Gear Guide
This guide will be outdated when Season 3 is released on October 3, 2023. It will remain on this page for historical purposes. We plan to publish a new guide soon. See the Rise of the Angry Earth PTR patch notes to find out what we know so far.
The best and worst thing about reaching level 60 is the gear. You can finally use all the gear in the game, without being restricted by level. But with this freedom comes a whole lot of confusion, with the sheer variety of perks and the way the RNG combines them. This guide aims to help you build sets of gear for end-game PVE, and decide what to salvage, what to keep, and what to buy or get crafted, to get the most out of your character build. Because it is quite long, we’ve provided a table of contents to help you navigate.
Table of Contents
While it is worth reading the whole article to understand the different elements of gear, we understand that it is alot. So we’ve provided quick reference short answers at the beginning of each section, to help you get started. These are not “right” answers, because information is not simple, but they are starting points.
The first thing to look at when choosing gear is the Attribute bonus. You should only have gear with attributes that increase your weapon damage or give you health – Constitution. The exception here is if you have a build that utilises a non-weapon attribute milestone bonus, but that’s for more advanced builds, so we will just focus on the attributes that are used by your weapon.
It is most efficient to stick to weapon combos that have similar attributes, for example War Hammer/Great Axe, Bow/Spear, or Rapier/Ice Gauntlet. This allows you to maximise your damage for both weapons more easily. You can check which attribute your weapons scales with on the Weapon card itself, or in Character (K) > Attributes.
If you use a straight stat weapon, like Fire Staff that scales solely from Intelligence or War Hammer that uses only Strength, then your gear should be limited to items with that attribute bonus or Con. When you have a split stat scaling weapon like a Hatchet, you have more options but also need to be careful about balancing your attributes. This is complicated further by the second weapon.
Every 50 points, there is a milestone bonus on each attribute. Some of these are fairly weak, but others are important to get. When setting your attribute distribution, take these into consideration and try to reach the bumps if you can.
| Strength | |
| 50 | 10% to melee physical basic attacks |
| 100 | 5% to melee slashing and strike |
| 150 | 25% stamina damage to melee weapon light attacks |
| 200 | 10% on stunned, slowed or rooted |
| 250 | Stamina regen is 25% faster during the startup of basic attacks with a melee weapon |
| 300 | 10% base damage to heavy attacks |
| Dexterity | |
| 50 | 10% chance to crit hit |
| 100 | 5% thrust damage |
| 150 | Dodges cost 10 less stamina |
| 200 | 10% bonus backstab and headshot damage |
| 250 | 10% bonus to random crit hit damage to stunned, slowed, or rooted |
| 300 | Guaranteed crit after a dodge (10 second cooldown) |
| Focus | |
| 50 | -5% ability cooldown |
| 100 | 20 to mana pool |
| 150 | 20% damage based healing output |
| 200 | 20% buff duration |
| 250 | 30 mana on any self or group AI kill |
| 300 | When your mana is at 15 or less gain 8 mana per second for 10 seconds (60s cooldown) |
| Intelligence | |
| 50 | 10% damage to backstabs and random crit hits |
| 100 | 10% damage to light and heavy magic attacks |
| 150 | 15% to elemental damage |
| 200 | 10 mana after a dodge |
| 250 | 30% duration to damage over time spells |
| 300 | 10% damage on first hit on full health target |
| Constitution | |
| 50 | All health consumables 20% stronger |
| 100 | Increase max health by 10% of your physical armour |
| 150 | -10% to crit damage taken |
| 200 | 10% increase to physical and elemental armour |
| 250 | -60% damage reduction when full health (60s cooldown) |
| 300 | Basic melee attacks gain GRIT |
How much Con you run will depend on your role in the group and the amount of experience you have in playing your character build. There is a direct relationship between how much Con you have and how much damage you do, due to the fact that points in Con take away from points in your damage scaling attribute. However, taking points out of Con reduces your health and if you run out of health completely, you die! So, start with your Con at a moderate level, like 150, and reduce it as you become more confident. If you find you’re dying a lot, respec to add some points to Con.
Side note: get used to spending 200 gold fairly often! Don’t worry, it’s only about 67 salvaged items worth.
Rarity is displayed as the colour of the item and determines how many perks an item has. Players usually see Attributes, Gem Slots and Perks individually, while devs call all of these items “Perks”. Hence, you might hear people refer to Legendary items as having 3 perks but devs talk about them having 5 perks. We’re going to use the 3 perk system for this article, as that is more commonly used in-game.
- Legendary – Gold – 600+GS – Attribute bonus, Gem Slot, 3 Perks
- Epic – Purple – Attribute Bonus, Gem Slot, 2 Perks
- Rare – Blue – Attribute Bonus, 0-1 Gem Slot, 1 Perk
- Uncommon – Green – Attribute Bonus, 0-1 Perk
- Common – Grey – No bonuses
So you can see that for a level 60, it is not worth using gear below Epic rarity, due to the missing perks. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that all Legendary gear is better than Epic gear. You can succeed in all activities if you have the right attributes and two good perks on your gear, which you can control with Golden Scarab crafting. As long as the Gear Score is 590 or above, this Epic gear is as good as Legendary gear where the third perk is a waste (Indestructible for example) and better than Legendary gear with only one good perk and two mediocre or wasted one. More on this in our Recycling section.
