Ultimate New World War Hammer Guide

Ultimate War Hammer Guide (Updated Up To Patch 1.3.4)

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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.

New World War Hammer is well-balanced for both PvP and PvE
War Hammer Is Well-balanced For Both PVP And PVE

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.

Attributes

The War Hammer scales only with Strength. Once you reach the endgame and are able to have 300 Strength, you will have Grit during light and heavy attacks, which is useful for avoiding crowd control.

New World War Hammer scales only with Strength
War Hammer Scales Only With Strength

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:

New World 20 Effectiveness To All Health Consumables For 50 Constitution Points
Constitution Is A Decent Secondary Attribute For War Hammer

Minmaxing your character for endgame PvP you can also reach 200 Constitution breakpoint for a 20% armor increase, but in this case, you’ll have 300 Strength only if you use buff food.

New World 200 Constitution breakpoint for a 20% armor increase
200 Constitution Breakpoint For A 20% Armor Increase

Of course, if you’re going to play as a tank, you should concentrate on Constitution only.

Builds For War Hammer

1. Crowd control build, which is usually being used to debuff your opponents and then switch to your main weapon, especially in PvP.

New World War Hammer Crowd Control Build
Crowd Control Build

Instead of Power Through Pain, where the 1-sec damage window is not always easy to utilize, you can take Epitome of Bonk! or Exhaustive Attacks for PvP. Facilitated Expedition instead of Guarded Sprint is also an option.

Acceleration can be taken if you don’t have any perks for heavy attacks and are going to use light attacks instead.

Or you can take Clear Out instead of Wrecking Ball:

New World War Hammer Crowd Control Build With Clear Out
Crowd Control Build With Clear Out

The goal of this build is to pressure backlines and be disruptive on point. You do your best damage by weaving light attacks, dodges, and heavy attacks together. You will use your abilities to set up kills for others with AoE and crowd control abilities or to stay on target better. As long as you don’t overextend too far and position yourself well, you’re very hard to kill and you still have the ability to solo kill people.

2. For open-world and one-to-one scenarios, this damage-oriented build can be used. It concentrates on heavy attacks and doesn’t really have a lot of haste or survivability:

New World War Hammer PVE Build
PVE Build

Taking Armor Breaker instead of Mighty Gavel will make you more single target oriented, but grants with Rend and Armor Penetration:

New World War Hammer PVE Build With Armor Breaker
PVE Build With Armor Breaker

Since you don’t have Aftershock in this build, Exhaustive Attacks will give you a debuff to increase your damage by 15% for Concussive Impact. These skills should be taken together. Instead of Facilitated Expedition, you can take Epitome of Bonk!, Guarded Sprint, Acceleration, or Stimulated Reduction.

3. This glass cannon build can be used for PvE solo target and Expedition, where you can find hard bosses.

New World War Hammer PVE Solo And Expedition Build
Solo PVE And Expedition Build

It concentrates on heavy attacks and skill attacks. So to get the highest damage, you might want Trenchant Strikes or Thwarting Strikes. For Thwarting Strikes, you need Grit, which can be obtained by achieving 300 Strength breakpoint or by getting Hardened Steel.

There’s a lot of variability in this build. You can take Hardened Steel, Prevail Spirit, or Epitome of Bonk! instead of Meteoric Crater or Power Through Pain. 

Optional Passive Skills

A bit of explanation about arguable skills.

1. Exhaustive Attacks:

New World Exhaustive Attacks
Exhaustive Attacks

This will make your opponent wait about five seconds to go from one stamina to a hundred instead of four seconds, which sounds pretty useless.

But Exhaust counts as a debuff, and it works great with Concussive Impact to increase your damage by 15%.

2. Facilitated Expedition:

New World Facilitated Expedition
Facilitated Expedition

Only 15% haste for 3 seconds isn’t worth a skill point in most cases.

3. Resurgence:

New World Resurgence
Resurgence

This might be useful in mass PvP, Wars, but there are more useful abilities.

4. Power Through Pain:

New World Power Through Pain
Power Through Pain

This skill sounds really useful, but it can be hard to utilize since most War Hammer attacks are pretty slow.

