Welcome to The Tank Club’s New World Tanking Guide!
In this comprehensive guide, we will provide you with all the necessary information to become a successful tank in the New World MMO.

Tanking in New World offers a unique experience compared to other MMORPGs. As a tank, you’ll be expected to play a hybrid role, combining tankiness with damage dealing. The game’s skill-based action combat system means that you’ll rely more on dodging and evading damage rather than simply blocking it.

It’s important to note that New World presents certain challenges for tanks, making it one of the least accessible games for this role. The developers intentionally designed threat and aggro mechanics to be difficult, making it challenging to control enemy positioning. Additionally, the collision system can be problematic, causing bosses to push you around and break through your character. This means that you’ll need to rely on dodging attacks to maintain your position effectively.

Being a good tank in New World heavily depends on the cooperation and support of your group. A capable healer and attentive damage dealers who follow your instructions on enemy focus and stacking are crucial for your success. Unfortunately, these factors may sometimes be out of your control.

Despite the challenges, tanking plays a vital role in group content in New World. Tanks are needed for 5-person group activities like Expeditions and Arenas, while raids and larger group content often require multiple tanks. Mastering the tank role will open up numerous opportunities for you, as tanks are a rare breed in New World, likely due to the aforementioned challenges.

In the following sections of this guide, we will delve into various aspects of tanking in New World, including attributes, weapon choices, armor selection, tanking strategies and more. It’s essential to note that this is not a specific Tank build; instead, it’s a comprehensive guide on how to effectively tank in New World. By following our advice and adapting to the unique demands of New World, you’ll increase your chances of becoming a successful tank in this thrilling MMO.

Let’s get started on your journey to becoming an awesome tank in New World!

Useful Links:

• New World Tank Build
• New World Beginner Tank Build
• The Tank Club Discord

When it comes to attributes for tanking in New World, your primary focus should be on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. To achieve the desired stats, there are several steps you can take:

• Increase Gear Score: Aim to raise your gear score to 625. This will ensure that you have access to gear with the desired attributes.
• Gear Selection: Look for gear that provides the necessary stats for tanking. Prioritize items that offer bonuses to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution.
• Food Buffs: Utilize food that provides a boost to the specific stats you want to enhance. Look for consumables that increase Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution to further enhance your tanking capabilities.
• Attribute Allocation: Make sure to allocate your attribute points accordingly. Increase your Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution to maximize their benefits for tanking.

By following these steps and optimizing your gear, attributes, and food choices, you’ll be able to maximize the effectiveness of your tanking build in New World.

Strength

Boosting your damage output is essential for generating threat and maintaining aggro on enemies. Strength affects various tank-related weapons such as Longsword, Great Axe, War Hammer, Greatsword, Hatchet, and Spear. Additionally, strength-based milestone perks provide damage buffs.

Dexterity

While less commonly used than Strength, Dexterity can still be useful for tanks. Increasing your damage output helps in maintaining enemy aggro. Dexterity also benefits several tank weapons like Spear, Longsword, Hatchet, and Greatsword. However, it’s worth noting that at 150 points into Dexterity, you unlock cheaper dodging, reducing Stamina consumption by 10%. At 200 points, you gain bonus backstab and headshot damage, which is generally not useful for tanks since enemies will almost always be facing you.

Constitution

For newcomers to New World, Constitution is highly valuable. Each point in Constitution increases your maximum health, providing a buffer against mistakes and making it less likely for enemies to kill you. Constitution milestones offer significant benefits, such as stronger consumables, increased max health based on physical armor, reduced critical damage taken, increased physical and elemental armor, 60% damage reduction when at full health, and the essential GRIT for basic melee attacks. GRIT prevents stagger when using light and heavy attacks, allowing you to continue attacking without losing your position or being vulnerable. Since permanent blocking is nearly impossible for tanks, utilizing light and heavy attacks becomes crucial for managing stamina during combat.

This is the standard setup, allowing you to benefit from all the advantages of Constitution while also utilizing an effective damage stat for various tank weapon types. This is especially good for new players or when you are venturing into new and unknown content.