Legendary items and Epic items that are 590+ Gear Score can be upgraded to 625 Gear Score with Umbral Shards. If an Epic item has static perks and is under 600GS, it will gain the extra perk when it reaches 600GS, and become Legendary. These items are usually “Named” and shiny, but there are exceptions to this rule. It is worth checking new-world.guide to see whether an item will gain an additional perk and what that perk might be, before committing your umbrals.
Additionally, items received in Outpost Rush, War, and Invasion caches will roll a random third perk and become Legendary when upgraded to 600.
590+ Epic gear can be upgraded to 625 GS, and while it will not gain an extra perk, the existing perks will scale up with the Gear Score. All items gain an extra Attribute point at 600, and another Attribute point is gained at 619 for weapons and 623 for armour and jewelry.
Before you can upgrade your gear, you need to level your Expertise from 500-600.
Fun fact: you can tell the armour weight of a pattern or Timeless shard by the number of filled-in weight icons, as you can see in the image above.
The next thing to consider is armour weight. There are three armour weight categories in New World and as long as you stay within their thresholds, you can make up sets with different item weight combinations.
You can play around with armour weight combos using this handy calculator. New World Armor weight calculator.
The following are optimal loads for the best protection within the weight threshold, but you might choose different combinations based on cost and availability:
- Light – 12.7 – Medium chest, Light everything else
- Light Tank – 12.7 – All Light armour plus a Round shield
- Medium – 22.9 – Heavy chest, boots; Medium head, gloves; Light pants (Note, head/gloves/boots are interchangeable)
- Heavy – 31.4 – Heavy everything
- Heavy Tank – 42.4 – Heavy everything plus a Tower shield
Choosing Armor weight
There are pros and cons to the different armour weights. In end-game PVE, tanks will usually wear heavy armour, healers will always wear light, and most DPS will also run light, although some may choose medium. It can be very beneficial to run medium while learning content and then move to light when you’re ready.
| Pros | Cons | |
| Heavy | High Armor Rating Block Stability +20% -20% reduced Stun duration Run disabled for 0.5s after melee hit |
Small dodge -30% healing output No bonus damage |
| Medium | Dodges cost less stamina (40) -10% reduced Stun duration +10% bonus damage |
Small dodge distance Less damage and healing than light Run disabled for 1s after melee hit |
| Light | +20% bonus damage +30% bonus healing Mobility with roll dodge |
Low Armor Rating No reduced Stun duration Run disabled for 1.5s after melee hit |
With a plethora of perks to pick from, it’s hard to know what you want, what’s okay, and what to throw away. Add to that the sheer fickle nature of the Random Number Generator, and it can feel like you’re drowning in gear with no way to tell whether it’s good or not.
Even though PVP is outside the scope of this guide, we’ve included PVP perks above for comparison.
The following perks are ones to look out for on armour. We have listed them in order of importance, although this is situational, so you may need to adapt according to your conditions.
Note: in the June Dev Q&A, it was confirmed that Creature Type Ward perks will be removed from the game “by the end of the year”. They will remain in this guide until the live game changes over to the new system, but just keep this in mind when you’re spending coin or umbrals. You will still need Ward until the new changes go live but we are unsure what will happen to that gear once it changes.
Creature Type Wards
In PVE, Wards give you a significant amount of protection against specific enemy types and are required for high level mutations. Each Ward item gives 4.9% damage mitigation against that creature type and they stack for up to 24.5% protection. It’s really worth making sure you have Wards on multiple pieces in the same set, as one piece won’t do very much.
We often recommend putting together a Corrupted Ward set first, as there are 3.2 Corrupted expeditions (The Depths, Dynasty Shipyard, Tempest’s Heart, and a little bit of The Ennead), plus open world POIs like Myrkgard, Castrum Principium, and the Imperial Palace, and Corruption Portals, and Invasions. Another option is to put together an Ancient Ward set purely for the purpose of farming Umbral Shards, to make upgrading your gear easier and faster. But since The Lazarus Instrumentality is only mutated about once a month, this is a bit of a risky proposition.
Weapon Ability Perks
When crafting armour, it’s good to select a Weapon Ability perk, simply to prevent any perks from other weapons appearing on your item. Many of these perks also make your weapon a lot more effective, and in some cases are pretty much essential. It is important to note that Weapon Ability Perks do not stack, so you only need them on one piece of armour or on a weapon.
