Ultimate Bow Guide (Updated Up To Patch 1.3.4)

• Attributes
• Builds For Bow
• Optional Passive Skills
• Bow Active Skills
• Gear
• Gems
• Equipment Perks
• Consumables
• Weapons To Combine With
• FAQ

Bow is a ranged weapon in New World. It focuses on dealing single target and area of effect damage mainly mid-range, while also providing high mobility. Learning how to headshot is essential because it automatically makes the attack a critical hit.

The Bow is unique among the weapons because it provides the potential for a significant movement speed increase with little effort or investment. Dodge and Weave provide speed whenever you Dodge and Archer’s Speed when you switch to the Bow or unsheathe your weapon.

Instead of Musket bullets, arrows are affected by gravity and require aim.

You have a quick attack that doesn’t shawn in the tooltip, without aiming you deal 80% weapon damage. To launch a heavy attack, you have to aim for more than 1 sec to deal 170% weapon damage. Any attack with aiming less than 1 sec will deal 100% weapon damage.

Attributes

The Bow scales only with Dexterity, so focus on obtaining as much Dexterity as possible to unlock passive skills on 50 points breakpoints:

Constitution is a decent secondary Attribute, especially for PvP, 50 points will be enough to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables, but you can get those 50 points with your gear or using +40 Consitution food:

Builds For Bow

Since most Bow active skills are pretty situational depending on your playstyle, there are a lot of build variations.

1. For example, this build for heavy Area of Effect damage, useful in Expeditions or Wars:

If you don’t use heavy attacks, you can take Arrow Range instead of Aim True or Opening Strikes, but you still need 10 points in Hunter skill tree to get elite ability – Concussion.

In the Skirmisher tree, you can pick Infected Arrows and Direct Hit if you’re sure you can land the Poison Shot directly, or the Barbed Arrows and Hooked Arrows to apply bleed and slow. Remember that the bleeding effect from Barbed Arrows doesn’t stack from multiple players using the ability on the same target since the December update.

2. If you don’t like to be stuck while casting Rapid Shot, you can take Penetrating Shot instead:

In this build, you can switch between Poison Shot and Rain of Arrows passive skills depending on what you need more, single target damage or putting bleeding debuff from Rain of Arrows.

3. This Single target build is mostly used for open-world PvP:

Here you can also swap between combinations of Aim True plus Opening Strike and Arrow Range or Mark if you don’t use heavy attacks or have some other players with you to apply debuff and make Mark useful.

4. If you don’t like Rapid Shot for being an easy target while casting it, you can try this mobile build, which becomes more popular:

5. Mixed build with Rain of Arrows will give you both area of effect and single target damage for different game content:

6. Mixed build with Poison Shot if you prefer this ability instead of Rain of Arrows:

Basic Rotation:

The most important thing about the rotation is using Rapid Shot before Penetrating Shot. So basically you will do roll – Rapid Shot – roll – Penetrating Shot – roll, etc. If you use Poison Shot, it will be your opener.

Optional Passive Skills

A bit of explanation about arguable skills:

Both passive skills are from the Rain of Arrows tree. Dealing 7.1% weapon damage each second is not so great, besides, Rain of Arrows sits on 24.4 seconds cooldown. Remember that the bleeding effect from Barbed Arrows doesn’t stack from multiple players using the ability on the same target since the December update. This can be useful in mass PvP, of course. 

Hooked arrows with 15% slow for 4 seconds also doesn’t look useful anywhere except mass PvP.

2. Infected Arrows and Direct Hit:

Both passives are from the Poison Shot tree. Infected Arrows gives you 40% weapon damage for 20 seconds, which is not a great number at all, those might be useful in mass PvP. 

Direct Hit increases only the direct arrow hit damage, not the poison damage, so it gives you a direct arrow strike for 150% weapon damage instead of 50% weapon damage, which is pretty nice if you can land it because usually Poison Shot is landed on the ground near enemies feet.

3. Catch Me If You Can:

Normally you shouldn’t have 3 enemies around you within 3 meters, if you do, it’s time to switch to another weapon or change your tactics.

4. Impale:

Well, 10% slow for only 2 seconds doesn’t look useful.

5. Hunter’s Insight:

Stamina regenerates pretty fast, and getting only 5 is not enough to make this skill worth a skill point.

