The Hatchet might be the most reliable and versatile weapon in New World. It has received many changes and tweaks over the past year, but if anything, it has become a more balanced and enjoyable weapon than it originally was.

Related: New World: Best Build To Level Up Fast

There are a few things that really stick out about the Hatchet: the movement speed buff of the Berserk ability is the only way to speed up your traversal across the map, its sustainability and damage put it up there with the Great Axe, and it pairs very well with ranged weapons. Here's our complete build guide to get you started.

Fundamentals Of The Hatchet

The Hatchet is a melee weapon with ranged capabilities, depending on the abilities that you choose to roll with. This gives it a lot of versatility in different types of builds.

• The Hatchet provides a movement speed buff via its Berserker mastery tree, as well as health regen. This makes it a great build for solo-leveling and completing quests.
• Depending on the weapon pairing, the Hatchet is a viable PvP weapon—although in a standard 1v1 melee fight, it might find itself outclassed by the War Hammer or Great Axe.
• The Hatchet primarily scales with Strength, with secondary scaling with Dexterity.
• The Hatchet prefers more mobile armor - light armor is an excellent choice because of the extra damage boost you get. Mobility is also key in most of the endgame mutations and expeditions.
• Death Defy is an excellent mastery (one of the best in the game) that essentially gives you a second chance at life. This is super powerful for both PvP and PvE, but does require that you spec almost entirely into the Berserker tree.

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The Best Hatchet Builds In New World

The Hatchet's abilities are all pretty well-rounded, and this will mostly come down to your own style of play. There are two trees you can invest your passive points into:

1. Berserker: All-out aggression, utilizing the Berserk buff and rapid attacks to kill enemies.
   1. Contains self-sustain passives.
2. Throwing: Focuses on ranged attacks and debuffs.
   1. Contains stamina-related passives.

Berserker is the most popular choice in PvE, mostly due to the Berserk perk. This effect gives you damage, movement speed, and makes your attacks uninterruptible. The rest of the tree gives sustain buffs as well, making this an all-around excellent tree.

Throwing is more oriented towards PvP or utilizing the Hatchet as a back bar weapon, damaging targets from a distance to draw their aggro or to apply pressure. This tree pairs best with weapons like the Spear and Rapier, as it allows you to create space between yourself and the enemy with ease.

Related: New World: How To Increase Your Gear Score

The Hatchet pairs well with an assortment of different weapons. It can be paired with the Fire Staff, Bow, Rapier, Ice Gauntlet, the Great Axe... It's so versatile and useful for getting around the map that virtually any build can make good use of the Hatchet. Here are some of our favorite weapon combos to pair with the Hatchet.

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Hatchet And Bow Build

We've actually got this listed as our favorite leveling build. There is an argument that other weapons, like the Great Axe or War Hammer, or more suited to PvE farming and quest completion. However, the Hatchet and Bow are still useful. You get a lot of mobility, loads of sustainability in PvE, and AoE from the Bow that allows you to clear bigger groups of mobs. This build is also viable in PvP.

Best Hatchet Masteries

In essence, you'll be speccing entirely into the Berserker tree. This tree gives three powerful abilities, health sustain, and a capstone that lets you ignore death once every 75 seconds.

Berserk is the star of the show, giving you a multitude of buffs once you grab each Berserk mastery. It grants bonus damage, movement speed, healing, and immunity to staggers while it's active. Pop Berserk whenever you can to gain the upper hand.

Feral Rush is a movement tool. You can use it as a gap closer, disengage tool, or a means of getting around the map a little bit faster when Berserk is on cooldown. Your second mastery, Crippling Strikes, is especially potent in PvP if you manage to land a backstab.

Raging Torrent dishes out damage in quick succession but also grants haste after successfully landing some hits. This makes it great for kiting powerful PvE enemies. It also pairs well with the light attack passives in the Berserker tree.

Best Bow Masteries

Related: New World: Best Tank Builds

For this setup, you'll want to focus mainly on the Skirmisher tree, grabbing any passives that enhance your mobility.

Evade Shot is nice for gaining a short Haste buff and for building some distance between you and nearby enemies. It deals solid damage too, so use this whenever you can.

Poison Shot is a great AoE skill and is especially powerful in PvP, dealing solid tick damage. For PvE, group up your targets before using Poison Shot to dish out as much damage as possible.

Penetrating Shot hits like a truck, dealing even more damage if you land it from a distance. If you can, try to start engagements with Penetrating Shot to deal a massive chunk of damage.

For more information on Bows, including alternate builds, check out our best Bow build guide.

Best Attributes And Gear

• Attributes: Strength and Dexterity
• Armor: Medium to Light

Your main attribute for this build will be Strength, followed up with Dexterity if you want to scale your Bow. If you only use your Bow to draw aggro and gain movement speed buffs, you can instead have your second attribute be Constitution instead of Dexterity. Either way, this setup will ensure that your Hatchet hits like a truck with each swing.