Some of the more popular weapon ability perks and their craft mods are:
- Sundering Shockwave – Reinforced Steel War Hammer Charm
- Fortifying Sacred Ground – Starmetal Life Staff Charm
- Insatiable Gravity Well – Reinforced Orichalcum Great Axe Charm
- Keen Berserk – Starmetal Hatchet Charm
- Unending Thaw – Starmetal Ice Gauntlet Charm
- Keen Tondo – Steel Rapier Charm (this works for everyone in the group, as long as someone has Tondo)
There are too many weapon ability perks to go through them here, but you should have a look at all the ones that relate to the weapon abilities you have, and consider whether they would be useful for you. One way to easily see the perks is to go to new-world.guide and type your weapon name + charm in the search bar. You can then hover or click on each result to see what the perk details are.
Cooldown Reduction
Cooldown reduction is very helpful, especially for classes that rely heavily on their weapon abilities, such as Healers and Tanks. Refreshing is usually the best of the three cooldown reduction perks, and can be added to a crafted item using the Brilliant Animus craft mod, which is quite a valuable one to keep an eye out for. Refreshing Evasion may yield faster cooldowns with additional stamina regen abilities, and Refreshing Ward is only useful if you are getting hit by multiple enemies and does not trigger from blocked attacks.
Aversion
Ranged attacks are particularly annoying in New World, so extra protection from them is welcome, if not essential. Many ranged attacks actually do elemental damage, so Elemental Aversion is usually preferred over Physical Aversion. These perks stack, so are more effective when you have them on multiple pieces of armour.
Shirking Fortification
Shirking Fortification is a damage absorption perk, like the Wards and Aversions, but it relies on a condition being met, like all the other Shirking perks. If you dodge an attack, you gain Fortify, which increases your armour. This perk stacks, and used to be very powerful in PVP, until the Fortify algorithm changed. If you find that you are often dodging out of the line of fire in PVE, then this perk could still be useful for you.
Debuff mitigation
There are three perks that reduce the duration of debuffs, allowing you to recover more quickly and return to the fight. These have situational usefulness and are never a wasted perk, just not always as desired as others, especially if you are restricted to two. These perks stack, so are more effective when you have them on multiple pieces of armour.
- Freedom – Reduce the duration of Slow, Stun, and Root by 3%.
- Vigor – Reduce the duration of Burn, Bleed, and Poison by 3%.
- Invigorated – Reduce the duration of Weaken, Disease, Exhaust, and Rend by 3%.
Conditioning
Elemental conditioning perks are designed for mutations and gear with this perk, as well as the craft mod, drops from the respective mutation types. The perk gives you 4% damage absorption of the specific elemental type of damage for 5 seconds after you take damage of that type. Sounds a bit confusing, but since all damage is converted to the mutation elemental type, it can give you very good protection. The perk stacks, so you can get up to 20% damage absorption. The four elemental conditioning types are Flame, Frost, Arboreal, and Abyssal.
Crafting and Refining armour
There are sets for each of the Refining trades that increase your chance of additional items, and sets for Crafting trades that raise your minimum gear score when crafting. They can be dropped by particular mobs or made from patterns found in aptitude crates. These are specialist pieces and don’t have other perks, so make sure you don’t find yourself wearing them to the big fights!
As well as being capable of having some of the universal perks, like Refreshing or Luck, each jewelry slot has perks that can only be found on that item slot. Some of these are quite powerful, so it’s worth knowing what they are and aiming to get the ones that suit your build. We will look at Amulets, Rings, and Earrings individually.
The higher the perk is on the lists below, the more important we think it is to have it. Perks appearing lower may be good for particular builds, and Refreshing is always good, as long as it’s not replacing an essential perk.
Health
Arguably the most important perk for your amulet is Health, as it gives you almost 10% extra hitpoints which means you stay alive longer.
Flame, Frozen, Nature, and Void Protection
On top of the elemental protection you can get from gems and conditioning perks, the Protection perks you get on an Amulet are a larger bonus and stack with the others, up to a cap of 50%. It is definitely worth getting one of these for each of the mutation types, and we would recommend Health + the relevant Protection over a Legendary amulet without it.
There are also Arcane and Lightning protection, plus each of the physical damage types – Slash, Thrust, and Strike. These can be very helpful in specific situations, such as against a boss mob that does that type of damage.
Divine
Divine gives you extra incoming healing from all sources including potions, and other self-heals. This will make you popular with your friendly neighbourhood single-target healer, as it enables them to get big heal numbers.
Buff Duration
There are three perks that increase the duration of buffs you apply by up to 29%, and may be useful situationally, depending on how much your weapon build uses those particular buffs.
- Empowered
- Alacrity
- Fortified
Recovery
These proc when you are hit while below 50% health, and do not trigger off persistent damage, DoTs, or blocked attacks.
- Fortified Recovery – gain 10% Fortify for 5s
- Purify – lose all debuffs
- Stamina Recovery – gain 96 Stamina
- Mana Recovery – gain 96 Mana
Shirking Cleanse
Shirking triggers when you dodge an attack for a max of 1 per 5 seconds.
- DoT Cleanse – Light equip load, lose one DoT debuff (Bleed, Burn, Poison)
- Debilitate Cleanse – Medium equip load, lose one Debilitate debuff (Rend, Weaken, Exhuast, Disease)
Adored Gathering Luck
Adds up to 9.7% chance at finding rare items while:
- Logging
- Harvesting
- Mining
- Skinning
There are quite a lot of good perks to choose from for Rings, and it is difficult to place them in order of importance.
