The Musket, similar to the Bow, is one of the ranged weapons that you can use in New World. Both weapons use Dexterity as a main attribute, but the Musket also uses Intelligence as a secondary stat. Here’s our guide to help you with the best Musket build in New World.
Best Musket build in New World
The Musket weapon in New World has two skill trees: Sharpshooter and Trapper. The former is all about increasing the raw damage of your shots. The latter, meanwhile, has some quirks to improve DPS, though there are crowd control (CC) options here as well.
Sharpshooter
- Power Shot – Overloads your Musket so the next shot deals 150% weapon damage.
- Powder Burn – Overloads the Musket so the next shot deals 100% weapon damage. It also applies the Burn status effect which deals 20% weapon damage per second for nine seconds.
- Shooter’s Stance – This allows you to enter a crouched stance. You can fire three shots in total, all dealing 100% weapon damage. Reload time is also reduced by 75%.
Recommended active abilities: The skills that cause the Overload effect don’t stack with each other. Still, you can take both Power Shot and Powder Burn (use them interchangeably). You’re fine with just Power Shot’s first perk (Initial Engagement). For Powder Burn, though, you’ll want both nodes (Backdraft and Chronic Trauma). Ideally, you should also get Shooting Stance with both nodes to reduce cooldowns and increase the number of shots before you exit the stance (five shots instead of three).
Recommended passive abilities: Most of the Musket’s passives rely on landing perfectly placed headshots. Critical Reload is good if you have a dedicated tank. This way, you can try getting three headshots to earn a free reload. Follow this up with Empowering Headshot for the Empower buff (i.e., damage increase). Called Shot Resupply (reduced ability cooldowns when you land headshots) and Heightened Precision (stacking damage buff) are also nice to have.
Trapper
- Traps – Place a trap that lasts 20 seconds. A target that triggers it will be immobilized for three seconds.
- Stopping Power – Overloads the Musket so the next shot deals 120% weapon damage. The target will also get knocked back.
- Sticky Bomb – Lob this projectile which sticks to anything it makes contact with. It deals 175% weapon damage to all enemies in a three-meter radius.
Recommended active abilities: Traps is a terrible ability to get for PvE purposes. You wouldn’t have enough time to land multiple shots due to the short duration. It’s significantly better in PvP, especially if you take the Trapped Damage and Scent of Blood nodes. Just pray that your opponent will actually move to the trap’s location instead of sidestepping it. As for Stopping Power, it’s a decent way to get out of a bind, though you can still skip it. Lastly, Sticky Bomb combined with the Sticky Slow node is a useful tool for AoE crowd control.
Recommended passive abilities: Salt on the Wounds and Empowered Weakness should be good picks before you get Sticky Bomb. The latter can even help out if you can apply the Burn status with the Powder Burn ability.
If you truly wish to make the most out of your Musket build in New World, you’ll want to have a dedicated tank or melee fighter who’s accompanying you. The passive perks are triggered, pun intended, via headshots. You’re going to have a tough time landing these consistently if enemies are moving around erratically. Worse, if they’re within melee range, you can’t block, which means you’ll need to immediately switch to a melee weapon.
In any case, you’d want the aforementioned abilities from the Sharpshooter tree to further boost your damage. The Sticky Bomb from the Trapper tree, meanwhile, can be a viable substitute. As for the Traps ability, it’s better suited for PvP than PvE. Lastly, if you’re still on the fence about this weapon, you can check our article that discusses the Musket vs. the Bow.
