How to Level Up Quickly in New World - A Beginner's Guide (2025)

Thorough explanation of how to Level Up quickly in New World - types of quests, zones, strategies, tips and tricks to level most efficiently!

New World, like most other MMOs offer a variety of ways to level. There’s a lot of skills that can be leveled, including gathering and crafting skills.

However, this Leveling guide is focused purely on Character level and getting you through the early story and beyond. Levelling as a crafter will take a similar start, but diverge based on what you plan to do. This is covered more extensively in our Guide to Crafting in New World.

We also have a separate guide on how to progress your character’s stats in New World, which is different type of progression, but is tied in to leveling as well.

We consider this guide to be safe in terms of spoilers. We have done our best to include the most helpful and useful information without breaking your immersion with the narrative. There are mentions of areas and some events, but nothing that will ruin your experience with the game.

How the “Story-Rush Method” works

This method will have you focusing on purely main Story quests, simply rushing them to get to the next set of story quests. Fair warning, this method often leaves gaps later on in the leveling and questing process. It’s great for coodinated groups to get access to some of the better farming options earlier in the game, but solo may take a bit more effort or grinding to push past certain points.

If you want to group up with friends to make this go even faster, after turning in the very first quest, don’t start the second one and instead head to the area where you friend started. It’ll take a bit to get there, around 5-15 minutes, depending on which zone each of you started in. But you’ll make up that time easily by questing together.

Skipping the Tutorial via selecting Continue to New World in the Game Menu (Esc) is recommended if your goal is to level ASAP. If you plan to use Shield and Sword, it does however provide a quick and easy Mastery Point for the weapon, letting you get Whirling Blade for early leveling, otherwise you won’t get it until you take down a few Drowned.

For this Method, we have three distinct goals we want to get done. Focus on our Story Quests, Gather materials for Tools, and work towards later skill requirements.

During the starting area while we’re taking down Drowned for our quests and collecting stuff in this initial area, we want to make sure to pick up at least 4 Green Wood (from bushes) and 4 Flint (small rocks in the water). These will be used to craft a Flint Skinning Knife, required for a quest early on; as well as a Flint Mining Pick, Flint Logging Axe, and Flint Harvesting Sickle, which we’ll need to work on our gathering skills to get required materials later on.

While you’re taking on these early quests, keep an eye our for Herbs, Petalcaps, and Hemp for easy Harvesting Levels, and Small Boulders and Iron nodes for easy Mining Levels. These will usually be fairly quick to harvest, as we need to hit a threshold of 10 Mining and 30 Harvesting for later quest completion. The Iron will also let you make Iron Tools, which will help significantly for improving Mining, Logging and Harvesting Speeds.

What to do at Levels 1 – 10

Levels 1 – 10 are fairly straightforward, you’ll primarily be following the main quest, while picking up some resources and skill levels for later quests as you can. There’s a lot of tips to help you get around faster and such.

Going to start this off with one of the quickest and easiest tips which will help throughout the whole leveling process. While you remain in the Light Armor Class, you can cancel the recovery animation at the end of a roll by Sheathing your weapon, Unsheathing your weapon, or swapping weapons.

You can use this to quickly travel by Rolling and immediately using any of the three cancel options listed for a short burst of movement speed. After this, it’s best to let your Stamina fully, or nearly fully recover before rolling again. Emptying your Stamina will reduce your movement speed for a few second while it fully recovers, so avoid this!

The Main focus for level 1-10 is what the quests tell you to do. During the early questing you’ll also want to preemptively Gather 40 Stone, 16 Rawhide and 40 Green Wood. These materials are used for a later quest and will keep you from having to head out from your first town again without having a better objective to work on. Doing so should also have you at roughly level 7 before reaching your first town.

In addition to this, you’ll also want to grab 4 Flint and 4 Green Wood to make your firs set of tools at the same time you make a Skinning time for an Early Quest.

Once you reach your first town, pick up every quest you can, as a few of these side quests will be required to progress and unlock a few necessary things for speeding up later progression, like Camps.

After a few tasks, you’ll be given a quest to pick your Faction. Which one you ally with doesn’t matter, they all provide the same rewards from quests and such. If you’re going in with a Company already, make sure you select the Faction they plan to ally with, or you’ll be unable to join them. Complete their given quest and return to town.

By the time you reach town again, you should be close to level 11, if you’re not totally ignoring everything you pass by for resources.

How to progress at Levels 11-25

The goal for these levels are to hit our thresholds while blazing through the story. We’ll need to hit 30+ Harvesting by Level 15-17 (For Living Seed Main Quest), and 10+ Mining by Level 17-20 (For Argent and Aether Main Quest). These are by no means hard, but there’s also a few other specific requirements that we need to pick up before these levels and they’re not too hard to find.

