Preview of Neverwinter From Cryptic and PWE

I'm catching up! My rogue is 21 now. Wait for me, guys.

I'm really torn on what feats to use for my Rogue. I've gone with pretty much extra damage for now, since that's my job, but I don't know what paragon tree I want to focus on. Stealth is pretty cool, but is it useful in PvE? Seems like PvE would be mostly about reducing threat and abusing crits.

I just beat Idris for the first time last night with my 37 CW. I've only run dungeons using the dungeon finder so the groups can be extremely hit or miss but last night's run went extremely smooth. And the fact that not a word was typed in party chat aside from one "afk a sec, brb" from our healer yet things were still systematically pulled and targeted? Amazing. I really needed that group after having two back-to-back bad pugs for the Mad Dragon dungeon. Never did finish that one.

I also saw someone off-handedly mention that the warlock and archer are going to be the next two classes they reveal? I haven't seen any mentions of this officially. Is that actually out there somewhere?

Kehama wrote:

I also saw someone off-handedly mention that the warlock and archer are going to be the next two classes they reveal? I haven't seen any mentions of this officially. Is that actually out there somewhere?

I've heard the same rumors. They posted a new "State of the Game" and announce a new "ranged" class, but that's all I've seen officially.

http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=8...

We’ve got a lot of new content in the works that we definitely feel will take Neverwinter to the next level. Right now, we’re putting the final touches on some new end game content: Gauntlgrym. It will be our first raid-sized, competitive PvP/PvE experience, and our current goal is to release it to OBT within a few weeks. On top of that, we’ve also got new companions, zones, mounts, mechanics, Paragon Paths, and a new class. I can’t share the details about the new class just yet, but as a hint, it’s going to be a “ranged” one.

Is there anything in the game to actually spend gold on aside from basic horses and the regular companions? Right now I feel like I'm rolling in gold but there's nothing to spend it on. Everything takes astral diamonds, seals or other various currencies. Just to try them out I bought 3 different companions last night just to buy something.

Basic consumables?

I agree it seems like gold is pretty useless, especially if you bought any of the Founders packs which give all your characters a mount. There's also no damage to items, so no gold sink for repairs like there is in WoW.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Basic consumables?

I agree it seems like gold is pretty useless, especially if you bought any of the Founders packs which give all your characters a mount. There's also no damage to items, so no gold sink for repairs like there is in WoW.

Item decay would be a great concept in this game. They desperately need a gold sink. But I think the whole idea was to make it so that the game only has two currency types. In STO, Cryptic kind of screwed the pooch by having (no joke) reputation points (3 different types), energy credits, gold-pressed latinum, lobi crystals, and dilithium crystals. It's complicated and stupid. Hopefully they've learned their lesson. Ideally, I'd like to see some other purpose for the gold as well - maybe player housing that needs upkeep?

You could send your extra gold to me? Level 26 and still can't afford a basic mount...

As far as the new class, I would guess a Ranger, if they are sticking with the classic D&D archetypes.

chaosmos wrote:

You could send your extra gold to me? Level 26 and still can't afford a basic mount...

As far as the new class, I would guess a Ranger, if they are sticking with the classic D&D archetypes.

it is definately a Ranger. Its already been spoiled. A warlock is coming after that though I know nothing of the mechanics.

namikaze wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

Basic consumables?

I agree it seems like gold is pretty useless, especially if you bought any of the Founders packs which give all your characters a mount. There's also no damage to items, so no gold sink for repairs like there is in WoW.

Item decay would be a great concept in this game. They desperately need a gold sink. But I think the whole idea was to make it so that the game only has two currency types. In STO, Cryptic kind of screwed the pooch by having (no joke) reputation points (3 different types), energy credits, gold-pressed latinum, lobi crystals, and dilithium crystals. It's complicated and stupid. Hopefully they've learned their lesson. Ideally, I'd like to see some other purpose for the gold as well - maybe player housing that needs upkeep?

