New World Factions Explained

New World's three factions are like an amped-up version of World of Warcraft's Horde and Alliance. You won't be able to change your alignment once you've chosen, so it's important to understand the weight of the decision before you commit to a faction. Here's what you need to know about the three factions in New World.

New World Factions Explained

When you hit level 10, you'll be tasked with completing a quest for each of the three factions. This will give you a sense of what each faction is like before you have to commit. The three factions in New World are as follows:

• The Syndicate is "a secretive organization of boundless guile and intellect in search of forbidden knowledge to usher in a new age of enlightenment."
• The Covenant is "a fanatical order that has charged itself with cleansing the land of heretics and defilers so that its true holy nature can flourish and justice can be restored."
• The Marauders are "a ruthless military force bent on establishing a free nation where anyone with the strength to do so can prosper and profit."

When you join a faction, you'll gain access to all the quests it offers, which will in turn offer faction-specific gear and rewards. You'll also be able to fight for that faction when it goes to war with another.

Wars are an opportunity for factions to claim new settlements. When two settlements are controlled by the same faction, their storage capacities are linked, allowing players in that faction to move their items from place to place. Otherwise, items are localized to the settlement in which they're stored.

Factions determine which company you can join. Companies are player-run organizations similar to guilds.

If you already know a company you plan to join, you'll need to enlist with whatever faction it serves. Otherwise, the decision comes down to personal preference based on the faction's aesthetic, lore, or other non-mechanical factors. New World also offers an official quiz to help you decide in which faction you belong.