War Hammer Active Skills

1. Armor Breaker:

New World Armor Breaker
Armor Breaker

This Ability is fast, making it a good follow-up to Basic Attacks. In PvP, this is extremely difficult to avoid if executed at melee range. However, the short-range of the ability makes it harder to use properly.

Being high single target damage with armor penetration makes it excellent for holding boss aggro if you decide to tank with the War Hammer or use it as a supporting weapon. 

2. Mighty Gavel:

New World Mighty Gavel
Mighty Gavel

While it’s not always an optimal choice for PvE or PvP, given that the War Hammer is more specialized towards area damage, it’s a strong enough ability, especially when upgraded, that it can earn its place with good usage.

In PvE, it’s a very high damage output skill, making it a viable choice as a DPS weapon. In PvP, it’s more a dedicated Block Breaker, as the first hit can very easily break someone’s block.

3. Wrecking Ball:

New World Wrecking Ball
Wrecking Ball

A decently hard hit and a crowd control effect that can’t be reduced can make this an ideal combo starter if you can land it.

In PvE, this skill can deal decent damage, and the Flatten can provide a little extra safety or interrupt enemy attacks as it “flattens” the enemy in place for a short time, which means you can hopefully land some extra heavy attacks or an Armor Breaker. 

In PvP, the extra crowd control can be nice, but this skill’s long windup can make it easier to evade. 

4. Shockwave:

New World Shockwave
Shockwave

It is important to note that Stun in New World will be broken on taking damage, so make sure you follow up this Ability with a big hit. This Ability is also somewhat telegraphed, making it easy to be dodged in PvP.

The AoE stun and taunt make it great for what you want to do as a tank. The same Stun can also give it quite a bit of impact in PvP. Add in the utility of the upgrades and it’s great in situations where you get outnumbered.

5. Clear Out:

New World Clear Out
Clear Out

This Ability is fast and hits several foes in front of you; however, displacing foes in a group is typically more bad than good for your group. This really only has some slight niche use in Wars to knock people off capture points. Beyond that, it doesn’t offer much in terms of damage or decent utility.

6. Path Of Destiny:

New World Path Of Destiny
Path Of Destiny

This is one of the longest-range skills across all melee weapons. It covers a massive area, which makes it incredibly potent in 1vX situations while also just generally giving you a wider range that you can threaten.

It has no limit on how many enemies it can hit. And with the final mastery passive, Stimulated Reduction, you can get a serious cooldown buff if you land a hit against multiple enemies, which makes it useful for both PvE and PvP.

Gear

Light armor gives you +20% damage bonus and the best amount of movement with a quick roll. 

Medium armor will give you more protection, +10% damage bonus, and +10% length of the crowd control debuffs, but you’ll not have a quick roll.

Heavy armor offers the best protection and +20% length of the crowd control debuffs for the price of lower mobility.

New World Equip Load
Armor Equip Load

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 TypeLightMediumHeavy
Head1,5 lbs2,6 lbs4,7 lbs
Chest3,5 lbs6,2 lbs11,0 lbs
Gloves1,5 lbs2,6 lbs4,7 lbs
Pants2,0 lbs3,5 lbs6,3 lbs
Boots1,5 lbs2,6 lbs4,7 lbs
Shields2,7 lbs (Round)5,4 lbs (Kite)11,0 lbs (Tower)

Look for Armor with Strength or with Strength and Constitution if you need 50 points to unlock 20% effectiveness to all health consumables.

All three types of armor can be used in every type of content, so it’s only your preference which one to choose.

Gems

Your War Hammer Gems can change your playstyle a lot, and you should become comfortable with switching between them depending on the situation.

1. Cut Pristine Carnelian:

New World Cut Pristine Carnelian
Cut Pristine Carnelian

If you’re a tank, this is the one you must have.

2. Cut Pristine Opal:

New World Cut Pristine Opal
Cut Pristine Opal

Fits more for PvP, where you’ll be dodging a lot.

3. Cut Pristine Jasper:

New World Cut Pristine Jasper
Cut Pristine Jasper

Can be used for both tanking and damaging since you’ll get hit pretty often.