First is the Petalcaps, these can be found all over the forests in most starting regions, but if you don’t find any, it can be found all over in the Windsward region. You’ll need a total of 6. Three will be held in your Inventory for one step of the Living Seed Quest chain, and the other three will be used to make Minor Corruption Tinctures for the proceeding part of the quest.

Then Rivercress is why we need 30 Harvesting. These can also be found near the rivers and ponds in nearly every region, you’ll likely find them and petal caps not too far apart when searching areas like Eldergate. Again, we’ll need 6 of these. Three for quest inventory requirements, and three for the Tinctures.

Silver Ore is the reason we need Mining at level 10 or higher. This is the minimum requirement to mine Iron. We’ll need 20 Silver Ore, to make 5 Silver Ingot to be used in the Argent and Aether Quest. You can also consider making an Iron Pickaxe and mining extras to sell, as they’ll be in demand early on because of this quest, especially on crowded servers.

After returning from your Faction quest, You’ll want to grab all of your faction PvE and PvP quests, and complete them. The goal is to hit level 12 before moving from your starting zone so you can pickup the “Between Innkeeps” Side Quest, which rewards a ton of Azoth and a Satchel, which increases your carry weight.

If you’re rushing purely story missions, you’ll end up being around 19-21 by the time you need to clear Amrine Excavation. This is possible at this level, but works best in coordinated groups, as the high damage of the boss monsters can be punishing without a great tank or a ton of ranged DPS.

Clearing Amrine will net you a ton of gear, and help you progress into the next stage. The Named gear, should they drop, can very easily out perform some of the Faction Gear gotten from Faction Store.

Tips for Levels 25-60

This seems like a ton of levels to talk about at once, but the way you level from here out will be fairly similar to the alternative method, as there will be many gaps in XP that you’ll need to fill as you continue the story. We’ll briefly cover them here, but the alternative method below will cover them in more detail. Use whichever ones you prefer to the gaps as you come across them.

Prior to Amrine Excavation, you’ll get access to your Azoth Staff, which opens the primary hard grinding method of clearing Corrupted Breaches. These will be difficult to solo under level 25, but will be a great way to fill gaps between levels and get plenty of Azoth and gear until you can move on to another quest, area or method. We have a full guide detailing the Amrine Excavation Expedition, so you can enter it knowing exactly what to expect.

Sidequests are another huge source of XP, especially if you’ve been collecting them as you do other quests. Some of these will also give you really good Rings, Amulets and Earrings; which can make them really worth doing to at least fill those slots.

Town Board Jobs are also great, It’s best to find the one that are broader in scope and easier to complete. These will be noted in the alternative method, highlight the good ones while helping you avoid ones that are more of a trap.

Faction Missions, both PvE and PvP alike can be super good if you get many stacked in the same area, which happens quite often. Once you’ve hit a certain level, there’s also a set of three PvE quests that can send you back to Amrine Excavation, which gives you a ton of bonus XP as well as Faction Tokens and Faction Rep.

How to Maximize your XP Gain in New World

This method can help you pull in a fair bit more XP, but won’t always be as quick as rushing the story. Despite this, it will help you more easily reach the thresholds for your gathering and refining skills to progress smoothly. It also remains consistent all the way from Level 1 up to Level 60.

The best benefit this method has is the higher average level means you’ll be closer to staying on curve with Main Story Quest levels, making some of the later quests much easier and much less grinding at later levels where there’s some gaps in available quests.

Much like the Story Rush Method we still want to get through quests as fast as we can, but we’ll also be taking Town Board missions, Faction Missions and Sidequests as well. The goal is to get as many objectives overlapping as possible. Even if we leave the area before they are complete, most Town Board tasks can be completed in other areas, meaning we can return for the XP later. Let’s detail which things to keep an eye out for and keep up with.

Which tasks to pick from Town Job Boards and why

Town Job Boards fall under four broad categories: Hunt, Gather, Craft, and Explore. which ones you want to focus on and grabbing early one vary by starting area, but you can also grab them to plan ahead as well.

There’s a few specific ones to watch for and other ones to avoid. Make sure that when you’re avoiding a job board task, that you accept it and then clear it. This ensures it cycles properly and help ensure you’re likely to get a different mission later.

Useful Town Job Boards available in All Territories

These are the ones that are good regardless of your starting area, and make for fantastic pickups. A lot of these are Crafting tasks, but there’s a few hunts that are very easy to get to as well.

