The High Watermark System is a system that decides the Gear Score of the drops you receive from endgame content, such as elite areas, Expeditions, Wars, Invasions, and Outpost Rush. It’s a system that kicks in when your character reaches level 60 and ultimately governs the power of gear drops you receive as you venture into the more dangerous areas of the world and fight powerful enemies.
New World’s Watermark is like a carved stamp printed out once you pick up an item. Let’s say we start with an item gear score of 520. Once you kill a mob eligible of dropping gear above that gear score, for example, lvl 64+ mobs, you will get a higher item level score or item level 521. Once you get that higher item level, the game database “watermarks” your current looted gear score to 521, giving you a chance of looting an item with a gear score of 522.
So, it requires immense dedication and playtime before you become eligible for looting high-gear score items. To increase your HWM and find higher Gear Score items, you can do the following:
Kill level 60+ mobs in Elite areas
Loot Elite Supply Chests
Complete Expeditions/DungeonsComplete
Corrupted Breaches
Participate in Outpost Rush
Use gear that increases your Luck
And keep in mind that anything obtained from other sources does not improve your Watermark System. This includes crafting items, using <a href="
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" target="_blank" rel="New World Coins">New World Coins</a>
to buy items off the trading post, or buying faction vendor gear.
One thing to note is the last point. Using luck-based gear does not influence the raw Gear Score, but it does influence the rarity of drops you receive. Therefore, it indirectly helps you get a higher Gear Score by giving you more overall drops. That said, there is no way to target-farm a specific item type, so you are limited to just grinding out mobs and chests as much as possible.
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