Hatchet Weapon Guide and Builds in New World

With Patch 1.1 of New World having been released on the 19th of November, we have prepared patch notes with commentary for the Hatchet weapon. Please follow the link below for more information.

The Hatchet is a one-handed weapon that scales with Strength and Dexterity. It deals Slash damage with its basic attacks and most skills. Even though it is one-handed you cannot dual-wield them or use a shield. The Hatchet is an aggressive and relentless weapon that allows you focus on fast, powerful melee attacks or medium-distance throws.

The Hatchet scales primarily with Strength but also scales with Dexterity, making it able to easily accompany a weapon that scales either of these Attributes. We recommend that you focus on obtaining gear that has either Strength or Dexterity and Constitution. Faction armor in particular does a good job of providing a balance of Strength or Dexterity and Constitution. If you want to use Heavy Dexterity armor you can change the Attributes on the Faction armor by using a Seal such as the Syndicate Brigand Seal. Take this Seal and the piece of faction gear that you want to Attribute swap to its corresponding crafting bench and there should be a new recipe for you to complete. For more information about Attribute scaling check out our guide on Attributes.

In PvE content you can use the Hatchet to DPS or as a secondary tank weapon. Your primary role will be to pump out as much damage as you can to all foes you can reach in melee range while staying alive. The Hatchet also can provide a useful debuff, Rend, with Rending Throw that will make everyone in your party do more damage against a single foe for a limited time. The Hatchet's melee range is somewhat limited, so proper positioning will be important to make sure that you hit as many foes as possible and that you are getting consistent backstab-crits against bosses. We recommend Berserk, Rending Throw, and Raging Torrent for abilities, unless you care about having a gap closer for which you can switch out Raging Torrent for Feral Rush. Berserk will heal you for 10% of your maximum health every 4 seconds so keep that in mind if you are in dire straits. The best gem for your Hatchet is Cut Pristine Diamond because with your self-healing you are likely to be at full health while fighting. For armor gems we recommend either Cut Pristine Onyx, Cut Pristine Malachite, or Cut Pristine Diamond to provide generic damage absorption. To see what weapons best pair with the Hatchet, check out our Weapon Combos section below.

We recommend taking the following mastery points:

• On The Hunt
• Berserking Refresh
• Against All Odds
• Dispatch
• Fortifying Strikes
• Aggressive Approach
• Final Blow
• Berserking Purge
• Uninterruptible Berserk
• Defy Death
• Relentless Fury
• Accumulated Power
• Enraged Strikes
• Critical Throw
• Rejuvenating Crits
• Desperate Refresh

In PvP content the Hatchet is used for chasing down foes and unleashing fast attacks on them. Berserk provides a sizable advantage to the Hatchet user due to its increased attack damage, movement speed, self-healing, and Grit. This can be used to catch up to other players in order to Root them with Feral Rush's Crippling Strikes. If you would die Defy Death can give you a small window of time to get away or activate a healing potion. We recommend using Berserk, Feral Rush, and Raging Torrent. If you are having a lot of problems with extremely tanky players switching to Rending Throw can help get through their defenses and Infected Throw can help fight against healers. The best gem for your Hatchet is Cut Pristine Emerald to help finish off low health foes. For armor gems we recommend either Cut Pristine Onyx, Cut Pristine Malachite, or Cut Pristine Diamond to provide generic damage absorption. To see what weapons pair best with the Hatchet, check out our Weapon Combos section below.

We recommend taking the following mastery points:

• On The Hunt
• Berserking Refresh
• Against All Odds
• Fortifying Strikes
• Dispatch
• Crippling Strikes
• Berserking Purge
• Uninterruptible Berserk
• Defy Death
• Frenzied Purge
• Accumulated Power
• Enraged Strikes
• Critical Throw
• Rejuvenating Crits
• Desperate Refresh
• Relentless Fury

The Hatchet, like all other weapons, has six abilities. However, you can only use three abilities at any give time on your action bars. While you can spend Mastery Points on more than 3, it is a waste of points since respeccing is rather cheap to do.

Feral Rush — A sprinting melee attack that causes the player to leap forward, hitting twice. The first hit deals 115% weapon damage and the second deals 130% weapon damage. This ability is a decent gap closer that can root foes that are hit in the back once you take Crippling Strikes. You can use Berserk to catch up and then root them for 2 seconds which can allow you to secure a kill. This works great against Elk and other foes that run away from you so you have a chance to kill them.

Berserk — Triggers a Berserk Mode that increases all attack damage by 20% while active. Berserk Mode will be active for 12 seconds and its cooldown will trigger once Berserk ends. This is the cornerstone ability for the Hatchet and is the primary reason that you would pick this weapon. Offering a damage increase, movement speed, self-healing, immunity to crowd control, and grit, this is just hands down the best ability the Hatchet offers. This ability will also taunt all foes within 8 meters for 8 seconds if you have a Carnelian gem socketed in your Hatchet. Note that switching to your other weapon or sheathing your weapon for any reason, including opening your inventory or gathering raw materials, will cause Berserk to dissipate.

