Neverwinter Online: Draconic Rage (and Siege lock)

Using the least amount of effort to keep players in game.

If Draconic Rage isn't the least inspired content Neverwinter Online has offered so far, it certainly is the laziest (or thriftiest) development wise. "A World First" is an odd title to this first chapter which has zero story. While similar in format to Echoes of Prophecy where you are trying to fill a progress bar to unlock loot before time runs out, Cryptic has taken the approach of not adding any extra filler in this time. No extra quest boards or NPCs in town to visit. All you have to do is run skirmishes and dungeons.

This is great it you already do that anyway to get your daily astral diamonds as it means your usual grind already counts as participation! For those of us who don't do those however, bleh! The time investment to run those dungeons is annoying, and I'm not sure the prizes are worth dragging myself into skirmishes to clear it. I'm wondering if Cryptic is regretting their decision to kill some of their content because even me - who doesn't play these much at all - finds the handful of skirmishes quite repetitive. I wish they had a bigger pool of variety to choose from, then I remember that they DID.

Just to hammer home the point that they want you to login and stay in for metrics, the latest Dragon Siege event has a notable difference: the "daily" defeat 2 dragons and beat 3 heroic encounters now fails if you log off mid way and forces you to start again where as before I could happily jump between my two characters to finish those gradually as I saw fit. I don't know who keeps making the decisions there, but they are doing a great job in making their MMO steadily inferior to everything else.

Neverwinter Online: Dragonbone Vale

Where Cryptic removes something else!

For those who have been doing the Echoes of Prophecy temporary "campaign" this is the culmination of your efforts! For those that didn't, well - Elminster needs you for a war against the Cult of the Dragon. Or is it just another battlefield in an ongoing conflict? Whatever. The Thayans and silly cultists are trying to raise dracoliches in what feels to be a shinier replacement for Dread Ring, except this time you can cosplay as Spiderman while treasure hunting! Don't worry though, the Dread Ring is still there (for now).

Magic grappling hooks for everyone!

What has been removed was the old enchantment system which went from rank 1 to 15 and needed absurd amounts of work / pay to get to the higher ranks. For those who don't play the game, each character is decked out with around 30 of these. Upon this modules release, congratulations! All those are now garbage! Well at least the ones from rank 1 - 9 which was the bulk of mine. If you have rank 10s and up you can trade them all in for points to get one or two of the NEW enchantments (at rank 1). Joy!?

I can just imagine the guys at Cryptic going "please work hard on ranking these ones up too (because its way more work / pay), we promise not to remove them in the future...", hiding the fingers crossed behind their backs. It boggles the mind why anyone gives these people money with all the shit they pull / remove but hey, as a free to player - I can just enjoy the ride!

NWO: An Ode to the Forgotten Adventurer

There once was a man who helped those new to the shores of Neverwinter reach the city, but since the retooling of the intro quests he has been removed with Makos taking the spotlight, possibly having gone back through history to change the timeline.

While Cryptic would prefer this person to be forgotten, we will never forget Private Wilbur Winfred Wally uh... Dave. For those who don't know, Private Dave "the Dude" was an amazing ally. He heroically fell to Valindra about 5 minutes into the intro quest and would much later return as one of her officers since he managed to woo the lich despite being dead.

"It is I... Dave the Dude!"

Everyone even remembers his favourite battle cry, "For the Nashers!" which he learned as a member of the Cult of the Dragon. It is a little known fact that he was a member of all the cults, and was a master of disguise, his favourite being a kenku as he mastered their "Cacaaaww!" cry, - even before being transformed into a tiefling when he equipped an unidentified item. As a result, all of Faerun (monsters and gods included) agreed to never have unidentified items ever again.

Wanting to lift his curse our favourite guy began studying magic under an alias starting with M. Marcos or Madros or something, and became a master of all the schools of magic. At one point he even became the Queen of the undead in Ebon Downs. Many look back fondly at fighting him in the Throne of Dave dungeon, which Cryptic has also removed, yet to no avail as it keeps coming back like some olden tales. Dave "the Dude" is now everywhere and everything. He is sometimes a five headed dragon, other times a charlatan named Elminster.

Dave's worst adversaries came in the form of Great Weapon Fighters though, and on more than one occasion he called them barbarians. Now everyone else calls them barbarians too! To train up against this threat, he's practiced their two handed ways and joined the recent Hell Pit event under his super secret alias "Wilfred". See Cryptic, you can never be rid of "the dude", because we know you work for him. The proof is with the Githyanki who still yell "For the Nashers!". I'm sure they learned it from Dave.

Neverwinter Online: Red Dragon Cultist Recruitment

[Part of the Gallery]

Shintar previously asked if there are Red Dragon Cultists in Neverwinter Online, and while they are truly elusive I can confirm they do exist!