4. Cut Pristine Malachite:

New World Cut Pristine Malachite
Cut Pristine Malachite

Since you have a lot of crowd control abilities, this is also an option.

5. Cut Pristine Onyx:

New World Cut Pristine Onyx
Cut Pristine Onyx

You will be able to open with your most powerful ability against full health foes. Works great with Armor Breaker’s Opening Act.

6. Cut Pristine Emerald:

New World Cut Pristine Emerald
Cut Pristine Emerald

This will help you to execute enemies running away. Works well with Mighty Gavel’s Summary Judgement and Contemption.

6. Cut Pristine Diamond:

New World Cut Pristine Diamond
Cut Pristine Diamond

Fits more for a group play, if you can keep at full health.

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:

New World Cut Pristine Amethyst
Cut Pristine Amethyst to fight against Ancients

2. Cut Pristine Aquamarine against the Lost:

New World Cut Pristine Aquamarine
Cut Pristine Aquamarine against the Lost

3. Cut Pristine Ruby against Angry Earth:

New World Cut Pristine Ruby
Cut Pristine Ruby against Angry Earth

4. Cut Pristine Sapphire against Corrupted:

New World Cut Pristine Sapphire
Cut Pristine Sapphire against Corrupted

5. Cut Pristine Topaz against Ancients:

New World Cut Pristine Topaz
Cut Pristine Topaz against Ancients
Damage Effectiveness Slash Thrust Strike Fire Ice Nature Void LightningArcane
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%
Ancients are the skeletal enemies adorned in regal clothing. You can find them guarding obelisks and other large-scale ruins found throughout Aeternum.
Corrupted refers to enemies covered in a black and/or red glow. Corruption Breaches are the most common source of Corrupted enemies.
Angry Earth enemies are nature-themed enemies mutated with bark-like skin and similar nature-themed traits.
The Lost are glorified citizens and spectral enemies that inhabit most of Aeternum’s ruined towns, farms, and cemeteries.
Beast refers to any of the wild animals that roam around the New World’s various zones. Wolves, Bears, and Lynxes are just a few enemies that fall under this category.

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

New World Cut Pristine Emerald
Cut Pristine Emerald

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

New World Pristine Pearl
Pristine Pearl

For other situations to provide generic damage absorption:

1. Cut Pristine Onyx:

New World Cut Pristine Onyx
Cut Pristine Onyx

2. Cut Pristine Malachite:

New World Cut Pristine Malachite
Cut Pristine Malachite

3. Cut Pristine Diamond:

New World Cut Pristine Diamond
Cut Pristine Diamond

4. There is another option if you are going to farm the Expeditions as a DPS and have problems with getting the aggro, the Cut Pristine Carnelian:

New World Cut Pristine Carnelian
Cut Pristine Carnelian

Equipment Perks

1. War Hammer Skill Perks

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

Empowering Armor Breaker:

New World Empowering Armor Breaker
Empowering Armor Breaker

This perk is not all that great because you do not want to break blocks with Armor Breaker. You want to apply Rend, which does not get applied if you get blocked.

Refreshing Mighty Gavel:

New World Refreshing Mighty Gavel
Refreshing Mighty Gavel

This perk is nice if you are using Mighty Gavel. This is easy and reliable to trigger in PvE, resulting in a lot of clearing power in both Open World and Expedition content. In PvP however, outside of Wars and Skirmishes, it’s unlikely you’ll ever get to trigger this effect.

Penetrating Wrecking Ball:

New World Penetrating Wrecking Ball
Penetrating Wrecking Ball

Penetrating armor increases the damage of your Ability depending on how much armor your target has. This is bonus damage to an attack that already hits hard and applies crowd control. If you’re using the ability, there’s no reason not to take it.

This will typically be more effective in PvP against the Heavy Armor players but can also have a good impact on how quickly you take down elite monsters as well.

Sundering Shockwave:

New World Sundering Shockwave
Sundering Shockwave

This perk is tremendously powerful because Rend increases the damage foes take. An AoE Rend on top of an AoE Stun and Taunt is a dream for any Tank, especially in PvP.

