New World Mechanics: Critical Chance And Damage
This is a guide from a series of guides about core New World mechanics. In this guide, you will find out the importance of Critical Chance and Critical Damage modifiers in New World and how they can help you get the most out of your damage.
Critical Chance
Critical chance in New World has a hidden system we refer to as “Bad Luck Protection” that works as follows:
“Crit chance increases with each non-crit.
If you have a 5% critical chance, your first hit is a 5% critical chance, but for every non-crit, that crit chance is increased by that quantity.
So the crit chance will be 5% > 10% > 15% > 20% > etc.
Until a crit is achieved, then it will reset back to 5%.”
New World developers response
This results in crit chance being significantly higher in all circumstances than what you would expect based on your gear and perks.
Mathematically, an average crit chance formula is as follows:
Kuratius wrote a simulator to perform 100,000 hits using this system and average the results together to see our actual effective crit chance. Here are the results:
“base Crit chance” here is the amount of crit you see on your gear + perks.
“average Crit chance” is the average crit chance you actually end up with.
There is an example: Crit chance of 0.2, or 20%, actually ends up averaging to about 40% effective crit chance.
The orange and green lines are the upper and lower limits of how far you’d expect this outcome to vary based on 100 hits (in other words, even if you got very lucky or unlucky in a particular scenario, you’ll still end up in between these lines the vast majority of the time).
The red X is data that we tested in the game, which matches the rest of the chart nicely, proving that the system does exist and does seem to work the way the NW devs have explained it.
As mentioned earlier, everybody’s crit chance is much higher than it looks.
You can see more precise results in the chart below, including the amount of crit you’d gain from adding, for example, a Keen ring to your build.
Sources of Crit Chance include Weapon (2-4%), Keen Awareness Ring (11%), Keen Weapon (11%), 50 Dexterity (5%), and a variety of skill perks that usually range from 10-15%.
If you just have crit from your weapon only, say 3%, getting 11% Keen on either your ring or your weapon will yield an increase of about 18% more effective crit chance.
After you get past that initial 14-16% range, gaining an additional 11% Keen is actually pretty accurate, or in other words, pretty close to a true 11% effective crit chance increase.
| Total Crit Chance From Gear And Skill Perks | Effective Crit Chance Once Bad Luck Protection Is Included | Effective Increase From 5% More Crit (i.e. 50 Dex) | Effective Increase From 11% More Crit (i.e. Keen Awareness) |
| 0% | 0.0% | 18.9% | 28.7% |
| 1% | 8.2% | 12.6% | 22.0% |
| 2% | 11.7% | 10.8% | 19.9% |
| 3% | 14.4% | 9.8% | 18.2% |
| 4% | 16.8% | 9.1% | 17.1% |
| 5% | 18.9% | 8.4% | 16.3% |
| 6% | 20.8% | 7.9% | 15.6% |
| 7% | 22.4% | 7.8% | 15.1% |
| 8% | 24.2% | 7.3% | 14.5% |
| 9% | 25.9% | 6.8% | 13.9% |
| 10% | 27.3% | 6.6% | 13.6% |
| 11% | 28.7% | 6.5% | 13.3% |
| 12% | 30.2% | 6.2% | 12.9% |
| 13% | 31.5% | 6.0% | 12.4% |
| 14% | 32.7% | 6.0% | 12.3% |
| 15% | 33.9% | 5.8% | 12.0% |
| 16% | 35.2% | 5.7% | 11.8% |
| 17% | 36.4% | 5.6% | 11.5% |
| 18% | 37.5% | 5.6% | 11.3% |
| 19% | 38.7% | 5.2% | 11.0% |
| 20% | 39.7% | 5.3% | 11.0% |
| 21% | 40.9% | 5.0% | 10.9% |
| 22% | 42.0% | 4.9% | 10.7% |
| 23% | 43.1% | 4.7% | 10.2% |
| 24% | 43.9% | 5.0% | 10.3% |
| 25% | 45.0% | 4.7% | 9.8% |
| 26% | 45.9% | 4.8% | 9.8% |
| 27% | 46.9% | 4.8% | 9.6% |
| 28% | 47.9% | 4.8% | 9.4% |
| 29% | 48.9% | 4.5% | 9.2% |
| 30% | 49.7% | 4.6% | 9.4% |
| 31% | 50.7% | 4.1% | 9.2% |
| 32% | 51.8% | 4.0% | 8.9% |
| 33% | 52.7% | 3.9% | 8.7% |
| 34% | 53.4% | 3.9% | 9.0% |
| 35% | 54.2% | 3.9% | 8.9% |
| 36% | 54.9% | 4.2% | 9.1% |
| 37% | 55.7% | 4.2% | 9.2% |
| 38% | 56.5% | 4.2% | 9.3% |