Alternatively: 300 CON + 211 DEX

As you advance in tanking, focusing more on damage becomes important. Reduce Constitution to 100-150, increase Dexterity to 150, and assign the remaining points to Strength or vice versa.

Remember, attribute allocation can vary depending on your playstyle and preferences. These suggested attribute setups serve as a starting point, and as you progress in tanking, you can experiment and adjust them accordingly.

Useful Link: New World Tank Build for information on perks, gems and more, which offers comprehensive insights and resources to help you optimize your tanking build.

When it comes to gear, it is recommended to use Heavy Armor to achieve a Heavy Equip Load, ensuring greater resilience as a tank. However, for experienced players with well organized groups, using Light or Medium Armor becomes an option for advanced tanking, allowing for score pushing and increased DPS.

Gear Perks

The primary gear perk to focus on is Ward gear. However, it’s important to note that Ward and Bane gear will be removed from the game in October. As a result, it is wise not to heavily invest in crafting or buying this gear at this stage. Instead, you can make use of easier-to-obtain gear to sustain your tanking until the changes take effect.

There are multiple types of Ward gear available, such as Ancient Ward, Angry Earth Ward, Beast Ward, Corrupted Ward, Human Ward, and Lost Ward. Each Expedition in the game features specific enemy types, and you should match your Ward gear to the corresponding Expedition for optimal effectiveness.

It is crucial to distinguish between Best in Slot (BiS) gear and easily obtainable gear. BiS gear typically includes perks that enhance your weapon abilities, such as Contagious Reverse Stab, Leeching Cyclone, and Relentless Freedom. These perks, combined with both the Ward perk and Refreshing, create BiS gear items. However, finding these items randomly through crafting or looting can be exceedingly challenging.

In terms of useful gear perks, prioritize Refreshing and alternative refreshing options, Elemental Aversion, Physical Aversion, Invigorated, Freedom, Vigor, and one piece of gear with Sturdy Energy.

For Shields and Amulets, Protection Perks can be utilized and are particularly beneficial. It is advisable to obtain multiple Amulets, each with a different protection perk, and switch them depending on the type of boss you are facing. Slash Protection, Strike Protection, Flame Protection, and Void Protection are among the most useful options.

To tank most effectively, a Tower Shield must have the Fortifying Shield Rush perk. Amulets should have Health, a Protection Perk, and Fortified is the best option when using Fortifying Shield Rush. Earrings should have the Refreshing Toast perk to reduce the cooldown of all potions. Rings with the Hearty perk are recommended to provide additional Max Stamina, enabling more blocking and dodging.

You can find guides on easy-to-farm Named Gear at these links:

• Ancient Ward Tank Gear
• Angry Earth Ward Tank Gear
• Corrupted Ward Tank Gear

These guides provide valuable information on obtaining gear that can be used throughout your progression, even up to M10 Expeditions. Gathering these easy farmable gear pieces will enable you to work towards acquiring BiS gear over time.

Heartrunes can provide significant additional benefits, and for Tanks, the best one to start with is the Stalwart Heartrune of Stoneform. This rune is excellent for new players or challenging boss fights, as it reduces the damage you take and provides an emergency heal, effectively bringing you from near-death back to full health.

Furthermore, the Brutal Heartrune of Grasping Vines is more group-oriented, as it applies Weaken and Rend as an area-of-effect to enemies, reducing the damage they deal and increasing the damage they receive. Combining this with other sources of Rend and Weaken ensures large uptimes, allowing your group to deal more damage.

While other heartrunes may become useful later on, these two are clearly beneficial for Tanks in most situations.

More information: Heartrunes.

There are many consumables you can use as a Tank to give you a range of different benefits when going into content.

• Trophies
• Food
• Potions
• Weapon Coatings
• Honing Stones
• Incense
• Oakflesh Balm
• Gemstone Dust

Trophies are items that can be stored in any owned houses that you have.

You can put 5 trophies in a house but only 1 of each specific trophy.

You can own 3 houses and you can stack 3 of the same trophies by using one in each house.

