Log Logic

One change I already love about this latest module is what they did to the quest log. As far as I'm aware Neverwinter has never had a limit on how many quests you can pick up, so it hasn't been uncommon for any of my max-level characters to have dozens of them in their log at any time.

The problem was that they weren't sorted in any way that made sense. Quests from the same area were generally grouped together, but newer quests could be listed before older quests for example, and it was all in a single, long list. Every time I did dailies with any of my guildies, it was a nightmare to figure out who was on which quest and what still needed completing. I eventually pretty much gave up on even trying to consult the quest log at all and mostly tried to rely on the quest-associated map markers.

Finally having things sorted into categories is therefore, while it might seem small overall, a huge QoL improvement for me.

Sunset

You can tell that the devs were excited about Tomb of Annihilation because they changed the character selection screen again! I do like the different lighting it provides now, even if it isn't very flattering for all of my characters... but at least they don't have to be cold anymore.

Also: I created three new characters in less than a year? Dang.

Nine Slots

Even though I have several alts that have nearly all professions maxed out, I never unlocked all nine profession slots on any character. The reason? Because the 8th and 9th slot cannot be unlocked through normal gameplay and require you to acquire higher quality profession assets which only come from the various random packs from the cash shop. This has always annoyed me and I refused to support it out of principle.

However, other day I decided to finally give in after all, specifically because I felt that I was wasting resources by only ever getting rank 1 results from a specific mission, and the assets I needed were actually going for fairly cheap on the auction house.

Looking at it now, I almost feel a bit silly for handicapping myself for this long when I could have simply bought the things I needed from another player all along. Even better, since they don't bind on use, I can now send them around to all my alts and use them to fully unlock the profession window on all of them.

Loading In, Part 2

I've previously mocked the strange way in which Neverwinter loads its graphics assets on the character selection screen, but lately it's started to affect my in-game experience as well. I'm wondering if I cranked up the graphics settings a bit too high when I got my new PC?

It's at its most annoying when it comes to the user interface, as certain windows will load as transparent initially, making it really hard to find the right icons and buttons until the background loads about a minute later. But it's even more noticeable in my surroundings with things like trees, which will initially appear as bizarre polygonal crystal formations until their actual "tree skin" appears.

If anyone's got any suggestions as for what causes this, I'd be happy to hear them. It's actually gotten a lot better again as of late, so maybe it was a temporary server-side issue more than anything related to my PC or game settings, but I still wanted to get this out there anyway.

Friendly P2W Disappointment

My guild was working on yet another building for our stronghold, this time being held back by adventurer's shards of power, which are also limited per character per day, but unlike influence, they are rewarded for something I like doing anyway, so I was slowly increasing our total day by day.

I enjoyed slowly chipping away at our common goal and feeling like I was contributing to something big. In my head, I kept calculating how many more quests I'd have to complete to hit the target.

Then, one day, the building was suddenly set up already, the coffer nearly emptied of shards. I was baffled and asked where we had suddenly got so many shards in such a short time. Had people from our alliance donated or something?

Pet tank: "No, I just bought some Zen..."
Me: :(