Things to Do in Mod 21

I was wondering what there was going to be to do for existing players in Jewel of the North if it was all focused on revamping the way levelling works. The answer is: not much. As mentioned in my previous post, if you never completed the levelling zones that remain in the game, now is a good time to go back and do them. Even if you already did them, there are a couple of new tutorial quests that you'll have to go through to earn the new rewards, but that's it.

That said, I reckon this is a great time to give the game another shot if you haven't played in a while. Just do whatever new quests Sergeant Knox has for you and the rewards will start rolling in in no time. The new catch-up gear will bring you close to on par with what used to be top level gear only a module or two ago. It's kind of impressive how far the game has come in terms of generosity there, because I still remember how stingy it used to be with simple quality-of-life things like mounts and bags. Now you have a blue quality mount and companion before hitting level ten and get a 42-slot bag just for completing Vellosk.

Housekeeping Required

It's commonly agreed that one of the biggest challenges for players returning to an MMO they haven't visited in a while is remembering how to play their character, figuring out what to do next, and what all the stuff in their bags is. A big patch that makes major systems changes can be similarly confusing for existing players. But seriously, no game I've played is as bad at this as Neverwinter.

I'm still trying to sort out all my characters post-mod 21 launch. Quests reset, stats reset, new stuff to claim and use or stow away (unless you want those flashing notifications to bother you forever), old stuff made redundant and requiring trading in somewhere (why can't they just auto-convert obsolete currencies like most other games?)... just the amount of housekeeping required to keep playing the characters I was happy and comfortable with the day before the patch is insane. And it feels like they do this about once a year. Just why, Cryptic?

Barren, yet Overloaded

 ... is my briefest of day one impressions of mod 21. Barren, because that's how the Sword Coast map looks to me with seven zones removed - see below for which ones got the axe:

Overloaded, because every character has dozens of new rewards to claim for content they've already completed, and just claiming all the boxes without even opening most of them was enough to give me a slight case of inventory panic. I'll have to take all my alts through this process slowly.

Oh, and I gained a new max-level alt because my previously level 65 cleric alt that I created after Undermountain is now also at the new cap of 20.

Currencies

Neverwinter has a lot of currencies, and unlike in SWTOR you don't get a warning if you're about to hit a cap on any of them, so I've more than once been in the annoying situation of accidentally having maxed out a useful currency since I wasn't realising just how much of it I had been earning already.

It's really hard to keep track of what to do with each one too. I got a lot of Tarmalune Trade Bars during my lockbox opening spree a few weeks ago, but I'd never actually spent any. This weekend I finally visited the vendor for the first time in ages and was shocked to find that he actually sells rank 15 enchantments directly.

It was also only a couple of weeks ago that I actually spent Alliance Supplies for the first time (after clicking on the vendor more or less by accident), a currency that you earn in the Maze Engine campaign (which came out more than four years ago).

This inspired me to take a closer look at my currency tab, and I realised that aside from gold, Zen and astral diamonds (both refined and unrefined), I have 114 (!) other currencies on there. I think if Cryptic wants to flag anything else for a revamp some time soon, the sheer amount of currencies might be a good candidate.

More Generosity

I only logged in briefly after yesterday's Avernus launch and haven't looked at any of the new content yet, but in that time I was pleased to find - besides another extremely generous package on the claims vendor that includes a free rank 15 enchantment and more, in honour of Cryptic's 20th birthday - that my character's default bag had been increased by 12 slots.

I have to say the game has clearly come a long way since the days when they made a point of patching in more vendor trash to fill up your bags more quickly.

Legacy Campaigns

When the level cap was raised to 80 with Undermountain, most old campaigns were awarded "legacy" status and not updated. I'm not sure what the selection criteria were, considering that the old Elemental Evil is still considered "current" while the much more recent Ravenloft has been designated a legacy campaign, but I'm guessing it might have simply come down to avoiding the hassle of re-scaling content where it would have been required.

With those old campaigns stuck at level 70, quests there can be completed with much more ease than previously now. To what end though? Cryptic were clearly asking themselves the same question and decided to add new weekly "legacy campaign quests" that ask you to either do quests, kill mobs or run heroic encounters on those old maps and that reward a special currency that can be used to purchase certain desirable items which were previously very hard to come by, such as companion upgrade tokens and high level enchanting stones.

