The New World attribute system is one of the main ways for your character to progress. In this New World attribute guide, we will be going over which attribute to level (these are essentially character stats), which one gives you the best stats for your build, what attribute thresholds are in New World, and finally which attribute will be the best for trade skills (think mining, refining, etc).
This will cover everything you will need to know about the attribute system and will be constantly updated as new information/builds are available. Hopefully, this attribute guide will help you make a more informed decision on your builds in New World.
First, let’s talk about the core attributes.
Core Attributes
The five core attributes in New World are Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Focus, and Constitution. Every time you level up in New World you will gain attribute points that you can then spend in any of these five attributes as you desire. There is no system in New World that restricts your build in any way, both for the negative and the positive, meaning that you could be a healer with maxed out strength, something that likely, isn’t ideal.
The next few sections will describe each attribute in detail, but here is an incredibly simplistic view of each attribute (for those who don’t want to read it all).
- Strength: The melee attribute for two-handed melee DPS (mainly)
- Dexterity: The ranged and one-handed stat
- Intelligence: The mage/caster attribute
- Focus: A healer attribute
- Constitution: Tank attribute
Again, this is a very simple view of all five attributes in New World. Nothing is as simple in MMOs as “this stat is just for ranged characters”, but for the majority of new players, you don’t need to know too much.
Not mentioned here are threshold bonuses for each attribute. These bonuses are incredibly powerful and can define a build by themselves. I will be talking about that further down the page, but if you don’t care, you don’t have to read it. Feel free to experiment yourself.
If you want more in-depth looks at each attribute, continue reading.
Strength Attribute
The strength attribute is all about melee damage, and mainly, two-handed melee. It really depends on the weapon, some of the one-handed weapons like the Hatchet scale from dexterity and strength, but for the two-handers, you will always be leveling strength for more damage. Think Great Axe and Warhammer vs. Sword and Board or Hatchet (latter scaling with dexterity as well).
The exact bonuses to damage that each weapon gets are subject to change (closed beta and all), but for now, these seem to be the numbers for each melee weapon:
- +2.5% War Hammer Damage
- +2% Sword Damage
- +1.5% Hatchet Damage
I got these numbers from the wiki if you’d like to check that out. I’ll be leaning heavily on the wiki for this attribute guide for New World, so shout-out to the wiki contributors!
Dexterity
Dexterity in New World is the damage stat for ranged weapons and some lighter melee weapons. Where strength gave you more damage for Warhammers, the dexterity attribute will be giving you damage for bows and hatchets. Although, melee weapons get far less damage than if you leveled strength.
Here are the exact damage bonuses for dexterity in New World:
- +0.5% Sword Damage
- +1% Hatchet Damage
- +2.4% Bow Damage
- +2.5% Musket Damage
- +?% Rapier Damage
There doesn’t seem to be an accurate number on the rapier damage yet, so I will update that whenever I can find it!
Intelligence
Intelligence is the magic/caster attribute in New World. Magic weapons like fire staff will be benefiting directly from each point you put in intelligence. Unlike dexterity, there is almost no reason to put any attribute points in intelligence if you aren’t a magic-user unless of course, you are trying to get those threshold bonuses.
Here are the exact damage bonuses for Intelligence in New World:
- +2.5% Magic Weapon Damage
As you can see, it is literally only magic weapon damage.
Focus
Focus is the healer/caster attribute in New World. Focus affects your mana regen and your skill cooldown, making it very important for any healer looking to spam their spells. Although, magic users might dip into this pool as well.
Here are the bonuses from the focus attribute:
- +2% Mana Regen Rate
- +0.5% Cooldown Reduction
You can clearly see there is no damage increase from the focus stat, however, mana regen and cooldown reduction are incredibly powerful for those of us who would prefer to run a healing build in New World.
Constitution
The final attribute in New World is Consitution. Constitution is basically the tank attribute, as it directly concerns your overall HP. Low constitution means you won’t be able to take a lot of hits, even if your gear is good, meanwhile if you have loads of points in constitution, you will be the tankiest lad in all the land.
Sadly, there is no flat bonus from constitution like the other stats. This is because constitution suffers from diminishing returns, which means that the more points you put into it, the less HP you get per point. For example, you might get 30 HP from your first point in constitution, but on your second point, you only get 29 HP and so on and so forth.
