Comprehending Conflict in New World
It’s possible to play New World and completely ignore the faction system, but if you do you’re missing out on bonuses and a whole new area of gameplay. This guide will help you choose a faction and explain what you can do once you’re in one.
Contents
What are Factions?
Factions are alliances of players that share bonuses, unique skins and items, and are on the same side in open-world PVP and war. Unlike a Company, you don’t choose who you are in a faction with. Rather, you choose the faction itself and then are grouped with others who made the same choice.
You need to be in a faction to engage in PVP (player vs player) content, as well as any instances that involve the War Board – which includes Invasions. You also benefit from fort bonuses, get rewards from the PvP track and faction missions, and can access items such as Chromatic Seals in the Faction Vendor.
Choosing a Faction
So, how do you know which faction to choose?
There’s no real answer to this question. Some might suggest looking at the map and seeing who holds the most territory or forts, but this is subject to change. Something important to know is that, while you can swap factions every 30 days, you cannot swap to the faction that holds the most territory.
One good reason to choose a faction is because your friends are in it. If you want to join a company, you can either be factionless or a member of the company’s faction. If that doesn’t apply to you, then I suggest going with the faction that you like the best. Each faction has its own style and founding values.
Covenant
The Covenant are pious religious warriors. Think Paladin, shiny armour, fancy churches, standing boldly in the light. There’s a touch of elitism, arrogance, and mindless belief, but also purity and good-ness. If you enjoy leading with a show of glory and the conviction of belief in a higher power, then the Covenant may be for you.
Items and Appearance
The Covenant is themed around gold: yellows, oranges, and even reds. The unique crafting item you can buy in this faction is the Covenants Chef Apron. You can also buy armour and weapons from the faction representative with their own look, which you can then transmog if you desire.
Marauders
The Marauders are hardened fighters, dedicated to honing their combat skills and defending Aeternum. They are practical and focus on fortifications rather than fancy architecture. If you’re a no-nonsense fighter that just wants to get down to battle, then consider joining the Marauders.
Items and Appearance
The Marauders’ colour is green and the unique crafting item you can purchase is the Marauders Blacksmith Gloves. You can also buy armour and weapons from the faction representative, each with their own look:
Syndicate
The Syndicate specialise in the power of knowledge, both arcane and scientific. Magical and hidden places are their domain, and they place value in books and collections. If you like to use your mind to solve problems and believe that information is the key to winning, then choose the Syndicate.
Items and Appearance
The Syndicate colour is purple and the unique crafting item you can purchase is the Syndicate Specs. You can also buy armour and weapons from the faction representative, each with their own look:
Joining a Faction
When you reach level 17, faction quest markers will appear on your map in and around Everfall. You may take the quest from each of them, or just focus on the one you want to join. Once you finish a short quest, you will be offered the opportunity to join the faction. Make sure you read the dialogue and don’t accept until you are sure that is the faction you want to join.
If you are already in a faction and want to swap to a different one, you can go to your Bio and choose “Leave Faction”. You will have to leave your company first. There is a 30-day cooldown between joining a faction and leaving it, so think carefully about your choice.
Notice how the game bribes you to become Covenant with extra XP and Azoth rewards?! Sus!
Faction Benefits
As soon as you join a faction, you have access to a range of benefits. These include powerful items in the PVP track, bonuses for your faction seizing war forts, various items and missions from your faction representatives, and the ability to flag for PVP and fight with other players in the open world. You can also get involved in territory ownership, by working with your company to win influence races and compete in wars.
Flagging for PVP
Once you join a faction, you can flag for PvP by pressing U. This gives consent to participate in player-to-player combat. Whenever you are outside of a Sanctuary (settlement, outpost, spirit shrine) you can be attacked and attack other players who are also flagged and of a different faction. While flagged, you get +10% XP, +3% Gathering Luck, and +1% Global Luck for elite chests.
PVP Track
If you go to Character > PVP you will see a PVP track. You can earn PVP XP by completing PVP faction missions, taking forts, participating in Influence Races, killing other players, and completing Outpost Rush, 3×3 Arenas, and Wars. There are 3 checkpoints per level and at each checkpoint you will get the option of 3 rewards. If you would like to claim a reward, you need to use Azoth Salt, which is also earned through the above activities and by completing PVP tracks. If you need extra Azoth Salt, you get 1500 for every 10,000 character XP earned while PVP flagged in the open world.
PVP Track rewards include:
- Artifacts. These have a random chance of appearing on Checkpoint 3 at specific levels. (see image)
- Named Items. These will often have PVP-specific perks and can be upgraded to 700GS.
- Random items. These will have PVP perks and are cheaper than named items.
- Special Dyes. While there are two shades in each faction colour, all six can appear for any player, regardless of faction.
- Furniture. This is Bind on Pickup and costs a lot of salt, so less useful than it could have been.
- Gold. You get more gold the higher track level you are.
- Consumables.
- Mount attachments.