| 39% | 57.3% | 4.0% | 9.3% |
| 40% | 58.1% | 4.3% | 9.2% |
| 41% | 59.1% | 4.0% | 8.5% |
| 42% | 59.9% | 4.1% | 8.1% |
| 43% | 60.7% | 4.3% | 7.8% |
| 44% | 61.3% | 4.5% | 7.7% |
| 45% | 62.4% | 4.2% | 7.1% |
| 46% | 63.1% | 4.2% | 6.9% |
| 47% | 64.0% | 3.6% | 6.3% |
| 48% | 65.0% | 3.1% | 6.1% |
| 49% | 65.8% | 2.6% | 5.7% |
| 50% | 66.6% | 2.4% | 5.4% |
| 51% | 67.3% | 2.2% | 5.1% |
| 52% | 67.5% | 2.4% | 5.4% |
| 53% | 68.0% | 2.2% | 5.5% |
| 54% | 68.5% | 2.6% | 5.6% |
| 55% | 69.0% | 2.5% | 5.6% |
| 56% | 69.5% | 2.6% | 5.8% |
| 57% | 70.0% | 2.4% | 5.7% |
| 58% | 70.3% | 2.6% | 6.2% |
| 59% | 71.0% | 2.6% | 6.1% |
| 60% | 71.5% | 2.6% | 6.0% |
| 61% | 72.0% | 2.6% | 6.1% |
| 62% | 72.4% | 2.9% | 6.3% |
| 63% | 72.9% | 2.8% | 6.4% |
| 64% | 73.6% | 2.9% | 6.3% |
| 65% | 74.1% | 3.0% | 6.4% |
| 66% | 74.6% | 2.9% | 6.8% |
| 67% | 75.3% | 2.8% | 6.8% |
| 68% | 75.7% | 3.0% | 7.1% |
| 69% | 76.4% | 2.9% | 6.9% |
| 70% | 77.1% | 2.8% | 6.9% |
| 71% | 77.5% | 3.1% | 7.4% |
| 72% | 78.1% | 3.3% | 7.6% |
| 73% | 78.7% | 3.4% | 7.6% |
| 74% | 79.4% | 3.4% | 7.5% |
| 75% | 79.9% | 3.4% | 7.8% |
| 76% | 80.5% | 3.4% | 8.1% |
| 77% | 81.4% | 3.5% | 7.9% |
| 78% | 82.1% | 3.6% | 8.1% |
| 79% | 82.8% | 3.5% | 8.2% |
| 80% | 83.3% | 3.6% | 8.4% |
| 81% | 83.9% | 3.8% | 8.6% |
| 82% | 84.8% | 3.7% | 8.5% |
| 83% | 85.7% | 3.6% | 8.5% |
| 84% | 86.3% | 3.9% | 9.0% |
| 85% | 86.9% | 4.1% | 9.3% |
| 86% | 87.7% | 4.0% | 9.3% |
| 87% | 88.6% | 4.0% | 9.4% |
| 88% | 89.3% | 4.1% | 9.7% |
| 89% | 90.2% | 4.0% | 9.8% |
| 90% | 91.0% | 4.3% | N/A |
| 91% | 91.7% | 4.6% | N/A |
| 92% | 92.5% | 4.5% | N/A |
| 93% | 93.4% | 4.7% | N/A |
| 94% | 94.2% | 4.7% | N/A |
| 95% | 95.3% | 4.7% | N/A |
| 96% | 96.3% | N/A | N/A |
| 97% | 97.0% | N/A | N/A |
| 98% | 98.0% | N/A | N/A |
| 99% | 98.9% | N/A | N/A |
| 100% | 100.0% | N/A | N/A |
Weapons Critical Chance Modifiers
| Weapon | Critical Chance | Critical Damage Modifier |
| Sword/Shield | 3% | x 1.3 |
| Rapier | 5% | x 1.4 |
| Hatchet | 4% | x 1.4 |
| Spear | 5% | x 1.3 |
| Great Axe | 3% | x 1.3 |
| War Hammer | 2% | x 1.2 |
| Bow | 5% | x 1.3 |
| Musket | 2% | x 1.3 |
| Fire Staff | 4% | x 1.2 |
| Life Staff | 2% | x 1.2 |
| Ice Gauntlet | 3% | x 1.3 |
| Void Gauntlet | 2% | x 1.3 |
| Blunderbuss | 2% | x 1.15 |
Additional Notes
Ground effects that deal continuous damage, such as Ice Storm and Oblivion, can’t be crit.
Gravity Well explosion and Path of Destiny crits don’t deal extra damage but will still trigger critical effects such as Plagued Crits or Keenly buffs.
The 5% crit from 50 dex is never worth it on a non-dex build. This has more to do with crit damage than with crit chance. Still, don’t get trapped into running 50 dex unless you are using a weapon that actually has some form of dex scaling.
Critical Damage
The damage formula in New World is as follows (source – New World Calculator):
Weapon Damage * (1 + Base Damage) * Skill Mod * (1 + (Base Crit Damage – Crit Reduction) + DMG + Headshot/Backstab Mod + Crit Mod) * (1 + Ammo Mod) * (1 + ABS) * (1 – (Armor Mitigation * (1 – Armor Pen))) * (1 + WKN)
Where:
Base Damage = “Bonus Damage” – Defiant Stance – Aversion
DMG = Empower – Weaken
ABS = Rend – Fortify
Let’s say that the average DPS build has something like a 25% crit chance from gear and skills. According to this chart, that would yield an effective crit rate of 45%.
In addition, all melee back attacks are guaranteed to be critical, and all bow/musket headshots are guaranteed to be critical.
That means it is very likely that more than half of the damage you take in PvP is going to be critical damage.
Knowing this, you should:
- Strive to get Resilient on every piece of armor for PvP;
- Run a minimum of 150 CON in PvP for the Crit Damage Reduction perk unless you are highly confident in your ability to survive;
- Take these increased numbers into account when making decisions about the value of crit-based perks like Vicious, Keenly Empowered, etc.
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