Luck in new world comes in two forms:

• Gathering luck, which impacts collecting from gathering nodes
• Global luck, which impacts your general loot rolls that are used for chests and enemy loot bags

What global luck does

Global luck will, on specific loot tables, increase your chances to roll rarer items, which are generally the more desirable ones.

AGS has used the term “named items” but this is somewhat misleading as people generally only think about named weapons and armor items, however it can affect many other items as well.

Some examples of things luck does affect, to varying degrees, are:

• Named weapons and armor
• Trophy materials
• Golden scarabs

What global luck does NOT do

• Increase your chances to get a loot bag
• Increase your chances at a higher gear score item
• Increase your chances at a higher quality item (e.g. Legendaries)

How to increase your global luck

You can increase your luck in many different ways:

• The Luck perk is available on Bags, Armor, Weapons, and Jewelry.
• You can slot Pearls into your gear
• You can be PvP flagged
• You can place Loot Luck trophies in your houses
• You can consume luck boosting food
• You get a small boost in territories your faction controls

This table outlines the amount of luck you can get from each type:

Type	Max Percent	Max Quantity	Total
PVP	10%	1	10%
Bags	2.7725%	3	8.3175%
Armor	2.8861%	5	14.4307%
Weapons	2.8861%	1	2.8861%
Shield	2.8861%	1	2.8861%
Jewelry	2.8861	3	8.6584%
Pearls (T1/2/3/4)	0.25/0.35/0.45/0.5%	9	2.25/3.15/4.05/4.5%
Trophy (Minor/Basic/Major)	0.5/1/1.5%	3	1.5/3/4.5%
Faction	0.5%	1	0.5%
Food	4.95%	1	4.95%
Total	–	–	61.6288%

Per AGS, even though we sheath our weapon to loot chests, the luck from the active weapon (and shield if applicable) still do apply.

Note that it is my belief, based on how the Luck perk is attributed, that Luck and Pearls on off-hand weapons do not impact rolls. AGS appears to indicate this also in their Luck FAQ. This would mean you would only need to have a single luck weapon equipped, and ideally it would be a sword so luck on a shield could also apply.

Technical Stuff

At a technical level, luck in New World modifies the parameters of a roll, providing anywhere from a very tiny increase in your odds, to, in select cases, a very significant increase to your odds.

New World uses the concepts of Loot Buckets and Loot Tables to calculate the rolls.

Loot Buckets provide a list of items and applies specific requirements, such as level, zone, and monster type. When you roll into a loot bucket, there is an equal chance to select any one item that you meet the requirements for.

Loot Tables are slightly more complex, as they can specify a list of items which have a minimum roll requirement. Loot tables can also specify if you can have all items you roll successfully (AND) or only one specific item (OR), as well as specify certain conditions. Additionally Loot Tables can link to other Loot Tables and Loot Buckets.

Each table can have a MaxRoll set, which is almost always 100,000. This means the game will roll a random number between 0 and 100,000 to determine which items you are awarded. You must roll at or above the item’s threshold to succeed. For an AND table you get everything in the table that qualifies, and for an OR table you must land above the threshold for the target item, but below the next highest threshold, meaning you can only get a single item.

The higher the roll threshold, the more difficult it will be to get an item. For example if an item has a threshold of 99,000, this will provide just a 1% chance to receive the item.

Loot Tables are where Global luck is applied. If a table has the GlobalMod condition, that means the Global luck modifier is applied to the table.

New World has a slightly confusing mechanic where the luck is actually an integer value. Each 1% of luck is 100 points of luck. This means if you have 60% luck, that is 6000 points of luck.

How this luck is applied depend on if the table has the “AddToRoll” or “ClampMax” RollBonusSetting.

With AddToRoll, your integer luck amount is simply added to whatever value you rolled, making it much easier to roll the rarer items. If you have 6000 points of luck, you can now roll just a 93,000, and still be able to hit that 99,000 roll threshold. This means your previous 1% chance to roll an item is now a 7% chance.

ClampMax is what was previously known as “Luck Safe”. While AddToRoll can have a fairly significant impact on your roll odds, ClampMax will provide a much smaller impact.

With ClampMax, the luck amount is instead subtracted from the thresholds, as well as the MaxRoll value. This has the effect of squishing the range, providing a very small boost to the odds. Using the same example as before, we would subtract 6000 and roll between 0 and 94,000, and must now achieve a roll of 93,000 to get the item. With this we now have a 1.064% chance to roll the item

This is largely why “Luck Safe” was thought to disable luck. It changes the affect luck has from quite significant, to very minor.

Examples

We can take a look at two examples of where luck is applied.

Trophy Materials

First is trophy materials from chests. To get a trophy material, you must roll in two different tables.

In the first table we must achieve a roll higher than 75,000. If we succeed we get a chance to roll in the next table where we must achieve a roll of 99,500. The key factor here is that while the first table is ClampMax, the second table is AddToRoll, which means our luck can have a fairly significant impact on our roll.

With no Luck, we have just a 0.13% chance of getting a trophy mat from a chest, or only 1 in 800.

With 6000 points of luck we now have a 1.73% chance of getting a trophy mat, or a 1 in 58 chance.

We can see that the odds on the first table increased slightly from 25% to 26.6%. But the odds on the second table went from just 0.5% to 6.5%, which provides the majority of the increase.

Once we succeed on this second roll, we will select an item from the ContainerTrophyArtifacts Loot Bucket, which means we have an equal chance of getting any item in that loot bucket. The number of items which meet the requirements will depend on the zone level we are in.

Golden Scarabs

Next we look at a Golden Scarab roll, specifically from the Sulfur Sarcophagi. This is quite easy as the Golden Scarab is awarded directly from the base loot table, so we only have to look at one.

With no luck we have a 7% chance to receive a scarab, or roughly one in 14.3 chests.

With 6000 points of luck we see our odds go up to 7.45%, or one in 13.43. Since this table is ClampMax, our luck has a fairly small impact on our odds. It does have an effect, but it also is not going to help you suddenly pull 5 scarabs per day. The impact of running 6000 luck would, on average, give you 1 extra scarab per 2 weeks, if you are hitting all the acid chests every day.

References

• https://forums.newworld.com/t/dev-blog-luck-faq/713119
• https://github.com/new-world-tools/datasheets-json