6. Battle Precision:

You might want this skill to increase the duration of your Poison Shot debuff, but it already has 20 seconds duration and 20 seconds is the maximum debuff duration in New World.

7. Knee Shot:

Theoretically, combined with Impale and Hooked Arrows this could be viable, but there are much more useful skills. Taking into attention that it is an Elite ability of the Skirmisher tree, it definitely needs tuning.

8. Unbreakable Focus:

Aiming while taking heavy damage is not a great idea, but, if you’re not taking heavy damage, why would you need a 10% reduction? But you can use this skill if you’re fighting with a Bow on a short distance using it like a shotgun.

9. Arrow Range:

It’s pretty hard to say how this ability will change your aiming, you can try it if you use a bow on a really long range, but it requires some practice since arrows are gravity affected. This is mostly about your own preference.

Bow Active Skills

1. Poison Shot:

Although 10% weapon damage does not seem like all that much, it does add up and most importantly will force enemy players to play around the cloud or take damage. 

In PVP the Poison debuff prevents enemies from healing, especially during the early game. This is an AOE ability that you fire at the ground (it creates a cloud), so try and predict your opponent’s movement.

2. Evade Shot:

With Evade Shot adding knockback and Go the Distance adding Haste, this skill is really great for keeping distance with foes in both PvE and PvP.

3. Rain of Arrows:

Both Rain of Arrows and Poison Shot are great for providing DPS support at the range, while your close-range brawlers are fighting it out on the front line. Rain of Arrows is much wider, however, which makes aiming with it more forgiving.

4. Rapid Shot:

This Ability pumps out three fast shots but forces you to stand still. It is great for a single target but does not have any area-of-effect component.

This is a great active skill to follow up your Evade Shot with. Bounce back, fire off three rapid shots, and then drop a poison cloud. The third shot will also inflict a knockback if it connects.

5. Penetrating Shot:

When used directly after a bow light or heavy attack, the burst potential quickly becomes apparent. With the ability having 150% weapon damage scaling while being on a single attribute scaling weapon, Penetrating Shot is one of the hardest hitting abilities in the game.

This is a great ability to follow up Rain of Arrows and Poison Shot with to hopefully hit 2 or more enemies at increased damage.

6. Splinter Shot:

This Ability requires nearly perfect range in order to use it well and generally does not do enough damage to make it a better pick. 

You can hit one target with three arrows from approximately 7 meters. Anything closer will deal 50% weapon damage with one arrow. With more distance, the arrows will split away and not strike your target.

With its passive skills – Scatter Shot and Calculated this ability does have great single target damage, but only viable in Expeditions where you can make a perfect range position.

Gear

Light armor gives you +20% damage bonus and the best amount of movement with a quick roll since normally you’ll keep the distance and don’t take damage.

Medium armor will give you more protection, +10% damage bonus, but you’ll not have a quick roll. You can use it if you’re fighting in close combat pretty often.

Also, you can combine different types of armor, light with medium, staying under 13 kg, or medium with heavy, staying under 23 kg. You can change your armor type by simply replacing 3 parts.

Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (1L + 2M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Light Pants, 2 Medium and 1 Heavy piece.

Alternative Maxed Medium Armor 22,9 lbs build (2L + 1M + 2H): Heavy Chest, Heavy Pants, 1 Medium, and 1 Light piece.

Maxed Light Armor 12,7 lbs build (4L + 1M): Light Head, Medium Chest, Light Gloves, Light Pants, Light Boots.

Maxed Light Armor 12,6 lbs build (3L + 2M): Light Chest, Medium Pants, 1 Medium, and 2 Light pieces. If you need more in-depth information, how tankier you would be wearing a certain kind of armor of a certain Gear Score, feel free to use the New World Calculator by Mixed Nuts.

Armor Type	Light	Medium	Heavy
Head	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Chest	3,5 lbs	6,2 lbs	11,0 lbs
Gloves	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Pants	2,0 lbs	3,5 lbs	6,3 lbs
Boots	1,5 lbs	2,6 lbs	4,7 lbs
Shields	2,7 lbs (Round)	5,4 lbs (Kite)	11,0 lbs (Tower)

Look for Armor with Dexterity on it for best results or with Dexterity and Constitution if you need 50 points to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables.

