Weapons Leveling Rankings - A New World Tier List

The purpose of this list is to rank the different weapons available in New World: Aeternum by how effective they are in the character leveling process. It is important to note that just because a weapon is low in the tier list, this does not mean that you cannot play it. Each weapon has its own unique playstyle and build options, and often it is better to play what you enjoy than to play what is considered the best.

Please note: This list is assuming that you are playing as an individual, and not with a group. This is important to keep in mind when reviewing this list, as it explains why some weapons (such as the Life Staff) is ranked so low. Playing this game as an individual, the Life Staff might be a bit limited, but playing this weapon in a group and it would rank very well.

In this section we present an overview, in list format, of the more detailed breakdown that we have further down the page. This is our opinion on the most effective weapons to use when solo leveling your character (Most Effective = S Tier, Least Effective = C Tier).

• Hatchet
• Spear
• Greatsword

• Great Axe
• Bow
• Rapier

• Fire Staff
• Sword and Shield
• War Hammer
• Blunderbuss
• Ice Gauntlet
• Void Gauntlet

• Flail
• Musket
• Life Staff

To learn more about why each of these weapons were placed where they were, read the full guide below, or watch this video to gain a more in-depth understanding of how each weapon can help you as you level up your character in New World: Aeternum.

This tier is for weapons that are considered the best options when leveling your character, and are always great options to utilize in PvE content. It's important to keep in mind that when using these weapons, you should use your attribute points specifically into areas that the weapon scales with. For example, adding STR and DEX attributes if you're using the hatchet.

The Hatchet's Berserk ability is considered one of the best abilities in the game because it provides a large damage boost, lifesteal, and movement speed. When leveling, the less downtime the better, and the hatchet does a great job keeping your health topped off and keeping you moving quickly across the map, while also chopping your enemies down.

Please note: The 20% damage buff that is provided from Bereserk is counted towards your empower cap (50%), which is important to keep in mind when trying to get as close to that empower cap as possible with your build.

The hatchet heals based on its lifesteal perk within the berserk skill tree, granting you 5% lifesteal on all attacks. Activating this ability when around health allows you to keep dishing off a great amount of damage, while also regaining your health in the process. The hatchet deals solid melee DPS that scales with both Strength or Dexterity, making it a good option as a secondary damage weapon for most of the game's weapons. It even brings a ranged damage option to the table in Aimed Throw to help melee builds hit distant foes.

Feral Rush can stop a foe in their tracks with a strong root provided from Crippling Strikes, and Rending Throw can provide easy access to the powerful Rend debuff. The three most commonly used abilities with the hatchet for leveling include Berserk, Raging Torrent, and Infected Throw.

Last but not least, the hatchet also introduces players to an amazing passive known as Defy Death, which is essentially a second chance at survival. This ability allows you to avoid death from a lethal attack, then grants you 500 HP + 50% of your base health, and invulnerability for 0.5 seconds, allowing you to take a step back, heal up, and go in for round two.

The Spear is also considered as one of the S-tier weapons for leveling due to it's balance of great damage output, crowd control, and debuff capability. With the Sweep and Vault Kick abilities, players are able to temporarily knock down or stun their opponents, allowing users to land there next attack, whether it be a heavy attack or another ability. One of the best abilities to use after succesfully dishing off one of these abilities is Perforate, which is arguably the best ability that the spear offers. This ability allows you to deal a great amount of damage, and also apply a large amount of Rend and @Weaken to your targets, limiting the amount of damage they deal on you, while maximizng the amount of damage you deal to them.

This weapon scales off of Strength and Dexterity, and is commonly paired with either the hatchet or bow.

The Greatsword's massive amount of damage output and great mobility is why it is considered an S-tier weapon for leveling. The abilities for this weapon are pretty straight-forward, as they are broken up into two categories: Onslaught (DPS focused), and Defiance (Tank-focused). When it comes to leveling, you can use a mix of both to maximize your damage output and your survivability.

The greatsword's Skyward Slash ability is a great opening move against your opponents, as it staggers your enemy, deals a good amount of damage, and then also applies two stacks of 5% rend (with a max of 3 stacks). When fully upgraded, this ability also applies Disease to your opponent, reducing their healing by 20% for 10 seconds (great for PvP).

Additional abilities worth mentioning include Relentless Rush and Crosscut, both being great abilities to quickly (and efficiently) deal massive damage to the enemy in front of you. The Greatsword is commonly paired with the hatchet, spear, or bow.

This tier is for weapons that can easily handle the leveling experience with little to no help from their other weapon. Each of these provide unique abilities that can make your leveling experience enjoyable, and efficient.

Swinging into A-tier, the Great Axe can cleave down foes while providing some great self-healing. Blood Lust is incredible for chasing down foes in PvP and PvE, while Gravity Well forces those hit by it to either use a movement ability or be stuck. Gravity Well only gets stronger with the Insatiable Gravity Well perk that effectively doubles its damage and makes you heal for a large amount of health. Its use in leveling allows you to control large groups of foes that you can then cleave down with wide hitting basic attacks, which is especially helpful in expeditions.

