New World: The 3 strongest builds for damage dealers in dungeons

Dungeons play an important role in New World. They’re a good way to boost gear level midgame, and endgame mutations are the hardest content in the game. We at MeinMMO show you three builds for damage dealers that will make you look good in dungeons.

What do you need to know about dungeons in general? Each dungeon has different enemy types, each vulnerable to different types of damage. In the Garden of Origination, for example, there is the Angry Earth, which suffers 20% more damage from cutting attacks, but takes less damage from piercing damage.

We therefore present three builds, each of which is good against a specific type of opponent. In the builds you will also find alternatives that are also strong, but are not presented in detail. Currently, however, there are only a few weapons in the meta and magic weapons in particular are in a bad way.

Note: Each of the builds presented here is already strong enough in the normal mode of a dungeon. However, we deliberately structured the guide in such a way that it is also aimed at players who would like to approach the mutations.

If you are looking for builds for tanks or healers, you will find them here:

Hatchet and Battleaxe – Strong against Ancestral Guardians

Why is this combo played? The Hatchet and Battleaxe both scale with the Strength attribute, making them a useful combo. You can also pull enemies in with the ax and then inflict a lot of damage on them with the hatchet.

The hatchet also has the special feature that you become invulnerable for 3 seconds through the attribute “Defy Death” when you would actually die. This also makes the build useful for beginners.

It comes into its own in battles against the Ancestral Guardians (Lazarus, Enneade, Destroyed Obilisk).

How do I distribute the attributes? You invest the most points in strength. For beginners: 300 points in strength, 200 in constitution. Experienced players can use a combo of Strength (300) and Dexterity (210).

What skills do I use with the hatchet? With the hatchet, you primarily rely on the berserker tree and also use two of the active abilities from it:

• berserk
• Roaring floods
• Rending Throw

The berserker mode increases your damage, your movement speed, you cannot be interrupted and also regenerates life points. Roaring floods, on the other hand, cause a lot of damage and then increase your movement speed.

However, you open the fight with Rending Throw. This inflicts the debuff, Ruptured, which reduces enemy damage reduction by 10%. At the same time, in the Throw tree, you’ll be skilling the passive attributes Refreshing Throws (reduces the cooldown of all hatchet abilities when hitting enemies with a debuff) and Exploitation (10% more damage to enemies with an active debuff).

What skills do I use with the battle axe? With the battle ax you use both skill trees:

• shirring
• maelstrom
• source of gravity

Ramp pulls in enemies in front of you, and Maelstrom pulls in enemies around you while absorbing projectiles and granting you the Courage buff. The Well of Gravity also brings CC to root enemies and in effect gives you and other players the Reinforcement buff.

You also deal more and take less damage when there are 3 enemies around you, which should always be the case, at least away from the bosses thanks to Raff and Maelstrom.

What is the equipment like? You rely on light armor to get maximum damage. You should have the Empowering Rending Throw and Raging Tides bonus effects on the armor. These strengthen your hatchet attacks.

On both weapons you want to use an opal or diamond as a gem.

What alternatives are there? Another strong build among the ancestral guardians is the great sword and battle axe, which we will present to you in more detail in the case of the corrupted/lost. Alternatively, you can also rely on rapier and spear here.

Greatsword + Hatchet – Strong against Angry Earth

Why is this combo played? The Hatchet and Greatsword both scale with the Strength attribute, making them a useful combo. Unlike the battle axe, you give up some CC in favor of even more damage.

The ax has the special feature that you become invulnerable for 3 seconds through the attribute “Defying Death” when you would actually die. This also makes the build useful for beginners.

It comes into its own when fighting the Angry Earth (Healing Garden, Barnacles, and Gunpowder) as they are vulnerable to Slash damage, which both weapons deal.

How do I distribute the attributes? You invest the most points in strength. The following applies to beginners: You distribute 165 points in strength, 150 in dexterity and 200 in constitution. Experienced players can use a combo of Strength and Dexterity and ignore Constitution’s defensiveness.