Gems

Your Bow Gems are often the core of your build, and you should become comfortable with switching between them depending on the situation.

Your Bow Gems are often the core of your build, and you might have to switch between them depending on the situation.

1. Cut Pristine Opal:

Since Evasive Tactics gives you 20% damage boost for 5 sec every time you dodge, you will find yourself on low stamina quite often. This option may give you the most all-around damage output anywhere in the game.

2. Cut Pristine Onyx:

3. Cut Pristine Emerald:

This will help you to execute enemies running away.

4. Cut Pristine Diamond:

Fits more for a group play since you are likely to be at full health while fighting at a distance.

If you’re fighting mostly against one enemy type, for example, farming something, you can use to convert your damage:

1. Cut Pristine Amethyst to fight against Ancients:

2. Cut Pristine Aquamarine against the Lost:

3. Cut Pristine Ruby against Angry Earth:

4. Cut Pristine Sapphire against Corrupted:

5. Cut Pristine Topaz against Ancients:

Damage Effectiveness	Slash	Thrust	Strike	Fire	Ice	Nature	Void	Lightning	Arcane
Ancients	-15%		+20%	-40%			+15%	+30%
Corrupted		+20%	-15%		-40%	+15%			+30%
Angry Earth	+20%	-15%		+30%				-40%
The Lost		-15%	+10%		+15%	+30%	-30%
Beast		+20%

For Armor gems you can use Cut Pristine Emerald for PvP while fighting against other Bow and Musket users:

If you’re already level 60 and farming chests or mobs for gear, you need a Lucky Gem:

For other situations to provide generic damage absorption:

1. Cut Pristine Onyx:

2. Cut Pristine Malachite:

3. Cut Pristine Diamond:

Equipment Perks

1. Bow Skill Perks

These perks can be found on armors and weapons, but often slotted on Armor as Weapons have access to better perks overall.

Enfeebling Poison Shot:

This perk is not that great since you typically want to shoot Poison Shot into the ground to make sure you do not miss your poison cloud. This could be a decent perk for group PvP or Expeditions to help reduce damage if you can land your shots.

Energizing Evade Shot:

This Stamina perk is rather nice because it can help provide enough Stamina to Dodge Roll. Since Evade Shot is normally used to create distance, being able to combine that with a Dodge Roll can help get another Dodge in.

Fortifying Rain of Arrows:

This Perk is nice for adding a bit of survivability to the Bow, which is always nice to have. As this Perk scales with Gear Score in terms of Fortify amount and duration of the buff so you can potentially keep this buff up almost all the time at high Gear Score.

Penetrating Rapid Shot:

This Perk increases the damage done by Rapid Shot; if you are using Rapid Shot then this is a great Perk but is not mandatory. Choosing this perk depends on how many heavy armor users you meet in PvP on your server.

Refreshing Penetrating Shot:

This Perk is great simply because reducing the cooldown of one of the best damaging Abilities is always a good option. This is a great Perk to pick up on gear but is not mandatory.

Empowering Splinter Shot:

Since the Empower granted by it is limited to the next attack, it is only slightly noticeable.

2. Armor Perks

Refreshing with Resilient can be a universal choice depending on your secondary weapon:

Refreshing Evasion is useful because you’re dodging a lot:

Physical Aversion is useful for PvP against Musket and Bow users:

3. Weapon Perks

Vorpal is one of the best perks for Bow since you try to land as many headshots as possible:

Keenly Jagged is a nice choice since you’ll crit a lot. If you land a critical headshot with this perk you deal a lot of damage over time:

Keen and Vicious are still a strong pair of go-to perks:

Refreshing Move helps a great deal with getting more skill rotations out:

Alternatively, you can use Enchanted and get plenty of damage that way as well.

For PvP against healers, you can use Plagued Crits. The maximum amount of healing decreasing is 24% for GS 600 weapons:

4. Amulet Perks

Slash Protection and Thrust Protection cover most PvE and PvP incoming damage:

Divine will give you more healing and Health – more HP, everything is simple here:

If you really want to heap on the defenses, Fortified Recovery grants a fairly strong 30% Fortify for 5 seconds when hit below 50% health, but has a 90 seconds cooldown for the effect:

5. Earrings Perks

Beloved and Evasive can both help you mitigate aggro making you less likely to pull aggro in expeditions:

Purifying Toast and Refreshing Toast are both great utility options for open-world PvP where health consumables tend to be used more. These all also help in PvE as well:

You can also grab Refreshing here as well if you don’t manage to get it on your armor.

