New Sharandar Impressions

Not a huge fan of the new campaign progression UI looking like the Redeemed Citadel one.

While the graphical fidelity in New Sharandar seems to be improved, it actually looks somewhat duller to me visually, as the increased "realism" has resulted in more muted colours for example. I liked how the older, brighter palette gave the forest a more magical feel.

More randomised quests of which you can only pick up and do two at a time = slightly meh for group play as you rarely end up with the same ones.

I guess it's intentional that this content is a bit easier again after Avernus, but at least the heroic encounters feel slightly ridiculous at the moment. The small ones finish so quickly that it's almost impossible to participate if you aren't already on top of one when it spawns, and even the zone's BHE gets obliterated in less than five minutes.

Trot

About two years ago, I made a point of doing the Siege of Neverwinter event on my paladin to get her the Neverwinter Champion's Charger, an armoured horse mount that, among other things, stood out for its funny walk. Instead of galloping like most horses, it ran at a very fast trot, which was not completely unique - the Jubilee Parade Horse uses the same animation - but rare. It made the rider look a littlie bit uppity and just a tad ridiculous, which suited my pally just fine.

Well, image my horror when I had to discover this week that they apparently patched that out! Now my charger gallops just like any other old horse. I am disappoint. What an odd change to make.

Ravenloft Launch Impressions

- First time I launched the game, it crashed before I even made it to the character selection screen. Happy patch day!

- New character selection screen! This time it's not just a new background, there are also new features such as the option to sort your characters differently.

- It looks like this module brought with it some sort of graphics update. I already noticed it on the character selection screen, but certain spell effects in game also looked a lot crisper than before. I don't like that the shade of green used for green quality items is much darker now than it used to be though.

- I thought I'd read somewhere that astral diamonds would now be account wide, but I could find no evidence of this. Maybe there's an option to put them all in the bank or something, I'll have to look again.

- The intro mission to Ravenloft felt quite lovingly crafted. Neverwinter's storytelling animations have always been on the poor side, but there was one cut scene where someone even moved their mouth while talking (gasp) and I liked what they did with the little silhouettes for when you're being told Strahd's story.

- Holy catch-up, Batman! Just completing the intro quest rewards you with a full set of 460 gear including rank 8 enchantments for every slot. Note to self: bring any and all alts to Barovia soon.

- At first glance the new map seems quite fun and like it iterates nicely on Chult. I was happy to see small heroic encounters make a comeback in particular as I sorely missed them in the jungle.

- I already attracted the night terror twice. Fortunately people were quite happy to pile on it whenever it appeared, but sadly it doesn't appear to drop anything, though my two guildies each got a title for killing it (not surprised the cleric gets left out as usual...)

- In a move that feels like over-conveniencing players, Cryptic made it so that you no longer have to actively roll on loot when you're in a party; the game just assumes that you want everything, rolls for everyone and then distributes the items accordingly. I actually feel kind of robbed. I liked seeing half a dozen items pop up on my screen and actively rolling on each one!

- The new, instanced hunts could grow on me, as the introductory one seemed quite fun. Less focus on randomised material gathering and more active hunting fun I hope?

Stop the Press!

This weekend I discovered that Cryptic updated the icon for Feydark Crystals. :-o

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.

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.

New Look

What's this? A new character selection screen? But they didn't do that for any of the previous expansions!

Now my characters will look even colder every time they load in in their underwear...

You've Got Mail

My pet tank signed up for the new VIP status, and one of its perks is that you can summon a mailbox any time you need it, anywhere you want. Nothing revolutionary there... however, said mailbox has a unique look and is damned cute! It looks like a mini-stronghold and the opening is a little drawbridge. D'awww!

Things to Love about Neverwinter

I feel like I've been ragging on the game a bit lately, what with the pay-to-win talk and the issues I've had with the Elemental Evil module. Obviously I wouldn't still be playing if I didn't enjoy it though. So, here are three things that I like about Neverwinter:

1) For all the pay-to-win problems it has with gear and competitive gameplay, the game is very generous to the casual player. All the actual content is completely free, and if you don't care that other people are having an easier time with it because they paid for advantages, you can do pretty much everything in the game without ever paying for anything.

2) You don't have to be a D&D nut (I'm not, really) to appreciate the depth of the setting and a story that takes itself seriously (even if some of the store mounts are very silly). I kind of feel like it's not considered "cool" anymore for an MMO to take itself seriously; it's supposed to be all about the pop culture references and in-jokes, but personally I appreciate a slightly more serious approach (without falling into the trap of having everything be dark and edgy instead). Neverwinter gets this just right in my opinion.

3) While the game's graphics style is fairly generic (a layman might easily confuse a screenshot from Neverwinter with one from a number of other fantasy MMOs), I do really like its art and animations. When I rolled up my first character, a rogue, I instantly fell in love with the way she was wildly slashing at the shadows with every move, and I was jealous of the sleek beauty of my pet tank's panther companion. I like that my cleric's gear actually looks useful and that there are no chainmail bikinis to be found. Even something as simple as just watching my character ride around on her mount still fills me with happiness.

Loading In

The characters on Neverwinter's character selection screen have a curious way of loading in: their bodies always load before their armour, which means that your characters always appear in their underwear at first. I find this mildly disconcerting.

The other night was even worse though - my connection was severely throttled as I was trying to download the latest patch for SWTOR at the same time, so the character selection screen's loading was slowed down the point of characters appearing only limb by limb... now that was just disturbing.

Rise of Tiamat

Neverwinters 5th module, Rise of Tiamat, released today. How did I know, apart from the giant patch and the fact that it's been advertised on the launcher for weeks? Because I logged in for my daily profession update and noticed that they redrew the icons for the treasure chests! OMG! Somehow that reminds me of the Blizzard joke of old about how every set of patch notes contains a bit about Mage Armor having received a new and exciting icon.

But yes, I'm still in "just doing my daily round of invoking" mode. Nonetheless it's nice to see Cryptic add new content at a steady rate. Means that there'll be all the more for me to do when I get back into the game properly.