Introduction
The Blunderbuss is a shotgun-esque weapon in New World. It’s a ranged weapon that offers high mobility and strong close to mid-range damage. It scales off of strength and intelligence, making it a versatile pairing with many different weapon types including both melee and mage builds. For more information, continue reading our New World Blunderbuss Guide.
General information for the Blunderbuss in New World
The blunderbuss fires 6 shots in a blast and deals 23% thrust damage per pellet. Unlike other weapons in New World (and much like the musket) it does not have a charged or heavy attack that deals additional damage.
In this guide, we will go over the Blunderbuss mastery trees, recommend abilities for different scenarios, and tips to optimize the use of the Blunderbuss. If you’re looking for a specific build for the blunderbuss check out our builds section and filter weapon type by blunderbuss.
Mastery Trees
The Blunderbuss mastery trees consist of the Containment and Chaos trees.
Containment Mastery Tree
The Containment tree focuses on closing the gap and unloading hot lead into your enemy’s face. The three activity abilities in this tree are Net Shot, Claw Shot, and Azoth Shrapnel Blast.
Net shot fires a large net projectile that deals a small amount of damage and slows any enemy that is hit. As you progress through the upgrades you will receive an increased cooldown for the ability, a stronger slow, and reduced initial damage of the ability but receive DoT damage in the form of a bleed placed on your target.
Claw shot shoots out a grappling hook that will inflict a small amount of damage, inflict a root, and then pull you towards your target. As you progress through the tree you will receive increased stamina regeneration, reduced cooldown, and if the hit is successfully landed you will receive one additional ammunition in your blunderbuss. If you blunderbuss is already capped at 2 ammo then you’ll receive an additional ammo allow you to fire the blunderbuss 3 times before having to reload.
Tip: There is a passive called Extended chamber on the chaos side of the tree that allows you to gain an additional ammo 2 seconds after a reload, granting you 3 total shots. This does not stack with the ammo granted from upgrading claw shot. Therefore, it’s not recommended to take both of these passives. Utilizing that point elsewhere would give you more benefit.
The last ability in the Containment tree is called Azoth Shrapnel Blast. Upon use you will fire 5 shots in a cone in front of you and will push yourself back a short distance. Each shot landed deals 50% weapon damage with a damage drop off of 20% for each consecutive hit on the same target. As you progress through the tree you will receive increased range, and additional 4 pellets making the total 9 pellets that fires, reduced cooldown, and the final upgrade will upgrade the ability to shoot out a single bomb down the middle of the cone that will explode dealing AoE damage.
Passives
The key passive or ultimate in this tree is called Unload. It allows the blunderbuss to fire a total of 8 pellets vs the default of 6 within a 6-second window of an ability being used.
The remaining passives in this tree focus on giving you additional damage, stamina, a cooldown reduction.
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Chaos Mastery Tree
The Chaos tree focuses on keeping your distance and bombarding areas with explosive AoE damage. The three active abilities in this tree are called Splitting Grenade, Mortar Charge, and Blast Shot.
Splitting Grenade fires a bouncing grenade that detonates after a short duration. Upon its detonation one grenade will become 3 mini grenades that disperse and explode after a short delay, dealing damage. This ability can be manually detonated by reactivating the ability. As the ability is upgraded you will receive additional damage against targets with great than half health, increased movement speed for grenades that hit a target, and a DoT in the form of a burn will be placed on the target.
Mortar charge loads your blunderbuss with heavy canisters instead of firing the default pellets. For the next 15 seconds or your next 3 shots, whichever comes first, you will fire the heavy canisters that will cause a tall explosion upon impact. The canister will deal increased weapon damage in a small area, and the further away your target is, the more damage it will take. Upon upgrading this ability you will receive stamina regeneration, haste, and when fully upgraded you will receive a 4th canister shot and each mortar charge hit will increase the damage for subsequent mortar shots for a short duration.
Blast shot is a crowd control ability. Upon use, it fires out a blast of wind that will knock down any target immediately in front of you, and deal reduced weapon damage. Upon upgrading you will also apply to rend to your target, and lay down a path that will increase your and your allies’ movement speed when running through that path.
Passives
The key passive or ultimate in the chaos tree is called Double Down. When taking this passive, your next ability used will have its cooldown reduced by 50%. This can happen once every 30 seconds.
The remaining passives in this tree are centered around cooldown reduction, increased damage, and damage mitigation.
Recommended Blunderbuss Roles
The recommended roles for the Blunderbuss are Tank and PvP. You can incorporate this weapon into a DPS build, however, it is not typically considered a high DPS weapon for expedition purposes.
The blunderbuss works well as a tank weapon due to the amount of mitigation you can inherently receive from some of the abilities within its kit. It also has one ability, Claw Shot, that is taunt gem compatible. Pairing the blunderbuss with weapons such as the sword and shield or war hammer can provide you with a solid tank build.