This is one new feature I really love, as I'm both a fan of giving old content a new purpose and I really benefit from this new, more casual avenue to accessing those rare items.

All legacy campaign quests also reward currency for the campaign they are related to, plus bonus currency for a campaign of your choice (e.g. you could complete a quest to do Icewind Dale heroics and get both Icewind Dale currency as well as Chult tokens). This is useful to help get alts through campaigns you don't like as much and to get extra tokens that are required for stronghold upgrades.

I think this is really great design as it has also worked to greatly reinvigorate some of the old maps and especially the larger heroic encounters on them, which many people had previously lost interest in due to lack of rewards.

Balls

While my Neverwinter-playing remains somewhat low-key right now, I did make a point of doing a round of the summer festival every day of its duration on both of my clerics. I wasn't after any specific rewards, I just enjoyed the rhythm of the daily event activities.

For some reason I'm a real sucker for herding chickens and pigs in particular. I even became a proper pro at quickly finding Henrietta the Golden whenever she spawned after a while.

What's funny to me is that I then couldn't really be bothered to spend time on actually using my rewards, which means that I've now got several dozen ticket balls saved up for next year I guess. The only thing I did make a point of spending were my fireblossom petals, since those are a temporary currency and disappear after a few days if not used.

There's a definitive pattern here, as I recently also failed to actually buy any of the Nightlife rewards in SWTOR for the second year in a row. I'm clearly doing this whole MMO thing all wrong, just having fun in the moment and not even remembering to collect my rewards.

Auto-Loot

A new quality of life change in Heart of Fire is that you don't have to manually loot items anymore. The way it used to be was that you could loot money by simply running over it (it appears as little piles of cash on the ground after defeating an enemy), while actual items required you to run over/target a little glowy thing on the ground, wait for the interaction prompt to come up, and hit F to loot it.

This has now been changed so that like money - and lockboxes actually - you pick up all items by simply running over them.

A part of me is actually kind of disappointed by this. I remember when trying LOTRO, I was quite weirded out by how loot just appeared in my bags automatically. I enjoy the act of looking at and sorting out what rewards I just earned from defeating an opponent - if they just go into my bags without me doing anything, that makes for a very disconnected experience.

On the other hand though... whenever the game was laggy, it could be a real pain to have to wait for the loot prompt to come up for every single item drop, so I like not having to worry about that anymore, and of course not having to click repeatedly makes the whole process a lot faster. I'll still have to run around to gather my shinies at least, so it's not as if they fully automated the whole thing just yet.

Omu Complete

At long last, my pet tank and I completed the Lost City of Omu campaign. I can't wait for Cryptic to add Signets of Patronage for this one.

I previously mentioned the atrocious drop rate for the trophies you need to buy the Omu hunt lures, and we actually managed to make it through the entire campaign, killing hunt marks over and over, without seeing a single drop apart from the ubiquitous Razortyrannus Spines. Only today, on our last day, the umpteenth wisp that we killed actually dropped a trophy. So now that we're fully done with the campaign we'd finally be allowed to go on our first hunt. Ridiculous.

Signet of Patronage

The Swords of Chult module introduced a new quality of life feature that I managed to miss completely until I saw someone bring it up in a random reddit thread: Signets of Patronage.

Basically these are tokens that you can craft with campaign currency once you have completed a given campaign and which you can then pass on to your alts in order to reduce the amount of time and currency it will cost them to complete the campaign, by doubling reputation gains and cutting the cost of most campaign tasks in half.

This is great because completing campaigns on alts is a massive grind (to be honest, it tends to be a massive grind the first time around, but we tend not to mind so much when everything feels new and exciting), and up until now Cryptic's only concession to this has been to give people the option to buy campaign completion with real money instead of playing. Yeah.

As someone for whom the latter is completely out of the question, I'm pleased to finally have an in-game way of speeding things up for my alts. Mind you, compared to similar features in other games, such as SWTOR's legacy perks, the signets' benefits still feel pretty anaemic, especially since they are single-use consumables, so you'd have to craft a new one for every single alt for every single campaign. Still, it's better than nothing.

I've crafted one for Storm King's Thunder and one for Cloaked Ascendancy for my rogue and we'll see how much of a difference it makes. So far progress feels quite swift, but then it always does in the early stages.