Repulsing Clear Out:

New World Repulsing Clear Out
Repulsing Clear Out

This perk is nice for PvP if you are trying to clear foes off of control points, but besides that, it is more detrimental than helpful. Especially in group PvE content, using Clear Out can cause your allies to miss their attacks, and this perk only pushes foes even more out of position.

Leeching Path Of Destiny:

New World Leeching Path Of Destiny
Leeching Path Of Destiny

This perk is great if you are using Path of Destiny for the extra health sustain. This stacks with Prevailing Spirit, giving Path of Destiny the ability to easily recover 50% or more of the damage it deals. Against any decent-sized group of enemies, this can almost be a more offensive option over a potion.

2. Armor Perks

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

New World Refreshing
Refreshing
New World Resilient
Resilient

Refreshing Evasion is useful if you’re dodging a lot in PvP:

New World Refreshing Evasion
Refreshing Evasion

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

New World Physical Aversion
Physical Aversion

3. Weapon Perks

Rogue and Vicious increase your damage heavily, as you’ll almost always be dishing out backstabs in group play:

New World Rogue
Rogue
New World Vicious
Vicious

Keenly Jagged is a nice choice to apply one more debuff:

New World Keenly Jagged
Keenly Jagged

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

New World Enchanted
Enchanted
New World Keen
Keen

Thwarting Strikes can give you a lot of damage if you have 300 Strength or using Hardened Steel:

New World Thwarting Strikes
Thwarting Strikes

Thwarting Counter can be advised only if melees using Grit are extra popular on your server and you meet them in PvP very often:

New World Thwarting Counter
Thwarting Counter

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

New World Refreshing Move
Refreshing Move

You can also go for Lifestealing if you want to gain health back on hit:

New World Lifestealing
Lifestealing

Hated:

New World Hated
Hated

This can be useful only if you play as a Tank. Up to +15% more threat generation.

Keenly Fortified:

New World Keenly Fortified
Keenly Fortified

More Fortify is always great, especially for tanking.

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

Plagued Crits require lowering the target’s health to 50% first:

New World Plagued Crits
Plagued Crits

Plagued Strikes don’t require anything but a heavy attack, but in PvP, it can be easily dodged, so both options are pretty situational:

New World Plagued Strikes
Plagued Strikes

Plagued Strikes can be combined with Trenchant Crits or Trenchant Strikes for more damage. Of course, you can use them without Plagued Strikes in PvE:

New World Trenchant Crits
Trenchant Crits
New World Trenchant Strikes
Trenchant Strikes

Trenchant Rend:

New World Trenchant Rend
Trenchant Rend

Or Trenchant Recovery for surviving:

New World Trenchant Recovery Weapon Perk
Trenchant Recovery

4. Amulet Perks

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

New World Slash Protection
Slash Protection
New World Thrust Protection
Thrust Protection

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

New World Divine
Divine
New World Health
Health

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 cooldown for the effect.

New World Fortified Recovery
Fortified Recovery

5. Earring Perks

Beloved and Evasive can both help you mitigate aggro, making you less likely to pull aggro in expeditions. Of course, if you’re a tank, you don’t need these options:

New World Beloved
Beloved
New World Evasive
Evasive

Despised:

New World Despised
Despised

On the contrary, playing as a tank, you need to increase your threat generation.

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:

New World Purifying Toast
Purifying Toast
New World Refreshing Toast
Refreshing Toast

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

Regenerating is especially useful if you’re tanking:

New World Regenerating
Regenerating

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

New World Nimble
Nimble

6. Ring Perks

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

New World Keen Awareness
Keen Awareness
New World Thrust Damage Skill
Thrust Damage

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

New World Refreshing Perk
Refreshing

Thrust Protection can be useful against Bow and Musket users:

New World Thrust Protection
Thrust Protection

Hearty will add you enough Stamina for one more additional dodge. If the player has 109.5 total stamina and each dodge takes 40 stamina (with 150 Dexterity attribute bonus), he 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:

New World Hearty
Hearty

Blood Letting works great with Keenly Jagged on your weapon:

New World Blood Letting
Blood Letting

You can also go for Leeching if you want to gain health back on hit:

New World Leeching
Leeching

Regenerating is especially useful for tanking:

New World Regenerating
Regenerating

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:

New World Hearty Meal
Health Regeneration Food

Health Potions:

New World Infused Health Potion
Health Potion

And Regeneration Potions:

New World Infused Regeneration Potion
Regeneration Potion

2. Attribute Food.

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

New World Roasted Gnufish
Attribute Food To Increase Strength

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

New World Turkey Thigh with Pan Gravy and Spiced Wild Berries
Attribute Food To Increase Strength And Some Constitution

Constitution / Strength combination with more Strength is also available:

New World Carrot Cake
Attribute Food To Increase Strength And Constitution At Once

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

New World Roasted Rabbit with Seasoned Vegetables
Constitution Attribute Food To Maximize DPS

To find more food for hybrid builds, please visit 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:

New World Powerful Honing Stone
Powerful Honing Stone

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

New World Powerful Gemstone Dust
Powerful Gemstone Dust

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

New World Powerful Oakflesh Balm
Powerful Oakflesh Balm

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

New World Powerful Incense
Powerful Incense

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:

New World Infused Ancient Coating
Infused Ancient Coating

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

New World Infused Ancient Ward Potion
Ancient Ward Potion

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

New World Infused Void Absorption Potion
Void Absorption

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

New World Infused Corruption Tincture
Corruption Tincture
New World Infused Blight Tincture
Blight Tincture

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. 

New World Infused Encumbrance Potion
Encumbrance Potion

For more Potions you can check our Arcana Guide.

Weapons To Combine With

  1. Great Axe. Scaling primarily with Strength, the War Hammer provides a lot of crowd control options while Great Axe adds some mobility. You can use the Great Axe to close the gap and then Stun and Knockdown your foes. Since the War Hammer deals Impact damage, it also helps cover for the Great Axe’s weakness against Ancient-type foes. The main downside of this combo is that you will have two slower-attacking two-handed weapons that have limited ranged potential.
  2. Hatchet. The War Hammer greatest weakness is its lack of gap-closing power, which Berserk can help remedy. The Hatchet does a great job providing health sustain through Berserk, which allows you to heal up out of combat. Feral Rush can also root enemies so you can catch slippery foes. You can also make the Hatchet a throwing weapon, which adds a ranged option to your setup. One downside is that both weapons have relatively short-ranged melee attacks, making it difficult to Backstab-crit against bosses with another melee present.
  3. Sword and Shield. This combination is mostly about tanking and applying Rend for your DPS to increase overall damage. It takes two weapons that scale well with Strength, using the best skills from both skill trees. With these two weapons, you can switch between attacking and defending in a pinch. One downside would be that you have no movement ability, and it’s neither the hardest hitter nor the tankiest tank.
  4. Life Staff. War Hammer provides several crowd control options for the Life Staff user. This combo is all about preventing your foes from doing anything while you continuously heal up. One downside of this combo is the lack of movement skills. For this setup, you would scale Focus instead of Strength and then use an Amber gem to change some of the damage scaling to Focus. While this combination does less damage than a pure Strength setup, it is incredibly difficult to kill.
  5. Void Gauntlet provides great utility and lots of buffs and debuffs for you and your team. Single target build for solo play is also possible. Even more, it gives you the ability to cool down your skills fast.

FAQ

What is War Hammer used for in New World?

War Hammer has enough defense, area-of-effect attacks, and decent crowd control skills, but it is pretty slow with long cooldowns. Mainly it’s used as a secondary weapon for providing crowd control and more utility for your group.

Which attributes do I need for War Hammer in New World?

Strength for more damage and Constitution for surviving.

Which armor should I wear with War Hammer in New World?

Whatever you need most, mobility or defense, but usually players prefer medium or heavy armor. You can mix different armor parts and find armor combinations that fit your own playstyle best.

What is the best secondary weapon for War Hammer?

Every weapon has its own preferences and can change your War Hammer build. You can use Sword and Shield for tanking, Hatchet for PvE farming, Great Axe for mass PvP, or Life Staff Focus build to kill elite monsters.

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