When going into end game content you should always make sure you are using the correct trophies to give you an extra advantage against the enemy type you’ll be fighting.

You need to make sure you are using food that will help you reach the Attributes mentioned earlier of either 300 STR/200 Con or 200 STR/300 CON. There are a number of options you can use but here are a few of the top foods to use.

• Roasted Gnufish [+40 STR]
• Roasted Rabbit with Seasoned Vegetables [+40 CON]
• Carrot Cake [+26 STR +16 CON]
• Turkey Thigh with Pan Gravy and Spiced Wild Berries [+24 CON +16 STR]

Potions once again will work in a similar fashion to the rest of your setup. You’ll use specific Ward Potions when in combat with a certain enemy type.

Infused Ward Potion
Increases damage absorption from x by 15% for 30 seconds or after receiving damage 15 times.

Use either Ancients, Angry Earth, Beast, Corrupted, Lost depending on what you are Tanking.

Potions have a 30 second cooldown but will be accessible more quickly if you use the Refreshing Toast perk on your Earring.

Potions have a different cooldown to Regeneration Potions, so it is possible to use things such as Health Regeneration Potions alongside your Ward Potions

Even as a Tank it’s worth also using Weapon Coatings which should be matched once again to the enemy type.

Infused Coating
USE: Apply to currently drawn weapon. Gives a maximal bonus to damage against enemy type. Lasts for 40 minutes or upon unequip, whichever comes first. Only one Coating may be applied to a weapon at a time. Coatings stack with Weapon Traits.

Use either Ancients, Angry Earth, Beast, Corrupted or Lost depending on what you are Tanking.

Since you are stacking damage sources you can add a Honing Stone to this as well. Make sure you are holding your weapons and it’s not sheathed and then you can apply it.

Honing Stone
Increases weapon damage by ?% for ? minutes.

• Weak – 4% for 25min
• Common – 5% for 30min
• Strong – 6% for 35min
• Powerful – 7% for 40min

We’ve already mentioned damage absorption above, if you want to reduce damage even more then you can try using Incense, Oakflesh Balm and Gemstone Dust. Each one does something different, so you don’t need to use all of them at the same time, but it can be worth carrying them to use at moments where they are needed.

In New World, there are various methods to reduce incoming damage and increase your survivability. One effective approach is to utilize Fortify skills and perks, which provide armor buffs however Fortify is capped at 50%.

A great way to setup us by using a Sword and Shield along with the Shield Rush ability with a Shield that has the Fortifying Shield Rush perk, and an Amulet with the Fortified perk. When you use Shield Rush, you gain a 33% armor boost for 8 seconds. The base cooldown for Shield Rush is 20 seconds, but this can be reduced by equipping gear with Refreshing perks or by using light attacks or reverse stab, allowing you to maintain nearly 100% uptime on the extra 33% armor.

When you combine this with gems and other absorption or armor buffs, you’ll easily be at the 50% cap.

Gems also play a role in reducing incoming damage. Using a full set of opal gems, combined with Fortify, can help you reach the resistance cap of 50% for all magic damage types. However, you can adjust your gem choices to suit your specific needs.

It’s important to note that when stacking damage absorption for certain Expedition Mutations and Raids, each individual resistance is effectively capped at 50%. If you already have 50% resistance to a specific damage type, gaining additional Fortify effects won’t provide further benefits for absorbing that particular damage. However, it will still enhance resistance to other damage types that are below the 50% cap.

The term “soft capped” is used because you can exceed the 50% resistance cap by combining resistance from perks and gems. For instance, using a Flame Protection Amulet, Flame Shield Ward on your Shield, and Ruby Gems in all eight gear pieces would result in around 68% Flame Resistance. However, this additional resistance only applies when stacking through those specific sources; adding Fortify to this setup wouldn’t provide any further benefits.

Certain bosses in the game deal significant damage of specific types. It’s wise to equip an Amulet with a protection perk matching the damage type inflicted by those bosses. For example, when facing bosses in Empyrium Forge, having Flame Resistance at 50% or more would be highly beneficial. Similarly, for bosses in Barnacles, stacking Slash Protection would provide the most advantage. A comprehensive list of bosses and recommended protection perks can be found here: New World Ward & Protection Article.