Too Much Info

One of the things I don't like about Neverwinter is that a character's power level is an extremely complex construct and made up of way too many different parts. My character sheet lists more than forty different stats, and even though not all of them can be found on gear, that is only the beginning.

There are also your basic D&D attributes (strength, wisdom etc.), paragon paths, feats (talents), powers, boons, on-use powers on artifacts, not to be confused with artifact powers on your main- and off-hand, enchantments, overload enchantments (totally different), armour kits, active and passive bonuses bestowed by certain companions, active and passive abilities granted by certain mounts, insignia bonuses from mounts (even though the stable system has been in game for over a year, I literally only learned how these work the other day), and I wouldn't be surprised if there was more that I'm forgetting right now.

I pretty much ignore half of this stuff to be honest and it hasn't really hindered my ability to complete basic quest content. But there is huge potential for min-maxing here, creating a wide gulf between those who can be bothered to figure it all out and those who don't. Plus every time Cryptic adds a new system to the mix, I can't help but suspect that it's mostly meant to give them yet another thing to sell in the store or to put into lockboxes. People are less likely to cry about pay-to-win if they can't even keep track of all the different ways in which you can increase your power.

Success!

Protector's Jubilee is over and I actually achieved all my goals!

Getting the horse for my control wizard was actually very easy as renown was available in spades. I had enough for the mount after only a couple of days, bought the associated outfit for good measure and still had plenty left over.

Getting the Protector's Garden key was trickier. A commenter actually asked me how one could get the required 15 figurines in only 8 days, and the advice I gave was at least partially wrong since I hadn't fully figured out the new system yet. Figurines didn't used to be rare because you'd get them for doing the event daily quests. This year this was changed however so that the quests only rewarded purple boxes... which would grant you a figurine the first time you opened one on any given day, but that appeared to be it.

The only reliable way we found to get extras was to have other people give you gifts through the protector's hospitality, since that had a random chance of dropping a figurine, and actually more than once per day. Fortunately my pet tank was grinding the event like crazy and showered my hunter ranger with all his gifts, plus a few guildies were nice enough to chip in as well. Thanks to their generosity I managed to hit 15 figurines on the last day and got my key.

Also, my hunter ranger - the character on whom I really wanted to take things slowly again - gained about 15 levels throughout the week. There's just no way not to level fast in this game.

Rich Spiders

While doing heroic encounters in the guild stronghold, someone made the interesting observation that wealth seems to be distributed surprisingly unevenly among the denizens of the stronghold. Not that anyone kills them for their loot (yay, another rank five enchantment), but it's still funny once you actually start to take notice.

Spiders appear to be the richest creatures by far (three Frozen Treasures from a single spider attack encounter!), followed by beasts and devils. The marauding orcs on the other hand appear to have almost no possessions. No wonder they are kicking up a stink - clearly a case of social unrest caused by extreme poverty.

Free Bags

My new(ish) control wizard alt forced me to remind myself of where I could get some free bags for her. You can get three for each character, and I was surprised that I didn't find a clear guide on how to get them.

The first is the Adventurer's Satchel you start with, which has thirty bag slots.

The second is the Adventurer's Knapsack with eighteen slots, which you get from completing the quest "Close to the Crown" in Blacklake District. I think you also have to complete the quest you get from Sergeant Knox immediately after coming from the tutorial on Sleeping Dragon Bridge first, the one to check on the Crown of Neverwinter. That story then continues via Private Hathidon at the entrance to Blacklake District: "Seeking a Suspect" leads to "Hot on the Trail", which then leads to "Close to the Crown".

The third bag is the Adventurer's Pack with twelve slots, and requires you to complete most - though not all - of the quests in Neverwinter Graveyard. The key quest is called "Wheels Within Wheels" and is given by Harper Windle. To unlock it, you first have to do a bunch of others from the other NPCs. I believe that all of these are required, but it's possible that I did one or two that weren't because many of them were close together and I didn't want to have to run back every time just to test if that one quest alone would unlock more.

From Doomguide Volahk: "The Missing Doomguides" and "The Dead and the Dying". "A Doomguide's Duty" is not required, however it comes immediately after one of the required quests, doesn't take long and rewards a profession back, so it's also worth doing.

