If you grab a shotgun for your secondary weapon (can make a weapon of your choic

e in the "intro to crafting" mission available next to the biker dude standing o
ff in the corner right of the ramp into the sheriff's office), you can make a pr
etty spiffy low-AP soloing build that will carry you through Kingsmouth and Sava
ge Coast with little difficulty.
Pull with Shotgun's Buckshot. Build weapon resources with 1-5x Blade Torrent. Un
load resources with Blade's Balanced Blade and Shotgun's Out for a Kill. Use Bre
aching Shot to increase your damage and Martial Discipline to save your butt. Sa
ve Stunning Swirl (e) as your interrupt or to give breathing room in case of add
s.
Passives:
Fists: Lick Your Wounds
Shotguns: Hit & Run, Dead on Target
Blades: Immortal Spirit, Sharp Blades, Regeneration, Fluid Defense (e)
Total AP needed: 52
When fighting multiple enemies, try to have an unused Shotgun resource on your o
pponents when they die and kill the weakest enemies first, Shotgun has a passive
that's really useful for those first two zones that triggers an AoE blast when
something dies with 1+ SG resources on it. If you're fighting, for example, a pa
ck of zombies and a lobsterman, you can deal a lot of damage to the lobster by k
nocking down the zombies like dominos.
Also remember that while Blade's resources build on you, Shotgun's resources bui
ld on the target(s). If you're hitting packs with Blade Torrent, they're all get
ting SG resources on them. You can use Out for a Kill and Balanced Blade on your
primary target, switch to a secondary target, and use Out for a Kill again once
its 4 sec cooldown is up.
New Players
Missions
The Secret World uses a tiered/stepped mission experience, where one step might
be go to point A, the next step is to collect three items, the next step is to k
ill five mobs, then end the mission by using the items collected in the earlier
step to summon a boss type monster and then kill it. The rewards are experience
and usually a piece of equipment. Missions are broken down into several flavors:
Story Missions These are long missions, which will see you through an entire
region before they are complete.
Sabotage Missions These missions are a little different, rather then being a
stand collect and kill type, they usually have you going into an area that is a
bove your level and doing some sneaky espionage type tasks. Disable a camera, av
oid being detected, steal item A, escape without being noticed.
Dungeon Missions If you zone into a dungeon your automatically granted the m
ission.
Investigation Missions These can include tasks that require using google to
find an answer too, as the answer is not located in the game itself. For instanc
e, you might be asked for a password and the hint could be the 2001 Superbowl lo
ser. Some people might know it, but google is there for everyone else.
Action Missions These are the standard MMO kill/collect type missions.
Item Missions These are missions you will usually run across while doing ano
ther mission. They have 2-3 tiers at most, and usually require you to deliver th
e item to another quest giver. You are allowed to have 3 of these at a time.

Most missions can be repeated after a certain amount of time has passed, between
24-72 hours.
Experience
Experience is awarded for killing mobs, earning achievements, finishing missions
and such. For every 40,000 xp you receive an Ability Point (AP), and for every
120,000 xp you receive a Skill Point (SP). Ability Points are spent on purchasin
g new weapon powers. Skill Points are used to upgrade weapon and equipment level
s, which allows access to higher quality gear. There is no limit to the amount o
f abilities you can unlock, you can and will unlock the entire wheel. Initially
you can keep a maximum of 175 AP and 40 SP unspent, the AP limit can be increase
d through the augment system. If you do gain the exp to gain more AP/SP while yo
u are maxed, those points will be lost.
Abilities
In general, the ability system consists of hundreds of active and passive abilit
ies that fit together to make your own personal build. As long as you are not in
combat, you can switch out abilities on the fly to meet different challenges.
525 active and passive abilities make up the Ability Wheel, with 28 Aux abilitie
s on the side. Purchasing new abilities costs Ability Points, which are earned a
t a rate of 1 for every 40,000 xp. Abilities cost anywhere from 1 50 AP, with ab
ilities becoming increasingly expensive as you progress down a tree.
Active abilities are your attacks, your heals, your buffs and your oh shit butto
ns. Passive abilities come in different forms, some will increase damage by a se
t amount and will be on all the time. Others require a condition to be met to tr
igger; for instance, in the assault rifle tree Extra Bullet will cause the build
er Safety Off to hit an additional time. Some passives will only boost one abili
ty, some passives will give a generic damage increase to all abilities, some pas
sives will trigger heal over time effects, some passives will grant defensive bu
ffs that reduce incoming damage, and many other effects. There are also several
powerful abilities that are called Elites, and have a gold background.
Attack abilities fall under three general categories: builders, consumers and at
tacks with long cool downs. A builder is an attack that will build a resource fo
r your primary weapon and your secondary weapon, except builders that heal your
friendly target only build for your primary weapon. These will build a maximum o
f 5 resources, at a rate of 1 resource per attack. Consumers use those resources
to perform hard hitting attacks, general rule is a consumer gains +20% damage p
er resource used. Some attacks have longer cool downs, anywhere from 10 seconds
to a minute, and usually do decent damage and perform a special effect like stun
ning or rooting.
Pro Tip, you can return to your factions training room and any abilities you pur
chase inside can be refunded as long as you do not leave.
Active abilities require the associated weapon to be equipped, passive abilities
have no such restriction. You can use any passive ability once you have unlocke
d it.
Skills
Similar to purchasing new abilities, you need to purchase skill levels in your w
eapons and your talismans. Purchasing new skills costs Skill points, which are e
arned at a rate of 1 for every 120,000 xp. Initially, new skills cost 1 SP to pu
rchase and increase by 1 for each level. The level of your skill in a weapon or
talisman determines what Quality Level of that type you can wear. You can wear s
kill level +1 except with epic gear, which requires equal skill in the weapon.
Builds

