New World Faction Gear Guide: Is It Worth It?

In nearly any MMO, there will be different factions that you can join, usually requiring exclusive commitment. This can give you a sense of identity in the game, as well as cool merch and some quests. New World is no different, so we’ll be exploring all the various faction options in our New World Faction Guide.

There are currently three New World factions that players can choose from: the Syndicate, the Covenant, and the Marauders. In this guide, we will look at all three factions. More specifically, what gear they give you, how you can obtain it, and whether it’s even worth it to do so.

Let’s get started!

Basics About New World Factions

We’ll start off our guide by going over basics that hold true regardless of which faction you join in New World.

Repeatable Quests

You can increase your reputation in your chosen faction by doing various repeatable quests. In fact, reputation is literally a resource you earn from doing these quests.

The faction quests are broken into PVP and PVE quests. The quests typically involve fighting enemies, acquiring items, or crafting items. The PVP quests reward more reputation than the PVE quests do, but you’ll be competing against other players — you can potentially lose those quests and not earn the reward.

Leveling Up Your Faction

Once you hit a certain amount of reputation, you qualify for taking the main faction quest, referred to as a trial. Completing that will earn you the next title in your faction and allow you to progress further.

How to Get Faction Gear

You can buy gear and other items from your faction by spending faction tokens which are earned through completing faction quests. As you level up in your faction, you’ll be able to purchase better quality faction gear with your faction tokens.

Choose Your Faction

There are three factions in New World, each with their own theme. First is the Covenant, religious fanatics who favor yellow. Then there’s the Syndicate, shady scholars who don the color purple. Lastly, there’s the Marauders, warriors who really like the color green.

Choosing which faction you’ll join is pretty important. Your selection determines which companies (guilds) you can join, who you can open-world PVP with, and what kind of benefits you get from owned territories. If you plan on playing with friends, be sure to decide on your faction ahead of time so you aren’t locked out of being in a company together.

Outside of those three things, there aren’t really any big differences between the factions. Just choose whichever faction calls out to you. If you regret your choice, you have one free faction change, then you can change every sixty days.

Let’s take a quick look at what vibe each faction is giving off.

The Syndicate

The Syndicate is mysterious, mystical, and mercurial. They seek ancient secrets and arcane wisdom, and wish to create an enlightened world. They also have a cool, Illuminati-style emblem and a purple color scheme. This is a fun faction for anyone imagining themselves as a heavily arcane character, or who wants to have cultish/secret organization vibes.

The Covenant

No one expects the Span— I mean, the Covenant. That’s right, this is the faction of religious zealots. If you like being pious, purging heretics, and purifying the land, then join the Covenant. They also come with a nice yellow color scheme, great for all your holy light and righteousness metaphors.

The Marauders

HULK SMASH! Do you think the Viking aesthetic is cool? Is your favorite D&D class the Barbarian? Are you just a really big a fan of the color green? Any of these are great reasons to join the Marauders. The Syndicate values knowledge/truth, the Covenant values religious devotion/purity, and the Marauders value freedom. The Marauders believe in a might-makes-right society where everyone is free to do as they please.

How and Where to Join a Faction

Once you hit Level 17, you can find three quests in Everfall (locations are shown above). Each questline ends with an option to join its respective faction. I recommend doing all three questlines, even if you already know which faction you want to join. They’re quick, easy, and reward tons of XP. So much XP, in fact, that you’ll gain a nice headstart for your current questing area.

Once you’ve done your chosen questline (or all of them), talk to the corresponding faction leader and pledge your allegiance to the faction. Now you’ll have access to faction chat, faction missions, PVP, and (most importantly) the faction vendor.

Faction Vendor

If you take a look at the faction vendor, you’ll see that a lot of items are locked behind Faction Ranks. Don’t bother with any of the lower-ranked gear — in New World, you’ll quickly outlevel any faction armor you buy and more than likely find better gear from doing quests. Before you get to Faction Rank 5, the only useful items to buy will be potions and a Rune of Holding to make a bag, if you want.

As you level, you should periodically check in with a faction representative in town and grab a few missions. These missions will give you gold, XP, faction tokens, and faction reputation. The higher the level, the better the rewards. Try to take missions for any Expeditions if you can. Expedition faction missions reward a ton of XP and reputation.

Once you’ve hit a certain reputation, you’ll gain a faction quest. Complete it and you’ll gain a new rank and new items at the vendor. If you want to speed up this process, PVP missions and killing players reward a ton of rep.

