Ultimate Weapons Guide (Updated Up To Patch 1.3.4)

• Sword And Shield
• Great Axe
• War Hammer
• Hatchet
• Rapier
• Spear
• Bow
• Musket
• Blunderbuss
• Fire Staff
• Void Gauntlet
• Ice Gauntlet
• Life Staff

As in many other MMORPG, weapons in New World are mainly divided according to their attack distance (melee or range). Melee weapons are divided into one-handed and two-handed. One-handed melee weapons are quicker but deal less damage. Two-handed weapons deal heavier damage but are pretty slow.

Sword And Shield 

It is used to bash and slash your enemies while you drink whiskey, looking at all these wet noodle kicks in your shield.

The only weapon to be paired with the Shield, the Sword offers many strong defensive options, and it’s the best weapon for tanking – besides, only Shield can block ranged attacks. 

The Sword and Shield combo can be built for either DPS or tank roles, depending on what players prefer or what a party requires. The Sword sadly does not do all that much damage, so it levels a bit more slowly than the purely DPS-focused weapons. The light attack is slashing, the heavy attack is a thrust, and the abilities using shields are strike damage – this is great since it can be used effectively in every dungeon.

Great Axe to sweep from Cutlass Key to Shattered Mountains and blow your enemies into a blackhole with gravity.

The Great Axe is a two-handed melee weapon with high defense ability, large damage output with area-of-effect attacks that cannot be ignored, and decent crowd control skills. It also has a gap-closing ability but is pretty slow with long cooldowns.

It deals Slash damage with its basic attacks and most skills and has the widest-hitting basic attacks in the game. While most other weapons can hit multiple foes with well-placed light or heavy attacks, the Great Axe easily hits multiple foes with its broad, side-to-side swings. The Great Axe also has multiple ways to heal from damage dealt, making it a good choice for solo content.

War Hammer

When you have it, everything around you starts to look like nails.

The War Hammer is a two-handed melee weapon in New World. This heavy weapon is a valuable asset for tanky players, as well as well-balanced for PVP and PVE content. It has high HP and defense, great crowd control and AoE skills, but its attacks are slow and easy to miss, and it has no movement skills.

With plenty of crowd control skills, access to Rend, and other armor reducing or ignoring effects combined with rather medium damage, War Hammer is often used as a secondary weapon to bring more utility to the team. It deals Strike damage with its basic attacks and most skills.

Hatchet to make YARRR and be unstoppable and unkillable. Well, for a couple of seconds. Valhalla awaits!

The Hatchet is a particularly formidable weapon due to the Berserk ability, which grants you a substantial attack damage boost, and can be upgraded to increase your movement speed, give you massive health regeneration, and grant immunity to crowd control with making your attacks uninterruptible.

It has a very short range and a very small hitbox, meaning you need to be right on top of the enemy in order to hit.

Rapier, monsieur, is about art, grace and blood.

The Rapier is a melee single target weapon. With extreme mobility, plenty of damage, and damage-over-time active skills, the Rapier is best suited for those who prefer not getting hit rather than trying to soak up damage.

The rapier doesn’t offer too much in the way of crowd control or area of effect skills – it’s best suited to one-on-one situations. 

Spear. That’s the verb, just like pierce, strike, impale, and many others. Sounds like music, right?

The Spear is a melee weapon with plenty of crowd control options and the strongest Rend application in the game. Since Spears have more range than any other melee weapon, you’re encouraged to manage your distance during an engagement.

The Spear is a weapon that has two types of crowd control: Knockdown and Stun. 

Knockdown comes from Sweep and Javelin and knocks foes affected by it onto their backs. Although, this effect does end early if they take any damage. 

Stun is exactly the same as knockdown, except it goes through Grit. Grit provides almost total immunity to crowd control and displacing effects, but stuns as Vault Kick will still apply.

Ranged weapons, in their turn, can be divided into Dexterity and Intelligence based weapons.

Bow. Run fast, shoot fast, win fast.

The Bow is a ranged weapon in New World. It focuses on dealing with a single target and area of effect damage on 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 provides speed whenever you Dodge and Archer’s Speed when you switch to the Bow or unsheath your weapon.

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

Musket. Those poor zag-zag melees will never understand where this headshot came from.

Musket is a single target ranged weapon. Muskets are ideal 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. It uses 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.

Blunderbuss. Here comes the BOOM!

Fire Staff. Don’t you think that a bit more fire should be added in this game?

The Fire Staff is mana using a weapon that heavily focuses on Area of Effect Spells and Damage over Time effects. 

If you’re good at prediction and can foresee how the battle is going to be and playing around with mobility, then, that might be the build for you. The weakness of Fire Staff is lacking the crowd control effects, limited self-healing, and pretty hard leveling due to the mana managing. 

Void Gauntlet will let you kill and heal while looking mysterious and dangerous. What else do you need?

The Void Gauntlet is a magical weapon that scales with Intelligence and Focus and deals with Void Damage. It can be used as a melee weapon, mid-ranged weapon, and as a supportive weapon for buffs, debuffs, and healing.

It is an extremely flexible weapon. Though it is being used mostly as a supportive weapon for healers and tanks, it can also be used as a solo playing weapon to fight the elite mobs or leveling.

Ice Gauntlet will make your opponents chill. Chill to the bone, hehe.

The Ice Gauntlet is a ranged mana using weapon that has the strongest Crowd Control abilities. 

This weapon can deal decent damage at mid-range or can be used as a supporting secondary weapon to help provide some crowd control. The weakness of Ice Gauntlet is lacking the movement skills, limited self-healing, and -40% damage against Corrupted.

Life Staff to bring light and peace. Don’t scream so loud. I’m healing, I’m healing!

Life Staff is the only mainly Focus scaling weapon currently in New World, which means it is the only weapon that can be efficient in areas of effect healing, single-target healing, and buffs to support allies. 

The Life Staff has one damage skill available in its entire kit, so players will heavily rely on their offhand for damage. It also has no crowd control or mobility tools.