Gear Breakdown

1. Armor is divided into three weight categories/types - Light, Medium, and Heavy. These types can be mixed and matched to achieve your desired weight category (also Light, Medium, and Heavy). Each category has a set of unique properties: 

• Light Category - +15% Damage Increase and +30% healing, Further Dodge (roll) with 50 stamina cost, the lowest damage mitigation. This category offers the highest possible DPS, but it sacrifices defenses in exchange. 
• Medium Category - No bonuses or penalties to damage and healing, Incoming Crowd Control Duration - 10%, Slower Dodge with 50 stamina cost (sidestep), average damage mitigation. A balanced choice, well-suited for all sorts of solo melee builds. 
• Heavy Category - -15% Damage Decrease and -30% healing, Incoming Crowd Control Duration - 20%, Block Increase, Slowest Dodge with 55 stamina cost  (slow sidestep), good damage mitigation. A defensive choice well-suited for tanks, but not ideal for solo play. 

2. Trinkets don't affect your weight category and provide a range of useful unique bonuses (they have their own subset of Perks), as well as increase your core attributes - they can grant points to one or more attributes. 
3. You start the game with a 200 carry limit, which is not a lot and you will struggle to stay unencumbered at the start. Luckily, you will gain Bag Slots at levels 10, 30, and 45. You can use these slots to increase your character's carry weight by, well... equipping Bags. The most basic bags increase carry weight by 50, but higher tier ones are much, much better. You should upgrade your bags as soon as possible, as it's going to maximize your leveling efficiency (the fewer trips back to town, the better). 
4. The shield adds to your weight category and can currently only be used with a one-handed weapoms like flail and sword. This means that you should consider unequipping it when using other one-handed weapons so that it doesn't push your weight category up. 
5. Despite introducing Archetypes there are no classes in New World, just weapons catered to certain combat tasks (the game features the "holy trinity" of roles - DPS, Healers, and Tanks). Each weapon has two separate mastery tries that have three active skills and a bunch of passives. You can equip two weapons at once, mix and match weapon skills and passives, and create your own playstyle based on it. We will give you some examples of great leveling builds in this guide.
6. Heartrunes introduced in Brimstone sands area are enabling sort of ultimate ability independent from your weapon choices. There is currently 9 to chose from. Most of them are dungeon drops. Each can be leveled to enhance them with additional buffs and debuffs or even modify their effects. Those will be available to you in the late stages, however, they are essential to lategame and will be very helpful in solo trials. Heartune of Stoneform is the one every player is looking to have as soon as possible and it is a drop from last boss of Lazarus Instrumentality - Chardis.

Right now you're probably wondering what's the "optimal" leveling gear. The answer to that is quite simple - In the case of bags - the bigger, the better. In the case of Trinkets, Armor, and Weapons, it depends on what build you're using. As a general rule, you should focus on your main weapon's primary attribute. For example, if you use Hatchet, you should choose gear that gives you a lot of Strength, however, Hatchet also scales with Dexterity, which means that this stat might also be of some use to you. Moreover, you should never fully skip on Constitution - ideally, you want to have ~25% of your attributes allocated into it for leveling purposes (going full glass cannon is not a good idea when you're leveling). 

Buff Sources:

• Flagging PVP

Joining a faction will give you many benefits, one of which is the ability to flag yourself for PVP. Along with buffing your in-game luck it gives you a strong increase to character XP gained.  Flagging means you will be able to attack players from other factions and so will they. Not every player will be keen on picking the fight, as they are most likely on the way to the same quest as you. However, if you find yourself being outnumbered or you simply do not want to fight, you can toggle PVP flag in every safe area which means, Fast Traves Shrines, Towns and outposts.

• Music Buff

Reaching level 25 in Music Trade Skill will unlock XP Gain buff on the songs you can play. To receive maximum buff easily just choose the lowest difficulty song, in the effects choose All Together Now after you unlock it and make sure you complete the song with the best score which is 4 stars. That is the factor guaranteeing the longest and strongest buff in the Music profession in New World. 