Potions and consumables can also contribute to damage reduction. If your resistances are below the cap, you can use Incense, Oakflesh Balm, or Gemstone Dust to further reduce enemy damage.

In New World, the Ward perks and potions play a crucial role in reducing damage from specific enemy types. However, it’s important to note that these mechanics will be removed from the game in October 2023. Until then, they remain essential for optimizing your Tanking performance.
Each PvE content area features specific enemy types, and you can use Wards to decrease the damage inflicted by those enemies. For example, during a Mutation 10 Ancient Expedition like Lazarus, enemies split their damage 50/50, with 50% of their damage being Ancient Damage. Using Ancient Ward perks and potions in this scenario provides a significant damage reduction. For lower Mutations, this value may be slightly less, but Wards still prove highly valuable for mitigating damage.

While these mechanics will eventually be removed, for now, it’s vital for Tanks to take full advantage of Wards to maximize their survivability and effectiveness in various PvE encounters.

It’s important to combine the appropriate Ward with other damage reduction sources. For instance, a Corrupted Expedition may involve bosses dealing Strike damage, so you would need both Strike reduction and Corrupted Ward sources. If you enter a Mutated Expeditions, you will have to contend with the additional effects for example a nature Mutation. In this senario you would require Corrupted Ward gear perks and potions, Strike Protection Amulet and Amber Gems for the Nature Ward for full coverage to maximize your damage reduction and ease your tanking experience.

It is not possible to permanently block as a Tank in New World. You have a Stamina bar that depletes when blocking or dodging and it also does not regenerate while blocking.

If you run out of Stamina while blocking, you become “Block Broken” meaning you are unable to block again for 3 seconds nor dodge.

Some bosses can fully deplete your Stamina bar with 2 attacks.

What this means is you need to be actively managing you Stamina resources.

How to manage Stamina:

• Hearty perk on Ring is vital and Sturdy/Sturdy Energy perks on your shield, all 3 will help a lot with Stamina sustain.
• Drop block when the enemy is not hitting you or doing an animation.
• Light Attack in between skill casts.
• “Heavy After a Heavy” follow up the bosses’ heavy attack by heavy attacking yourself.
• Use an Energizing Carnelian Runeglass Gem on your Sword.

Block Break

• When block is broken you can’t dodge or taunt for 3s.
• Stamina resets back to full after 3s.
• You cannot block at 0 Stamina.
• Stamina doesn’t regenerate while blocking.
• When releasing block, there is a 1s delay before Stamina is regenerated.
• Stamina regenerates when attacking.
• Default Stamina regeneration is 20 Stamina per second.

Article: Taunting & Threat.

To taunt an enemy as a Tank in New World you need a weapon that has a gem slot.

You then need a Carnelian gem; you need to cut it yourself or buy a cut gem.

With the Brimstone Sands update, you can further customise your Carnelian Gem by encasing it to get increased benefits.

Once you have both of these, you also need to be using a certain weapon type that has an ability that applies a Taunt.

Drag the Cut Carnelian gem onto the weapon with a gem slot to activate it.

In New World, the threat and taunt systems play a vital role. Aggro is obtained by the person with the highest threat level. Using a taunt skill instantly propels you to the top of the threat list. However, it’s important to generate sufficient threat before using a taunt, as once the taunt expires, if your base threat is not high enough, enemies may disengage from you.

If you’re facing challenges with threat generation, the first step is to ensure that your group members are working together rather than against each other. Healers should avoid pre-healing or using AoE healing before group members are in position and have received damage. It becomes impossible to maintain aggro when group members are scattered, causing enemies to spread out. In such cases, your DPS and taunt skills may not be enough to round up enemies from different corners of a room. When enemies are stacked together, you can utilize AoE crowd control, damage, and taunt skills to maintain control. Additionally, your group members can assist by using complementary skills, such as a Great Axe when you’re using a Warhammer, which can provide additional AoE crowd control or stacking abilities.