I wish we could multi-class!

You can find one for yourself in the Well of Dragons, he spawns in the final wave of the big heroic encounter called Cult Gathering.

Neverwinter Online: Blue Dragon Cultist Recruitment

[Part of the Gallery]

Of the dragon cult groups, this one seems like the easiest to sell, though one always needs to pay attention to the small print...

Also, in-game any enemy with a shield has the same property so maybe it's not such a good selling point after all? Now if the armor behaved like a Faraday cage that would be awesome.

Neverwinter Online: Green Dragon Cultist Recruitment

[Part of the Gallery]

While the Black Dragon Cultists are numerous in Neverwinter Online, the Green Dragon Cultists are quite few in number. I thought it would be due to being more selective...

Turns out they are just dragon worshiping Nazis.

Neverwinter Online: Black Dragon Cultist Recruitment

[Part of the Gallery]

Due to the endless swarms of dragon cultists in Neverwinter Online, I started thinking "how do they recruit all these people?"

Works for Viagra I guess? :P

Eador: Untethered

[Part of the Masters of Eador story.]

Sensing Nesturs rising power, Dorikos sends his dragon cultists to attack the mainland and Thellaphes is on defense duty. He gets off to a good start by befriending a djinn and finding a fireball scroll early but is then hampered in progress by a large ocean flanked by lands occupied by boulder throwing giants.

It takes awhile to build a shipyard large enough to make the crossing and Thellaphes loses most of his units on the shore landing but makes it to the enemy castle himself where the javelin guards give him no challenge. Dorikos retreats back to his world and Thellaphes follows.

Dragons, more OP than magic. Also immune to magic!

It certainly seems that Dorikos sent all his best troops on the offense because there's nothing that can stop Thellaphes from marching right to his front gate and destroying the dragon master's tether to the land, sending the overgrown lizard hurtling through space into the chaos.

Now is a good time to note that all dragons on Eador are immune to magic and are very deadly, which is why Nesturs forces tend to just avoid them. Fortunately Dorikos wasn't really supported by his kin, and ironically it was the dragons godliness (and tether) that proved to be his weakness.

Dragon's Dogma: No Salvation

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Upon returning the slates to Ser Maximillian, he gives us our next assignment of infiltrating attacking a Cult of the Dragon Salvation meeting taking place in the not so nearby catacombs and A peasant chubby lady named Sara volunteers to guide us there. Right outside the city gate there is a brief encounter where the city guards are trying to save a merchant wagon from goblins which should have been an easy fight, until a griffon comes along and wrecks everyone. Only my team, including the peasant lady, survives as the Griffon takes the dead Ox and flies off mid combat.

I'm curious why these are nocturnal.

Our journey then takes us through a creepy forest, and since night falls as we traverse it we are beset by numerous undead, including the fat "boomer" type that self explodes. One such creature explodes Sara into many directions. Fortunately Lily knows the way too, so we get to the catacombs and fight through even more of the walking dead to the second level where a surprise ogre manages to kill Monterrey by suiciding into a bottomless chasm, with her attached.

Soon after we find the Salvation meeting point and witness that Ser Julien is here, but he runs off as soon as our presence is made known. The ugly leader guy then kills all the gathered members and reanimates them into zombies to fight us, which is really dumb as from experience they are all much weaker than the generic bandits. Alas the ugly leader escapes but at least we open up a shortcut much nearer to Gran Soren for our return trip.

Dragon's Dogma: Vocational Dangers

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

After sealing up the Everfall (by putting a padlock I imagine, or maybe a sturdy 2x4 against the door), Ser Maximillian of the Duke's guard offers me to join the "Wyrm Hunt", which is more like a fancy way of asking for my help in investigating the return of the dragon to this land. I say sure, recruit myself a ranger names Ferris to replace my previously eaten, now certainly being digested team mate and then switch my vocation from fighter to assassin, because they get to use bows. I also switch Rose from mage to sorcerer, which is pretty much "mage with bigger spells".

The Wyrm Hunt investigation includes tracking down a spy in the Duke's court, one who supposedly works for the cult of "Salvation" - dragon worshipers who welcome the end. So, Cult of the Dragon exists here too. Check. Following said spy is pretty easy since he stands out like a sore thumb. More interesting is that this spy, Ser Julien, meets with the busty merchant Madeline as his contact. I just report this to Ser Maximillian who says he'll handle it.

She's that kind of girl.

Our next task involves recovering old slates from the Watergod Altar cave which hides behind a waterfall. While there's nothing overly strong in there the resident saurians remind me that there is no swimming (for humans) in this game, especially when one drags Ser Berne and Ferris to a watery grave. The lizardmen obviously can swim, but aren't very agile in the water making them easy targets for Rose's new spells.