Charge is a great movement skill not only for its range, but because it is nearly instant, making it hard for you to be stopped. Feed, Critical Gains, and Hunger provide lots of self-healing as long as you are dealing damage.

The most common abilities used with the Great Axe for leveling are Charge, Maelstrom, and Gravity Well.

Pelting foes with arrows, the Bow is a great leveling weapon. The ability to reliably put massive amounts of damage onto a foe before they can close the gap to you is incredibly strong. Between Evasive Tactics, Long Range, Aim True, Opening Strike, and Surprise Attack, the bow can start fights with extremely strong heavy attacks.

The Bow can also travel quickly around the map with Archer's Speed and Dodge and Weave, providing consistent movement speed. The bow has several area-of-effect abilities such as Poison Shot, Rain of Arrows, and Penetrating Shot, which can help clear out large groups of foes at the same time.

This weapon scales directly with Dexterity, and is commonly paired with either the hatchet, spear, or greatsword.

Slashing and stabbing down foes, where other melee weapons need self-healing to recover lost health, the Rapier avoids taking damage in the first place. Evade with Crescendo allows for insanely short cooldown damage immunity and damage boosts.

Riposte stops incoming damage from almost everything in the game, including some things that do not make sense, like Thorpe's laser beam skill in The Depths. Fleche is a solid movement skill that goes through foes, so you are not able to be body blocked. Flurry provides insane burst damage that can quickly be reset with Fleeting Strikes and Red Curtains. Lastly, the Rapier is one of the best-traveling weapons due to Breathe In restoring stamina when you use Evade, which allows you to get more dodge rolls in.

This weapon actually has potential to be classified as an S-tier weapon if used correctly, as it has potential to dish off a very, very large amount of damage with certain combos. The most effective combination of abilities to dish off a tremendous amount of damage in a full sequence is using, tondo, then, evade, and finishing with Flourish and Finish, which deals a large amount of burst damage to whoever is on the other side.

This tier is for weapons that can handle leveling, but which require some assistance from their secondary weapon to feel great, or which require extra effort to play to their full potential.

Slinging Fireballs and launching Pillar of Fire for massive damage, the Fire Staff can put out a lot of damage. This weapon would score higher but until you have both Spell Focus and Flare, you are going to have a challenge maintaining your mana. This means you most likely will have to wait until this point to pickup your Burnout ability, since it is from the other side of the skill tree.

Hitting the 200-Intelligence breakpoint also helps with mana, but until then you will be either chugging mana potions, using a non-magical weapon to regen, or switching to the Ice Gauntlet to use Entombed. Even then, aiming Pillar of Fire can be extremely tricky and without any good control crowd or self-healing the fire staff is a weaker leveling option. This weapon is commonly paired with the ice staff or rapier.

As the primary tanking weapon in New World: Aeternum, the Sword and Shield is a rather durable weapon. Unfortunately that durability does come with the downside of not having the best damage output. Defiant Stance's Restoration does provide a solid self-heal that can be help keep you healthy, and the damage reduction is not bad either. While finding a group for expeditions will be significantly easier as a tank, there is not much reason to level up as Sword and Shield outside of unique tanking situations. Also, your taunts are only active with a socketed Carnelian gem, so your weapon upgrades are limited to those with a socket if you want to tank.

The Sword and Shield do shine with the great amount of stuns and crowd control abilities it has, including the Shield Bash ability, that can stun enemies for up to 3 full seconds (which feels like an eternity in a battle situation). Additionally, the this ability can provide stagger on enemies in case of emergencies, which also allows you to quickly swap to your other weapon to deal a heavy attack. Pairing these stuns and staggers with the spear can allow you to almost constantly keep your enemies staggered, stunned, and on the ground (as long as they don't have GRIT).

The War Hammer is a solid hunk of metal that does a great job knocking foes down and stunning them with its crowd control options. Unfortunately, it does not do a great job of not taking damage while dishing it out. With slow basic attacks, it is rather difficult to avoid taking hits while playing this weapon.

Regarding the war hammer's ability to dish of damage, the Armor Breaker ability surprisingly deals a decent chunk of damage, making it extremely helpful when taking down powerful enemies. This ability penetrates the target's armor, has GRIT, inflicts rend, and deals a good chunk of damage.

Prevailing Spirit certainly helps out with survivability while leveling, but there is a reason that this weapon has Power Through Pain as a mastery. This weapon feels great when it has its cooldowns up and ready to crowd control your foes, and feels weak when they are down. The war hammer also is limited when it comes to movement abilities, so it might feel a bit slower than other weapons.

