New World is hosting a Preview session until September 4th that allows players to experience what the game looks like currently. Starting the game is relatively straightforward with the tutorial teaching you all of the basics of fighting, crafting, and gathering. However, there are several crucial tips that can make your life much, much easier.
See our continued beginner tips guide here.
1. Craft the Coarse Leather Satchel
The tutorial will provide you with a basic satchel that can improve your encumberance by a small amount. However, the first craftable leather satchel can increase your encumberance by 1000 – roughly translating to carrying 100 more item weight.
This will greatly improve how long you can harvest/gather raw materials for before having to go back to a settlement. With how long it takes to actually move around in this game, this will alleviate the headaches that you will end up facing. One other benefit is that using this satchel will ensure that you don’t run out of space from gathering random things on your way between settlements. You won’t have to throw out any materials just to make room for the iron deposit you just found.
2. Level “Harvesting” to 30
Regardless of which skill you want to dedicate time to in the future, levelling up Gathering to 30 allows you to collect from plants that provide Motes (and higher level versions of Motes). This plays a role in crafting gunpowder, lifestaff, firestaff, and many more. Keeping a healthy stockpile of motes is infinitely easier if you can just collect whichever ones you end up seeing when travelling between points. Gathering can be rapidly increased by gathering herbs and hemp.
3. Use wells in towns for Water
You don’t have to run all the way outside to the nearest stream for freshwater. All towns (as far as I know) have a well either inside it or just outside. This saves you a ton of valuable time if you are mass-crafting potions and need a reasonably close source. Using the town well will also remove the need for storage space dedicated to water.
4. Items placed into storage can still be used for crafting
Feel free to dump all of your gathered resources into the storage at your main settlement. Occasionally it will glitch and say that you don’t have a certain resource, but it is easily fixed by picking it up and putting it back again. It is a great quality of life measure that helps with improving item organization. Keep in mind that once you craft new items, the new items are now in your inventory. You will have to get into a habit of dumping everything as soon as you get back and making another trip to the storage before you leave again.
It is important to know that each settlement has its own unique storage. If you decide to move to a different city, you will have to bring all of your resources with you. One way to overcome this is to always set your “Inn” at the same city that you have all of your resources. Choose your city very carefully as well – usually one of the ones in the middle of the map are the most popular.
5. Craft Iron tools
Tier 2 tools are very easily accessible early game. These improved tools will speed up the gathering process much more than basic tools and there really is no reason not to craft them. Once you get to the first settlement, you can easily create a set of these tools just from resources you pick up on the way.
6. Push to level 30 before grinding Tradeskills
By the time you hit Level 30, you will have experienced enough of the game to know more about what you want to dedicate your time to. I initially really liked the magic in this game and spent half the day grinding out gathering and arcana only to realize that I enjoyed the sword/shield and smithing aspect much more. One other benefit is that Level 30 is when you unlock a second satchel spot. This increases your max weight to 400 (without other bonuses) and can help a ton with actually grinding.
At the same time, definitely explore as much as you can about the different available skills. Try out everything before you commit, but don’t feel the need to actually grind things out until later on in the game.
7. Join a Company
New World is definitely a group-based MMO that has amazing benefits for those who decide to party up. EXP is not currently split between team members, and having a group of people to play with helps you all progress extremely fast. Instead of killing mobs one-by-one, a group of you can take down multiple mobs at the same time. As long as you get at least one hit in, you will receive EXP. Many of the missions are also “Kill X amount of monsters” type quests, and landing a single hit on the mob will give you credit. Joining a Company is the easiest method for you to find a group of players to explore the game with.
8. Specialize Refining within the Company
Once you join a Company that you like, talk amongst yourselves and dedicate yourselves to specific refining roles. This tip is NOT meant to be restrictive – it just helps a ton with crafting and avoids frustrations. For context, the Auction House in game at the moment is not very well-populated with resources. To craft a Tier 3 Steel Sword, you need Tier 2 Leather, Tier 2 Wood and Tier 2 Ingots (Steel). If your company gets organized and splits up the trades, everyone will be able to craft whichever item they wish.
One added benefit is if you have a funneling agreement with a small group of Company members, you can each level up your respective refining skills much, much quicker.
9. Keep equipment that has bonuses to Trade Skills
In your journey you will find equipment that has certain bonuses like “increase chance of obtaining rare resource when logging by 2.5%”. Even if you do not think you need it now, having a full set of these bonuses in any Trade Skill will be very useful. Specifically for mining, it enables you to gather Gems that you can later refine and place into sockets. Without it, it is much more difficult to find these resources.
Another reason to keep them is that it is difficult to craft the ones you specifically want. Crafting an item with a specific perk requires you to add on an ingredient that has that trait. These items are obtained by gathering the related resources. It can take a long time to grind for the specific one you are looking for and it is much easier just to hang onto them as soon as you see them.
10. Scrap everything you don’t need
For beginners, the drops you get in the early game aren’t worth very much. You very likely won’t be able to sell them to other players and there currently is no way to sell them to an NPC. If you don’t need it (and it doesn’t have a Trade Skill boost as mentioned in Tip #9) then you should scrap it for materials. You will always need the extra resources it provides and will actually be of use to you rather than being thrown out.
11. Resources spawn in the same location
Once you find a useful resource, make a mental note of it or make a note of it on a PDF of the map. Alternatively, you can refer to this map here since it appears to have most of the resources annotated already. Crafting in New World requires using the previous tier as materials. For example, crafting a Steel ingot requires Iron ingots. This means that all of the basic resources like Iron and Oil will be in demand no matter where you are in the game. Making a note of where to find resources will be important to reducing wasted time.
12. Always have Food and Potions
It is incredibly easy to have food up 24/7 since you have the ability to set a camp virtually anywhere and there are turkeys all over the place. The basic boost to constitution and the constant heal from food is valuable to reducing downtime.
Having a supply of potions is likewise very simple once you collect a few herbs and some water. Potions can be used to quickly regain some health, but it does take some time to actually use. Unfortunately, if you are playing alone then it may be difficult to find a time in the middle of combat to chug a potion. However, if you are playing with a group then this minimizes your down time and enables your entire group to continue grinding.
13. Take it slow and enjoy the game
Try to take a step back and just enjoy the game for what it currently is. I personally really like the Trade Skills aspect of New World – I definitely spent more time crafting and gathering than I did actually doing quests. Every player will enjoy a slightly different aspect of the game, but do explore as much as you can before committing to a certain playstyle.
Conclusion
I hope that this guide has helped some of the new players transition into the game a little better. The game is currently not perfect by any means, but still has a ton to offer to the average player. If you have any feedback, definitely let me know in the comments below!
For more beginner tips, see our continued guide here. Any players interested in joining Wars are encouraged to see our Beginner War Guide here.
Please follow me on Twitter here for updates on guides and other beginner tips/tricks 🙂