Damage Bonus
For DPS, a ring that increases your damage type is pretty much essential, and it’s also useful for tanks to help keep aggro. You can either get one for your weapon type damage, or you can add an elemental gem to your weapon and pair it with a matching elemental damage ring.
| Thrust Slash Strike | Nature Fire Ice | Void Arcane Lightning |
Hearty
Hearty is one of my personal favourites and I miss it when I’m wearing a ring without it. It adds up to 9.6% to your max Stamina, a bit like what Health does for your health. What this means is that you can dodge or block more without becoming exhausted. This is probably intended for Tanks, but is useful for everyone.
Sacred
Sacred is essential for a healer, as it increases your outgoing healing. But it is pretty much useless for everyone else and does not increase healing from potions.
Keen Awareness
Keen Awareness increases your critical chance by 11% and stacks with other crit chance perks and passive abilities. Since crits do quite a bit more damage than regular attacks and can be enhanced further through perks such as Keenly Empowered or Vicious, this is a strong perk to have on your ring.
Leeching
A bit more healing never hurt anyone, and leeching turns every attack into a 5% life leech. It doesn’t increase your damage and may be taking the place of a perk that does, but a dead DPS does no damage, so staying alive should be high on your priority list.
Debuff Duration
These increase the duration of debuffs you apply by 28%. If the debuff is a key component of your weapon build, Burning for a Fire Mage for example, these increase your overall damage by quite a bit.
- Burning
- Blood Letting
- Poisoning
- Enfeebling – Weaken
- Infected – Disease
- Crippling – Slow
Brilliant and Siphoning
Brilliant gives you 19% increased max Mana and Siphoning gives you up to +2.8% mana per hit, both of which seem like they would be helpful for a Mage. With the overabundance of Infused Mana potions and various ways to reduce mana costs through passive abilities, this is less essential than you might imagine. If you don’t use mana, they are wasted perks, and even if you do, they are not particularly useful unless you find your playstyle leads to you running out often.
Most earrings will come with a Toast perk, and it’s the only slot that can have them so it’s good to know what they do and whether you should include one. Refreshing is a high priority perk on your earring slot, then have a look at the selection below and see what suits your build.
Refreshing Toast
Waiting for a potion cooldown can be the difference between life and death, and this perk makes them go almost 30% faster.
Healthy Toast
Healthy Toast is an interesting perk, as it gives you a 9.4% heal when you drink a Mana potion. As Health, Regen, and Mana potions all have their own cooldowns, this gives you a small extra heal. Could be worth having if you have room for Mana pots in your hotbar.
Purifying Toast
Purifying Toast will remove a debuff when you drink a regen potion. It is useful in specific situations, such as the Acid Chest run to remove acid burn.
Regeneration
There’s a perk that increases regeneration for each of health, stamina, and mana. It’s hard to tell how much of an effect they have, which probably means they don’t do much.
- Nimble – increase stamina regen
- Regenerating – increase health regen
- Focused – increase mana regen
Threat
Threat management is important in a group, so these are perks to avoid or include based on your role. Tanks can use increased threat, while healers or high-output DPS can reduce their threat.
- Despised – increase threat – Tank only
- Beloved – reduce threat – Healer/DPS
- Evasive – reduce threat after dodging – conditional so get Beloved instead
Duplicating Toast
Duplicating Toast gives you a 14% chance that when you drink a potion, it doesn’t use one, this saving you money. On a more useful note, it also doesn’t trigger the cooldown. Like all RNG, this only works when you don’t desperately need it.
Mana Toast
This is the opposite to Healthy Toast – when you drink a health potion, you will gain 31 mana. Doesn’t seem too useful, but might free up needing to slot Mana pots at all for mages who are close to managing.
Crafting Mastery
The five crafting mastery perks that give +5 to minimum Crafted Item quality are essential while crafting and useless when not. You’ll usually keep these with the respective crafting sets. The Cooking Mastery earring adds to the chance of bonus items, so it is definitely worth wearing, along with the rest of the Chef set, while cooking with rare ingredients.
*for Tank, DPS Sword/Shield will look for damage adds and weapon ability perks, such as Empowering Leaping Strike
The suggested perks above take into account both the native crit chance and heavy/light attack usage of the weapons. Suggestions in this section were provided in consultation with our resident weapons experts CVTurner and A. Bacon, and take into account both the preferred weapon abilities and the benefit of its associated perk. If you would like to discuss weapon perk choices in more detail, you can catch CVTurner on his Twitch stream and talk to him directly, he’s always happy to help. You can also message him or A. Bacon in game on the Delos server.
It’s important to note that these are simply options to choose from and you will be limited by what you can get your hands on. If a weapon has one of the listed perks in addition to Bane, then it’s pretty good. You will need different weapons for different situations and you may wish to customise yours based on your needs..
Weapon perks roughly fall into the broad categories of adding damage, increasing survivability, or providing utility. There are some repeated affixes whose meaning is good to know.