For Hunting Jobs, you’ll want to grab any that send you after Rabbits, Turkeys or Wolves. These mob types are everywhere. Make sure to skin all of these as you kill them, as hides can be turned into Leather and meats can be used for Cooking. Turkeys also give Feather, which can also be a common Job Board Task. Which if it’s requesting a low amount of Feathers is great, but these are also better held for working on Engineering.

For Gathering Jobs, Flint is usually pretty low XP, but also pretty free as you’ll typically never need a huge stockpile of it. Just collect it as you go and keep some banked for these, and it’s great. Avoid any jobs that request any material, raw or refined in excess of 50. This is a waste of resources as many of these are used in the Crafting Jobs, where they get much more value. Avoid Fishing Tasks unless you’re actively fishing, most of these have seemingly low requirements, but require luck and/or a lot of bait to finish.

For Crafting Jobs, focus specifically Weapon and Armor Smithing Jobs. These require varying amount of Fiber, Iron Ore, Raw Hides, Green Wood and their refined counterparts. These give both great player XP and Crafting XP, and the materials can be found everywhere as you travel. Cooking Jobs can be okay, though most require specific items, mostly Salt and other Spices, which you’ll need to luck into from Provision Crates and Herb Harvesting.

Almost always avoid the Explore missions. Unless you have a Main Quest, Sidequest or Faction Mission for the specific area, they’re always going to be a waste of time. They will however stack will with Procure Faction Missions quite well. For the sections below, we’ll note stand out areas that may be worth considering per territory. Though we’ll only be covering the starting territories here,

Useful Town Job Boards available in First Light

In First Light, Explore Jobs that send you to Hilltop Encampment, Dayspring Mills, Clearwater Bend, Campbell’s Rest or Letum’s Pick should be taken here.

These are all areas with side quests or even main quests tied to them, which means you’ll be headed there at some point. A couple of these locations have a few faction missions that can be stacked up when visiting the area as well. While there are quests to most areas, these are ones you’ll end up visiting in multiple quests and show up frequently in other missions.

Crafting Jobs tend to be a little tougher here, as Fiber is a little more scarce, but also needed for some of the good Crafting Jobs. In contrast, most of First Light’s Northern region has plenty of Iron.

Lynx and Rabbits have have high populations here, around Pyrgos Nao and Elafry Pyrgo Points of Interest. There’s very early access to a high rabbit population around Dayspring Mill as well.

Despite the Lack of Fiber, First Light can be a great starting town. It’s less popular due to its location on the map, being the farthest settlement to the South, where Windswards and Everfall are much more centralized.

Useful Town Job Boards available in Monarch Bluffs

In Monarch’s Bluffs, Jobs that send you to Alioth, Chason Steep, Adamant Mine, Mines de Miclot, Farside Township, Traitor’s Hold, The Gray Mist and The Dagger should be taken here. Much like First Light, these are areas that are visited in Main Quests, Side Quests, or Faction Missions allowing them to just be done alongside other sources of XP.

Traitor’s Hold, The Grey Mist and The Dagger can also be used if you get multiple tasks for these areas. They all very near each other, making them great options at most times early on.

Monarch’s Bluff is also pretty light on Fiber locations, with most of it being near the border into Windsward. So some Crafting Jobs will be bit tougher until you make your way over there.

Monarch’s Bluffs does however have pretty easy access to both Lynx and Sheep. There also happens to be a Spirit Shrine you can grab to be able to Fast Travel to a very central location near all of them. The Sheep are between Mines de Miclot and Adamant Mines, where Lynx are located just outside of Archernar.

Monarch’s Bluffs may not be the best starting zone, but it’s not a terrible option by any means. It offers a lot of things to help you level smoothly and plenty of resources.

Useful Town Job Boards available in Windsward

In Windsward, Jobs that send you to Pride of Puckett, Hecker’s Haven, Stoneview Seabreak, Buccaneer Creek or Buccaneer Falls are all good. These are common locations for Faction quests, as well as several side quests; making them great detours for Explore tasks as well.

Lynx Hunts are also fantastic here, given the area around Amrine Temple has them all over, making them pretty reliable and in an area for many quests and side quests. This is a level 20 zone so it won’t be available too early on without a group.

Rabbits are also pretty plentiful in the Primrose area as well as near Bulrush Wash. This area also has Bison, and a convenient Fast Travel location to get here quicker. If you cross over into Monarch’s Bluff, there’s also even more Bison around.

The combination of all of these thing make Windsward a strong starting zone, as it has most everything you’ll need for a great start.

