The musket is one of 11 weapons that are currently usable in Amazon’s MMO New World. And as one of two physical ranged weapons, it serves as one of the highest damage ranged options.
If you’re experienced in shooting games, the aim required to do well with this weapon will give you an advantage over the typical MMO veteran.
Unlike most MMOs, New World requires players to aim and shoot at enemies instead of just having casts that automatically target. Parts of the musket’s Mastery Tree can turn your strong aim into some of the highest throughput in the game, too.
When considering the best possible build for a musket, it’s important to consider four aspects of your character: personal attributes, weapon mastery, equipped armor, and second weapon.
In New World, every player has five core attributes. Each weapon is made to work well with a particular attribute (or even two).
Meanwhile, your weapon mastery determines what active and passive abilities your character has when using a specific weapon.
Lastly, your character can equip up to two weapons at a time, so it’s important to think about what other weapon might pair well with what you’re using.
Here’s everything you need to know to put together the best musket build in New World.
Personal attributes
The musket benefits most from Dexterity, but its secondary attribute is Intelligence. For this reason, you’ll want to load up on as much Dexterity as you can early in your leveling process.
From there, you’ll be able to move into Constitution or Intelligence once you’ve hit 300 Dexterity. Because this build isn’t as tanky as others, it will behoove you to put some of your stats into Constitution, which is effective health. This will give you more survivability.
Second weapon and armor
The musket can work with a range of other weapons and benefits from the same stats are more than half the weapons in the game at this time.
There’s a lot of flexibility you have in picking a second weapon, but selecting one that can help you create distance from your enemy is key. Additionally, having a weapon that can provide debuffs is helpful.
Recommended secondary weapons include the rapier, ice gauntlet, and hatchet. All three can debuff your opponent, which synergizes with some talents in the musket Mastery Tree. Additionally, they can all either slow your enemy or help you get away from an opponent quickly.
Because you want to be out of range of your enemy, using light armor is extremely important as a musket player. Additionally, talents like Tactical Reload, which reloads your weapon when you dodge, will make barrel roll dodges highly effective. Those barrel rolls are only capable with light armor.
Weapon mastery
There are two things to consider when selecting your weapon mastery build. You can either load up on abilities that enhance your throughput based on your headshot accuracy or you can veer toward abilities that give you perks for debuffing or rooting a target.
The type of content you’re trying to do will ultimately decide what’s best for you. But no matter what you do, there are a few key abilities that you’ll want.
Powder Burn is the best opening ability you have as a musket player. Putting a damage-over-time effect on your enemy to start an engagement is great for both PvE and PvP.
Back It Up, Hustle, Energy Burst, and Tactical Reload are all passive abilities in the Trapper tree that will help you create and keep your distance from your enemy to set yourself up for your next overloaded shot.
From there, you have a lot of flexibility in terms of whether you’d like to take active abilities that provide crowd control or ones that maximize damage. Stopping Powder and Traps are both abilities that will help you keep your space or set you up for a headshot.
Everything else you select will depend largely on how much confidence you have in your ability to click heads. If you can consistently hit headshots, this build will give you some of the highest damage potential.
Otherwise, you might want to consider a build using more Trap abilities in conjunction with things like Empowering Weakness, Weakened Defense, and Kick ‘em When They’re Down.