- Gypsum Orbs, Dark Matter, Ruby Gypsum.
- Vial of Azoth Salt.
- Runeglass ingredients.
- Perk craft mods.
Fort Bonuses
Each territory has a war fort, the staging ground for wars and invasions. These forts can be claimed by members of a faction by standing on a point near the flag and staying there until your faction’s colour fills the point. Once claimed, the fort remains locked for one hour, and everyone in the faction gains a buff from it until the time expires and another faction takes over the fort. To enter and claim a fort, you must be flagged for PVP. A message is sent throughout the territory so that everyone, including players of opposing factions, knows the fort is under attack. You may need to fight others to maintain your position on the point, so come prepared for defence.
Owning a fort gives everyone in the faction a 5% XP bonus, as well as a specific bonus depending on the territory.
- Brightwood: Resourceless Camping
- Brimstone Sands: Gathering Quantity +10%
- Cutlass Keys: Global Gathering Luck Boost +1%
- Ebonscale Reach: Global Faction Store Discount -5%
- Edengrove: Global Fee Reduction -10%
- Everfall: Global Azoth Salt Bonus +10%
- Monarch's Bluff: Global Combat, Tradeskill, Mastery, Territory XP Boost +5%
- Mourningdale: Global Crafting Bonus +5 gear score
- Restless Shore: Free Fast Travel
- Reekwater: Global PVP XP Bonus +10%
- Weaver's Fen: Global Refining Yield Boost +10%
- Windsward: Chance consumables are not consumed +10%
Faction Vendors
Another great benefit to being in a faction is the missions and shop items that you can get from the faction vendor. There’s a representative in each town and most outposts, as well as in each faction’s enclave. Look for your faction’s icon on the map.
Faction Missions
There are two types of faction missions, PVE on the top row and PVP on the bottom row. These give faction reputation that allows you to level up your faction rank and access better rewards in the shop, and the faction tokens that you use to buy the rewards. You also get gold, territory standing, and XP; plus PVP XP and Azoth Salt for the PVP missions. Each day you get 3 bonus missions which give 10x the reputation, tokens, and gold rewards.
Once you do enough missions to reach the reputation requirement for the next rank, you will need to head back to your faction Enclave and do a short quest to progress. The best rewards are available at the highest faction rank, so keep an eye on this.
Faction Shop
You can spend your faction tokens in the shop, which is accessed by clicking on the Rewards button. Some of the items can be worth buying if you can’t seem to get the right weight for a slot, plus you can transmog the appearance if you like it. Faction shop items cost a mix of gold and faction tokens. If your faction owns the Ebonscale fort, the token cost will be reduced by 5% but the gold cost remains the same.
Some Faction Shop Items of Note:
- Gathering Crates – you can buy these to boost your gathering skills. The gold ones aren’t really worth buying
- Gem Setting Pins – used to add a gem slot to an artifact.
- Starmetal Chisel – an ingredient in crafting an Orb to enter one of the 3 open world Arenas: Siren Queens, Zygoramet, and Avarice.
- Gypsum Orbs – these cost only tokens so are a good way to keep your balance down if you are close to the cap. You can buy 5 per day at max level.
- Chromatic Seal – used to upgrade Named items and Artifacts. You can only buy one per day and they cost 5,000 gold and 20,000 tokens.
- Ultimate Trophy – used to combine all trophies of a type into a single trophy, which allows more buffs to be active. Combat, Crafting, and Gathering Ultimate trophies are available. These cost 45,000 gold and 100,000 tokens so make sure you choose the right one!
- Gorgonite Inductors – if you can’t get a raid group to complete the Hive of Gorgons, you can farm faction tokens and buy one per week instead. Or as well.
- There are also dyes and a unique crafting item for each faction.
Influence Races
Influence Races are scheduled events that allow companies to declare war for the control of a territory. You can join in the Influence Race regardless of whether you are a member of a warring company or not. Like any open-world PVP, you will be allied with players who are in the same faction as you and will fight against players from the two other factions.
You can see which territories have Influence Races and when by going to Map > Conflicts.
During an Influence Race, three Watchtowers become active within the territory under conflict. You can claim a Watchtower for your faction for influence, as well as PVP and Azoth Salt rewards. You can also earn influence by completing PVP missions in that territory during the influence race window. Taking a Tower completes a Seize mission, usually reserved for taking the Fort. The faction that holds the Fort during the Influence Race will receive +20% Influence. Races usually start on the hour and run for 45 minutes.
At the end of the race, each player who participated will receive 1000 PVP XP, 5240 Faction tokens, 500 Azoth salt, 100 gold, standing, a Ruby Gypsum, and Influence Spoils, whether they won or lost. The earring artifact Justice has a chance to drop in winning spoils.
Companies from the faction that earned the most attacking influence during the race have the option to declare war on the territory. There is a fee for declaring war and while more than one company can declare, only one is selected.