Your build is the 7 active and 7 passive abilities you have equipped at a given
time. You're restricted to only using two weapons at a time, but you can use any
passive regardless of the weapon it belongs to. You are further restricted to o
nly take one Elite active and one Elite passive. There are premade builds which
are unique to each faction, these are generally regarded as trash. The only reas
on to get the abilities required is to get the outfit that comes along with the
premade deck.
Weapons and Equipment
The game starts you with 9 weapon choices. Each can be used effectively for caus
ing damage and they each have their own gimmick that they bring to the table, su
ch as tanking, healing, crowd control. A quick look at these weapons:
Melee: 5 meter range
Blades Damage, Tanking
Hammers Damage, Tanking
Fists Damage, Healing (Heal over time)
Chaos Damage, Tanking
Ranged:
Pistols Damage, Healing Support, 10 meter range
Shotguns Damage, Tanking Support, 10 meter range
Elemental Damage, More Damage, some crowd control, 15 meter range
Blood Damage, Healing (Barriers), 15 meter range
Assault Rifle - Damage, Leech Healing (Healing through Damage), 20 meter ran
ge
EVERY WEAPON CAN BE USED TO DEAL DAMAGE
Talismans are The Secret World's wearable equipment, they do not change your app
earance and function solely as a statistic container. Talisman's contain three d
istinct stats:
Primary Stats - Health, Heal Rating and/or Attack Rating.
Secondary Stats - Offensive and Defensive supplements that increase your abi
lity to evade an attack, counter someone else evading, increase the chance for a
critical hit, increase the damage you do on a critical hit, and such.
Signets - Signets are restricted to the higher level gear that can increase
your damage, survivability or healing with unique effects that happen when speci
al conditions are met.
Weapons work similar to talismans, except their primary statistic is weapon powe
r.
Some equipment can have their secondary stats changed by using a glyph. Mission
rewards and dungeon boss drops typically can not have their stats changed, but c
rafted weapons and the gear you purchase during the end game grind is 100% custo
mizable.
Secondary stats are broken down into two categories, offensive and defensive:
Offensive stats:
Hit Ability to overcome your opponents Defense stat, nullifies a portion of

the targets evade chance.

Critical Rating Chance to score a critical hit
Critical Power Determines how strong critical hits are
Penetration Ability to overcome your opponents Block stat, nullifies Physica
l/Magical Protection.
Defensive Stats:
Defense Increases chance for incoming hits to be a glancing blow.
Block Increases chance for incoming hits to be blocked.
Evade Increases chance for incoming hits to be evaded.
Physical/Magical Protection Provides damage reduction to incoming attacks.
Crafting
Crafting is a little different then most MMO's, there are no recipes to grind fo
r. From the moment you create your character you can craft everything. Crafting
uses a minecraft style concept, where you have a grid and you place materials ga
thered in specific patterns, along with an appropriate toolkit and get an instan
t product. Additionally, almost every green item and above can be disassembled i
nside the crafting interface for materials. This includes potions, weapons, tali
smans and glyphs.
Combat
The Secret World uses a system where you have some abilities that build resource
s and others that consume them. While in combat it is best to keep moving as muc
h as possible, its possible to avoid some enemy attacks and you can use your abi
lities while on the move. Some enemys will charge up an attack and leave a white
outline on the ground, its possible to avoid all the damage if you move out of t
he silhouetted area. To aid in this, we have a free dodge that can be used by ei
ther double tapping in the direction you want to go or activating a hot key whil
e moving.
You can have two targets assigned at any given time, a hostile target and a frie
ndly target, and abilities will act accordingly without the need to constantly c
lick between the two.
How the hit roll works is still largely a mystery, but here are the possible out
comes.
Evade/Miss 100% damage reduction
Glancing Hit 60% damage reduction, secondary effects will not trigger
Blocked Hit Variable, between 30-50%.
Hit Full Damage
Critical Hit Full Damage plus a variable amount determined by critical power
Penetrating Hit Full Damage plus an additional 60%.
Penetrating/Glanced Hit
Critical/Blocked Hit
Penetrating/Critical Hit
Blocked/Glanced Hit

