New World: How Professions, Skills & Crafting Work in the Amazon MMO

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‎In the settlements of New World you practice professions and craft equipment for yourself and your comrades‎

Crafting plays an important role in the MMO New World. We explain how crafting works and how skills and professions are related to it.

New World doesn’t really see itself as a role-playing game, but it has a lot going for it. For it is precisely when you settle on a certain way of playing that you can immerse yourself deeply in the game world of Aeternum. This is made possible not least by crafting and skills, which you can use to tailor your hero to a role or profession – but you don’t have to.

Here we give you an overview of what crafting, skills and professions look like in the MMORPG and what influence they have on the game. If you want to delve deeper, you should read our guide on the topic:

New World Crafting Guide: Everything you need to know about professions and item crafting

This is what crafting and professions are all about

Do I have to choose?

In addition to your “job” as an adventurer and warrior, in New World you can also take up a profession outside of the battlefield. Whether or not you pursue only one depends on your willingness to role-play and is voluntary.

In the MMO, you may pursue all activities in parallel without disadvantage. If you concentrate on individual ones, however, you will quickly improve, which will allow you to produce high-quality products and equipment. At the highest level, this should even be able to hold a candle to Endgame Gear.

What advantages do professions bring?

High-quality self-crafted equipment is of course an obvious bonus of a specialisation. However, PvE players in particular benefit from such a focus: they become a valuable part of mass PvP battles without having to participate in them themselves – for example, they can supply their comrades with materials and weapons from the settlement.

How do I practice a profession?

You look for the appropriate raw materials and mine them, refine them or process the materials. Professions are thus divided into three categories: Gathering, Refining and Manufacturing. As in Skyrim, you level up the skill by performing it – so if you chop a lot of wood, you automatically become better and gain more or higher quality resources than inexperienced woodsmen.

You increase such civilian skills completely independently of combat or your character level.
You increase such civilian skills completely independently of combat or your character level.

Collect

With the gathering skill or a gathering profession, you harvest special crafting raw materials:

  • Miner: Stone and Ores
  • Furrier: Animal Skins
  • Lumberjack: Wood
  • Angler: Fish
  • harvesters: fibres, fruits and vegetables

To do this, you must first find the necessary resources, which is helped by an interactive map. You will also need to make a tool such as an axe in advance. You can do this at your campfire anywhere in the world.

Refining

Refining skill, or a refining profession, gives you the ability to turn these raw materials into manufacturing materials:

  • Smelter: Ores into ingots
  • Stonemasons: Stone into blocks – they also cut gems that upgrade your weapons.
  • Woodworkers: Raw wood to wood
  • Tanners: rawhide to leather
  • Weaver: Fibres to cloth

This works at crafting stations in settlements where you put the respective raw materials.

Crafting

The end of the crafting chain is formed by players with a crafting skill or a crafting profession, who build powerful items from the materials:

  • Weaponsmith: Melee Weapons
  • Armor Forge: Armours
  • Jewel Cutter: Jewellery
  • Engineers: Ranged weapons and ammunition
  • Arcanists: potions, tinctures and magic weapons
  • Cooks: Food and drink
  • Carpenters: Furniture, storage items and trophies for your homes

You can also do this at crafting stations with the appropriate raw materials in hand.

You can find such crafting stations in settlements.
You can find such crafting stations in settlements.

No classes: This is what the skills bring

How does character progression work in the MMO?

There are three types of skills in New World. The “Trade Skills” mentioned above cover everything away from combat – for example, gathering or crafting. You level them up by performing the activity. Core Attributes determine your general character traits, such as strength, and are the closest thing to regular skills. You invest points as you level up.

Weapon Mastery refers to your weapons. The more often you use them, the more points you unlock, which in turn open up new active and passive abilities in combination with the weapon via the skill tree. This is where the actual classes of New World are hidden.

What’s behind the basic attributes?

You start the MMO with five points in each category and as you level up you are allowed to invest one more point in Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Focus or Constitution. You know it from other role-playing games. In general, you increase your damage with the different types of weapons, your mana supply and your health.

The maximum level is 60 and the characteristics can also be increased by weapons, armour and jewellery. If you want to redistribute points, you should do so sooner rather than later. This costs money and the price increases with each level.

We know this from other RPGs. But New World gets exciting with the weapons, which bring their own skill trees.
We know this from other RPGs. But New World gets exciting with the weapons, which bring their own skill trees.

What’s the deal with weapons and talent trees?

In New World, there are no character classes – instead, your skill points go directly into your favourite weapons. This should motivate you to try out many play styles and perhaps use weapons in unusual ways. An axe, for example, does not necessarily have to be used for close combat – you can also equip it with axe-throwing skills and use it as a ranged weapon from a safe distance.

The weapons in New World are divided into one-handed, two-handed, ranged and magic weapons. You can learn up to 19 skill points and use them to activate six active and around 30 passive skills in two different talent trees per weapon.

Two skill trees can be upgraded per weapon - but never both to 100 percent.
Two skill trees can be upgraded per weapon – but never both to 100 percent.

You always equip two weapons in parallel – for example a sword and a bow. You can then switch between them at the touch of a button. Instead of using a whole bar of skills, as in WoW and the like, you only use three different skills per weapon in the active combat system. An unusual step for an MMO.

If you’re venturing into unknown MMO territory even in the Open Beta, our guides will also help you in word and deed:

New World Beta Guide:Tips to help you get started in Amazon’s MMO