Useful Town Job Boards available in Everfall

In Everfall, Jobs that send you Arcturus, Shattered Obelisk and Kheller Homestead are all great. These are all have plenty of quests and Faction Mission around them, which makes them great for Explore tasks.

Everfall also tends to be light on Fiber spawns, so some crafting jobs may require a trip to the trading post or Windsward to grab them easily.

Everfall is also one of the earliest regions where hunting Sheep is actually possible, so this becomes a worthwhile pickup as well. It’s worth also considering grabbing jobs that take you to Bradbury Fields or Fallowhill Farms alongside them, as these two areas have them nearby to stack with the Sheep jobs. These areas are also have high Rabbit Populations as well.

Farther to the South of Everfall, around Shatter Obelisk is a decent population of Lynx. Further Northeast from there are some Alligators, which can be tough to track down otherwise.

Between plentiful resources and lots of hunting targets, Everfall tends to be the favored zone to start in. In addition, it’s very centralized on the map and near the zone you’ll move to at 25, Brightwood.

How to utilize Sidequests for quick leveling in New World

Sidequests are all over in every starting region. Taking and completing as many of them as possible will help you keep pace with require quest levels.

Next to the Main Story Quests, these will be among one of the largest sources of XP outside of the gathering and collecting you should be doing. Most of these will start from a Settlement, and take you to one or several Points of Interest.

With a lot of these being based on Points of Interest, you’ll also be getting the XP from visiting them as well. So they end up giving more XP that way.

How Faction Missions help you level up in New World

Faction Missions come in two varieties, PvE and PvP. PvE are the ones we care about the most, but PvP can be good to take too, so long as your Inn Recall is on cooldown. This is because after you start a PvP mission or complete the objective, it will be reset if you complete a Fast Travel, meaning you need to walk to it and back to complete it.

PvE Faction missions come in four varieties; Assassinate, Exterminate, Procure, an Purge. for the purpose of leveling, we’ll want to take mostly the non-Procure ones. But if there’s a Procure mission and another for the same area, take both.

Purge/Exterminate Missions are very similar, just being generic kill quests. The only Difference being Exterminate usually ask you to kill a specific type of enemy, not just any enemies of a given faction. These are both really quick and easy to complete.

Assassinate Missions are another kill quest, but requires you to kill a specific Named Elite at a given Point of Interest. These often aren’t too hard to solo, but can be if you’re under the level for the Point of Interest.

Procure Missions are a fetch quest, which usually means going to a Point of Interest and looting all or several of the chests and supply crates in the area.

Regardless of the Mission type, you’ll always want to stack these up to similar or nearby locations to each other or other quests when possible. The goal will also be to get every bit of XP possible as you Travel.

What are the Corrupted Breaches events

Once you hit roughly level 20 and complete your Azoth Staff though a Main story quest, you’ll also get access to Corrupted Breaches. These are events that get placed all over the map. Though these mostly only reward XP and gear on completion, they can still be great to do with a party. Soloing them is not recommend unless you’re at or near the recommended level of them, which starts at 25.

Getting a group and clearing a ton of these back to back can result in fairly decent Character XP and plenty of Weapon Mastery XP as well. It’s highly recommended to only do these with one party when possible. Having multiple parties will speed things up, but also reduce XP and rewards slightly.

What are the “Elite Points of Interest”

These simply put are Points of Interest with a ton of Elite enemies as well as Elite Chests around them. This Points of Interest will have a red marking behind them when shown on the map. These are more common in Level 40+ areas, but there are a couple at lower levels that are okay too, even if not properly marked as Elite Points due to not meeting the requirements for them.

It’s worth noting that Elite Chests have a cooldown of 23 hours, so it’s worthwhile to hit every 60+ Elite Point of Interest daily when Farming for gear upgrades at Level 60. Each of the areas detailed below has a handful of Elite Chests and many regular chests which have a cooldown of 1 hour. Afterwards, you can focus on whichever ones you like the best for farming with a group.

For level 25 and below, there’s a few areas with Elites and named Elite in each of the four starting zones; however there’s only one true Elite Point of Interest for this level. This would be Deadman’s Cove in Monarch Bluffs. This happens to be nearer to Cutlass Keys than Monarch’s bluffs. Deadman’s Cove is filled with Elite Lost, at Level 25.

The only (and less effective alternative), is to Travel to Saircor in First Light. This area may not be as packed with Elites, but does feature several named Elites which can be farmed in a similar, but less effective manner. Saircor is mostly level 16-17 Ancients.

