New World Expertise was introduced in patch 1.1.2 along with the first Winter Festival Event. The Winter Festival hosts many good rewards and some really cool looking weapons. Expertise in New World refers to the Maximum Gear Score you have.
You have an expertise score for each item slot. As you can see in the screenshot below, this chatacter has a 500 Gear Score for most slots, other than the shoulders slot that currently is 504 expertise.
How Does Expertise Work?
As you journey through New World and kill enemies or open chests, you have a chance to obtain gear the same Gear Score as you have in that slot specifically, or slightly higher Gear Score.
If your chestpiece is 500 Gear Score and you get a drop for a chestpiece of 505 Gear Score, your new Expertise rating on your chest will be 505. It does not matter if this is light, medium, or heavy armor; the rating is strictly tied to the item slot. As this increase in expertise happens, future drops of that same item slot will continue to be either the same gear score or higher.
There are some things you should know about this system that don’t make it perfectly straight forward the way it’s been laid out in the above paragraph, read on.
New World Expertise Rating Explained
As soon as you reach level 60 with your character in New World, the Expertise System will be unlocked automatically. At this point, you can open your inventory screen and see the purple indicators seen in the image we presented earlier.
Some quick concise things to know about Expertise in New World:
- Each time loot drops or a chest is opened, the item you are about to received will be rolled to give you an item appropriate for your expertise in that slot. This is somewhat RNG but the chances are you will at least get a small upgrade.
- Once you hit level 60, your overall expertise and gear score is defaulted to 500.
- When loot drops, you do not need to equip it or even pick it up. If the system has rolled a new, higher gear score item for you, your expertise in that item slot will automatically increase.
- You can use Gypsum to increase your Expertise of a selected Gear Slot. This is a very powerful new system introduced in patch 1.1.12. You can find out more about Gypsum in this article
- Purchasing or crafting an item will not increase your expertise in that slot. The expertise is only increase from drops or chests, or through Gypsum.
- While each armor item slot has its own expertise level, weapons types have their own expertise level too. Upgrading the expertise on your equipped Great Axe will not upgrade the expertise of your War Hammer.
Finally, you should also know that the enemies you are killing need to actually be able to drop items of the gear score you currently are looking for. These are the gear score ranged for enemies at level 60 and above:
- Level 61 Enemy: 500-530 Gear Score Drops
- Level 62 Enemy: 530-560 Gear Score Drops
- Level 63 Enemy: 560-590 Gear Score Drops
- Level 64+ Enemy: 590-600 Gear Score Drops
What the above information tells you is that if you are already gear score or expertise of 550 for example, killing level 61 enemies will not give you any upgrades for any slots you already have at 550. Level 61 enemies only have the ability to drop gear score in the range of 500 to 530. If you are looking for item level 550 gear you would need to kill enemies level 62 or higher.
Enemies in elite zones and expeditions, as well as elite named enemies, will also have a higher chance of dropping items that will increase your Expertise ratings.
RNG Protection System
If you are having bad luck and not receiving items that are upgrades for the slots you need, don’t fret. New World has calculations going on behind the scenes that make it so that each time you don’t receive an item of higher gear score than the one you have for that slot, you will gain a slightly higher chance next time to get that upgrade.