Here are the best stats I can give for the constitution attribute:
- 25 HP per point (at the start)
- 21 HP per point (after the diminishing returns)
If this changes or there is more information, I will make sure to update this. Regardless, this is what most of you New World tanks will be taking to tank in your PvE or PvP endeavors.
Threshold Bonuses
Each attribute in New World has a threshold bonus, several in fact. These bonuses range from a slight mana increase and mining speed, all the way to being able to have a chance to refund ammo when shooting. So these effects are quite powerful. Consider this section the Threshold Bonuses guide for New World.
There are currently five “nodes” of threshold bonuses that require you to spend most of your points in a single tree. So, for example, if you wanted the first node in the Strength tree, you would need to spend 50 attribute points in strength, with the final node taking 300 attribute points.
This makes it incredibly important to understand where you want your build to go, as these threshold bonuses are more powerful than simply having a high stat level in the respective attribute. Also, every threshold bonus has benefits for trade skills like mining, woodcutting, etc. so even for your profession in New World it is important to get these threshold bonuses or you will simply be behind.
Here are the threshold bonuses for every stat, the number is the number of attribute points you need to reach the node.
Strength Threshold Bonuses
- 50: +15% damage to melee weapon light attacks, +10% mining speed
- 100: +20% damage to melee weapon heavy attacks, +20 encumbrance
- 150: +50% stamina damage from melee weapon light and heavy attacks, -10% decrease in weight of mined items
- 200: +20% damage on stunned, slowed, or rooted enemies, +10% mining speed
- 250: Stamina regeneration continues while performing light and heavy attacks with melee weapons, +10% yield increase when mining
- 300: Light and heavy attacks with melee weapons gain Grit, 25% chance to fully mine an ore node with a single swing
Strength bonuses are incredibly powerful for every melee type and even boosts the miner profession with mining speed increases and the ability to carry more, which leads to less back and forth.
Dexterity Threshold Bonuses
- 50: +10% chance to critical hit, +10 skinning speed
- 100: +5% piercing damage, +20% haste for 3 seconds after skinning
- 150: Dodging cost 10 less stamina, -10% decrease in weight of skinned items
- 200: +20% bonus backstab and headshot damage, +10% skinning speed
- 250: +30% bonus critical hit damage on stunned, slowed, or rooted enemies, +10% yield increase when skinning
- 300: Ammo has +15% chance of being returned, guaranteed critical hit after a dodge roll
Dexterity is obviously amazing for critical hits, although later in the tree you will be focusing more on ranged weapons than on others. Also, dexterity is a great attribute for people who want to skin in New World.
Intelligence Threshold Bonuses
- 50: +10% damage to light and heavy magic attacks, +10% harvest speed
- 100: +20% critical hit damage, 5% chance to gain 1 azoth when harvesting
- 150: +20% to elemental damage, -10% decrease in weight of harvested items
- 200: +10 mana after a dodge, +10% harvest speed
- 250: +30% duration to damage of time spells, +10% yield increase when harvesting
- 300: +30% damage on first hit on full health target, -10% reduction in Azoth travel cost
Focus Threshold Bonuses
- 50: +10% mana regeneration rate, +10% fishing line tension
- 100: +20 to mana pool, +10% yield increase when salvaging
- 150: +20% healing output, -10% decrease in weight of fishing items
- 200: +20% duration on casted buffs, +10% fishing line tension
- 250: +30 mana on any self or group kill, +10% increase to caught fish size
- 300: When mana hits zero gain 200% mana regen for 10s (60s cooldown), 10% cooldown reduction for Inn fast travel
Constitution Threshold Bonuses
- 50: All health consumables +20% stronger, +10% logging speed
- 100: Increase max health by 10% of physical armor, 10% reduction on durability loss for tools
- 150: 20% reduction to crit damage taken, 10% decrease in weight of logging items
- 200: +20% increase to armor, +10% logging speed
- 250: 80% damage reduction when full health, +10% yield increase when logging
- 300: +30% duration of stun, slow, and root spells, 25% chance to chop down a tree in a single swing
End
So that is all there is to the attribute system in New World. Hopefully, this attribute guide helps all of you new players out and shows you the importance of picking the right attribute to level.
Again, I will be keeping this updated as new information comes out. Thanks for reading!