Raging Torrent — Perform four fast attacks each dealing 90% weapon damage. This is a fast ability that pumps out a lot of damage but leaves you open to counterattacks. Partnered with Relentless Fury, it can really pump out some serious damage. This ability unfortunately does not have a large area of effect and does not apply any crowd control, so it is easy for foes to leave the area before taking the full damage.

Rending Throw — Throw an axe dealing 110% weapon damage and applying Rend, reducing target's damage absorption by 10% for 10-seconds. This Ability has an extremely quick animation and fires off an axe in a straight line. Rend is a powerful debuff that makes those affected by it take more damage and can be stacked up to 30%. This Ability is useful in PvE and PvP to soften up a foe's defenses.

Social Distancing — Throw an axe forward and dodge backwards, dealing 130% weapon damage and slowing targets by 15% for 3 seconds. This ability is useful if you are trying to play a ranged-only playstyle because it can help you gain some ground against a single target or small group.

Infected Throw — Throw an axe that deals 150% weapon damage and triggers Disease and Weaken on the target for 5-seconds. This Ability has a rather long animation which makes it difficult to hit. This is the only source of applying Disease for players so it can be an attractive PvP option to reduce incoming healing.

Like all other weapons, the Hatchet has two Mastery trees. You can spend Mastery Points in either tree but must have a Mastery from the preceding row to select deeper Masteries. Likewise, if a Mastery has a vertical line connecting it to a Mastery above it then you must first select the higher Mastery in order to unlock the lower ones. These linked together Masteries typically support abilities which are denoted by a square-shaped icon. While you can unlock all six abilities at once, you will only be able to place three abilities on your action bar at a time. It is unwise to invest in more than three abilities because it is easy to respec. The Ultimate Mastery point will unlock once you spend 10 Mastery Points in its tree. You are unable to add additional Mastery Points, respec your Points, change your action bar, or unequip your weapon while any Ability is on cooldown.

The Berserker tree is all about melee and buffing the player after performing light or heavy attacks. Relentless Fury allows you to use a heavy attack and then follow it up with three Empowered light attacks which sets up Accumulated Power for your next heavy attack. This rotation of one heavy followed by three light attacks can take a bit to get used to, but drastically increases the single-target DPS of the Hatchet. Fortifying Strikes provides a hefty 15% damage reduction for 3 seconds, which is incredibly powerful for both PvE and PvP content. The Ultimate Mastery of this Tree is Defy Death which allows you to avoid a killing blow and avoid dying for 3 seconds. This is great for escaping a tough situation; however, that 3 seconds goes quickly and unless you have gotten some distance or healed you are likely to die right away.

The Throwing tree focuses on making the Hatchet a ranged weapon and applying up to four debuffs. Aimed Throw allows you to change your block into an Aimed Throw which can be useful for hitting foes at a distance. This is also the only ranged weapon that does not cost ammo or mana and instead drains your Stamina. The Ultimate Mastery Persistent Hinderance causes throwing axe hits to extends the duration of Hatchet debuffs by 30%. Since you can apply Rend, Slow, Disease, and Weaken with the Throwing tree and gain several benefits from hitting foes that are debuffed, this Ultimate pairs nicely with the rest of the tree. Refreshing Throws reduces your cooldowns, Exploitation increases your damage, and Boot and Rally recovers your Stamina when you are hitting throws against debuffed foes. Critical Throw is a great first row Mastery that grants increased Critical Strike Chance to both melee and thrown Hatchet attacks and should not be overlooked.

Every Weapon Ability in New World has a corresponding perk that can be found on armor and weapons. Most perks scale in power with the Gear Score of the item they are on. You can only benefit from one instance of a Weapon Ability perk at a time. These can be rare to find on gear and are mostly just a bonus.

• Energizing Feral Rush — Gain Stamina for each successful hit with Feral Rush. This perk is okay but not gamechanging in any way.
• Keen Berserk — Increase Crit Chance by a flat amount while under a set percentage while Berserking. This perk is rather strange as it requires you to be low health while having a buff active that heals you. It might be nice for PvP but is not as valuable in PvE.
• Refreshing Torrent — Every hit of Raging Torrent reduces all Hatchet cooldowns by a percentage. Since Raging Torrent can hit 5 times, this perk is nice to have when using Raging Torrent.
• Energizing Rending Throw — Rending Throw kills grant Stamina. Rending throw is generally used for its Rend debuff so it would be an uncommon occurrence for you to save it for a kill, making this perk mostly useless.
• Vorpal Distancing Throw — Social Distancing headshots deal additional damage. More damage is always nice, but it can be somewhat hard to land headshots so your mileage with this perk may vary.
• Mending Infected Throw — Infected Throw kills heal for a percentage of your maximum health. While healing for a percentage of your health is always a strong perk, Infected Throw has a long animation and does not hit all that hard so it may be difficult to get consistent kills to take advantage of this perk.

