Ultimate Musket Guide (Updated Up To Patch 1.3.4)

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

A musket is a single target ranged weapon. Muskets are perfect for long-range combat with a high payoff for a precise aim, especially headshots. They dish out great damage, are hit-scan, and can even be used to apply crowd control. They use ammunition to fire shots, meaning you have to be precise with your aim and willing to either craft or buy more bullets.

Along with the strengths, there are some weaknesses of the Musket. The player’s survivability doesn’t measure up when it comes to musketry. Reloading takes 2 seconds and can be interrupted. It doesn’t have any area of effect skills except Sticky Bomb.

You can aim down the sight and fire; you can hit fire, you can fire while crouching, and even fire while laying down. Aiming down the sight or firing prone will give you the best accuracy, while hip firing on the run will grant you the worst accuracy. 

The accuracy meter is the two little tiny dashes to the side of your hit marker. The closer they are to the marker, the more accurate you’re going to be.

Attributes

The Musket scales from the Dexterity primarily at x0.9 and has a secondary stat of Intelligence (x0.6).

First of all, choosing the main Attribute depends on what weapon you’ll use as a secondary one. If you’re leveling with the Musket, you’d better put all your Attribute points in Dexterity to get maximum raw damage.

But on a high level (40-60), you’ll have an option to change your build to a hybrid one. While Intelligence gives less raw damage since it scales at x0,6, it has a very strong breakpoint at level 100, which will add 10% of damage to every headshot you land:

The next Intelligence breakpoint is at level 150, which go up to x0.8 damage scaling using the damage converting Gem:

And at level 300 Intelligence, which gives you extremely strong first headshot damage:

So you can reach 150 breakpoints in Intelligence and 300 breakpoints in Dexterity for the best damage. Or even max the Intelligence while using the Gems in your weapon to convert your damage partially to the magic one. 

This will let you cover the weaknesses of the bosses and match the elements where you need them; for example, Corrupted enemies are rigged to Arcane damage, Fire is good against Angry Earth.

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 Musket

It’s pretty hard to make a build for everyone since Musket relies mostly on the skills and preferences of the exact player. If you’re sure you can land headshots, you can run a sniper build. If you feel comfortable in mid-range combat, you can use Traps.

If you want to shoot fast, you have to lose your mobility. If you want to get AoE, you have to pick up a Sticky Bomb which is pretty hard to land. 

Those builds are given only as examples. The final decision of which perks you’d pick up is still up to you.

1. Sniper Build is extremely ranged, best for 50vs50 wars – you’re the sniper elite and not supposed to engage in close combat:

2. This build can be used for leveling or in the open world, where you cannot always stay on a range distance:

3. If you do need some AoE, you can try this build with Trap and Sticky Bomb:

4. This one is also mid-ranged and combines Trap and Shooter’s Stance – you can trap your enemy and then shoot him asap:

Optional Passive Skills

A short explanation about arguable skills

1. Critical Reload:

You do not have to land three headshots within five seconds. You land one headshot, then you have five seconds to land headshot number two, then once that lands, you have five seconds to get headshot number three.

2. Empowering Headshot:

Landing multiple headshots won’t reset the timer back to 5 seconds. Once a headshot is hit, you have 5 seconds of Empower – this means that you have 2 shots to take advantage of this buff.

3. Ballistic Advantage and Hit Your Mark:

At 100 meters, your damage is reduced by 25%. If damage falloff is linear, this means that the damage starts to fall off at 50 meters, and every 2 meters past 50, you’re going to lose 1% damage.

Since Hit Your Mark does not forgo damage fall off, these skills should be used together.

4. Hustle:

This buff doesn’t have a cooldown so you can keep it permanently.

5. Back It Up:

If someone’s within 8 meters of a player, it’s either time you get out of there or switch to your secondary weapon.

6. Empowering Weakness:

This 5% buff is actually going to be applied to your light attack damage, which is not the main source of Musket damage.

7. Greater Accuracy:

This skill removes any penalties for shooting without aiming, but since Musket is pretty accurate anyway, it’s not very useful.

8. Energy Burst:

Absolutely useless talent at that moment.

Musket Active Skills

First of all, all overload skills – Powder Burn, Power Shot, and Stopping Power – do not stack or combine with each other, but all of them have their cooldown initiated the moment the gun gets loaded, not when you fire it. 

They don’t expire when you swap your weapon, so you can always have them on your rifle.

Activating one of these abilities to load a shot while the other is already loaded will replace the previously loaded shot with the new shot.

All of them require that you reload your weapon after activation, so try to use them after firing a shot.

1. Powder Burn:

This Skill is your opener to set a pretty strong DoT on the target that’s based on your Weapon’s damage. 

When combined with the initial shot damage, this ability will do a grand total of 290% weapon damage over 9 seconds. 

If you utilize a Powder Burn into another Powder Burn before the burn ticks fall off, you will not do two ticks of burn damage at once – it will reset the burn stacks to 9 seconds.