What skills do I use with the hatchet? With the hatchet, you primarily rely on the berserker tree and also use two of the active abilities from it:

• berserk
• Roaring floods
• Rending Throw

The berserker mode increases your damage, your movement speed, you cannot be interrupted and also regenerates life points. Roaring floods, on the other hand, cause a lot of damage and then increase your movement speed.

However, you open the fight with Rending Throw. This inflicts the debuff, Ruptured, which reduces enemy damage reduction by 10%. At the same time, in the Throw tree, you’ll be skilling the passive attributes Refreshing Throws (reduces the cooldown of all hatchet abilities when hitting enemies with a debuff) and Exploitation (10% more damage to enemies with an active debuff).

What skills do I use with the Greatsword? With the greatsword, you primarily use the offensive tree “carnage”:

• cross cut
• Unrelenting Storm
• Skyward Cut

With the Path of Carnage (Offensive Stance) you deal 15% more damage, but you also get 15% more. So it is important that you avoid incoming damage.

Unrelenting Storm is used to slice through large hordes of enemies, while Skyward Slash is for single targets. Cross Slash does very high damage in general.

The important thing is that you keep up the “Path of Carnage” to deal more damage over time and that you reduce your cooldowns by 10% when using heavy attacks. You should also dodge regularly to gain empowerment for the next 3 attacks, which increases your damage again.

What is the equipment like? You rely on light armor to get maximum damage. On the armor you should have the Siphoning Crosscut and Raging Tides bonus effects. This will heal you and reset cooldowns.

On both weapons you want to use an opal or diamond as a gem.

What alternatives are there? Another strong Angry Earth build relies on spear and hatchet. In principle, you can also play the hatchet + battle ax presented above.

Greatsword + Battleaxe – Strong against the Corrupted and Lost

Why is this combo played? Greatsword and Battleaxe both scale with the Strength attribute, making them a useful combo. You can also pull in enemies with the ax and then deal them a lot of damage with the greatsword.

The greatsword currently has the highest DPS in the game, but also with some risks, because you get more damage in the offensive stance.

The build comes into its own when fighting the Forsaken (Barnacles and Gunpowder, Amrhein) or the Corrupted (Shipyard, Heart of Storms).

How do I distribute the attributes? You invest 300 points in strength and 210 points in dexterity.

What skills do I use with the Greatsword? With the greatsword, you primarily use the offensive tree “carnage”:

• cross cut
• Unrelenting Storm
• Skyward Cut

With the Path of Carnage (Offensive Stance) you deal 15% more damage, but you also get 15% more. It is therefore important that you avoid incoming damage as much as possible.

Unrelenting Storm is used to slice through large hordes of enemies, while Skyward Slash is for single targets. Cross Slash does very high damage in general.

The important thing is that you keep up the “Path of Carnage” to deal more damage over time and that you reduce your cooldowns by 10% when using heavy attacks. You should also dodge regularly to gain empowerment for the next 3 attacks, which increases your damage again.

What skills do I use with the battle axe? With the battle ax you use both skill trees:

• shirring
• maelstrom
• source of gravity

Ramp pulls in enemies in front of you, and Maelstrom pulls in enemies around you while absorbing projectiles and granting you the Courage buff. The Well of Gravity also brings CC to root enemies and in effect gives you and other players the Reinforcement buff.

You also deal more and take less damage when there are 3 enemies around you, which should always be the case, at least away from the bosses thanks to Raff and Maelstrom.

What is the equipment like? You rely on light armor to get maximum damage. On the armor you should have the bonus effects “” and “Sucking Crosscut”.

On both weapons you want to use an opal or diamond as a gem.

What alternatives are there? The combo of Ice Gauntlets and Doom Gauntlets is useful when fighting the Forsaken. This is because the Forsaken are vulnerable to Ice damage. However, the build is harder to play. Alternatively, you can also rely on greatsword and hatchet here.

Alternatively, you can play well against the Corrupted with Rapier and Spear, as they are vulnerable to piercing damage.

You can find all our guides to New World in this overview:

New World Guides: All tips, tricks and builds at a glance.