Hatchet leveling is strong due to having several strong options for early Masteries. Berserk is an easy pick for your first Point and upgrading it with On The Hunt and Berserking Refresh makes you an early-game powerhouse. Due to the limited access of mobility and healing at early levels, the Hatchet is arguably the strongest low-level weapon for leveling. From there, take Aimed Throw to allow yourself to hit distant foes. This allows you to pull foes to you that you would have to run over to otherwise. This does remove your ability to block with the Hatchet so keep that in mind. Next, Feral Rush does a good job providing us with some additional damage and a gap closer. Against All Odds provides a consistent damage buff against foes that only gets better with additional foes. Fortifying Strikes makes you more tanky by providing a 15% Fortify effect.

Filling out Feral Rush with Dispatch and Crippling Strikes allows you to catch and kill PvE or PvP foes who are running away from you. A 2-second Root does not sound long but it can be the difference between an escape and a kill. Next we are going to complete the Berserker tree with Berserking Purge and Uninterruptible Berserk to make our damage uptime more consistent. This opens up Defy Death which helps you avoid lethal damage; however, the immortality window is only 3 seconds, which is not a lot of time. After that we grab Rending Throw and some of the Masteries we have been passing over like Relentless Fury, Accumulated Power, and Enraged Strikes. With Relentless Fury and Accumulated Power you can now rotate one heavy attack followed by three light attacks for a solid damage boost. Note that this is best accomplished against bosses and single targets that are attacking another player. Rending Throw applies Rend which is a powerful debuff that removes an enemy's damage absorption. Lastly, finish up with Critical Throw, Rejuvenating Crits, and Desperate Refresh.

The Hatchet is a great weapon to combine with any weapon that is looking for self-healing or melee damage. There are a few weapons that pair extremely well with it:

• Great Axe — Scaling primarily with Strength, this is a great pairing with the Hatchet. The Great Axe does a great job of gap closing and getting close to foes. There is something really satisfying about running someone down in PvP with Blood Lust and then using Feral Rush to root them in place due to Crippling Strikes. The Great Axe also has a longer range on its attacks which makes it easier for you to hit backstab-crits against bosses when there is another melee player attacking. One downside is that both these weapons deal Slash damage and so both will be weak when fighting Ancient-type foes.
• War Hammer — Where the Hatchet lacks crowd control the War Hammer has it in excess. This two-handed weapon's greatest weakness is its lack of gap-closing power which Berserk can help remedy. Armor Breaker is an especially nice ability that allows you to get a quick attack off that applies a powerful Rend; you can combine that with the Sundering Shockwave perk and you can easily hit the 30% Rend cap which will make your attacks hit incredibly hard. This weapon is strong against Ancient-type foes which covers up for Hatchet's inherit weakness against them. One downside would be that you have no movement ability so traveling over rivers will be a bit of a pain.
• Spear — This weapon scales primarily with Dexterity and has Strength providing secondary scaling. This complements Hatchet's primary Strength and secondary Dexterity scaling by allowing both stats to not feel as wasted when you get them on gear. The Spear provides a lot of crowd control with Sweep and Vault Kick but lacks gap closing power which Berserk can provide. One downside would be that both of these weapons have limited area-of-effect capability.
• Sword and Shield — This weapon combination is more about PvE tanking than anything else. Berserk has a relatively short cooldown and provides both self-healing and an area-of-effect taunt which can be useful for gathering up multiple foes. Hatchet's ranged abilities are also nice for aggroing distant foes as the Sword does not have any ranged Abilities. A downside would be that both weapons are Slashing weapons and are weak against Ancient-type foes.
• Bow — Scaling with Dexterity, the Bow does a great job of doing damage at a distance but can struggle when foes get too close. Having the Hatchet to switch to can allow Bow users to have a melee damage option. Hatchet's self-healing abilities are nice for Bow users as they have extremely limited self-healing. The Bow also provides some area-of-effect damage with Poison Shot and Rain of Arrows which is useful since Hatchet is somewhat limited in this regard. One downside would be that you would want to scale Dexterity instead of Strength, reducing the Hatchet's overall damage.
• Musket — Similar to the Bow, the Musket scales primarily with Dexterity but also scales with Intelligence. The Musket excels at long-range strikes with its hitscan attacks and can even provide some crowd control with Traps. A downside would be that Musket is extremely single-target-focused and does not provide any area-of-effect damage.

The Hatchet scales with primarily Strength and Dexterity secondarily

You can get your first Hatchet either from killing foes or chests. If you do not find one then you can craft it for yourself at the Forge. We recommend crafting a Great Axe after completing your 'craft a weapon' introduction quest if you have not yet found one. For more information about crafting check out our Crafting guide.

No. Berserk will be removed if you weapon swap or sheath your weapon, including opening your inventory or gathering raw materials.

No. Berserk will not start its cooldown until its effect has expired.

No. Your Hatchet must be in your hand in order to gain any benefits from it, including Defy Death.