- Keenly – relating to critical hits – usually good on Dex weapons
- Trenchant – relating to fully charged heavy attacks – usually good on heavy weapons
- Mortal – relating to getting kill credit
- Thwarting – relating to grit
In general, it’s best to pair a high-damage-output weapon on your main hand with a utility weapon on your off-hand. War Hammer, Great Axe, Ice Gauntlet, and Spear are good off-hand weapons due to their crowd-control (CC) abilities. These are made more effective with Weapon Ability Perks.
Weapon Ability Perks
These are the same perks that appear on armour, except they are stronger on weapons. It is worth getting to know the Weapon Ability perks for the weapons you use and considering having the best one on your weapon. This is very situational and based on your build and group makeup. A perk for a Weapon Ability that you don’t use is, of course, wasted.
If you want to research weapons in more detail, Icy Veins has guides outlining the different weapons along with builds and recommended perks. There are also many youtube videos discussing the best weapons at any given time, but as this is something that changes and is fairly subjective, it is outside the scope of our guide.
The role of a DPS is to do as much damage as possible, so damage add perks are good to have. Doing more damage is also good for tanks, as it helps them hold aggro. If you’ve been hearing people mention much higher damage numbers than you are getting, this is another way to boost them (getting your attributes right is the first).
Note: in the June Dev Q&A, it was confirmed that Creature Type Bane perks will be removed from the game “by the end of the year”. They will remain in this guide until the live game changes over to the new system, but just keep this in mind when you’re spending coin or umbrals. You will still need Bane until the new changes go live but we are unsure what will happen to that gear once it changes.
Creature-type Bane
In PVE, we’ll often be fighting just one enemy type at a time, so Bane is almost essential, especially if you are using a ranged weapon. Bane is a flat damage increase against the creature type.
| +14% | +24% |
| Sword Hatchet Rapier Spear War Hammer Great Axe Great Sword |
Fire Staff Ice Gauntlet Void Gauntlet Bow Musket Blunderbuss Life Staff |
You can also increase your damage against specific creature types by placing combat trophies in your houses. Check out our Trophy Hunt guide to find out more about trophies and how to get them.
Vicious
Adds 11% to your critical hit damage. This works well with a dex build and weapon with a high base crit chance, like a Bow or Rapier. Less good with a low crit chance weapon like a War Hammer, which also has a lower crit multiplier. You can pair this with the Keen perk and Keen Awareness on a ring to boost effectiveness.
Enchanted
A generally decent damage add, this is good on a weapon that has time between special attacks. It gives you 9.8% damage to your light and heavy attacks. If your build allows you to do almost constant special attacks, then this is less useful.
Rogue
Apart from having the most hilarious icon, Rogue gives you a whopping 19% extra damage to Backstabs, which are just hits from behind. This is perfect if you are standing behind the mobs anyway, as the melee DPS are supposed to.
Attunement
This perk gives you an additional 14% weapon damage as the respective elemental type, not to be confused with elemental gems that convert a portion of your damage to that type.
You can pair this with a matching gem and damage bonus ring to maximise your output.
Trenchant Strikes and Crit
Trenchant bonuses only work on fully charged heavy attacks, so if it’s on a weapon that you rarely, if ever, heavy attack with, it’s not worth having. This is best on the bigger weapons like Great Hammers and Great Swords.
- Trenchant Strikes – 19% additional damage
- Trenchant Crits – 29% additional crit damage. This is very nice when it procs, but bear in mind the low base crit chance on a Hammer. On a Great Sword this can increase your damage significantly with the right perk combos.
Keenly Empowered and Jagged
Like Vicious, these are more effective if you have a high critical chance, as they trigger on critical hit.
- Keenly Empowered – Empower increases your damage, in this case by 15% for 5 seconds. The cooldown is 10 seconds so the most this can be active is half the time.
- Keenly Jagged – Bleed deals 10% weapon damage per second for 6 seconds. The cooldown is 7 seconds, so it can theoretically be almost constantly active.
Thwarting Strikes and Counter
Grit is when you have immunity from being staggered by incoming attacks and is indicated by you (or an enemy) glowing white. You get it on the 300 Con milestone, as well as from weapon skill passives such as Hardened Steel on the War Hammer or Enduring Strike on the Great Axe.
- Thwarting Strikes – +11% damage while you have grit
- Thwarting Counter – +20% damage against enemies who have grit.
When an enemy has grit, you can’t stagger them either, so most of your knockdown moves won’t work (Shockwave will still stun through grit). While it can be nice to have the extra damage, it’s even nicer if you can prevent the enemy from going into a grit state in the first place. So Thwarting Counter isn’t that useful.
Conditional Elemental
The elemental damage types are:
- Fire – strong against Angry Earth
- Ice – okay against Lost
- Void – okay against Ancients
- Arcane – strong against Corrupted
- Nature – strong against Lost
- Lightning – strong against Ancients
If you have either of these types of elemental perk on a weapon, you can’t put a different elemental gem in it.
