New World Beginners Guide: Getting Started in Aeternum

Like all games in the genre, Amazon's new MMO -- New World -- is huge. The mysterious island of Aeternum you've washed up on holds many secrets, and it's your job to uncover them.

This guide will serve as your starting point for your adventure, and covers everything from weapons and builds to trade skills and power leveling.

Contents

• Weapons, Skill Trees and Builds
• Trade Skills: Gathering,. Refining, and Craftng
• Understanding the Map
• Questing and Leveling Up
• Factions and Settlements
• Understanding Stats
• Resources and where to find them
• PvP
• Tips & Tricks

Weapons: Which to choose and how to build them

The first thing to understand is that unlike other MMOs, there are no classes to speak of. All players can equip all weapons, and create builds that suit their own playstyles. The variety comes from hot-swapping between two different weapons in battle, unlocking different abilities to use when off cooldown.

Each weapon comes with two skill trees that suit different styles. Each tree has three active abilities, and a range of upgrades and passive abilities. You will be able to select three abilities from these six to use in battle.

As players kill mobs using a particular weapon, it will gain experience and level up. Each time you gain a level, you'll get a point to spend in the skill trees.

Early on in the game you can respec your weapon for free, but once the weapon reaches level 10, you'll have to pay an Azoth cost that increases with each respec.

Grab your tools and harvest away!

Another trope from the genre, gathering resources and crafting items plays a huge part in New World.

There are three types of Trade Skill, the game's name for professions. Gathering skills provide the raw materials, Refining skills turn them into usable components, and Crafting skills give you the end products, such as weapons, armor, and consumables.

Almost everything you can see can be harvested, from the vast forests of trees and bushes and all their animal inhbitatants, to almost all boulders and stones you come across. Then there are the nodes, such as metal veins, plants, and fishing hotspots that provide rarer items -- although you can fish in any body of water.

We'd highly recommend going off the beaten track and collecting as much as you can during your questing, and depositing your finds in the Storage Sheds found in Settlements.

Leveling up your professions is going to be an almighty grind, and you'll need all the resources you can get!

Here are the tools of the trade.

Trade Skills: Choosing to focus or leveling all

Thanks to the sheer cost of leveling your trade skills in terms of resources needed, it's always advised to focus on one or two rather than going full tilt with all of them. However, in a game that strives for choice, it really is up to you -- there's no real penalty other than time spent.

As such, it's a good idea to level all of your gathering skills, even if you're not planning on using the materials to craft -- base resources will always prove to be lucrative on the Trading Post!

For the refining trades, focus on those that will be most useful to your chosen crafting trade. For example, if you're planning on being a high-level Armorer, then Smelting will be most optimal to go with the ores you get from Mining.

As for crafting trades, there's a host of possibilities. Whether you focus on which syngergises best with your chosen weapons and playstyle or the needs of your Company (New World's guild system), there's always that flexibility to change if needs be.

Ultimately, everything in New World has layers -- they all require one another at some point, and trade skills aren't as black and white as in games such as World of Warcraft. As mentioned previously, the only thing that really limits you is time, so if you want to max out all trade skills, go right ahead!

Gathering Trade Skills

Refining Trade Skills

Crafting Trade Skills

Understanding Aeternum and the Map

When you first begin your adventure in the land of Aeternum, you'll start off in one of three starting zones -- First Light, Monarch's Bluff, or Windsward. You'll run through a series of introductory quests which are designed to teach you the basics of the game and get to know the world you now inhabit.

Aeternum is divided into fourteen Territories. Eleven of those have Settlements, towns which serve as a hub for activity, quests and more, and Forts, which serve as the flashpoint for PvP conflict. Territories can be controlled by one of the three different Factions, with a system of Influence and Wars that decide that control.

All things considered, Aeternum is a vast land. You will be able to fast travel to Settlements, and there are Spirit Shrines that serve as checkpoints in all regions. Fast travel will cost you Azoth, a special currency, and you can use one Settlement as a base for your Recall ability. There's a lot of travelling involved in New World, so be prepared to run if you're out of the Azoth resource.

Purchasing property in a Settlement will add an extra recall point, and in theory you can have property in all Settlements. Just be prepared to save a lot of gold to pay for them! Your first house will cost 5,000 Gold, but after that, prices scale.

However, traversing Aeternum manually isn't all bad -- you can use the time to gather valuable resources that lie between you and your destination.

Here is the map showing Territories and their Settlements and Spirit Shrines:

Quests, quests everywhere...

There are five main types of quest in New World:

• Main Quest
• Side Story
• Legendary Quest
• Town Projects
• Faction Mission

Naturally, questing takes up the majority of time, mostly for PvE players. Main Quests follow a story, and take you all over Aeternum, while Side Stories offer a little more insight into the lore of each Territory and its denizens. A Legendary Quest will offer a valuable prize, such as the lengthy Legendary Fishing Pole quest chain.