Nimble helps the somewhat excessive use of Stamina from this build by boosting Stamina Regen slightly:

6. Rings Perks

Keen Awareness is a strong option for higher burst damage potential and Thrust Damage is a small damage boost in general:

Refreshing is also decent Utility with the lowered cooldowns, but that’s also available on armor:

Thrust Protection can be useful against other Bow and Musket users:

Hearty will add you enough Stamina for one more additional dodge. If the bow player has 109.5 total stamina and each dodge takes 40 stamina (with 150 Dexterity attribute bonus), a player can dodge twice (leaving the player at 39.5 stamina), wait a fraction of a second for stamina to regenerate to 41, then dodge twice more for a total of 4 dodges.

Blood Letting works great with Keenly Jagged on your weapon:

Consumables

In this chapter, you can find information about endgame consumables because you don’t really need most of them on low levels. You can easily find the low leveled versions of them because the names only differ by one word, except food. 

1. First of all, you need Health Regeneration Food:

Health Potions:

And Regeneration Potions:

2. Attribute Food:

As a DPS player, you might want to increase your Dexterity. This food gives you an option to put 40 points from Dexterity to another Attribute.

You can use food with both Dexterity and Constitution bonus to increase your health and damage at the same time.

Constitution / Dexterity combination with more Dexterity is also available.

Also, you can use Constitution food to maximize your health.

To find more food, for hybrid builds please check our Cooking Guide.

3. Powerful Honing Stone will increase your damage and, as a result, threat level. They can be bought or crafted at Smelter if you reach 170 Weaponsmithing level.

4. Powerful Gemstone Dust can be also bought or crafted at level 170 Jewelcrafting.

5. Powerful Oakflesh Balm can be bought or crafted at 170 Armoring level as well.

6. Powerful Incense requires 170 Furnishing level to craft. Otherwise, it can be bought for cheap from the Trading Post.

7. Weapon Coatings give a 15% damage bonus against certain types of enemies. These coatings are usually used in dungeons, where you’re fighting mostly against enemies of the same type, for example:

8. Ward Potions increase your damage absorption against certain enemy types. They can help you mitigate heavy incoming damage. 

9. Absorption Potions can help you not only in dungeons but also in PvP against mages. They increase absorption by 15% against certain types of elemental damage, for example:

10. Corruption Tincture and Blight Tincture remove afflictions and give 97,5% resistance to these afflictions for 5 minutes.

11. Infused Encumbrance Potion will help you a bit with bringing your sack to the nearest warehouse. It lasts 3 minutes and increases the Encumbrance Limit by 100.

I know that feeling, bro, even one Flint or Green-Wood must not be discarded. 

Weapons To Combine With

1. Spear scales with Dexterity and provides a lot of crowd control with Sweep and Vault Kick. This playstyle is perfect for an archer who wants to stand their ground and then punish those who get too close. Both of these weapons got thrust-type damage weak against Undead enemies. Besides, this build has few defensive abilities. 
2. Rapier provides great mobility and damage. Rapier scales primarily with Dexterity. This weapon combination is effective at every range. But at the same time, they both got thrust type of damage weak against Undead enemies. We recommend this combination if you want to be extremely elusive in PvP and PvE, picking when you engage with those whom you are fighting.
3. Hatchet is a great pick as it deals devastating damage up close, while also packing self-healing abilities so you don’t need to use restorative items like Potions or food as often. It also scales with Dexterity secondarily so it shares the Bow’s points.
4. Musket has a 2-second long reload animation that can be bypassed by switching to another weapon for those 2 seconds, allowing you to fire off a shot, switch to your Bow, shoot some arrows, then switch back to Musket, and fire right away. Both weapons deal Thrust damage and are weak against Lost and Angry Earth-type foes. Also, with double ranged weapons, you will have limited melee options if someone gets too close. If you enjoy the ranged playstyle and have great aim then this may be the combo for you.

FAQ