Keep completing quests and missions until you hit 50,000 rep for max Faction Rank.

Faction Armor: Should You Buy Faction Armor Now?

Okay, you’ve finally made it to Faction Rank 5 — is it worth buying faction gear now? Yes and no. In New World, faction armor sets used to be a great starting set for fresh Level 60s, especially for PVP. Not to mention being able to change armor stats was a godsend, making it great for someone who was trying out new builds. Now, not so much.

At 525, faction armor’s gear score is way too low to be useful. With no option to upgrade it further, this gear will quickly be outscaled as you progress further into endgame activities. That said, there’s a simple reason to buy and use faction gear — crafting is hard and time-consuming.

As anyone remotely familiar with New World knows, the game is all about the crafting system. In fact, this game is so all about the crafting that you’ll need to craft new resources from the ones you gather so you can craft items from the new resources. As such, it should come as no surprise that the idea is for you to craft your own gear instead of buying it. You can still buy equipment, of course, but it will be very costly.

Sometimes, the faction gear will simply be better than any other gear you have (or have the ability to craft) at the moment. Sure, it may not hold up to your own crafted endgame gear, but it will hold up on the journey to the endgame. And if you work on leveling your faction as early as possible, the faction gear will help you out a lot in early game.

Alternatives to Faction Gear

All in all, buying faction gear is somewhat counterproductive. It takes a long time to get the full set only for it to be outclassed in a couple of dungeon runs. Fortunately, New World has made it easy to find gear better than the faction armor and weapons. Instead of buying the faction armor, try the following for better items when you reach Level 60.

Chest Runs/World Trains

One of the best ways to get better gear is through opening elite chests in elite areas. These chests have a 15-hour cooldown, so you can only open them once per day, but it’s totally worth it. Included in the picture above is what my inventory looked like after opening all the elite chests in just one zone. Keep any gear with the Luck perk, as having a full set will increase your chances of better loot.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend trying these areas by yourself or with a small group. For a fresh Level 60, these areas are pretty hard. Luckily, many servers have what are called “box runs” or “world trains.” You’ll be able to blow through zones with at least twenty people, opening chest after chest.

They typically advertise in faction/recruitment chat and bring tons of people with them, so be on the lookout for them. For reference, in the picture above is my server’s local Kevin Durant box run advertisement. All you have to do is type X in chat and someone should invite you to a group. In addition, here is a great forum post detailing all the common locations people go to for chests.

Expeditions

Another way to get better gear is through completing expeditions. Once you hit Level 60, you’ll able to run two new expeditions, Lazarus and Genesis. Each drop tons of armor and weapons, including exclusive items only found in those two dungeons. Completing expeditions also grants guaranteed expertise increases, which is needed for getting better gear in the future.

I recommend running Genesis, as it has a lower gear score requirement and is somewhat shorter than Lazarus. It may be a little hard for a fresh Level 60, but if you find a nice enough group, you’ll be geared up in no time.

Brimstone Update/Named Drops

Finally, for some easy high gear score items, the new free Brimstone expansion has many quests that reward weapons in the 615 gear score range. While these weapons aren’t the best around, they are great items to get you started. In addition, Brimstone quests reward plenty of gold and gypsum orbs. These orbs can be used to craft more gear as you play.

The Brimstone expansion also added multiple “named” item drops from creatures around the map. Named items are guaranteed to drop at 590, with the added benefit of being able upgrade them to legendary 600 gear score and beyond. Most of these items are unique, and some are the best items in the game. You can view all the items here in the database and see where they drop.

Why Increase Faction Reputation?

But wait! If you aren’t going to use the faction gear, is it pointless to increase your faction reputation? Good question! It is absolutely worth it to get your faction reputation to max.

At max rank, you get access to multiple items worth buying. First off, you’ll be able to buy two gypsum orbs per day. These can be used to craft more gear with higher gear scores. Second, you can buy Chunks of Consecrated Iron, Writ of Adventures and Grand Runes of Holding, used for crafting. You can also sell the Consecrated Iron and Runes of Holding on the market for some extra profit.

The only reason you should be leveling up faction reputation is to buy crafting material or gypsum orbs for better gear.

Join the High Ground

That wraps up our New World faction armor guide — thanks for reading! Hopefully these tips saved you some time and money as you explore Aeternum. Leave a comment if have any questions, and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for more New World content.

Happy gaming!