Well, they succeeded in reducing it, though they certainly failed to keep it to 2. We still have gold, Astral Diamonds, Zen, dungeon tokens, glory, ardent coins, and celestial coins. I found it extremely confusing when I first started, and it's still really hard to grasp the value of Astral Diamonds vs. Zen.

ahrezmendi wrote:

I'm catching up! My rogue is 21 now. Wait for me, guys.

I'm really torn on what feats to use for my Rogue. I've gone with pretty much extra damage for now, since that's my job, but I don't know what paragon tree I want to focus on. Stealth is pretty cool, but is it useful in PvE? Seems like PvE would be mostly about reducing threat and abusing crits.

Yeah, stealth is just fine for PvE since you can do more damage depending on feats and stuff. U usually stealth as I hit a group and can take them most down before I drop out!

chaosmos wrote:

You could send your extra gold to me? Level 26 and still can't afford a basic mount...

As far as the new class, I would guess a Ranger, if they are sticking with the classic D&D archetypes.

I think I got the gold necessary at 25. What have you been buying?

If you need it, I'll lend you some gold.

cyrax@cyraxpw

cyrax wrote:
chaosmos wrote:

You could send your extra gold to me? Level 26 and still can't afford a basic mount...

As far as the new class, I would guess a Ranger, if they are sticking with the classic D&D archetypes.

I think I got the gold necessary at 25. What have you been buying?

If you need it, I'll lend you some gold.

cyrax@cyraxpw

I think I went overboard on buying the Skill Kits a while back. Thanks cyrax, but I think I'll be okay now. I sold off a ton of unused enchantments in my bags and am good to go.

chaosmos wrote:
cyrax wrote:
chaosmos wrote:

You could send your extra gold to me? Level 26 and still can't afford a basic mount...

As far as the new class, I would guess a Ranger, if they are sticking with the classic D&D archetypes.

I think I got the gold necessary at 25. What have you been buying?

If you need it, I'll lend you some gold.

cyrax@cyraxpw

I think I went overboard on buying the Skill Kits a while back. Thanks cyrax, but I think I'll be okay now. I sold off a ton of unused enchantments in my bags and am good to go.

Great, having a mount makes the experience alot more convenient.

chaosmos wrote:

I stumbled on another great Foundry quest: "Protect the Caravan."

The writing is nothing special, but the map layout and enemy placement is really clever. And the author found a way to enable a "Difficulty Slider" for 3 different settings, and companions to fight alongside you, both of which I don't think I've seen in player-made content before.

The Foundry is quickly becoming my favorite part of this game. If Cryptic is smart, they will keep updating and promoting it.

I just started Hidden Blade last night (Chaosmos mentioned it on the last page) and enjoyed the first segment. There was a little bit to read giving me a reason to feel invested in the mission, a nod to different class abilities, a couple options to progress through the story (I think? I went one route, but it seemed like there were other possible choices available to move the story forward?), one surprise that made me jump a little, and an ending that made me want to know more about the story. I'm definitely running the next segment soon.

I'll check out Protect the Caravan as well. Totally agree about the potential of The Foundry. If there are more quests at the quality of The Hidden Blade, it'll keep me happy for a long time.

My name is Armoff if anyone is adding friends. Level 25 Thief, but I'll likely be rolling the new ranged character whenever it's available.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Well, they succeeded in reducing it, though they certainly failed to keep it to 2. We still have gold, Astral Diamonds, Zen, dungeon tokens, glory, ardent coins, and celestial coins. I found it extremely confusing when I first started, and it's still really hard to grasp the value of Astral Diamonds vs. Zen.

Yep, still confused here as well. I think there are some things you cannot get with Astral Diamonds (more bank space, more bags for your character), and you'll need to drop real-world cash, but I could be wrong. If you can find bags on the Auction House for Astral Diamonds, I haven't figured out where to find them yet. It'd be nice if I could type a word in the AH Search field and search every category, instead of needing to select a specific category (maybe I can do that as well, but haven't figure it out yet), because I can't tell if there are craftable bags for sale in the AH.

