Musket
Muskets are a type of Ranged Weapon in New World. Choosing to use the musket will require you to manage longer reload times compared to the bow, but the rewards are a significant boost of damage over its bow counterpart. Muskets use Cartridge Ammo that must be crafted or purchased from a trading post and carried with you as you travel through Aeternum. Your shots will also travel in a straight line and will not suffer the same gravity penalties as arrows. The Musket has two mastery trees:
- Sharpshooter: an offensive tree focussed on big damage numbers and optimising skilful aim!
- Trapper: A crowd control tree utilising bombs and traps to lock down your opponents.
Dealing damage with a Musket will scale off a player’s Dexterity and Intelligence Attribute so you should focus your points in these areas to improve your damage.
Below you will find a breakdown of each skill in the mastery trees.
Best Damage Types
Each weapon has a unique way of dealing damage on top of their abilities. For Muskets, this is primarily Thrust damage. You should take care to look for perks and gems that prioritise Thrust Damage as other types will provide no additional bonuses to your character.
Muskets will also benefit from higher quality Ammo. Each type of ammo provides damage modification to your shots. The higher the tier the higher the modification. Look to use the highest grade of ammo that you can wield.
Musket Mastery Trees
Active Abilities
- Powder Burn – Overload musket with gun powder, causing the next shot to deal 120% Weapon damage and cause a Burn status effect that deals 20% weapon damage per second for 9 seconds. Does not stack or combine with other overload shots. Cooldown: 15 seconds.
- Power Shot – Overload musket with gun powder, causing the next shot to deal 150% weapon damage. Does not stack or combine with other overload shots. Cooldown: 15 seconds.
- Shooter Stance – Player enters a shooting aim stance to enhance shooting performance. Shots deal 105% weapon damage. While in stance rotation Angle is limited to 180 degrees, mobility is reduced to zero, accuracy is increased by 10%, and reload time is reduced by 75%. Mode will exit after three shots. Cooldown: 20 seconds.
Active Ability Enhancement Traits
- Backdraft – Standard Musket shots deal 12% additional damage while target is on fire.
- Chronic Trauma – If Powder Burn is a Headshot, extend Burn duration for 13 seconds.
- Initial Engagement – When you hit with power shot gain Empower, causing attacks to deal an additional 10% damage for 5 seconds.
- First Blood – +10% additional damage to targets with full health.
- Bullseye – Power Shot Headshots reduce Power Shot’s cooldown by 15%.
- Shoot More – Shots fired before exiting stance increased to five.
- Marksman – If 3 consecutive shots hit the same target, reduce all other musket cooldowns by 25%.
Passive Ability Traits
- Critical Reload – Landing 3 Headshots within 10 seconds of each other grants an instant reload.
- Greater Accuracy – Accuracy penalty while moving and aiming removed.
- Ballistic Advantage – Removes damage Fall off from standard musket shots on targets more than 50 meters away.
- Hit Your Mark – Increased Headshot and Critical hit damage to target the further the target is away from the player, for a max of 30% at up to 125 meters away. Does not forgo damage fall off.
- Called Shot – Increase Musket damage by 15% if aimed down sight for more than 3 seconds.
- Empowering Headshot – On successful headshot: Grant Empower, increasing all Musket shots damage by 10% for 5 seconds.
- Heightened Precision – While aiming, successful hits with a musket grant a stackable 2.5% damage. This effect ends when a player stops aiming down sight for more than 5 seconds between shots. (Max 10 stack)
- Called Shot Resupply – Standard attack headshots reduce all musket ability cooldowns by 10%.
- Sniper – Adds an optional 3x zoom view for all musket aim shots. Use Mouse Wheel up and down to zoom in and out while aiming. Also grants a 25% damage increase to all Headshots.
Active Abilities
- Stopping Power – Overload musket with gun powder, causing the next shot to deal 115% Weapon Damage, staggering the target and knocking them back 3 meters. Does not stack or combine with other Overloaded shots. Cooldown: 18 seconds.
- Traps – Throw a trap that last for 20 seconds. When triggered it causes target to be Rooted, immobilizing target for 3 seconds. Cooldown: 20 seconds.
- Sticky Bomb – A bomb that can be thrown a short range and sticks to anything it makes contact with. Detonation will occur 5 seconds after impact dealing 150% weapon damage to all targets within 3 meters. Cooldown: 12 seconds.
Active Ability Enhancement Traits
- Lasting Impression – Targets hit with Stopping Power are Exhausted; reducing stamina regeneration speed by 10% for 8 seconds.
- Supplementary Repulsion – Targets hit with Stopping Power are slowed by 10% for 8 seconds.
- Trapped Damage – Traps apply Rend to target increasing damage to trapped targets by 20% for 3 seconds.
- Scent of Blood – Regen 50% of weapon damage done as health when dealing damage to trapped targets.
- Double Trap – Ability to have two active traps.
- Unflinching Walk – Sticky bomb grants player 40 stamina when it deals damage with an explosion.
- Sticky Slow – Direct hits with the Sticky Bomb cause the target to be Slowed by 15% for 5 seconds.
Passive Ability Traits
- Salt On The Wounds – +15% increased damage to targets below 30% health.
- Weakened Defense – Increases stamina damage to blocking enemies using shields by 200% and deal 10% of Armor Penetration to targets that aren’t blocking with a shield.
- Hustle – After a Dodge: Gain Haste, increasing movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds.
- Energy Burst – Attacking a target with an active debuff restores 20 stamina.
- Back It Up -Walking/Strafing movement speed Increased by 10% when an enemy is within 8 meters of player.
- Empowering Weakness – Hitting a target with an active debuff triggers Empower, increasing player’s damage to be increased by 10 for 5 seconds.
- Tactical Reload – Dodging Reloads the musket. (Can only trigger once every three seconds)
- Kick ‘Em When They’re Down – Deal 10% extra damage to targets with an active debuff.
- Compounded Adrenaline – Grants a 40% base damage increase to musket attacks on targets that have any of the status effects applied by the Trapper tree active abilities.
