New World Guide: The Best Builds for Every Class

New World presents a big, colorful world with lots of things to do, such as adventuring quests, dungeons to explore, and several different weapon classes. With 12 types of weapons that go from a melee and ranged combat focus to a magic or healing approach, we can talk about optimized builds to make the most of them, depending on what do you want to play.

How do builds work in New World?

First and foremost, you need to keep in mind that New World introduces 12 different weapons. Those weapons level up the more you use them, independently from your character level and stats attributes, and up until level 20, the game lets you re-specialize attribute points and weapon class points whenever you want. This will allow you to try different weapons and have early impressions of their skills before deciding on a set path, something that no MMO really does these days, which is nice to see.

Every weapon class will scale its attributes relying on one or two character attributes. For example, the Rapier will scale with Dexterity and Intelligence, while the Flame Staff will scale only with Intelligence, and the Bow only with Dexterity. That, complemented with multiple weapon skill trees per category, gives you access to multiple approaches at the moment of building a character, whether you try to make a hybrid DPS or rely on a sole attribute and build upon that.

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The Best Builds In New World

We’re now going to disclose the best builds in New World. We’re talking about a Build for Solo play and early leveling, and then four more builds focused on different aspects of a multiplayer team, being a Tank, Healer, and two kinds of DPS builds. While you're here, you can also check our useful Weapons List and Weapon Perks guides if you want to make your own builds.

Solo Leveling Build

For this build, given that the offensive weapon options will rely primarily on Strength, that's where the majority of the points will be located, followed by a minor amount of Focus to boost the life staff effectiveness, and Constitution to have enough sustain in battle. Both the Hatchet and the Warhammer are incredibly powerful, so you should develop just fine in combat while also being able to heal yourself if things get spicy.

Tank Build

For a Tank setup, two weapons that work perfectly are Sword and Shield, and Warhammer. Since they share the same focused Attribute you can comfortably invest your points in Strength first and foremost, and give some love to Constitution too, so you can hold your ground in battle. Changing from one weapon to the other helps you to adapt to different fights since the Warhammer hits harder but is also slower than the sword, and you want to be able to block attacks in certain circumstances.

Physical DPS Build

Both the Rapier and Musket are weapons with really fun gameplay that doesn't make them any less strong than the other weapons. The idea is to take care of enemies from afar with the Musket and rely on the Rapier for close combat encounters if everything else fails. You want to invest mainly in Dexterity with a few bits on Constitution to get some buff or a fair share of Intelligence in case you want to go hybrid and bring a magic weapon.

Mage DPS Build

For this build, the weapons of choice are Intelligence-based ones, the Flame Staff and Ice Gauntlet. Depending on the Skill tree you choose, they can get an enormous amount of Synergy in combat, with the Builder tree of the Ice Gauntlet being the perfect assistance while you obliterate enemies using the Fire Mage abilities of the Flame Staff. Don't forget to throw a few points to Constitution so you can hold your ground enough in the field.

Healer Build

Since the Life Staff only scales with Focus (which is your main stat for this build), you want to make a setup that benefits from those boosts to mana, so it's only adequate that you use a weapon like the Ice Gauntlet as a secondary weapon, supported by its Builder skill tree. Of course, the skill tree of choice for the Life Staff is the Healing one, and while having the Ice Gauntlet will require some points in Intelligence, they're completely worth it.

And that's it, now you know everything you need to build your character in New World! While you're here, you can also check our useful guides on every Animal, Mineral, and Fungi Locations!