Bags are there, but they are ridiculously priced. a greater bag of holding will run you 400k diamonds.
Or you can spend 1000 Z for one.

I wanted to get one for my son's alt but not at those prices!

sithload wrote:

Yep, still confused here as well. I think there are some things you cannot get with Astral Diamonds (more bank space, more bags for your character), and you'll need to drop real-world cash, but I could be wrong. If you can find bags on the Auction House for Astral Diamonds, I haven't figured out where to find them yet. It'd be nice if I could type a word in the AH Search field and search every category, instead of needing to select a specific category (maybe I can do that as well, but haven't figure it out yet), because I can't tell if there are craftable bags for sale in the AH.

You can convert AD to Zen, so technically you can buy everything with AD. The conversion rate is atrocious though, using groan's example I think you'd spend more than 400k diamonds just getting 1000Z. I think the pricing on everything is out of whack in this game, a single companion ranges from $15 to $35, and I think they'd get a lot more sales if that were $5 to $10 instead. The beauty of microtransactions is you appeal to the impulse of low price, one-off buys that people can't resist, but that is lost if your items are priced the same as a brand new AAA game.

The only thing that's really bugged me so far is the Nightmare Lockboxes. They take up inventory space, but I'm not entirely comfortable just destroying them because I imagine they have value to someone. Yet when I check the AH they sell for a couple AD at most. Do I just destroy them? Do I save them up and offer them in trade for keys like I see other folks doing? So confused.

In other news, PvP as a Rogue sucks. PvP as a Cleric rocks.

ahrezmendi wrote:

You can convert AD to Zen, so technically you can buy everything with AD. The conversion rate is atrocious though, using groan's example I think you'd spend more than 400k diamonds just getting 1000Z. I think the pricing on everything is out of whack in this game, a single companion ranges from $15 to $35, and I think they'd get a lot more sales if that were $5 to $10 instead. The beauty of microtransactions is you appeal to the impulse of low price, one-off buys that people can't resist, but that is lost if your items are priced the same as a brand new AAA game.

Prices on the AD::Zen market will stabilize. After the rollback, the economy is still shaken. The items on the Zen store that are account-wide are worth $15-35, simply because you can have it on every one of your characters. I'd like the option to spend $5-10 to buy a companion for one character though. Like a limitation option. Example: my cleric will never need an acolyte of Kelemvor companion, because he can heal. So instead of me spending $20 on a companion for all my characters, Cryptic could get me to spend $10 on each of them.

ahrezmendi wrote:

The only thing that's really bugged me so far is the Nightmare Lockboxes. They take up inventory space, but I'm not entirely comfortable just destroying them because I imagine they have value to someone. Yet when I check the AH they sell for a couple AD at most. Do I just destroy them? Do I save them up and offer them in trade for keys like I see other folks doing? So confused.

Lockboxes are a huge racket. Don't bother with them - sell them to a vendor for 8 coppers each.

Oh, I didn't know the companions were account bound. I guess $15 to $30 makes a bit more sense then.

I often get the idol in the lockbox which trades for 40000 AD. The key costs 125 zen. i'm not sure if i'm losing or gaining...hmm.

I keep seeing the announcements of someone getting the nightmare mount. Every time, I shake my fist at them!

Turning 50 never felt so good. (No pics, chainmail is embarassing)

cyrax wrote:

Turning 50 never felt so good. (No pics, chainmail is embarassing)

I just hit 50 today as well

Rainsmercy wrote:
cyrax wrote:

Turning 50 never felt so good. (No pics, chainmail is embarassing)

I just hit 50 today as well :)

*You and me, me and you...*

The levelling rate in this game is definitely nuts. I just started playing a week or two ago and my wizard is already level 56 and I have a cleric at 21 and a guardian at 13, both of which I only play with my 6 year old and his play time is definitely restricted. While I'm enjoying the run I'm beginning to realize that if I stick with this game then the bulk of my time is probably going to come from running foundry dailies and the occassional dungeon or skirmish to save up some AD.