The blunderbuss excels at burst damage in PvP. It is an up close and personal play style that is heavily dependent upon your abilities being active. Pairing this weapon with heavy crowd control weapons to set up your burst combo is preferred.
For specific tank and PvP builds you check out the blunderbuss builds in our builds section.
Recommended Weapon Pairings with the Blunderbuss
The blunderbuss is a unique weapon in New World because it scales primarily on strength and secondarily on Intelligence. This makes this weapon a good fit for a variety of weapon combinations. However, the recommended pairings for this weapon are the following:
Ice Gauntlet
The ice gauntlet scales off of intelligence making this a good combination for the blunderbuss. The ice gauntlet provides some great crowd control options allowing you to lock down your target and switch to the blunderbuss from some great combos of damage.
War Hammer
The war hammer scales solely with strength making this a great pairing with the blunderbuss. The Warhammer excels at crowd control allowing you to lock down your opponent while dishing out large damage with the blunderbuss.
Sword
The sword offers some great crowd control options allowing you to land your blunderbuss combination. The sword also scales primarily off of strength making this pairing synergize well together. You can utilize leaping strike and shield bash to lock down your opponent and then switch to the blunderbuss for a great combination of damage.
Fire Staff
The Fire Staff is the ultimate intelligence-based offensive in PVP. Firstly, using the Fire Staff gives you the doubled-up synergy of using Ignited Runeglasses in your armor for increased fire damage. Secondly, with this combination, you become the ultimate burst and hunting machine. A fantastic combination and highly recommended.
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How to Level the Blunderbuss in New World
In order to effectively level the blunderbuss (check our weapon leveling locations guide for info on locations and strategies to level your weapons) it’s recommended that you start by putting a point into Azoth Shrapnel Blast. This will increase your damage by a good amount to groups of enemies.
The recommended path for your abilities while leveling is as follows:
- Azoth Shrapnel Blast
- Splitting Grenade
- Mortar Shot
- Reach
- Discord
- Refresh
- Azoth Bomb
- Soften
- Steady
- Freedom
- Streak
- Ramp
- Deep Load
- Buckshot
- Future Planning
- Artillery
- Extended Chamber
- Double Down
The overall strategy is to train a group of mobs and get them clumped together. Then, utilize your Azoth Shrapnel Blast to deal damage to the group, into splitting grenade, and then finish the mob pack off with Mortar Charge. You will be getting procs of Unload in between abilities to help dish out even more damage to the groups of mobs. To see specific weapon leveling locations in New World you can check our Weapon Leveling Locations guide.
Blunderbuss 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 timeless shards.
Some perks can be applied to both weapons and armor. Other perks can only be applied to one or the other. There are also weapon specific perks for each weapon. Weapon specific perks have increased effectiveness if they are applied to your weapon vs your armor. However, there are situations where you do not want to have the weapon perk on your weapon, but instead on your armor.
You can reference our builds section for specific Blunderbuss pairings and builds.
The Ability perks for the Blunderbuss in New World are as follows:
| Weapon Ability Perk | Description | Armor | Weapon | Crafting Mods |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exhaustive Net Shot | Net Shot inflicts exhaust, reducing target’s stamina regeneration by X% for 8s | 37% | 60% | Steel Blunderbuss Charm |
| Leeching Shrapnel Blast | Heal for a percentage of the damage dealt from Azoth Shrapnel Blast | 16% | 35% | Starmetal Blunderbuss Charm |
| Venturing Claw Shot | When Claw Shot connects to a target at least 10m away, gain X% Empower for 3s or until next hit | 20% | 41% | Orichalcum Blunderbuss Charm |
| Plagued Splitting Grenade | Splitting Grenade hits inflict disease, reducing healing efficiency on target by X% for 8s | 16% | 25% | Reinforced Steel Blunderbuss Charm |
| Resupplying Mortar Charge | Mortar Charge kills reload 1 additional canister and grant X% Empower for 5 seconds. (Mas 1 reload per shot. Will not trigger after final shot). | 9.5% | 20% | Reinforced Starmetal Blunderbuss Charm |
| Crippling Blast Shot | Targets hit by Blast Shot are slowed by X%, reducing movement speed for 5s | 21% | 40% | Reinforced Orichalcum Blunderbuss Charm |
Recommended Blunderbuss Gems
The type of gem you will want to slot into your blunderbuss is heavily dependent upon your build and what you’re trying to accomplish. 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 Blunderbuss is strong/weak against
With the blunderbuss 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 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
New World Blunderbuss Guide Conclusion
That concludes our New World Blunderbuss Guide. For more on where to level your Blunderbuss, check out our Weapon Leveling Locations.