How to add friends and party up in New World

With a big, beautiful new world filled with enemies and loot to explore, the best way to approach Amazon Studios’ MMO New World is together with your pals. Whether you’re questing, forming a company, or buying all the property of a settlement and raising taxes until you’re run out of town, it’s more more fun with friends at your side.

But before you get to all that, you and your friends have to group up together first, and maybe find some new friends on the way. With that being said, here’s how you can add friend and form parties in New World.

How do I add friends?

Before adding friends, you should know that in order to play together, you and your friends must be in the same world together. With the amount of people playing New World during closed beta, Amazon Studios has added more worlds to the list to account for everyone, so you and friends shouldn’t struggle too much finding an open world together.

There are a couple methods to adding friends in New World. If you open the main menu, there’s a friends menu on the left-hand side of the screen. This social menu can also be accessed by hitting the O key. At first glance it should say zero friends online because, well, you don’t have any friends.

But you can change that! If you know your friend’s in-game name, you can search for it by entering into the search bar. Hover over their name in the search results and hit Add Friend. Once they accept, break out the champagne, you’ve made a friend in New World.

There are also ways for you to make new friends in-game as well. If you find yourself inadvertently tagging with a player through numerous encounters, you can make it official by adding them as a friend, too. Aim your crosshair at them and press H, and it will bring up the same options from the social menu. You can also right click on people’s names in the GLOBAL, HELP, RECRUITMENT, or COMPANY chats, and add them, too.

How do I form a party in New World?

All the same methods you used to add friends can also be used to start a party. You can enter their names into the Social menu search bar, add them from the chat, or click H while aiming at their character. You can also right click on them and invite them to your party if they’re already in your friends list.

Because the game is currently in closed beta, you cannot use the Steam in-game menu to add friends or invite to parties. Once the game is fully released, that feature will likely be added, however.