From Doomguide Orran: "Rest in Peace", "Thinning the Horde" and "Red Rituals".

From Christopher Chettlebell: "Correcting History", "Dragon Attack", "History Lessons", "Opening the Way" and "Clockwork Guild Tomb".

From Captain Zemmer: "Mercenary Nature"

From Harper Windle: "Enter the Dragons", "Artifact Snatch" and finally "Wheels Within Wheels".

Shores of Tuern

My pet tank and I have slowly been working our way through the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. We've reached a point where, in order to unlock the next character boon, we both need an item that, according to the campaign window, comes from the Shores of Tuern skirmish.

Our first problem was that we couldn't figure out how to get there. According to the wiki it's unlocked through the campaign window, which is blatantly not true anymore, and our skirmish queue only displayed the epic version. Since we were supposedly sufficiently geared for epic anyway, we decided to give that a go, though not without trepidation.

We got into a group relatively quickly, and seemed to do okay on the trash, even though people were getting downed on almost every pull. Then we got to the boss, a fire-breathing dragonborn with two rage drake adds. There was a lore entry that suggested that killing the adds first would cause him to enrage. It didn't seem to matter either way, as we were wiped out within seconds.

We tried again, with the same result, and people started dropping group, with replacements getting rotated in almost instantly. What was bewildering to me was that everybody else appeared to be massively overgeared for the place, yet they quickly died all the same, and nobody seemed to want to offer up any advice on what was going wrong.

Eventually a rogue spoke up that he had "an idea", which turned out to be what you could call an exploit. Apparently it's possible to wall-jump up to where the entrance to the area with the boss is located, and if one person is willing to sacrifice themselves, the two rage drakes can be pulled up to that door where the boss won't follow. People who die can then respawn outside and even though they are separated from the rest of the group by a blue "magic wall", it is apparently possible to attack through it so that you can help with killing the drakes from outside.

After a couple of failed attempts we managed to kill the drakes, with three people stuck outside and only the rogue and a scourge warlock left inside the area. I believe that the plan had been to get the boss to evade so that he could then be fought without the adds, however the scourge warlock's companion pet had a different idea and decided to face the boss on its own. Funnily enough, for all the one-shotting he had done to the players, he seemed to be incapable of killing the pet, so after a couple of minutes of everyone waiting for it to die, the rogue and warlock decided to join in instead (as the pet was holding aggro very effectively by that point) and slowly took the boss down.

I'm very much against exploiting but had a hard time feeling too bad about this one as the fight just seemed so impossibly hard and was still a handful even while using the rogue's "trick". That aside, I told myself that we were only doing it this one time to get our campaign item anyway.

As it turns out, it's actually a rare drop, and neither my pet tank nor I actually got one. On the plus side, we also found out that it's possible to purchase it from a vendor instead if you grind out lots and lots of campaign currency via dailies. I can't help but feel that epic skirmishes and dungeons are simply too tough for us.

Lucky

I finally convinced my pet tank to get back into the game as well.

Since he's not averse to buying things from the cash shop, he bought a lockbox key after some questing and opened one of the boxes in his inventory.

It got him a drake mount.

He immediately bound it to himself, but I looked it up on the auction house and there was only one for sale, for the price of five million astral diamonds. Lucky bugger!

(This was also the first time I saw someone I know trigger one of those admin announcements about people winning rare lockbox prizes. Initially it didn't even register with either of us since we're so used to ignoring them, but then I just had to scroll back up to take a screenshot.)

Vendor Trash

For a game that makes money from selling bag space (among other things), I've never felt that Neverwinter particularly tries to clog up your bags with junk. Things like currencies and crafting materials go into their own, seemingly limitless inventory tabs, and most things you pick up while questing are actually useful. There's never been a whole lot of vendor trash in Neverwinter.

Today while questing on my lowbie great weapon fighter, I killed a bunch of dragon cultists associated with the new module and they dropped junk like crazy. I seemed to get a useless white quality item on every other pull, and Cryptic appears to have created a whole bunch of new grey items purely for the dragon cultists to drop some rubbish. Even as I stopped to sell things whenever I could and refined enchantments away on the go, my inventory kept filling up over and over again.

Someone clearly wants to sell more bags.