In regards to the AH, I simply can't wrap my head around the prices I'm seeing. With regular daily runs, leadership missions, hourly prayers, etc. I only had maybe 70k AD by level 56. Considering that mounts, companions, bags and even green level crafting tools were seeling for hundreds of thousands, or even a million + AD each, I have no clue how people are supposed to be buying things on there without dropping a significant chunk of real money to get more AD. I suppose if, once I hit 60, I spend a few hours a day doing nothing but dailies then I could get 100k AD in a couple of weeks but, yeah, doesn't sound appealing to me.

Oh, also a word of warning, if you find yourself in possession of enough funds to buy a floating sword companion, save your money. Right now that pet is simply broken. Once combat starts, 95% of the time it will stop wherever it is and sit until combat is over and then come back to you. Very, very rarely, if an enemy is sitting right on top of it the sword will make a few attacks but most of the time it won't even do that and I've never seen it actually go after an enemy. After reading a few forum posts about it, it looks like everyone agrees that the sword pets are just bugged and that you should just wait until they're fixed. Sadly, after a few fights with him, I changed my jagged blade's name from Foebane to Butterknife, and it will remain so until he can get his act together.

I'd heard many times on Grievance that the cat is the way to go for companions. I'm saving my sweet dough for a puttytat.

My dire wolf from the $60 founder's pack is rocking right now. He's only 10, but he's got this move which interrupts abilities and he saves it for when enemies start some powerful channeled ability. I can't count how many times he's won me a fight.

EDIT: Regarding AH and Astral Diamond prices/values, I think a lot of that can be chalked up to new economy fluctuations. Not many people have access to the high end resources, so players are setting absurdly high prices for them on the AH. Most of them probably won't sell, and those prices will stabilize in time. AD values are also still stabilizing, so for a while we're likely to see a ton of prices being of whack with the actual value of items.

I'm just sitting on all the AD I come across for now. I still have my 600k from the founder pack, plus whatever I get from dailies, and I see no reason to spend any of it until things calm down and/or I get to a higher level.

Well, I've now gone through all of the quest maps in the game and enjoyed all of them but one. On only one map did I find myself verbally cursing at the game. I would say Mount Hotenow could die in a fire but I think it's hard for a volcano to do that.

I think I'm done with the game for a bit. Got a rogue to max level but finding it hard to get good groups in 60 pvp or the "T1" dungeons. Further questing is tough solo cause my free companion is paper thin now.

I really enjoyed the game as I played it. Great for a FTP game. I even spent $10 opening nightmare boxes!

Yah, I got my cleric to 60, tried a couple dungeons but even though my system is pretty beefy and with all the settings turned down, it would ctd numerous times in dungeons, especially the Spider dungeon.

I'm still having fun with it. I joined the Grievance guild so I wouldn't have to put up with pugs any more. Some of those were really ruining it for me. I've been running some T2 dungeons and some guild PvP while levelling up some alts through Foundry missions. The user created content has really added to the longevity of the game for me. For my first character I stuck strictly to the main game missions and it was pretty standard MMO fare for the most part. The foundry, though, has been really good and added a lot of variety to the story. The character who's been going through those missions really feels like he's been on some strange and amazing adventures as opposed to just plowing through Map 1 after killing X numbers of bad guys and then plowing through Map 2, etc.

Kehama wrote:

I'm still having fun with it. I joined the Grievance guild so I wouldn't have to put up with pugs any more. Some of those were really ruining it for me. I've been running some T2 dungeons and some guild PvP while levelling up some alts through Foundry missions. The user created content has really added to the longevity of the game for me. For my first character I stuck strictly to the main game missions and it was pretty standard MMO fare for the most part. The foundry, though, has been really good and added a lot of variety to the story. The character who's been going through those missions really feels like he's been on some strange and amazing adventures as opposed to just plowing through Map 1 after killing X numbers of bad guys and then plowing through Map 2, etc.

Yeah that's a good point, I did skip a lot of the foundry stuff after doing some initial missions. I may try that again on the weekends.