Going into New World MMO’s end game content: Expeditions?

Learn how to become a good team mate with The Tank Club’s Expedition Etiquette Guide!

The reason for this guide is to hopefully guide people to becoming better team mates when doing group PvE content in the New World MMO!
Not everyone has a wealth of experience playing MMO games and New World may well be the first time you have dived into an MMO game and decided to go into group content.

There are a few things that you can do to help make Expeditions more enjoyable for everyone and you should also see increase success when attempting to complete them.

Learn to Tank with our New World Tank Guide and join the conversation on The Tank Club Discord

1. Communication
This is an MMO game with group content, it’s always nice to drop a hello in the chat and be social. When doing harder content be prepared to have voice chat available so you can follow any mechanics, strategies or directions from your Tank.

2. Let people know if you don’t know mechanics at the start or start your own lobby
I’m sceptical to mention this because a large portion of the New World players I’ve encountered have little patients to guide or help players. The problem is if you try to just jump in not knowing what to do you’re likely to get kicked because people want to rush through and speed run every time. There doesn’t seem to be many people who like to teach mechanics or help new players progress but if you create a lobby with a name that its a learning run or something then you might find more patient group members.

3. Don’t do Mutated version of Expeditions until you know the base level mechanics after multiple runs of normal
You are going to want to complete an expedition a few times before you even consider mutated. When doing mutated versions, the difficulty is upgraded, new mechanics and damage are added and you need to know how to complete the basic version to a good standard before you take on the higher difficulty level. When doing mutated version you need to come prepared making sure you have enough gear score, wards, banes and consumables that are effective against the enemy type you are fighting.

4. Don’t run ahead of your group or your Tank
There are almost no situations in New World PvE content where it’s beneficial to run ahead of your group. By running into combat first you’re guaranteed to pull aggro of enemies and make it harder for the Tank to generate threat and pull them permanently away from you. You’ll disrupt the positioning and the ability to stack the enemies so they can be killed easier, so you’ll actually make things slower.

5. Let Tank pull enemies…
Are you a Tank? No? Then do not start combat! To a seasoned MMO player this is pretty obvious but if you are new then stay back. Your Tank is the beefy guy who’s usually holding a shield and built to take damage. The main job of these guys is to protect you so you can safely do damage or heal. You make everyone’s life miserable when you pull enemies and don’t let the Tank do it, the positioning of enemies becomes a mess, the taunting of enemies becomes harder and you’ll quite often die.

6. Stack on ranged enemies
New World has a system for aggroing enemies that is based upon threat so whoever has the highest threat against an enemy will be they one they target. There are also not many ways to pull and stack enemies especially over larger distances. When you are in a room with enemies spread out, especially ranged enemies, the priority is for the group to stack on those ranged enemies in most cases and then the Tank should bring any melee enemies and stack them on top. Easy as that.

7. If you’re being chased by a loose enemy, run to the Tank
Tanks in New World only have 2 or 3 Taunt skills slotted and these also have long cooldowns. This means that a Tank has to try to stack enemies and then deal damage and do abilities to them to keep them aggroed. If you are being chases by one enemy then it’s not really going to be possible for the Tank to run over and grab it, its not quite that simple because if a tank is chasing down 1 enemy it will likely both mess up the stack of enemies and they will begin to lose aggro so the best thing you can do is run over to the Tank so they can hit that enemy and attempt to generate threat to aggro it.

8. Stand behind enemies
The collision in this game is a problem and it makes it hard to Tank bosses especially due to the position changes happening constantly because of the collision. Always make sure you are alert and maintaining position BEHIND enemies, especially bosses.

9. Healers: don’t place down ground healing until after a few seconds into fight
A LOT of healers make the mistake of running into a fight and immediately placing all of their ground area heals down, but why? By doing this you are instantly making life difficult for yourself and your group, you’ll instantly generate the highest threat of enemies and they will B-line straight for you. Let the Tank run in, gain control of the fight and place down your heals once people have actually received some damage.

10. Being hit by an archer or mage, run behind or past the tank so it comes into the enemy stack
It’s the Tanks job to control the fight but sometimes its hard when there are ranged enemies all over a big room, especially a boss fight. When this happens, you can line of sight an enemy by running past the Tank. The enemy will chase you and run into the stack or move near to the Tank or the boss and this makes it possible for the Tank to easily aggro the enemy and your group kill it fast.

11. Don’t stand there soloing 1 enemy, come to the group so we can AoE everything
Some group members love to stand there killing one lonely enemy, but don’t do that, always follow your group. It’s far more efficient to follow the group and stack up enemies so they can be killed with area damage meaning you can kill multiple things at one time rather than slowly killing everything 1 by 1.

12. If you run around separated, you can’t be healed
Tanks have limited cooldowns on taunt skills and healers have cooldowns on their healing abilities. Try to stay stacked up as much as you can with your other group members and when you take damage, look for the green circles on the ground to get healed. A healer cannot chase you around to heal you especially if everyone is spread out. By being away from your group and a healer prioritising to heal you can lead to deaths of other groups members and this is problem especially if its the Tank that dies!