Chain Elemental
The situation that this perk is conditional on is that there are close targets for it to bounce between. It deals 15% elemental type damage on those targets, which is additional to your other weapon damage.
Shirking Elemental
If you’re constantly dodging out of danger, this perk could give a big payoff, with 39% bonus damage as the elemental type. The issue is, DPS shouldn’t be getting aggro, so they’re not often dodging hits, and tanks usually block rather than dodge. Might be nice for a light tank, or solo play.
Mortal Power
Mortal perks rely on getting kill credit, so may not be easy to trigger in a group. However, if you have a ranged weapon, like a bow, where you can choose a weak target and finish it, you can pretty much add 15% Empowered to your damage most of the time, due to the long 20 second duration. Be warned, this isn’t going to be much help in any long fights that don’t spawn adds.
While it’s nice to maximise our damage, a dead adventurer can’t do anything so it’s worth looking at survivability perks if you need them.
Trenchant Recovery
Being Trenchant, this only works if you’re doing heavy attacks. The great thing is that heavy attacks with a big weapon usually result in high damage numbers, so the 20% you get back as health can be significant.
Lifestealing and Mortal Lifesteal
You’d think that Lifestealing’s healing for 5% of all damage would be very good but it feels fairly mediocre, possibly because when you need it, you’ll be taking quite a bit more damage than you are healing for. Stacked with the 5% from Leeching on a Ring, it’s better, but not as effective as a Weapon Ability perk like Leeching Flurry.
Mortal Lifesteal has the same kill credit issue as any other Mortal perk, and gives you 6.8% Health, which could be handy in a solo situation. There is a 1 second cooldown so you can’t stack the bonuses when killing multiple at once.
Keenly Fortified and Mortal Fortification
Fortify gives you extra damage mitigation, although it is not as good as it used to be, as of the Season 1 patch. While reducing the effectiveness, the cap was also increased, so there is an argument to say that we now need as many sources of Fortify as possible. That said, no-one really wants a watered down perk on their weapon.
- Keenly Fortified – 10% Fortify for 3 seconds on crit, with a 10 second cooldown
- Mortal Fortification – 15% Fortify for 10 seconds on kills, with a 1 second cooldown
A lot of weapon utility comes from the special moves and passive abilities in your skill tree, but there are a few perks that fall into that category too. Look for keywords like Enfeebling or Rending in the weapon ability perks for your weapon types and determine whether they could help you or the group.
For example, the Enfeebling Skewer perk on a spear reduces the target’s damage by 44% when they are hit with Skewer, so almost halves the damage taken and keeps the group alive. The Rending Throw ability on a hatchet will reduce the target’s armour by 10%, meaning everyone is hitting it harder.
Refreshing Move
For some weapons, this can be an essential perk, especially if your character build relies heavily on your special attacks, like a healer or tank. It allows you to reduce your cooldowns through performing Light and Heavy attacks.
Keen
Keen increases your critical chance by 11% and enhances perks like Vicious or Keenly Empowered
Trenchant Rend
Fully charged heavy attacks inflict Rend for 7s, reducing the target’s armor by 14%. 12 second cooldown.
Plagued Crits and Strikes
Plagued attacks inflict Disease, which reduces healing effectiveness on the target by 24%. In PVE, this is only useful in certain situations, for example Nature mutations where the mobs heal, or when fighting Varangians who have Clerics.
- Plagued Crits – crits against targets below 50% health give Disease for 6 seconds
- Plagued Strikes – Heavy attacks inflict Disease for 8 seconds
Class Specific
A couple of weapons have essential perks that make any version of that weapon without them almost useless. These are:
- Blessed – Life Staff
- Sturdy – Shield (for Tank)
Physical ranged weapons also have some unique perks:
- Accuracy – may be essential on Muskets – +48% Accuracy
- Vorpal – useful on Bows and Muskets – +15% headshot damage
Note: when you get to mutations, you should use specific gems. These are outlined in the Mutation Rotation news articles each week.
Cut Gems can be placed in the gem sockets of weapons and armour and will have a different, but often related, effects in each. We will go through the different gem effects and then find out about upgrading them with Runeglass. Cut Gems can be purchased from the Trading Post or refined from gemstones at the Stonecutting Station.
There are Tiers II to V for gems and an argument to use Tier II gems for Int weapons, but we are simply going to look at Tiew V gems in this guide.
The Gem effect type is added as a Prefix to the item name, for example a Vengeful Hatchet of the Ranger would have a Jasper slotted in it.
