Combat Change Mayhem

As mentioned previously, mod 20 was supposed to bring about some major gameplay changes (once again), but in a somewhat surprising move, Cryptic decided to just drop those on us early last week and without warning, with the actual new content being scheduled to come out later.

As is definitely a pattern whenever Cryptic changes the combat and/or stats, everything's kind of screwed up for the moment. My guildies and I did a Castle Never for the weekly challenge and suffered so many deaths, it was funny. You could argue that it's not a bad thing to tune the content up so that people can't just ignore or skip mechanics quite so easily anymore, but our group was between 30 and 40k item level, while the recommended minimum for that dungeon is 20k. No idea how a party with that would get through any of those fights.

Also, while my dps as a healer was never the greatest it's even worse now. I'll concede that healing itself felt better though, as damage was taken more consistently so that I could get into more of a rhythm healing it up.

On the plus side, Avernus appears to have been nerfed into the ground and we had a good time doing some hunts there. Just gotta sit tight and wait for Cryptic to rebalance things within the next couple of weeks/months - as usual.

Aasimar Unlocked

This week I finally unlocked the last of the Redeemed Citadel rewards on my main, which means that I now have access to the Aasimar race. Too bad I like all my existing characters as they are and see little incentive to roll yet another alt until they release another class.

Some of the gear rewards from the milestones were also pretty good - for example I hadn't upgraded my neck and belt since Ravenloft. Sadly the main and off-hand remain un-upgradeable for me though as doing so requires drops from the higher-level Avernus hunts, something I just can't be bothered with at this point.

Return to Sharandar

Only a few days after I complained about the lack of information about the upcoming module 20, I logged in after maintenance to find it being advertised on the launcher.

"Sharandar" continues the theme of naming confusion started with Avernus, as it's the name of the zone where Neverwinter's very first mod, Fury of the Feywild, took place.

My first reaction was actually to chuckle and think to myself that they must be running out of ideas to start revisiting older zones like that, but then I realised: Who cares? Fury of the Feywild was one of my favourite modules and I'll be quite happy to revisit the elves, so bring it on.

Content Drought?

Today it hit me that it's now been more than six months since the release of the Avernus module. This is unprecedented, as until now Cryptic has always been very good about releasing new content every four months or so. I always considered the sheer amount of free content one of the game's strengths, even if there are other parts of its business model I don't like.

Looking back at their 2020 road map posted last year, we should have heard more about module 20 by now. Instead, the Redeemed Citadel event appears to have been extended indefinitely and as far as mod 20 goes, all the talk has only been about upcoming gameplay changes, with nothing about actual new content. Wonder what's going on there?