End of an Era

With the new module, invoking was changed once again, this time so that it doesn't reward astral diamonds anymore. Instead you get "bonus diamonds", which means that the next time you do a "real" activity that rewards AD, such as a dungeon run, you get more than usual - if I understand the new system correctly anyway. As I do those activities so rarely, this bonus isn't worth the repeated daily logins for me, so I'll be back down to only logging in only once a day for the first invoke (I still like getting those coins) and to queue up professions.

When they originally introduced the now scrapped system that required logging in six times a day, staggered over the course of at least four hours, I wasn't thrilled, but somehow I got caught up in it anyway and ended up pursuing its rewards pretty obsessively. I actually feel kind of relieved that the incentive to continue doing so is gone and I won't be staring at the clock as much anymore. I do think it might also reduce my involvement with the game though. While logging in to press ctrl+i repeatedly wasn't engaging per se, each time was an opportunity for others to grab me and drag me into group content while I was online. And the time between the first couple of invokes was so short that I often didn't find it worth logging out and ran around taking care of a couple of small bits and pieces instead.

Also, I do wonder where my AD are going to come from now. I was pretty cross when they removed them from leadership, but things ended up being okay for me because my regular outgoings are small enough that my income from invoking was sufficient to keep me afloat. I'm not sure what's going to happen now. I shouldn't run out of AD too quickly, but I would expect to run out eventually. Also, any new characters will have a really hard time earning their first bits of currency now.

Still Playing

I should really post here more often, considering that I've actually been playing a fair amount again as of late. Funny how even short posts can sometimes take effort to write.

My newest project is a halfling hunter ranger, since I still had an empty character slot lying around from one of the packs I bought back in the day and I missed the feeling of levelling a character from scratch.

I was actually a bit afraid of making another alt because I'm somewhat addicted to invoking and didn't want to add yet another character that would add to my compulsion of "having to" log in seven times a day to collect free astral diamonds. So I've set myself the rule that I'll only log this particular alt if I'm actually going to play her "properly" that day in some way - I don't need yet another character levelled the AFK way anyway.

Life After the AD Changes

Cryptic implemented the announced changes to the leadership profession and to astral diamond gains a little less than two weeks ago.

The leadership changes were a typical Cryptic hack job - they literally just removed astral diamonds from all the missions that gave them as a reward and didn't replace them with anything worthwhile. (I think some of the missions had their XP output increased, but who does leadership for the XP?) The result is that there are a lot of high-level missions now that are very much not worth doing as they simply offer no worthwhile reward whatsoever, while often taking twice as long as comparable low-level missions. There's also at least one rare mission that does still reward AD, which might have been an oversight.

On the plus side, this has inspired me to start levelling some other professions which I never paid much attention to previously. I'm not sure if anything good will come of any of it, but if nothing else it might allow me to unlock another profession slot.

The demand for astral diamonds on the ZAX has remained high, so that one Zen is down to being worth less than four hundred AD by now - never thought I'd see the day.

At least Cryptic took the effect on the economy into account fairly quickly and drastically slashed the prices of marks of potency, which are one of the main astral diamond sinks in the game (they are an expensive reagent required to upgrade high-level enchantments and gear).

I haven't done any dungeons or skirmishes in a while, so my max-level characters are down to an astral diamond income of 3000 per day, which is exactly what they get from invoking six times a day. For the moment that's enough for me since I don't have any major outgoings, but I don't know what I will do when/if the day comes where I find myself running out of in-game currency.

More Invocation Changes

When they changed the invocation system a couple of months ago, one of the new perks of the multiple invokes per day was that one of them would grant you a refinement stone of some kind. What was funny about this was that it was initially randomised which kind of stone you would get, but then you would get the same stone every day, forever.

The result of this was that if you were lucky and got a useful stone the first time, you would continue to get something useful every day. This was true for my cleric and my rogue for example. If you were unlucky, you might end up like my great weapon fighter, who has a pile of over fifty stability stones (bound to character of course) and no stability artifact to use them on. This system seemed rather odd and like it was probably bugged.

This seems to have been confirmed with the latest patch, since they "fixed" it now so that invoking grants a goodie bag instead, which will then contain a random stone. This is good news for my great weapon fighter, but bad news for my other characters, who now suddenly have a chance of getting something useless. Worse, since you can now get something different out of a whole selection of useless items, it's going to hurt your inventory space, and much worse than those 50+ stability stones ever did.

Also, never one to leave out an opportunity to monetise, Cryptic seems to have programmed the system in such a way that you also get a coupon for the Zen store from every single one of those goodie bags, which I find quite annoying. I don't mind finding them out in the world on occasion, but having multiples of them dumped in my inventory every day seems kind of... pushy.

I know it won't happen, but I kind of want that bug back.

Invocation Changes

Today was the launch day of the new "Elemental Evil" module. I haven't looked at any of the new content yet, but I logged all three of my characters to invoke, as I usually do. There I learned that invocations have been changed: it used to be that you received the biggest benefit from invoking once per day, after which you could repeat the ritual once an hour while experiencing high diminishing returns. By the third hour it was nearly useless.

Under the new system you can invoke once every fifteen minutes, but you only receive a much smaller reward the first time. To maximise your Astral Diamond gains from invoking you basically have to do so once every fifteen minutes for one and a half hours. (EDIT: I initially misread the timers, actually the time increases after each invoke, making for a total of four hours.)

That kind of sucks for those of us who have been "playing without actually playing" for prolonged periods of time, but it rewards people who spend time in game every day beyond a five minute login. Can't say I can blame Perfect World for this change.

Playing Without Playing

The reason I haven't been posting on here as of late is that SWTOR's housing and associated features have sucked me back into that game without leaving much time or enthusiasm for anything else. So I just log into Neverwinter for five minutes at the start of each day to invoke on all three of my characters and to work on their professions.

It's never good if interest in an MMO drops to the level of "just logging in to do the chores". I sure stopped playing WoW quickly when I realised that my brief re-visit there had deteriorated into paying a sub just to grow some vegetables for no real reason. However, Neverwinter is free, doing the "chores" doesn't take long and they are very rewarding for the amount of time invested. I'm pretty sure that eventually my interest in the game will be rekindled (presumably when SWTOR hits its next major content slump) and then I'll be all the happier that I kept working on it and that I will be that much closer to getting my purple companion for 365 ardent coins.

Levelling without really playing

When I originally abandoned the game about a month after launch, my rogue was in her thirties. When I picked the game up again and rerolled as a cleric this summer, I also started logging onto my rogue again, though only to invoke (pray to the gods) and receive the associated benefits of currency and experience points.

Now my rogue has hit sixty, with most of the last couple of levels gained purely by invoking. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the fact that you can fully level a character to max simply by logging in every day, without actually playing "properly". On the one hand it's a nice way of getting an alt to the level cap without having to put a lot of effort into levelling, plus it's one way of skipping questing content that you've already repeated one to many times.

On the other hand it feels weird that you can't really "pause" playing a character, to later pick it up again where you left off, unless you're willing to forfeit the (considerable) benefits of invoking every day. It can also be somewhat challenging to get back into actually playing the character if you've gained twenty more levels (plus associated new powers) since you last went out into the world and your gear is now hopelessly outdated for the content that you should be doing.