Wars
This article will not go into the strategy of War, or the politics of being selected to be in an Army. On highly populated servers, wars are competitive and require VOD reviews and commitment to training and participation. If you join a warring company, you will have the opportunity to learn about all this in more detail.
It is possible, however, to sign up for a war and be selected without being part of the attacking or defending companies, especially on servers with lower populations. So we’ll go through the basics of how war works and what the implications are for the wider server community.
Declaring war and building two armies
Once a company declares war, a date and time will be assigned by the game. This is based on the Siege Window of the defending company. Each company can choose their own siege window to guard against sneak attacks when they are not online. The war information is placed on the War Board of the territory under conflict and you can also sign up by clicking the settlement on the map and choosing Join Army on the right side panel. There is also a War Board outside the front gate of the War Fort.
Anyone from the attacking company’s faction can join the attacking army, and the defending company’s faction can join the defending army. Members of the other faction can sign up for either side.
Members of the army are either company members or mercenaries.
- The attacking army is allowed to have 25 mercenaries
- The defending army is only allowed to have 10 mercenaries.
So, if you are not in the warring company, it is easier to get a slot in an attacking war rather than a defending one.
The leader of each army will place people on the board, or they can choose to allow Auto-fill, which will automatically populate the army from the sign-up list. As long as there is one person on the board for either side, the war will proceed. If both sides have no-one on the board, it becomes forfeit and the defending company holds the territory.
War gameplay
There is 15 minutes at the beginning of the war for each army to prepare. This may include sharing communications channels for strategy, handing out consumables, and assigning groups. This can be extremely organised or just a bit of fun. You can buy consumables from the armoury at this point, usually Cleanse potions or whatever is requested by the leaders.
Once the war starts, the attacking team has 30 minutes to take three points and the fort. The more people standing on a point, the faster it is taken. Defenders work to remove enemies from the point, either by killing them or through other tactics. The fort is protected by gates that can be damaged by weapons and kegs, and repaired by the defenders using repair parts. If the defending army can prevent the attackers from completing their objectives, they hold the territory. If the attackers successfully take the point inside the fort, they become the new owners of the territory.
Benefits of Town Ownership
Owning a town grants benefits to company that holds it, which include discounted housing, fees, and fast travel, plus extra loot luck and gathering bonuses in that territory, for company members. All faction members also get access to the Resource Cart in town.
There are rights and responsibilities to running a town. Each town earns a percentage of global tax income, which is paid periodically to the company treasury. The more upgraded the settlement is, the greater percentage of income is earned, up to the cap for that territory.
Town income caps are:
- 15% – Edengrove
- 10% – Brimstone Sands, Everfall, Windsward, Brightwood
- 7.5% – Ebonscale Reach, Reekwater, Monarch’s Bluff, Mourningdale
- 5% – Restless Shore, Cutlass Keys, Weaver’s Fen
Town Projects
The Governor and Consuls of the ruling company can go to the Territory Planning Table to start Town Projects. These upgrade the crafting stations in Town, the War Fort, or provide buffs for residents of the town. Upgrading the town and fort increases tax income. It is important to note that these upgrade projects no longer provide any benefit to anyone else, as all crafting recipes can be made at a T2 crafting station now.
Town buffs, on the other hand, are global buffs that apply to all residents of the town, regardless of company or faction. It is the responsibility of the ruling company to provide town buffs. If your company owns Everfall, Windsward, or Brimstone Sands, it is expected that you will maintain a rotation of crafting buffs, as these are known as crafting towns.
Town projects require players to complete missions for project points. Only one town project can be started per day, even if the project points target is reached. The buff or upgrade applies as soon as the required points have been earned. There is a 30 minute cooldown on competing town project missions, so it works best if these are completed by multiple players.
Town Buffs
There are a range of town buffs to choose from and each buff lasts 3 days so a settlement can have multiple running at the same time. Active town buffs apply globally to anyone who owns a house in the territory.
- Gathering Buffs – increase yield by 20% from Logging, Harvesting, Mining, or Skinning.
- Crafting buffs – increase Gear Score of crafted items by 5 points from Weaponsmithing, Engineering, Armoring (used for Jewelcraft as well), or Arcanist.
- Chef’s Passion – increase the chance of additional meals when Cooking.
- Combat Buff – Arcane Blessing – Increase Corrupted damage absorption by 5%
Resource Carts
Each settlement (except Edengrove) has a resource cart that you can collect from daily if you are a member of the ruling faction.
- Food Cart – Brimstone Sands, Reekwater
- Fibers Cart – Windsward, Ebonscale Reach
- Ore Cart – Mourningdale, Monarch’s Bluff
- Lumber Cart – Brightwood, Cutlass Keys
- Rawhide Cart – Everfall, Restless Shore
- Oil Cart – Weaver’s Fen
Enjoy
So you can see, being part of a faction has many benefits, from buffs and bonuses to new ways of playing the game. Sign up to your chosen faction today! Psst: choose Syndicate! 🙂
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