New World Musket Guide

Introduction

The Musket is an accuracy-based, single-target, ranged projectile weapon in New World. It scales from the dexterity stat primarily and has a secondary stat of Intellect. For more about the Musket continue reading our New World Musket Guide.

General Information

The musket can be used without having ammo equipped to your ammunition slot. However, having no ammo will not provide you with any additional damage bonuses. You can obtain ammo for your musket by looting enemies and boxes, crafting them yourself, or purchasing them from the faction vendor or trading post. There are different tiers of ammo with each tier increasing the damage dealt.

Infinite Cartridge (no ammo) – Tier I – Damage modifier of 1.00
Iron Cartridge – Tier II – Damage modifier of 1.05
Steel Cartridge – Tier III – Damage modifier of 1.10
Starmetal Cartridge – Tier IV – Damage modifier of 1.15
Orichalcum Cartridge – Tier V – Damage modifier of 1.20

Musket Mastery Trees

The musket mastery tree is broken down into two skill trees, Sharpshooter and Trapper

Sharpshooter

The active abilities in the Sharpshooter Tree are based on dealing damage. Moving Through the tree will transform the musket into one of the hardest-hitting weapons in the game.

Powder Burn

The first ability is Powder Burn deals 110% Weapon damage and applies a Burn DOT that deals 20% weapon damage every second for 9 seconds. When using the ability, it charges your next shot. When upgraded, Powder Burn applies a debuff that causes the target to take 12% more damage from the musket’s basic attacks and extends the duration of the Burn if Powder Burn is a headshot.

Power Shot

The second ability is Power Shot. Power Shot overloads your musket to deal 160% weapon damage with your next shot. When upgraded, Power Shot will give you a 10% Empower buff, deal 10% more damage to a target with full health, and reduce its own cooldown if you land a headshot.

Shooter’s Stance

The final ability is Shooter’s Stance. This locks the player in place and limits the player’s rotation angle to 180 degrees. The Musket then deals 100% weapon damage and reload time is reduced by 75%. The basic version of Shooter Stance only allows the player to shoot three times but it can be upgraded to 5 with Shoot More. The final upgrade to Shooter’s Stance decreases the cooldown of all musket abilities by 25% if three of the shots hit the same target.

Passives

The majority of the passives in the Sharpshooter Tree revolve around the player dealing damage while aiming down sites and headshots.

Key Passive

The Key Passive in the Sharpshooter Tree is Deadeye. It grants a 15% damage increase to all headshots. If multiple targets are hit when you get a headshot you’ll inflict a bleed on the targets dealing damage over time.

Trapper

The Trapper Skill Tree is centered around crowd control and manipulating the movement speed of both the musket user and its target.

Stopping Power

Stopping Power is a powerful shot that deals 90% weapon damage, staggers the target, and knocks the target back 3 meters. Can be hip-fired or while aiming down sights. When upgraded, Stopping Power also applies exhaust (reducing the target’s stamina regen by 10% for 8 seconds) and slows to the target.

Traps

The second ability in this tree is Traps; it allows you to put down a “trap” that lasts 30 seconds and (if triggered) immobilizes the target for 3 seconds. As you progress down Traps upgrade path, you will gain the ability to put down two traps at a time, grant traps the power to apply rend to the targets that trigger them, and allow the musket user to leach 100% weapon damage of damage done to targets in Traps as a heal.

Sticky Bomb

The final ability is Sticky Bomb. Sticky Bomb is a projectile that can be thrown and stuck onto anything it makes contact with. Detonation of the Sticky Bomb will occur in 3 seconds and deal 210% weapon damage in a 3-meter AOE. Sticky Bomb will also apply a slow and regenerate 40 stamina when it deals damage to a player when upgraded.

Passives

The Key Passive for the Trapper Tree is Lethal Combo. This passive Increases damage to targets affected by the Trapper Tree status effects.

Recommended Weapon Pairings with the Musket

The musket is a ranged DPS weapon that specializes in single-target damage. The musket is currently not recommended in PVE.

The Musket scales off of Dexterity, so pairing the it with another weapon that scales off Dexterity is recommended.

Rapier – The rapier scales primarily off of Dexterity and secondarily off of Intelligence, making this a good pairing with the Musket because both weapons will benefit from pushing your attribute points into the Dexterity attribute. The rapier does very high single-target damage, can provide you with some mobility while using the Musket, can provide some defensive options, and could apply a bleed for some additional damage over time if you choose to go that route.
Spear – The spear scales primarily off of Dexterity and secondarily off of Strength, making this an ok pairing with the Musket as well. The spear can provide you with quite a lot of crowd control options that can help you deal with foes that get too close, and can also provide you with some additional damage over time as well.
Void Gauntlet – With the new Artifact Void Gauntlet, Lifetaker, Mustket has found a new back-bar weapon. Not only does Lifetaker scale with Dex but it also allows you to apply Disintegrate with your musket shots.

You can reference our builds section for specific Life Staff pairings and builds that other players in the community are using.

Musket Perks

Every Weapon Ability in New World has a corresponding Perk that can be found on armor and weapons. Most of the perks scale in power with the Gear Score of the item they are on. It’s important to note that you can only benefit from one instance of a weapon ability perk at a time. You can obtain the weapon perks randomly from drops or you can craft gear with the specific perk on it. You can enhance your chance at obtaining a specific perk by utilizing mods. Additionally, you can enhance your chance at obtaining your perk with the right stats by using the timeless shards.

The Ability perks for the Musket in New World are as follows:

Weapon Ability Perk	Description	Armor	Weapon	Crafting Mods
Crippling Powder Burn	Targets hit with Powder Burn are Slowed by X% for 5s.	27%	45%	Steel Musket Charm
Refreshing Power Shot	When Power Shot hits reduce it’s cooldown by X% (15s cooldown).	30%	55%	Starmetal Musket Charm
Empowering Shooter’s Stance	Hitting a target while in Shooter’s Stance grants a stack of Empower, increasing damage by X% for 6s. Effect is removed when stance is exited (Max 4 stacks).	11%	16%	Orichalcum Musket Charm
Refreshing Stopping Power	Stopping Power hits reduces all other trapper skill cooldowns by X%.	12%	20%	Reinforced Steel Musket Charm
Accelerating Traps	+X% movement speed for 5s after deploying a trap (Does not stack). Traps now apply Bleed for X% of weapon damage for 5s.	15% 7.7%	33% 16%	Reinforced Starmetal Musket Charm
Mending Sticky Bombs	Every hit of Sticky Bomb heals you for X% of damage done.	22%	32%	Reinforced Orichalcum Musket Charm

Recommended Musket Gems

The type of gem you will want to slot into your Musket is heavily dependent upon your build. It’s also going to vary based on PvP vs PvE activities. You can check our quick reference guide for gems for a full list of gems and their effects.

Enemy types the Musket is strong/weak against

With a Musket the damage type you will be dealing is Thrust! Our Damage Type vs Mob Types Quick Chart guide as a complete breakdown for every weapon. Corrupted and Beasts mobs will be the monsters most affected by this and is ideal to use against them.

Corrupted : Takes 20% MORE damage from Thrust attacks
Beast : Takes 20% MORE damage from Thrust attacks