As you level through New World you'll gain Territory Standing for the regions you quest through. Territory standing is an important aspect of not just the levelling experience, but also the end-game as you start to establish different settlements across the map as places you can live, craft, and excel in. Each level territory standing level grants passive buffs that seem useful, but which ones to take?
This guide will take you through the basics of what territory standing is, what level up buffs you have access to, and which ones you should be taking! What seems like a simple and unimportant choice can have a significant impact of your New World experience, and this guide should simplify the process.
Read More: New World: All Elemental Motes and Where To Find Them
What is Territory Standing
To put it simply, territory standing is an experience bar for each different region in New World. You gain territory standing by completing quests and community board missions in that region. So for example, if you wanted to earn territory standing in First Light, you should head to the settlement there and take on missions handed out in the town hall.
Every time you level up, you're provided with a selection of three passive buffs that only affect you in the region. You can only pick one of the three per level, so making sure you pick one most beneficial to you is important. You always get three different cards per level, but you always have access to the same pool of cards each time you level, meaning you can take multiple copies of the same buff if you want.
If you want to do this, bear in mind that each additional copy of a territory standing card provides diminishing returns, so after a while it may not be worth choosing additional copies of the same buff.
What Options Do You Have?
You can choose between the following buffs each time you gain a level of territory standing:
- Increased XP gain
- Increased territory standing gain.
- Increased storage space
- Increased gathering speed
- Decreased crafting taxes
- Decreased trading fees
- Decreased property tax
- Increased number of items stored in your house
- Decreased cost of house ownership
- Increased number of faction tokens gained
As you can see, these buffs cover a wide range of aspects of your characters growth. All are without a doubt useful, but certain territory standing buffs are universally important for every type of players.
Which Ones Should You take?
This depends largely on what sort of focus you have in terms of endgame content, but there are some general rules that apply to everyone. Storage space increases are important for everyone, and is the closest to a 'must get' in the selection. Regardless of you focus, everyone can do with additional space to store crafting materials, potions, armour sets, and more.
On the other hand, experience gain is the worst purely because it ceases to matter once you hit max level. Buffs like crafting speed remain useful from level 1 to level 60 and beyond, but once you hit max level experience gain becomes irrelevant as there's no longer any experience to gain! If you only care about hitting max level as fast as possible, feel free to take it, but just know you're missing out.
Everyone wants a house, so any card that makes owning one cheaper is a safe bet. From there it's up to personal preference: if you're a fan of crafting then crafting taxes and gathering speed is fantastic. Trading fees decreasing is of course useful to those interested in making money. For PvP players faction tokens are a cool bonus that increases your rewards for PvP content.
The only one that is somewhat complicated is increases to territory standing. If you feel like you're going to push the territory standing in a particular region up all significantly, then it's of course worth taking these. If it's in a region you don't care about... you'd likely be better served with gathering speed or a reduction in fees and taxes.
Now you've read our guide on territory standing, you should be more comfortable choosing the buffs as you level through the various areas around New World. If you'd like to learn more about attribute points, another super important part of the levelling journey in New World, check out our attributes guide. If you want to hit max level as quick as possible, check out our leveling guide!