Elemental type gems
Amber
Armour - Arboreal
- 6% Nature damage absorption
Weapon - Arboreal
- 50% Damage is converted to Nature
- Scales off FOC or weapon stat, whichever is higher
Ruby
Armour - Fireproof
- 6% Fire damage absorption
Weapon - Ignited
- 50% Damage is converted to Fire
- Scales off INT or weapon stat, whichever is higher
Amethyst
Armour - Abyssal
- 6% Void damage absorption
Weapon - Abyssal
- 50% Damage is converted to Void
- Scales off INT or weapon stat, whichever is higher
Sapphire
Armour - Empowered
- 6% Arcane damage absorption
Weapon - Empowered
- 50% Damage is converted to Arcane
- Scales off INT or weapon stat, whichever is higher
Aquamarine
Armour - Iceproof
- 6% Ice damage absorption
Weapon - Frozen
- 50% Damage is converted to Ice
- Scales off INT or weapon stat, whichever is higher
Topaz
Armour - Insulated
- 6% Lightning damage absorption
Weapon - Electrified
- 50% Damage is converted to Lightning
- Scales off INT or weapon stat, whichever is higher
Damage modifier gems
Moonstone
Armour - Burnished
- 5% Slash damage absorption
Weapon - Exhilarating
- +24% while your health is below 30%
Emerald
Armour - Tempered
- 5% Thrust damage absorption
Weapon - Opportunistic
- +20% damage against opponents with less than 30% health
Jasper
Armour - Padded
- 5% Strike damage absorption
Weapon - Vengeful
- +15% damage for 2 seconds after taking a hit
Onyx
Armour - Reinforced
- 2.5% Physical damage absorption
Weapon - Brash
- +30% damage against opponents with full health
Opal
Armour - Imbued
- 2.5% Elemental damage absorption
Weapon - Scheming
- +15% damage while your stamina bar is not full
Diamond
Armour - Primeval
- 0.63% Elemental and 1.9% Physical damage absorption
Weapon - Rallying
- +15% damage and healing while at full health
Malachite
Armour - Spectral
- 1.9% Elemental and 0.63% Physical damage absorption
Weapon - Cruel
- +12% damage against targets affected by crowd control effects (Slow, Stun, Root)
Oddballs
Carnelian
Armour - Calming
- 10% less Threat
Weapon - Taunting
- +300% more Threat
- Taunts are active
Pearl
Just lucky
- 0.5% chance at rare items from chests and monsters
Runeglass cases allow you to add an extra perk to your gems, at the cost of reducing the base stats of the gem that is converted. Even though we don’t recommend players who are new to 60 worry about runeglass, there is a place for it in end-game gear.
Runeglass gems are made at the Stonecutting station and require a Runeglass Case of the bonus you want to add plus the Pristine Cut Gem you are upgrading. The difference in base gem stats when you apply a gem to runeglass is as follows:
| Regular | Runeglass | |
| Elemental | 6% damage absorption 50% damage converted | 5% damage absorption 40% damage converted |
| Moonstone | 5% damage absorption 24% damage bonus | 4% damage absorption 20% damage converted |
| Emerald | 5% damage absorption 20% damage bonus | 4% damage absorption 20% damage bonus |
| Jasper | 5% damage absorption 15% damage bonus | 4% damage absorption 15% damage bonus |
| Onyx | 2.5% damage absorption 30% damage bonus | 2% damage absorption 25% damage bonus |
| Opal | 2.5% damage absorption 15% damage bonus | 2% damage absorption 12% damage bonus |
| Diamond | 0.63/1.9% damage absorption 15% damage bonus | 0.5/1.5% damage absorption 12% damage bonus |
| Malachite | 0.63/1.9% damage absorption 12% damage bonus | 0.5/1.5% damage absorption 10% damage bonus |
| Carnelian | 10% less threat 300% more threat | 8% less threat 250% more threat |
It’s up to you to decide whether the loss is worth the gain that you get from the runeglass perks. Important to note: Emerald and Jasper do not reduce their weapon effects.
| Armour | Weapon | |
| Abyss | +2 % damage to your Void attacks | Corrosion – 8% void damage per second for 2 seconds |
| Electrifying | +2 % damage to your Lightning attacks | Surge – 8% lightning damage per second for 2 seconds |
| Empowering | +2 % damage to your Arcane attacks | Hex – 8% arcane damage per second for 2 seconds |
| Energizing | +2 stamina with each successful hit (2s cd) | +8 stamina with each successful hit (2s cd) |
| Freezing | +2 % damage to your Ice attacks | Frostburn – 8% ice damage per second for 2 seconds |
| Igniting | +2 % damage to your Fire attacks | Burn – 8% fire damage per second for 2 seconds |
| Leeching | Gain +1% of your damage as health (2s cd) | Gain +3% of your damage as health (2s cd) |
| Nature | +2 % damage to your Nature attacks | Poison – 8% nature damage per second for 2 seconds |
| Punishing | +1 % damage to your melee attacks | +2 % damage to your melee attacks |
| Sight | +1 % damage to your ranged attacks | +2 % damage to your ranged attacks |
| Siphoning | +0.8 mana with each successful hit (2s cd) | +1.5 mana with each successful hit (2s cd) |
If you want to get into Runeglass, you can buy them from the Trading Post or make them with Weaponsmithing using glyph stones gathered in Brimstone Sands, charged sand gathered from sandstone, sulfur, and globs of ectoplasm.
You probably know by now that you are going to end up with a lot of rubbish at the end of every adventure. Salvage everything that is grey, green, or blue, and then evaluate whether the purple and legendary gear is better than what you currently have. If it’s not, scrap it.