Town Projects and Faction Missions serve similar purposes in upgrading Settlements and vying for control of a Territory. While Town Projects are designed to level up the various workstations in a town, Faction Missions will grant you reputation and unlock higher tier benefits within your chosen Faction, as well as helping your faction's Standing. Faction Missions can be either PvE or PvP, with three available at a time.

Make sure to pick up everything you can. In New World, it's impossible to miss quests, as they will show up on the map when available, marked with a yellow pin. Hovering over the pin on the map will give you an overview of the quest and the giver, so just go speak to them to get started.

Naturally, some quests are gated behind others, meaning you'll need to follow the chain in order to unlock them.

Factions & Settlements

There are three Factions in New World: Syndicate, Marauders, and Covenant. Early on in the main story you'll be asked to choose one of them.

Eleven of the fourteen Territories can be controlled, and Settlements will gain bonuses for the ruling Faction.

Territories with Settlements are:

• First Light
• Restless Shore
• Mourningdale
• Brightwood
• Ebonscale Reach
• Windsward
• Monarch's Bluffs
• Weaver's Fen
• Cutlass Keys
• Reekwater
• Everfall

Three Territories are without Settlements and cannot be controlled:

• Shattered Mountains
• Edengrove
• Great Cleave

When you level up in a Territory, you'll gain a choice of bonus that applies whenever you're in that region. These include increased experience, faster gathering speeds, higher storage, and more.

Check out our guides for more info.

Understanding the statistics

As with most MMOs, stats are the name of the game in min-maxing your character's potential.

There are different ways to increase your power level, across weapons, gear, and base statistics.

Base Statistics

You'll be granted three points to spend on your base statistics each time you level up. They cover the following. They are directly tied into the potential of categories of weapons or your character's survivability

• Strength -- primarily melee weapons
• Dexterity -- primarily ranged weapons
• Intelligence -- primarily magic weapons
• Focus -- primarily mana and healing
• Constitution -- primarily Health

Weapons

Increasing stats on weapons is possible through baking Perks into your weapons when you craft them, as well as adding gems if the weapon has an available slot. Spending Azoth when crafting increases the chances of them having a better Gear Score.

Check out our guides on weapon builds to learn about weapon types and how to spend your stat points.

Armor

Armor consists of two types of Armor Rating: Physical and Elemental. Physical obviously deals with physical attacks, while Elemental concerns protection against magic attacks.

As with weapons, you can bake Perks into armor pieces for added bonuses, and gem slots can house even more benefits.

Be mindful that all gear, whether weapons, armor, or gathering tools, has a durability level. Once it depletes to zero it will break, and you will lose all of its stats. Repair the item using Repair Parts, which you can get from salvaging gear you pick up and don't use or sell.

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Where to find Resources

As mentioned earlier, collect everything you can. You'll certainly need it for leveling up trade skills, but also in creating the various other items you need for your adventure such as buff food.

In order to find specific resources easier, consult an interactive map!

PvP or PvPvE?

PvP is a massive part of New World, and one of the core facets Amazon considered when developing the game. As such there's a variety of PvP content on offer, aimed at keeping players regularly engaged.

• Duels
• Open-World PvP
• Faction Wars
• Outpost Rush

Duels and Open-World PvP

Duels and open-world PvP are pretty standard 1v1 battles that you can engage in, depending on whether you are flagged for PvP. The difference between the two is that Duels must be initiated manually, whereas open-world PvP means anyone can kill you at any time once outside a safe zone.

Contributing to open-world PvP, such as storming a Fort, contributes to your Faction's control of a Territory. Controlling a Territory will grant you buffs specific to that region.

Faction Wars

Wars are initiated slowly. Firstly, a challenging Faction must build up its influence in a Territory to the point where the region officially enters Conflict, and that challenger can declare War on the Faction currently in control.

A 50v50 battle, the challengers will take part in a Seige of that Territory's Fort. Players must sign up for War at the War Board located in that Territory's Settlement.

Outpost Rush

This is a PvPvE form of gameplay that takes place on a special island. Firstly, players must have reached level 60, and takes the form of a 20v20 battle.

Players will gather resources and capture objectives, all while battling (or avoiding) enemy players. The winners can receive Azoth, as well as Legendary gear.

General Tips & Tricks

• Search everywhere, whether buildings for the various supply crates or Settlements for quests. New World requires a lot of grinding and farming.
• This also applies to gathering resources. Log trees, skin animals, mine veins and boulders, and fish all hotspots you come across.
• Try not to take aggro from multiple mobs when questing. Even if you're around the same level or a little higher, they can quickly swarm you and kill you thanks to mechanics such as stagger.
• Empty your bags often, whether selling gear, salvaging it, or dumping it in a Storage Shed. Being encumbered means you walk super slowly, cannot fast travel, and cannot dodge attacks.
• Use the game's Unstuck option (in the Settings menu) to get out of a sticky spot should you find yourself trapped.
• Keep food buffs active at all times, for whatever purpose -- whether farming materials, killing specific categories of mobs, or heading into Expeditions.