2. Power Shot:

Also could be used as an opening ability combined with other modifiers for extremely huge headshots.

3. Shooter’s Stance:

You can only activate this Ability after reloading and have an additional, non-Shooter Stance, shot after the Stance ends. 

You can enter and exit the Stance whenever you want by pressing sprint, the ability key, dodge, Esc, or releasing RMB, and the ability will not go on cooldown unless you’ve shot at least one shot. Once the first shot is fired, the moment you exit the Stance, the Ability will go on cooldown.

It does work with your other buffs, so the first shot, while you’re kneeling, will use your buff. The reload time seems to be reduced only by 1 second, so it’s only 50% of a reduction.

4. Stopping Power:

Mostly PvE ability, you probably don’t want to fight in close range in PvP and don’t really need to knock back enemies. But you can use this Ability to push people off Cannons in Fort Sieges.

5. Traps:

In PvE, this allows you to draw foes over your trap to buy you more time to shoot, and in PvP, it allows you to kite over the trap. 

Take into account the long animation of throwing it. 

If you throw a trap and it lands on the feet of your target, that target will instantly get trapped and immobilized.

6. Sticky Bomb:

Very situational, but the only AoE Musket skill. The explosion staggers and knocks back enemies. Crits deal ~273% weapon damage.

This bomb hits rather hard, but the 3-second delay between throw and detonation feels long. 

It’s incredibly hard to use as a very short throwing range. You can aim way high in the air if you want to arc it very far, but it’s hard to accurately stick it to anything when you can’t see where you’re throwing it. So you’re probably going to use it in tandem with Traps.

Gear

Light armor gives you a +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 is also a nice option as a compromise between offense and defense.

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

Gems

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

1. Cut Pristine Onyx:

You will likely be able to open with a devastating headshot against full health foes. As a musket user, you’re going to be tagging people from a mile away that usually have full health in Wars.

2. Cut Pristine Emerald:

Will help you to execute enemies running away.

3. Cut Pristine Diamond:

This one fits more for a group play since you are likely to be in full health while fighting at a distance.

If you’re fighting mostly against one enemy type or using Intelligence hybrid build, then you can use the following 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 sniper PvP builds because the only ones who can kill you are other 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. Musket Skill Perks

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

Crippling Powder Burn:

This Perk is nice because slower foes are easier to headshot. If you are using Powder Burn, consider getting this Perk.

Refreshing Power Shot:

This Perk requires you to get the killing blow with the Power Shot, which is not always possible.

Mending Sticky Bombs:

Relying on getting a kill with an ability that has a 3-second fuse is pretty terrible.

Empowering Shooter’s Stance:

This is a great perk that you should always try to take if you are using Shooter’s Stance.

Accelerating Traps:

This Perk is wonderful for giving you a small burst of speed.

Energizing Stopping Power:

This Perk is nothing amazing – a bit of extra stamina might help for one more additional dodge roll.

2. Armor Perks

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

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

3. Weapon Perks

Vorpal is the best Perk for Musket 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, as well as the powder burn headshot, you deal a lot of damage over time:

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

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

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

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 but could be adjusted depending on what faction you’re facing or if you’re going more into PvP:

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 it has a 90 cooldown for the effect:

5. Earring 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 help in PvE as well:

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

6. Ring 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 a decent Utility with the lowered cooldowns, but that’s also available on armor:

Thrust Protection can be useful against other snipers:

Burning will increase your Powder Burn damage:

Blood Letting works great with Keenly Jagged on your weapon:

If you are using a Gem to convert your damage, then a certain damage increase could be useful:

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 or Intelligence:

You can use food with both Dexterity and Intelligence bonuses:

Constitution / Dexterity and Constitution / Intelligence combinations are also available:

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

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

3. Powerful Honing Stone will increase your damage. 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. 

For more Potions, you can check our Arcana Guide.

Weapons To Combine With

1. Rapier provides great mobility and damage. Both the Musket and Rapier scale with Dexterity and Intelligence, which makes them a fantastic pairing. This weapon combination is effective at every range and has a high burst single-target DPS. But at the same time, they both got thrust type of damage weak against Undead type enemies and don’t have AoE options.

2. Spear scales primarily with Dexterity and provides a lot of crowd control with Sweep and Vault Kick. One downside would be that both of these weapons have limited area-of-effect capability.

3. Ice Gauntlet. This build focuses on keeping your enemies away from you by casting crowd control abilities while you try to shoot them from a safe distance. It can be used in Expeditions and other heavy AoE situations to cover the lack of AoE abilities, but it’s weak at close-range fights.

4. Fire Staff. Dominate opponents from the range with the Musket and Fire Staff combo. Thanks to gems, you’ll be able to focus mostly on Intelligence to scale the damage to both weapons. This will give you enough AoE damage and mobility, but you will not have any close combat options.

5. 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 Musket’s points. This combination could be nice for PvE, but it doesn’t have as much mobility as the Rapier combination.

FAQ