There are four possible states a target, or yourself, can have applied:
Affliction- Damage over time effects
Weakened damage, healing or defensive debuffs
Hindered Roots and snares

Impaired Stuns, Knockdowns and Silences

PvP
Pvp is isolated into three play fields: Fusang, El Dorado and Stonehenge. Pvp of
fers an alternate path for obtaining end game quality epic gear through the use
of a special currency awarded when competing in mini games. Killing another play
er also grants pvp experience for purchasing new unique outfits. All mini games
are made up of three faction specific teams, the players for the teams are pulle
d from specific battle groups. Battle groups are based on which server you are o
n, currently there are only two battle groups.
Stonehenge is a king of the hill style map, with five person teams.
El Dorado is a murder ball mini game, with ten person teams. The teams battle ov
er four relics, each relic will grant one point every few seconds. Hold all four
relics will start a two minute victory counter.
Fusang is a persistent battlefield that has several bases that can be captured f
rom the other teams, or defended against capture. Each base as a PvE element to
it in the form of NPC defenders, namely a sentry turret that guards the entrance
and a custodian that guards the base. Both need to be defeated before the base
can change hands. Fights that happen in Fusang are rarely even, its usually 1 vs
25 depending on the time of day. Fusang features four side item missions that c
an be completed for regular experience: Capture a facility, Capture an anima wel
l, Kill 10 players and activate your factions patrolling custodian. The patrolli
ng custodian is granted to the team with the least amount of players.

Achievements and Lore

The game has a ton of achievements for doing things like killing a type of creat
ure 10,000 times or finishing all the missions in a region. Lore appear as yello
w honeycomb boxes and help to tell the story of the region you re in.
Your First Build
I will not tell you which two weapons will make the best combo for finishing all
the solo or group content in the game, instead I am going to give some of the c
oncepts that many of us follow to create successful builds:
The ability wheel has a search feature, that can search for key terms inside
of the ability descriptions. So if you need a hinder, search for hinder. If you
need passives to go along with burst abilities, search for burst.
You need a builder ability that builds resources for both of your equipped w
eapons.
You need a consumer for each weapon that uses resources.
Having some form of AoE will help out a ton, either as a builder or consumer
.
Most mobs have some sort of gimmick that either makes them easier to kill, o
r gives them a bonus that makes them harder to kill. Take a second and review th
eir buffs before you engage them, and make sure your build exploits their weakne
ss and avoids their strengths. An example is bugs in Shadowy Forest that will af
flict you, if you afflict them.
Having some sort of survivability can help out in a pinch, most weapons have
some sort of sustained defense to protect yourself or the ability to heal damag
e. But the best defense is a good offense, and that holds very true in The Secre
t World.

Having a buffer of extra hit points can help out a lot, this is even more tr
ue when you get into the QL10 blue and purple gear, that no longer has health bu
ilt into it.
Which passives you take can be the hardest part of putting a build together:
Things like Lick Your Wounds, Advantage Me and Immortal Spirit can provide t
he passive healing to keep your health topped off so you can move onto the next
fight.
Additional damage through extra hits like Sudden Return, Arterial Pulse and
One in the Chamber can help eat through mobs, if you have the stats to trigger t
he effects constantly.
A good portion of abilities have a passive that is unique to them; Safety Of
f has Extra Bullet, One-Two has Follow Through, and such. Consider taking these
if they will help you in one way or another.
The Exposed debuff which can be applied by hammers, blades and chaos will he
lp take down mobs faster. The Debilitate debuff will cause mobs to hit for less,
which will let you last longer. Both are good options for harder fights. Use th
e search function to see what applies them.
Ask in mumble, in game, on the offsite forums or in this thread if you need help
putting together an effective build.