If you still struggle with threat generation, consider equipping an Earring with the Despised perk, as it provides a significant 146% increase in threat generation. Furthermore, make sure to use Pristine Carnelian Gems in your weapons, preferably without a casing, as this reduces the threat percentage, helping you maintain control over enemies more effectively.

The key to managing threat and aggro effectively is centered around group positioning and skilful ability rotation. As a Tank, you must lead the group into optimal positions and carefully time the usage of taunt skills, avoiding using them too closely together. Balancing light and heavy attacks within your rotation also plays a crucial role in maintaining control over enemy aggression. By honing these skills, you can assert your dominance as a Tank and keep the enemies firmly focused on you during encounters.

This is the icon that appears above the enemy health bar when an enemy has a physical taunt applied to it.

The only downside to following this icon is that you can see any debuffs applied to an enemy whether you applied it or someone else, so you might see this icon even when someone else has the enemy taunted.

You can maintain aggro of enemies even without a taunt by making sure you generate the most threat.

Methods of generating threat:

• Slotting a Carnelian Gem into a Weapon – This increases your base threat when you attack the enemy (varies depending on gem quality).
• Healing – You generate threat from healing equal to the amount of health that is healed by the spell used.
• Damage – Threat is generated by causing damage and the more damage you do the more threat that is generated.
• ‘Hated’ Gear perk – not usually needed when using a Pristine Carnelian but may be helpful for newer Tanks.
• ‘Despised’ Earring Perk – When struggling to maintain aggro, try this before everything else other than using a stronger Carnelian gem.

Carnelian Gems offer varied levels of threat depending on the quality of the gem you use.

• Cut Flawed Carnelian – generate +100% more threat.
• Cut Carnelian – generate +200% more threat.
• Cut Brilliant Carnelian – generate +250% more threat.
• Cut Pristine Carnelian – generate +300% more threat.

When using a Cut Pristine Carnelian, you should be able to maintain aggro of enemies without needing to use the Hated trait on your gear.

When you look at the enemy, if they have the grey outline around their health bar, you do NOT have them taunted or aggroed, so you either need to cause a taunt skill or you need to generate more threat.

When the health bar has the red outline such as this one, this is the indication that you have the enemy aggroed onto you. You’ll get this when you taunt an enemy with a taunt skill or when you’ve generated the most threat.

You should instigate combat by attacking the enemy with abilities or light and heavy attacks to generate threat and then cast your taunt skill. It’s also a good idea to be the first person into combat as enemies will usually target you if you’re first to be within range of them.

When you have aggro on an enemy, the nameplate will have a bright red highlight around it. Enemies also have a visible debuff above their health bar

Each enemy has its own threat table which means you need to make sure you are generating threat on everything even the enemies that might be stood outside of a stack since they may attack your group members.

Maintain threat and taunt by casting your taunt skills but making sure to spread them out, don’t cast them all back-to-back and then have no taunt available. Make sure you be light attacking enemies with your Sword especially, you should have the Refreshing perk on your Sword which will reduce your cooldowns but also help you to maintain threat. Light Attacking is also good with Hatchets and Great Axes but with War Hammers and Greatswords you’ll want to be Heavy Attacking.

Maintaining aggro of enemies is the most essential and challenging aspect of tanking in New World. It’s important to note that losing aggro is not always the tank’s fault but can result from the group’s positioning and lack of cooperation. As a tank in New World, you must take the lead and manage your group effectively. Failure to position correctly or follow instructions can lead to chaotic situations and rapid loss of aggro.

The basics of tanking involve always being ahead of the group, leading them into combat. Add pulls can be particularly difficult due to the game’s design, room layouts, and the spread of enemies, especially ranged foes. Typically, as a tank, you’ll run into a pack of adds, hitting each one with a light attack as you pass by. Then, you’ll focus on a specific ranged enemy, gathering all the other enemies around it. Ranged enemies are challenging to move effectively due to limited range on skills like Reap (which pulls enemies to you) or the faster and easier option of stacking on the ranged enemies themselves.

