Saturday 18 June 2022

Neverwinter Online: Dragonslayer

There are some nice freebies that come with this and even more (time limited) freebies with the current Jubilee event that are worth logging on to collect.

Dragonslayer itself is a continuation of the Draconic Rage / Dragonbone Vale which is easily summarized as "there are more dragons that need killing". Thus a group of Dragonslayers have setup shop in a small new segment of the city and are offering dragon hunts which in theory are pretty cool. Especially since you're supposed to get good gear from it, and the item level requirement to participate is pretty low (18-22k). 

As someone with characters on 44-45k item level I'm here to tell you that's a lie. To start off, you must kill two baby dragons (one at a time) who both have 26 million hitpoints. Sure, the fight might not be so hard but expect to be bored for the next 15+ minutes (per dragon). Also, you MUST SOLO THESE to progress.

After these are the adult dragons who you can face with two friends. Now if you have strong friends and are strong yourself this is fine. If you are doing PUGs, good luck. As expected the adults are far stronger than the kiddies and come with new moves, many of which are denial of play abilities which in design terms are the most terrible decisions you can put into a game. In a board game that would look like "skip a turn or skip half your turn" while waiting to participate.

Here, the dragon roars and you are stunned / can't use abilities or attack for 3 seconds. Or it eats you and you can't do anything but take damage for 3 seconds. (Both of which they can spam)  Or you get killed, get booted from the fight, and must wait until everyone else dies (or wins) because you cannot rejoin at anytime. And with fights that last this long, you can expect to be waiting and/or be undermanned for a long time.

Curiously, each fight consists of three phases - between each the dragon flies off and you must chase it to fight a handful of little minions. It's almost like the designers KNEW the dragon fights were so dull that there needed to be something different in between, but alas as it stands it's still a piece of shit garbage content that I can't believe got put to live.

On the flip side, people with already high item levels seem to be enjoying the (5 man) ancient dragon hunts (unlocked after killing lots more adult dragons) which leads me to believe this mod is really targeted at them and not at pleb level players like myself. Anyway, since you're logging in to claim the freebies (right?) give it a try. You'll know right away if this is for you or not.

In my case its definitely not. I'll just wait for the next lot of free catch-up gear should it ever arrive, because if you keep making content for end level players - you'll end up ignoring everyone else. Good luck with that.

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