For armor, medium is recommended. It strikes a great balance between damage resistance and bonus damage. Light armor is risky on a melee-focused DPS build, at least for PvE. As for gear, look out for perks that enhance your Hatchet abilities and cooldowns.

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Hatchet And Great Axe Build

Axes, axes everywhere. With full Strength and a bit of Constitution, this is a tanky build that can deal massive damage. You'll be able to close the gap, group enemies together, then finish them off with a copious amount of damage. If you aren't familiar with the Great Axe, check out our best Great Axe build guide.

Best Hatchet Masteries

We're going to be using the same Hatchet tree as the previous build; Berserker just synergizes too well with the Great Axe. In essence, you'll be using your Hatchet as a single-target option after your Great Axe clumps up everyone and dishes out its AoE abilities. Proc Berserk, then unleash a flurry of uninterruptible attacks on your foes.

Berserk is your main source of damage for the Hatchet. Activate this whenever you can to dish out some serious damage. You can also use Berserk in the open world to move faster, acting as a movement skill of sorts.

Feral Rush should be used to chase weak targets or to close the gap. It deals great damage to weak targets, immobilizing anyone who isn't facing you.

Raging Torrent deals an absurd amount of damage when paired with Berserk. Activate this when enemies are stacked together or when fighting another player.

Best Great Axe Masteries

We'll be focusing mostly on the Reaper tree for this build. It has excellent damage output, health sustain, and its abilities are all fantastic. We will be taking Maelstorm from the Mauler tree, however, since it gives you another means of grouping targets together.

Reap might seem like a strange choice, but this ability provides excellent CC and deals a great amount of damage—especially once you allocate the Fatal Attraction mastery. This ability can also heal you thanks to Hunger, so feel free to play aggressively.

Charge is fantastic for closing the gap, retreating, or for animation canceling the recovery frames in a light attack chain to get a third hit in. Only grab Frenized Momentum from the mastery tree; Unpredictable Strike isn't worth it.

In the Mauler tree, we take Maelstorm to group targets together while dishing out some good damage. You can go with Gravity Well instead if you want a ranged CC option, although you'll need to allocate two mediocre passives from the Mauler tree to reach it. In terms of raw point efficiency, Maelstorm fits this build better. But if you prefer Gravity Well, feel free to use that instead.

Best Attributes And Gear

• Attribute: Strength
• Armor: Medium

Go all-in on Strength for this build. This will enhance the damage of your Hatchet and Great Axe, allowing you to dish out some absurd damage in the endgame. Any extra points you have should be invested towards Constitution to increase your HP. If you plan on playing PvP more than PvE, you might want to have an even split between both attributes. As for armor, Medium armor strikes a great balance between damage and defense.

For gear, anything that gives Strength and Constitution is great. Perks that enhance any of the abilities listed above or your cooldowns will go a long way.

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Hatchet PvP Build

After recent Throwing Hatchet changes (buffs to various passives and abilities on the Throwing tree), the Hatchet's throwing capabilities are now super viable in PvP. There are a few different weapon pairings that work well with the Hatchet, but there have also been some recent trends of using the Sword and Shield for its mobility and CC. The Spear is also another great option.

Hatchet and Spear

For the Hatchet and Spear, you want to spec into Berserker but pick up Rending Throw. With Berserker active, you already get full Grit on your attacks, which also means you get a bit more freedom with your stats (you don't need 300 in Strength for Grit). We've used around 250 Dexterity and 50 Strength with all extra points dumped into Constitution so far for OPRs and have found it to be a very powerful build.

• Light armor is recommended. Extra damage, extra mobility. You are squishy, though.
• BiS perks for PvP are as they always are: Resilient, Mortal Power (perfect with the Hatchet), Shirking Fortification, Freedom, etc. This is all subject to change ahead of the Brimstone Sands expansion later this month.

Hatchet and Sword And Shield

Alongside the Spear, the Sword and Shield is actually a surprisingly good offensive weapon outside its uses in PvE as primarily a tank load-out. We had to try this for ourselves, and the Shield Charge close-down into Hatchet Berserk is a very satisfying combination. Some good abilities to try out are Social Distancing for distance-closing with the Hatchet, Leadership with SnS for damage boost across the board in Wars and OPR. This can be run with either Heavy armor (excellent for holding points) or with Light armor (you will be able to deal a lot of damage and chase light-armor players on the other team, Fire Staffs, Muskets, etc.)

• This is not an easy build to use. We found that with Heavy armor you're a bit of sitting duck, not great unless you have a good healer alongside you. With light armor, we found the controls to be a bit finicky - especially moving around with the Sword and Shield. However, with practice, you can deal a lot of damage with this build (2k-3k hits, sometimes more with a critical) that can delete light armor players.
• PvP perks are much the same as mention above, and for stats, you want to go Strength/Dexterity/Con. Experiment with these and see what feels the best. We prefer Strength.

Next: New World: Complete Guide And Walkthrough