Once the enemies are stacked, use skills for taunting and crowd control as your group engages in combat. At this point, you should have the highest threat level and an active taunt. It is crucial that healers avoid placing AoE healing on the ground before you reach the final stacking position, as it will be wasted and can draw aggro away from you. Healers who prematurely cast AoE healing can create difficulties for tanks.

During add pulls, taunt abilities have limited durations, making it necessary to control enemies, deal significant AoE damage, and maintain threat. The War Hammer is exceptional for these scenarios. Skills like Shockwave are ideal as they stagger and stun enemies while taunting and applying debuffs, whereas Clear Out can be problematic as it pushes enemies away. Wrecking Ball is useful for smashing enemies into the ground, preventing them from escaping or dealing damage. With the Sword and Shield, Shield Rush staggers enemies, and Defenders Resolve provides an 8-second taunt, although it has a 45-second cooldown. Following up with Reverse Stab and light attacks, along with the refreshing move perk on your sword, can further reduce cooldowns.

In some cases, it may not be feasible to stack enemies using the method described above, especially when dealing with numerous ranged enemies. In these situations, you can direct your entire group to stack in a location where enemies cannot see you, such as behind a wall or obstacle. This forces the enemies to gather in a stack within your line of sight, allowing you to hit them with AoE abilities for aggro and crowd control while your group eliminates them.

Mini boss fights frequently occur during add pulls, posing challenges, particularly when dealing with ranged enemies. It is important to communicate with your group to stack the mini boss on the ranged enemies and ensure proper positioning. It’s sometimes also an option for group members to purposfully gain aggro of ranged enemies and then run away from them slightly so that they move on top of the boss, this then allows for the Tank to maintain a static position but aggro enemies as they get pulled within range of taunt, in these situations it’s ideal for the Tank to not burn through all taunt cooldowns too early in the fight.
When dealing with add pulls you realistically want to use the War Hammer as if it’s your main hand weapon because the abilities, passives and threat generation you’ll get are better than with other weapons.

Like in most MMORPGs, it is advisable to turn enemies away from your group once you have established aggro. This helps reduce cleave damage and allows your group members to take advantage of backstab or flanking damage boosts.

Boss fights require a different approach compared to add pulls. In New World, you cannot play as a traditional defensive tank by rotating cooldowns or solely relying on blocking attacks. Instead, you need to adopt an evasive tanking style, utilizing dodge to avoid damage rather than relying heavily on blocking. This aspect can be challenging for new players, as bosses unleash powerful attacks that require careful dodging. To maintain aggro, you must deal substantial damage between taunts to stay ahead of healers and damage dealers. Understanding boss mechanics and animations is crucial for successful dodging. Gaining this expertise comes from repeatedly engaging in boss fights and learning to recognize sound and animation cues, enabling you to anticipate and dodge specific attacks with precision. This level of experience is crucial for becoming a successful Tank in New World.

If you’re new to Tanking or entering new content, begin by rotating your blocks, using short bursts of block between ability casts and light attacks to prevent being overwhelmed by big hits. Follow up a blocked attack with a heavy attack to regenerate lost stamina. Throughout boss fights, remember the “Heavy After A Heavy” principle, which means following a blocked heavy attack or mechanic with your own heavy attack, as bosses typically do not chain attacks in rapid succession, providing a window for stamina regeneration. Utilize Shield Rush combined with the Fortifying Shield Rush perk on a Tower Shield to boost resistances and reduce damage taken.

Using a Sword and Shield makes this learning phase easier, and it’s important to maintain debuffs on the enemy, such as Weaken to reduce their damage output and Rend to increase the damage they receive. Spreading out skill casts during boss fights is advisable, avoiding the excessive use of taunt skills in quick succession. Instead, initiate combat with basic attacks to gain threat on a target and then use a taunt skill to secure aggro. Rotate Sword skills with light attacks to benefit from the refreshing move perk. For example, start with Shield Rush for buffing and Weaken, followed by a light attack, Defender’s Resolve, light attack, Reverse Stab, light attack, and then switch to your secondary weapon. If using a War Hammer, heavy attacks are beneficial, taking advantage of an active taunt and weaken. Start with Armor Breaker, followed by a heavy attack, Wrecking Ball, another heavy attack, and use Shockwave to taunt and weaken enemies.
As you gain experience, you’ll rely more on dodging big attacks rather than blocking, which is more sustainable since certain attacks can deplete 80% of your stamina in a single hit. Dodging allows for three consecutive dodges before running out of stamina, and not blocking enables more stamina regeneration. If you run out of stamina, you become “block broken,” rendering you unable to block or dodge until your stamina reaches 100%. This makes tanking particularly challenging for new players.

