Shot that also give some mobility. The Containment Tree focuses on keeping targets locked in place and single-target damage. Its Ultimate Master Unload adds more pellets to its basic shot spread to help with damage output after using an ability. The Chaos Tree looks to affect as many targets as possible and has many AoE options. Its Ultimate Mastery Double Down gives you 50% cooldown reduction on the next ability used every 30 seconds in order to get as many abilities out as possible. It has a baseline of two cartridges that can be fired before needing to reload and it will deal a mix of Thrust and Fire Damage.

For more information about the Blunderbuss (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

These weapons all utilize mana to create magical effects. They consume mana to cast Abilities and fire off Basic Attacks. Magical weapons are different from the other weapon types because they deal elemental damage with no physical damage. These weapons can be crafted at the Arcana crafting station in any town.

Raining down fire on its foes the Fire Staff is the Fire Damage focused weapon in New World. Its Fire Mage Tree focuses on long-range area of effect Abilities such as Fireball and regenerating mana through Heavy Attacks. Its Ultimate Mastery Runes of Helios drops a rune on the ground that increases your spell damage while you stand within the rune. The Pyromancer Tree focuses on close range Abilities such as Flamethrower and damage over time Burns. The Ultimate Mastery Reheat allows you to drastically increase your mana regeneration when you have not used an Ability within the last 6-seconds.

For more information about the Fire Staff (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

The sole healing focused weapon in New World, the Life Staff is extremely powerful. Its Attacks and Abilities deal Nature damage and scales with Focus. The Healing Tree focuses on healing allies who are below 50%-health. The first row Mastery Absolved is great for any Life Staff user as it allows you to use Basic Attacks without consuming mana. Its Ultimate Mastery Divine Blessing makes it so that when you heal an ally below 50%-health you heal for 30% more. The Protector Tree is focused on providing buffs to its allies and has several Masteries that scale with having buffs or extend the duration of your buffs. Its Ultimate Mastery, Magnify, supports the Ability Light's Embrace by making the Ability extend Life Staff buffs.

For more information about the Life Staff (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

This magical gauntlet summons ice to damage and control its foes. The Ice Tempest Tree focuses on critical damage and its Ultimate Mastery Ultimate Chill makes your Abilities chill enemies increasing your ice damage by 35% for 3-seconds. The Builder tree has several popular Abilites such as Ice Shower and Entombed but the Tree has a large focus on the Ice Pylon Ability. Its Ultimate Mastery Ultimate Frost doubles Ice Pylon's health and provides some additional benefits.

For more information about the Ice Gauntlet (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.

This magical gauntlet uses the power of the void to dish out damage and heal. The Annihilation tree focuses on empowering Void Blade to make the Void Gauntlet a melee weapon and its Ultimate Mastery Voidcaller rewards repeated hits with Void Blade with a short term damaging and healing aura. The Decay tree focuses on supporting from afar with Orb of Decay. Its Ultimate Mastery Glimpse of the Void can reset your Void Gauntlet cooldowns if you chain together multiple ability hits in a row.

For more information about the Void Gauntlet (abilities, perks, synergies, etc.), please refer to our dedicated guide.