• Rested XP Bonus

After you log off the game for more than 8 hours, your character will start to generate rested XP. Every 1 hour you will get 1% of your current level bar needed to achieve the next level. After joining the game all this Rested XP will be awarded at a 2 times rate. This is a nice feature catered more towards a laid-back approach. Keep in mind higher your level more this mechanic will benefit you.

Questing

This is the leveling method recommended by the game itself - it will allow you to learn the game's story, practice combat, and discover a variety of in-game systems. New World has the main story quest that will take you from region to region with a truly robust story that has been revamped in the last 3 years and become a streamlined experience.

It should lead you swiftly between areas with a bunch of side quests nearby that can usually be completed without going out of your way too much. This means that you can easily kill two birds with one stone - you can complete the main quest and a bunch of side quests simultaneously. Doing so will allow you to over level the content by a bit, which will make all subsequent quests much faster and easier to do. If you were to focus on Main Quest exclusively, you would quickly find yourself level gated - don't do that. 

There's no need to explain this one any further - simply follow the main quest line and pick up any side quest you can, but only complete side quests that can be done on the occasion - don't go out of your way to complete every single one of them or your leveling efficiency will suffer. 

Closing Corrupted Portals

Corrupted Portals are physical manifestations of Corruption that spawn in territories controlled by factions. The more developed the territory's settlement, the stronger and the more frequent the manifestations. You can see the portals on your minimap - minor breaches spawn every 30 minutes and major breaches every 60 minutes. There are four types of Corrupted Portals: Corrupted Hive, Corrupted Grove, Corrupted Portal, and Corrupted Monolith, but they don't differ mechanically - in order to close them, you simply have to clear them out of The Corrupted and seal them off with the Azoth Staff. You will aquire it during main story quest. Closing these Portals not only gives you experience, but also awards azoth, territory standing, and some loot. 

If you have a well-coordinated group, running these can be one of the most effective ways to level up in New World. If your party is strong enough, Corrupted Portals will yield more experience per hour than Dungeons. To run them quickly and efficiently, you will need a group of 10 to 15 players, so you should find yourself a Company that likes to run these. Alternatively, you could ask in the chat. 

A great takeaway from those are Minor and Major Breach Caches with items that should be fitted towards your current build and also opening two everyday drops Lost Sack of Coins each, rewarding you 500 gold total.

Gathering Resources

As previously mentioned, pretty much everything you do in New World awards you with experience. This means that you can solely focus on leveling your gathering skills and you will still progress through levels. This is great news, especially for those of you who want to focus on "trade skills" right from the start. While gathering won't level you up quickly by itself, by combining it with refining and crafting skills this experience gained from trade skills will still boost your character level. By placing weapons and tools as offers on Trading house early you might pick up gold while on your leveling adventure.

Joining Faction

During questing in Everfall on level 17 you will notice 3 Faction stories that enable you to join one of them. You can complete each short questline and or pick only one if you know exactly what faction are going to join if for example, your friends are joining the same. Keep in mind after switching faction once you will have a 30-day cooldown for switching again. Joining Faction will let you pick up quests both PvE and PvP from your faction representative. The first three you return will offer enhanced rewards daily that you can also use to speed up your leveling process.

Town Project Board Quests

This method was heavily nerfed since and we would recommend avoiding those. Most of the time materials you will be asked to trade for XP will make you more gold on the Trading house.

END NOTE

Please remember that Fun should always be the most important factor while playing - trying to play "perfectly" and always seeking to optimize everything will quickly kill your interest in the game. Don't let that happen, play for fun! 

We hope that you have found this guide useful and informative. If you liked it and want us to add more guides such as this one, please let us know! Also, we will be happy to receive constructive criticism that will help us improve our future work so leave your suggestions in the comments section below.