Dodging is superior to blocking in New World due to the game’s collision issues. When you hold block, you often experience being pushed around and sliding along the floor as bosses with large hitboxes exert pressure. Additionally, bosses tend to spin around and clip through your character, posing a threat to melee damage dealers in your group. Dodging, on the other hand, allows you to maintain your position more effectively. The dodge animation prevents the boss’s attack animation from making contact with your character, thereby keeping you in place.

Fortunately, in New World you are able to cause damage even as a Tank. Obviously, you won’t be hitting the top end of DPS, but you can level up your character and progress as a Tank.

Personally, I like to begin the early levels by using a War Hammer. This is a very solid Tank weapon but also gives you a good amount of damage.

Once you unlock the second weapon slot then using a Sword and Shield is the next important thing to do.

If you are serious about Tanking and progressing as a Tank then the best way to level up is by completing expeditions and by completing Alliance missions. Expeditions all have suggested levels in which they should be done so running Amrine at level 25 to 35 gives you chance to practice Tanking while also collecting gear suitable for your current level. Then at level 35 you move onto Starstone.

In-between that the Alliance missions are important because this is where you’ll pick up your main Tank gear and fill in any gaps where you don’t have a good piece of gear. Alliance gear always drops with specific perk so if you’re in need of a weapon, shield or armor to match your current level then you can always pick up something decent here. You also want to progress your Alliance rank so you can purchase Gypsum Orbs later down the line which will help you to boost your gearscore.

Once you reach level 60, again the Alliance gear is good to pick up as a first set of gear. But you’ll need to be pushing up your gearscore so you can get better gear and complete harder content. To do this you’ll need to do two main things.

1. Elite Chest Runs
2. Gypsum Orb Farming
3. Completing easy Expeditions such as Lazarus and Genesis

Elite Chest Runs are usually mass events where many people run around an Elite PoI together, burning down bosses and looting Elite Chests that can be opened once each day. At lower levels you get gearscore increases from these quite often but as you get closer to 600 gearscore you’ll notice it slows down.

Always use Gypsum Orbs to at the Gypsum shrine to open Weapon Cache of the specific weapons you’re using, so most likely War Hammer, Sword and Shield. You can farm a lot of Gypsum Orbs by doing quests in Level 60+ areas, especially Brimstone Sands. And you should also try to farm some daily so you can just guarantee gearscore increases by opening specific boxes daily.

Completing easy Expeditions is also really useful as you’ll get more gearscore increases from these more often than doing the Elite runs.

Once you have all items at 590+ Gearscore you can finally collect some good gear, either looted named gear or crafted/purchased gear. This gear can be upgraded to 625 with Umbral Shards to improve your gearscore past 600. Focus on 1 item at a time when upgrading, starting with Weapons is good.

The core of the PvE End Game in New World is Expedition and Mutated Expeditions.

Expeditions are 5-person dungeon-like content with varying enemies and enemy types. When you move onto the harder version of these Expeditions you have Mutated Expeditions which have 10 levels of difficulty. When an Expedition becomes mutated, the enemies will gain additional power and the difficult will scale with each level of mutation.

Other content includes 5-person arenas and trials which are quite easy and basic content where you just fight one boss in a short encounter.

There are also two raids in New World with the 10-person Raid The Hatchery and the 20-person Elite Raid The Sandwurm, both raids are in Brimstone Sands are require full optimisation of your build to be successful.

All content in New World has it’s own weekly or seasonal leaderboard, with the top teams unlocking titles and armor skins for placing high on them.