As we move into the next area Brightwood, we get access to another two Elite Point of Interest; Brightwood Isle and The Azoth Tree. Both intended for level 30+ and is a proper Elite Point of Interest. Brightwood Isle is filled with Elite Lost, all at level 34 and can be found South of Brightwood.

The Azoth Tree, out second Elite Point of Interest for this area is much farther south near the border to Everfall. This area is filled with Elite Angry Earth at level 32. Being filled with Angry Earth means Blight Tinctures are recommended. This is also our first Elite area that’s not filled with Lost so far! It also happens to be closer to the Everfall Settlement.

As we go up to the Level 35-40 range, we get two more Elite Points of Interest in different regions. The first of these is Stone Skull Fort in Cutlass Keys. This one also happens to be a shorter distance from the First Light Settlement. This area is filled with Elite Lost at Level 40.

The Second area we get in this level range is Periville, found in Weaver’s Fen. This area is filled with Elite Lost at Level 40. Much like Stone Skull Fort, it’s recommended to be at least Level 35 in this area.

Restless Shore is home to out next Elite Point of Interest, Eridanus. Eridanus is found to the Northeast of the Restless Shore Settlement. It features Elite Angry Earth at Level 46. This makes the minimum recommended Level 41. Being filled with Angry Earth means Blight Tinctures are recommended.

Moving into Mourningdale, we come to one of the more well known Elite Points of interest; Scorpius. Scorpius is located to the Northeast of Mourningdale’s Settlement. Scorpius features Elite Corrupted at Level 50, making the minimum recommended level for this area Level 45. Since Corruption is abound in this place, Corruption Tinctures are highly recommended.

Alternatively for this level range, there’s also Svikin’s Stand in Great Cleave. This area can be found North East of Cleave’s Point. Much like Scorpius, this are also features Level 50 Corrupted. This means the recommended minimum level for this area is also Level 45. Being Corrupted, it is again highly recommended to bring Corruption Tinctures.

Sticking to Great Cleave and heading West of Cleave’s Point, we have a group of several Elite Points of Interest. These consist of Dead Fool’s Pass, Balebane Maw, Stranglepitch Road, Mangled Pox Gate, and Nihilo Village. This group of Elite Points of Interest are all Elite Corrupted at Level 60, making the minimum recommended Level 55. Being Corrupted areas, we highly recommend bringing Corruption Tinctures.

Before we move North to Great Cleave, we have two other areas to cover first, Ebonscale Reach and Reekwater.

Ebonscale Reach is home to the Imperial Palace. This sits to the Southwest of Ebonscale Reach’s Settlement. This zone is filled with Elite Corrupted ranging from level 61-62 meaning the minimum recommended level for this area is 55. Being filled with Corrupted, bringing Corruption Tinctures is highly recommended.

Over in Reekwater we have our last major non-Corrupted Elite Point of Interest, Forecastle Drift. Forecastle Drift is a filled with Level 63-65 Lost, making the recommended minimum level for the area 60. Similar to Myrkgard, which we talk about shortly, this area is great to do at Level 60 to push for 600 Gear Score. It serves as a good farming area if you’re low on Corruption Tinctures or would rather not use them.

Heading North from Great Cleave into Shattered Mountain, we have three Elite Points of Interest here ranging from Level 61- 65. The first of these is Caminus at Level 61, meaning you can come here around 55-56 . This one is the one farthest to the South in the image below, but directly North of Svikin’s Stand. This area is filled with Elite Corrupted, so Corruption Tinctures are highly recommended.

The second is actually a pair of Areas, Ambusti Inferior and Ambusti Superior. These range from Level 62-63, and are Northwest of Mountainhome. These you can farm at a minimum recommended level of 58. This area is filled with Elite Corrupted, so Corruption Tinctures are highly recommended.

Finally, to the North is Myrkgard, which in itself has 5 Elite points of Interest which range from 62-65. These you should absolutely only Farm at 60, as this is one of the most difficult pieces of open world content that New World has to offer currently. The high amount of Chests and Elites here also make this a great area to push for 600 Gear Score. This area is filled with Elite Corrupted, so Corruption Tinctures are highly recommended.

This concludes our New World Leveling Guide. We wanted to keep everything as straightforward and simple as possible, to make things easier to read. All map segments shown are from newworld-map.com‘s map of Aeternum.

If you’re new to the game, we highly recommend checking out our Beginner’s Guide to Weapons and Abilities in New World and the Beginner’s Guide to Combat in New World. These can teach you some of the most important basics of the game.

Here at VULKK.com we have a ton of useful New World Guides and more and more are being published regularly. We also have all of the news and updates covered to keep you up-to-date with all things New World!