New World New World Play Guide for Folks Who Solo and Duo (Levels 15 to 30)

Gathering And Crafting

My level 15 to 30 journey was another eye opener for a majority of things that you need to plan and prepare to make happen. There is much to cover, especially important things that others tend to take for granted.

If you haven’t gotten your basic gathering skills to 100 yet, do it. Don’t wait like I did. There’s nothing much more frustrating than running up to a special node that has glow lines all through it, and you need 100 skill minimum to harvest it. I was still at 88! Ouch! While that happened to me, you do not have to let it happen to you. Especially in mining!

For each gathering skill, there are a host of options when you go to create your Steel tools for use at level 20. You can spend Azoth and use a ‘special drop’ to give your tools magical bonuses. For the Steel level, I chose to find/buy/harvest the items that give haste for gathering and of course, investing the Azoth for that second perk. Why haste? You are competing with other players for resources! You see five nodes and two people smacking on them, you want to finish as fast as possible to get your limited share. Plus the fact that the faster you gather, the faster the nodes re-pop. Win-win all around.

If you’ve been gathering, processing and selling at the Trading Post as suggested in my 1 to 15 guide, even with the expense of a house, you could end up with anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 gold minimum by this time.

There are certain ‘named’ rare weapons that are bind on pickup, meaning that you have to make them for yourself. Are they worth the time and effort? Absolutely. Is it game breaking if you don’t? Absolutely not. There are a host of dropped and player made weapons on the Trading Post that don’t run very expensive that are nearly as deadly. If you're a craft-a-holic, the benefits are there. If you aren't crafty-happy-button-smashy, I can promise you won't be gimped on damage or protection.

I used my Level 20 faction armor and weapons with great results to level 27 when I caved in and bought some armor and weapons off the Trading Post. What happened to the level 20 armor and weapons? Salvaged them all! I’ve been able to maintain my Salvage Parts in the 450 to 500 range by breaking down everything I loot that I don’t use, weapons and armor wise. I spent less than 600 gold upgrading everything to my satisfaction, as prices are highly reasonable. So craft your own or buy them, the ease of doing such things and the resulting powers of surviving are worth it, regardless of the path you personally find satisfying to do.

Fishing

Doesn’t matter if your using the special event or not, fishing has its pluses. The quest called ‘Fishing With Shields’ is a multi-layered process that teaches you the basics of the right bait and the kinds of fishes you can catch with them. Eventually, you’ll have stacks of fish in your inventory that can be salvaged. You get fillets and other things, and those occasional boots you dredge up? Salvage those for crafting materials!

If you’re really really lucky, you can catch a treasure chest filled with valuables! So stop the grind, relax with a pole by the river and get stuff you can sell on the Trading Post if you don’t use the fish for cooking for yourself.

Faction Points And Mayhem With Math

Your faction, no matter who they are, caps your reward points well before you can maximize your reputation points. What this means is those capped reward points no longer increase, but you have a ways to go yet with reputation before you can unlock the next tier.

What to do?

There are consumables you can buy from the faction store, some that cost 100 or 200 reward points each. Some are potions that protect against corruption or the blight. So math time! Three PvE quests that are granted the daily bonuses can equal to 6,000 points per day, if not a touch more. So take all three PvE quests, but before you do and turn them in, buy 6,000 points worth of corruption or blight protection potions.

Now go and do the quests, turn them in, your points go back to maximum and you get a reputation increase. Do this enough times every day, you’ll have plenty of corruption and blight protection for when you start helping to close those nasty portals!

Portals

About those nasty portals. Keep an eye on the corruption meter! You may need to chain drink the protection potions from time to time or risk dying on the spot. Pay attention to the map! I’ve been seeing, every once and a blue moon, a larger level 55 portal spawning in a level 25 area. Not all the time, but sometimes. Nothing like charging in with sword raised high just to get backhanded into next week while looking both ways for Sunday!

Since I duo with my fabulous gaming partner and solo in between our play times, I’ve elected to wait until level 30 to do level 25 portals. The portal monsters are not pushovers. Managing your corruption damage, combat and monster strategies can be intense, as keeping track of all three can consume a major amount of your attention. There are teams advertising ‘portal’ groups from time to time and if you join those, you can get your quest quotas sooner, but that is a personal choice being dependent on your solo or group play styles.

At these levels, this challenge is still dangerous and exciting, but can break your brain a little bit. Get burned out? Go fishing! Or Harvesting. Keep those skills increasing while recharging the batteries for the tougher fights.

City Reputation And Personal Storage

When I hit level 30, my second bag slot opened. Instead of running to the faction store to buy a Major Rune of Holding and make a bag, I went to the Trading Post to see what the damages were on just buying one.

A Tier 3 bag with a nice perk of holding 67 more pounds above and beyond the new capacity, it cost me a lovely 1,150 gold. Since I had more than 11,000, I went ahead and splurged. Now I can personally carry 547 pounds before going encumbered. Yay!

When raising my city faction and getting perk points to increase certain benefits, every time I see a storage bonus in my home city, I take it without hesitation. With the amount of harvesting, processing and selling I do, I tend to keep city storage nearly capped.

Warning! City Storage does NOT share items in different cities! Each Storage Shed in each City has their own storage capacity and contents that you can only access at that specific location. So if you put all your Iron Ingots in one city storage unit and travel to another city to craft, you will not have access to your Iron Ingots. Materials must be stored in the city you intend to do crafting in, or in your personal packs that go where you go, which can weigh you down.

In Map Mode, click the city and regard the pop-up information. You can select the city storage to see what you have stored there before using any Azoth for fast travel. Now you don't have to burn up fast travel resources to three different cities just to find out where you stored those hides or ingots you forgot you had until that very moment.

I use my home city with the highest reputation for major storage and I craft there when I can. I don't spread it around the map to conserve Azoth from fast travel expenses.

Large Lakes And Deep Water

Be cautious. In New World, you can drown. Not fun. Do not cross large lakes by walking under water. You won’t make it. Every time you die, no matter how you die, your equipped items will take a durability hit that will cost you repair parts. So any ideas of marching up out of the deep water to attack like in the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean' is not going to happen.

Quest Quandary For The Quick

Between the harvesting, board quests for city and faction related rewards and the myriad amount of NPC tasks, you can run out of quests to do in your home/starting city. There are a couple of side quests that are broken and hopefully they will fix them soon. There will be a moment or three when you’re standing there wondering what to do to gain those last two levels before hitting 30.

Consulting your map, you can grind them away and take forever, or look for quests out in the countryside to snap up and do. Those big yellow pins on the main map can help you find them, and by all means, go and have fun knocking them out!

Now for the biggest tip I can share. The other starter cities where they are for levels 1 to 25 have their own quests you can do. Yes, they start out low level and work up, but why are those worth doing? City faction increases help, but you also get more Azoth and weapons to Salvage when you open the reward chests! That does help to close that experience gap, and I was in the middle of doing just that when I finally hit level 30.

In Closing

There are things that happen, if recorded, would have made one heck of a comedy movie. Like using shield rush and missing, going off the dock into deep water and nearly drowning trying to get to the shore as the mob is chasing you under water, laughing while swinging at you. Stuff like that tickles me, and the resulting last laugh is mine when I finally crush that undead enemy on the beach.

Like all open world games, immerse yourself into the moment and simply have fun. I’m still enjoying New World, and while learning all the ins and outs, I’m happy to share what to look out for. Find new friends or solo your heart out, there’s plenty of play opportunities to enjoy!

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2844412309

New World Play Guide for Folks Who Solo and Duo (Levels 15 to 30)