New World Aeternum Season 9 Weapon Review And Recommended Offhand Match
Posted: Sep 05, 2025 Views: 25
New World Aeternum is a somewhat unusual MMO. It doesn't have a specific class structure. Instead, your weapon set is your class, allowing you to combine ranged and melee weapons or become a more specialized healer.
For new or returning players, choosing the right weapon set from these 15 weapons can be a trial-and-error process. Choosing the wrong weapon set can waste both upgrade materials and New World Aeternum coins. let's take a look at the features of these weapons in Season 9 and their recommended builds below.
New World Aeternum's 15 weapons are divided into four main categories: one-handed melee weapons, two-handed melee weapons, ranged weapons, and magic weapons.
Melee One-Handed Weapons
Sword & Shield
- Attributes: Strength & Dexterity
Sword & Shield is often considered a tank or heavy frontline class, but its skill tree allows you to play a mid-range DPS or even an assassin role. You'll need to choose the right skills based on your desired class. Sword & Shield can be paired with a variety of weapons, with Flail, Hand Axe, and Great Axe being recommended.
Rapier
- Attributes: Dexterity & Intelligence
Rapier is a light DPS weapon, a getaway tool for mages and healers. It's one of the top DPS weapons in PvE, with a high skill ceiling and a high penalty for mistakes.
Hatchet
- Attributes: Strength & Dexterity
Hatchet is incredibly popular and versatile. Easy to learn and powerful, it's suitable for leveling, end-game PvE, and PvP. Its skill tree is divided into two sections: melee survival and ranged debuffing. Hatchet can be paired with almost any weapon and is one of the top three weapons for rapid mastery.
Flail
- Attributes: Strength & Focus
Flail provides numerous team buffs and enemy debuffs. It's suitable for tanking and frontline support, and can be paired with a Life Staff to create a versatile healer. While it's not recommended for leveling as a main hand weapon, it's worth exploring as a secondary weapon.
Melee Two-Handed Weapons
Spear
- Attributes: Strength & Dexterity
Spear is an excellent choice for frontline DPS. It boasts one of the best stamina sustains in the game and provides the crucial Rend and Weaken debuffs. It has a long range and fast combos, making it a popular pairing with a sword and shield or a hand axe.
Great Axe
- Attribute: Strength
Great Axe is a classic weapon. It used to be very powerful, but after several adjustments, it has become more balanced. It's mostly used by Bruiser characters in PvP and as a secondary support weapon in PvE, but its damage isn't the highest.
War Hammer
- Attribute: Strength
War Hammer is a utility weapon, mostly used by frontline Bruiser DPS or tanks. Its high damage, combined with its slow and predictable attacks, and its ability to provide crowd control and some debuffs, make it a popular weapon for tanks in PvE.
Great Sword
- Attribute: Strength & Dexterity
Great Sword has high damage and offers two play styles depending on your selected perks. You can choose a light or medium armor DPS (can be paired with a hand axe), or a frontline tank (can be paired with a sword and shield).
Ranged Physical Weapons
Bow
- Attribute: Dexterity
Bow is a classic ranged DPS weapon, with a skill tree divided into single-target damage and area/DoT damage (DoT). In PvE, bows can be difficult to output damage safely, making it primarily popular in PvP. It's often paired with a rapier or hand axe for survivability.
Musket
- Attribute: Dexterity & Intelligence
Musket is the epitome of the glass cannon. While it deals extremely high damage, it's also very fragile and difficult to control. It performs well in PvE, making it a popular choice in many quick leveling guides or New World Aeternum coins farming guides. It's often paired with a rapier.
Blunderbuss
- Attributes: Strength & Intelligence
Blunderbuss is a lightly armed DPS weapon, capable of dealing high burst damage at close range. It boasts both single-target and AoE abilities, making it an excellent DPS weapon in both PvP and PvE. However, its short range and the need to reload every two shots make it easy for opponents to find it in PvP. However, its flexible builds allow you to choose between a bow or a spear to compensate for these drawbacks.
Magic Weapons
Fire Staff
- Attributes: Intelligence
Fire Staff is Mage's signature weapon, a core source of elemental damage. The skill tree is divided into melee and ranged combat. Its strengths are similar to those of the bow, making it a pure DPS weapon. Good positioning is essential in combat, and it can be paired with other magic weapons or a rapier for escape.
Life Staff
- Attribute: Focus
Life Staff is the primary source of healing in the game and a must-have for nearly all gameplay scenarios. While it provides sufficient healing for pure healers, some players also use it in tank builds for self-healing. It can be paired with a rapier for escape or a Void Gauntlet for additional support.
Ice Gauntlet
- Attribute: Intelligence
A top-tier survival support weapon, Ice Gauntlet was once a decent damage source, but now serves more as a secondary support weapon for healers, mages, and melee DPS.
Void Gauntlet
- Attributes: Focus & Intelligence
Void Gauntlet is an excellent support weapon, providing a host of essential buffs and debuffs, making it suitable for any PvE or PvP situation. While its own damage isn't high, it significantly enhances main hand weapons, making it popular with healers, assassins, and mages.
These are the 15 weapons and recommendations for New World Aeternum Season 9. If you're choosing a second weapon set, I recommend upgrading each weapon. While this will take a lot of time and New World coins, Season 10 is expected to release on October 14. If you already have all the weapons, you can quickly transition to the Season 10 meta.
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