The two most commonly used abilities to use when leveling with the war hammer is armor breaker, and of course, Shockwave, which is arguably one of the best abilities this weapon has. Typically, war hammer users tend to use Shockwave to stun the enemy, then uses armor breaker to dish off decent damage and inflict rend, then end the combo with either a heavy attack or your third ability.

The Blunderbuss is a some-what ranged weapon that has potential of dishing off some great burst damage. The reason we say "some-what ranged" is because you actually need to be somewhat close to your target for your bullets to actually land. Regardless, this weapon has some great perks and abilities to help you maximize damage output against your foes.

One of the most helpful abilities for this weapon is the Azoth Shrapnel Blast ability, which shoots out up to nine bullets in a horizontal fan in front of you while pushing yourself backwards. Each damage deals fire damage, making this weapon scale nicely with any additional fire damage perks or buffs that are on your character.

This weapon is a bit of a unique one, as the damage of this weapon scales off of Strength and Intelligence, making it a little awkward at times when trying to figure out the best secondary weapon to pair this with. Many blunderbuss users tend to utilize the fire staff or war hammer for efficient leveling builds.

Although the Ice Gauntlet boasts good damage with Ice Storm and solid mana regeneration with Entombed, it takes awhile for the full build to really feel effective. Once you can acquire Ultimate Chill and hit the 200-Intelligence breakpoint, this weapon starts to feel like it deals good damage and you can use your Entomb offensively as opposed to a mana recovery tool.

Ice Shower is a really strong crowd control ability, but sadly provides zero damage, and the other abilities all have some sort of weakness. Wind Chill forces you to be close to foes and does not always prevent them from hurting you, Ice Spikes can be difficult to aim and time, and Ice Pylon generally does not provide a ton of damage. Pairing it with the Fire Staff or Rapier allows the player to benefit from the crowd control the Ice Gauntlet can provide.

Again, this does not mean that you should not use the Ice Gauntlet when leveling. If you enjoy this weapon, and have fun with it, that's what is important.

The Void Gauntlet is a very fun weapon that provides users with a range of damage-dealing abilities, debuffing abilities, and even some healing abilities. Due to this, void gauntlet builds tend to shine very brightly in group settings instead of solo play, but there is still a lot of potential for individuals using this weapon when leveling.

This weapon is also an interesting one, as you have the option to transform this ranged weapon into a melee one using the Void Blade ability, which allows you to transform your weapon into a blade that you can swing at your opponents just like any other melee weapon. This ability, along with many others that the void gauntlet has to offer, provide a combination of critical chance and critical damage bonuses, lifesteal, and armor buffs. Players tend to prefer utilizing the Keen perk on their void gauntlets to maximize what they get out of basic attacks and abilities.

This tier is reserved for Weapons that under-perform the average power of other weapons and require high Mastery or Attribute levels to begin to feel good.

The Flail is one of the newest weapons introduced to New World: Aeternum, which can be paired with the shield. This weapon tends to primarily be used in a more defensive manner, and is primarily utilized by tank builds due to the limited amount of damage output this weapon's abilities push out.

The Flail is great for group settings due to a few buff and healing abilities available, and can also be a great source of survivability on an individual basis. If you're looking to dish off as much damage as possible with this weapon, it's worth exploring the "Bastion" side of its skill tree.

The Musket only truly excels after acquiring most of its mastery points. The two-second reload per shot feels extremely long, especially considering that dodge rolling forces you to restart the animation. Hustle helps with traveling across long distances by providing a consistent speed buff.

The main reason that musket is rated so low is that it just does not do much damage compared to other weapons without landing consistent headshots, and it has almost no area-of-effect damage. Sticky Bomb's 3-second delay feels so long that it is hard to anticipate when to use it correctly. Also, Shooter's Stance is great for rapid fire shots but forces you to remain stationary for the entirety of the ability.

This weapon does have some great PvP potential, but when it comes to leveling, it's a bit difficult when compared to other options due to the fact that it really needs a majority of its skills and abilities maxed out to be most effective.

Healers are extremely valuable and sought-after group members in New World: Aeternum. As a healer, you won't have a problem finding a group for expeditions and PvP-related content. However, when it comes to leveling individually, this weapon can be a bit limiting.

The Life Staff has extremely potent healing that can be paired with a wide variety of weapons to help kill foes. Sacred Ground and Beacon are both incredibly potent heals that persist through weapon swap, which allows you to throw these down and DPS with a melee weapon and stay healthy if needed.

If you use an Amber gem within your life staff, you can partially convert any weapon to scale partially with Focus, the main attribute for this weapon. Healers are just incredibly durable, so even though your damage output might be lower, you can easily solo content that would stop others (it just might take a little longer).

Friendly Reminder: This tier list is our thoughts on most effective weapons when it comes to leveling as an individual, which is why the life staff is rated last. The life staff is an incredibly important weapon in this game, but could be limited in how useful it is on an individual basis when compared to other weapons that have lifesteal and self-healing capabilities.