You should have a good idea about what some good perks are to look for on gear now, but what about bad ones? We go by the two good perk rule – an item needs two good perks to be decent. We’ve talked about PVE in this guide, but there are also PVP-only perks in the game, which are worth a lot of gold in the right combinations but wasted when combined with PVE-only perks, such as Ward.
Some Bad Perk Combos
- Resilient + [creature type] Ward
- Blessed + Strength
- Focus + Refreshing Ward (as a healer, you don’t want to be hit 4 times to get a cooldown reduction)
- Wrong attribute for weapon type, e.g. Focus on a Bow
- Any weapon ability perk that doesn’t match the weapon damage scaling attribute, e.g. Sundering Shockwave + Intelligence
- Indestructible + anything
- Ruinous + anything
- Sturdy on anything other than a shield
- I’m also not a fan of Sturdy Energy, I mean, who blocks?
While there is a very small chance that you will win the RNG lottery on regular drops, it can be frustrating when you continually end up with salvage. Some ways to control your bonuses better are to farm named items, get someone to craft it, or make it yourself with Event patterns.
There are thousands of items in New World with fixed perks, meaning they have the same perks every time they drop and will upgrade to Legendary with an extra perk if they drop Epic. They are usually Named and shiny. But how will you know where to find them?
Well, luckily, some very industrious players have put together a database of these items so you can search for the perks you want and find out which named items have them. You can also see how other players have used these items in Builds they have shared. Go to new-world.guide and click on Items on the left side, then choose the type of item you want to find.
Say I was looking for a Spear to use on the Corrupted. I would l click on Weapons and then choose 2-Handed, and then Spear. This would show me a list of spears and some filters to choose from. The first thing I’m going to do is click on the big green PERKS button and then start typing in “Corrupted Bane”. Once it comes up I can click on it to select the perk and only spears with Corrupted Bane will be shown.
The great thing about this search is that now, if I go back to Perks, it will only show me the perks that are available on the Corrupted Bane spears. So I can browse and choose one that I think will work.
I’ve now narrowed it down to a list of spears that have two perks that I like. I could have also used the Bonus filter to make sure they had the right attribute, but with such a small list I find it easier to evaluate them manually, due to my acceptance of split attribute items. Once you choose an item, you can click on it to find out where it drops. Sometimes, the item might be a rare drop so you have to go back and find a different one.
Unfortunately, new-world.guide is still in the process of updating where to get every item, so I’ve run into a situation that might happen to you, which is that there is no “where to get” link on this item. So, what we can do is go back to nwdb.info and search for Biggus.
We can see that it drops from mobs in Castrum Principium, so we can farm it there.
Note: I choose New World Guide because I prefer the layout of the search area plus some of the community features like Builds. New World Database is the original database site and might be your preferred source of info. It’s definitely better for maps. They both datamine from the same files, just with different presentation and community collaboration styles.
With the introduction of Golden Scarabs, a master craftsman can now create items with 2 guaranteed perks and a chosen single attribute. There is a chance that this will roll Legendary and pick up a third perk, which may or may not be useful. Two good perks is enough for our purposes, however, so we recommend not gambling and just rolling one piece for each slot.
You will need per item:
- Asmodeum (amounts vary based on the item – use our handy calculator to work out how much you need)
- Runic Leather (amounts vary based on the item – use our handy calculator to work out how much you need)
- Phoenixweave (amounts vary based on the item – use our handy calculator to work out how much you need)
- the two craft mods for the perks you want
- 1 Golden Scarab
- 3 Timeless shards for the gear type
- 25 craft mods for the attribute type.
You will also need a crafter who has
- 200 skill
- 3 Major trophies active
- a full set of crafting armour and earring equipped
- a crafting food buff on, and
- a house in a town that has an Inspiration buff for the crafting type active.
For more information about crafting gear, have a look at our article on Crafted Armour, what’s it all about?
There are some good items you can get as quest rewards, so make sure you keep up looking for those quest markers on your map and clearing them.
Your main questline will take you into Tempest’s Heart and there is a repeatable quest given from the Church outside that gives reward caches full of decent gear the first few times you do it. You will be used to items that have the suffix “of the X” to be random perks, but in this exception, these items ARE upgradable, so don’t salvage them.
Important: these are only upgradable if they roll at 590 or higher, so please wait until your expertise is 600 before you get them.
The Brimstone quests also drop some really good weapons, but again this should wait until you are 600 GS if possible, as the zone can be tough and the solo encouter is difficult for some classes.
Sometimes the seasonal event stores sell patterns that can be crafted with no skill and roll Legendary with standard perks and a choice of single attributes. For example, the 2022 Winter Convergence event store sold patterns like the Floral Regent Crown which has Corrupted Ward, Elemental Aversion and Luck. This is a great starter set if you can get hold of the patterns.
The Spring 2023 Event shop sold 600GS patterns that roll with Physical Aversion and Refreshing, but have a limited perk bucket for the random third perk and can’t roll Ward. So do your research before you invest.