Tales of the Blight: Cult of the Dragon

[Part of my Dragon Age: Origins play through. Spoilers ahead!]

Our next stop is the small mountain village of Haven, following a lead to find some holy ashes to cure Arl Eamon. I decided to bring Alistair and Leliana for their chantry background and Morrigan for her spells on this mission. The villagers are outright weird and unfriendly and it isn't long before they turn to trying to murder us just like they've been doing to some others. I find one brother Genitivi a prisoner in their chantry and after learning that the ashes are close in a nearby ruin, I send the injured man back to Denerim for his own safety.

After purging the village of all life we do find more cultists and their pet dragon kin in the ruin and do the same. Turns out this cult worships dragons and believes one particularly powerful one to be a resurrected prophet. Sounds like a different group I've heard of before elsewhere...

Wonder if they are related?

Anyway, I end all of them which angers Morrigan a little bit, including their "worshipped" dragon. That turned out to be a pretty lengthy but fun optional boss fight. Alistair eventually slays the beast, leaving the way clear to reach the higher sanctum where the urn full of ashes are meant to be.

Slightly off topic: For those who play Neverwinter Online, now is a good time to remind you that the Cult of the Dragon are raising/summoning Tiamat on November 18th! :)

Neverwinter: Not so Hidden Communities

While the Siege of Neverwinter takes center stage in Neverwinter Online at the moment, with the armies of the Cult of the Dragon attacking the exterior walls of the city I thought I would talk about something else in the Cryptic's online D&D game, namely two not-so-hidden groups that might make life better for players.

First up is the Scribe's Enclave, whom readers of this site might have heard about before. If player generated content and building quests in the Foundry is something you enjoy then please give their guildlaunch site a look (setting up a guildlaunch account is free and straight forward). Not only do they play through your quests but they also give a lot of advice and ideas on how to make your missions the best they can be. Everything from accuracy of lore to decor techniques to technical mechanics and tricks in the foundry editor. They are actually going through some tough times at the moment with scribe leader Zeirlynn going through some burnout, so new blood would be more than welcome.

The second "community" exists as a channel in the game which, if you've wandered the forums or played for a length of time you may have encountered before: the NW_Legit_Community. I knew about them for months but never bothered to investigate further, until I decided that I wanted to run some of the harder epic dungeons. Then I hit the problem in the regular Zone chat PUGs of not meeting their (often higher than needed) gear score requirement, previous dungeon or boss mechanic experience, and/or not having the right class they are looking for. Not so with the NW_Legit_Community. They take anyone who can handle themselves and run various dungeons everyday. One time they were even just rolling dice to determine which epic mission to attempt, one after the other. I strongly recommend signing up to their channel if this sort of thing interests you. At the very least it does open another point of contact for general questions and the like with less trolling than the global zone chat.

To open communications with them just type the following line in-game:
/channel_join NW_Legit_Community

Neverwinter Online: Tyranny of Dragons

[Post #23 of the Blaugust Challenge!]

Neverwinter Online's Tyranny of Dragons has been out for a few weeks now and in my opinion it is a clever and resource saving way to expand. Instead of having entirely brand new zones like they did previously (though there is still a new dungeon and skirmish to unlock and for those interested a new race and class to try out), this time they just expanded a few of the existing areas and added the new encounter sets for the quite troublesome Cult of the Dragon in each zone, all at "skull" level which means the percentage of damage they take and receive is based on the level of the player they are fighting. It's a clever system as the first zone of Neverdeath Graveyard has people around level 30 still able to participate in the content and be just as effective against the enemies as the sudden influx of level 60s.

That said, there are campaign instances, again on reused maps but with the new baddies set at level 61 which may catch some people unprepared. The biggest draw card of course are the heroic dragon encounters out in these new regions where they and their timers are clearly marked. Zone chat has never been more useful in finding the soonest dragon brawl you can get into. As always, the campaign tree to unlock content and feats is grindy. At least this time I haven't found any PvE competitive tasks thus far, and that you can grind to what suits you. You can do a short 10 minute stint a day, or if you want to get ahead you can collect more currency items than needed so that you can either have rest days or have extras readied to unlock bonus reward chests and the like.

I think Tiamat is also waiting in the new dungeon...

Personally I quite like it, though I find the dragons (the first three anyway) much easier to fight at range. You have to be a bit more on the ball with the evades if you are up close. Standing on the side often lets you evade the tail swipe and breath attacks but all the dragons do a radial stomp that can kill an unprepared hero.

While we're on the topic I figure I should put up my latest foundry creation. You might have to hunt around for it though in the "New" or "For Review" tab. I tried something different this time and made it optionally stealth based, but due to that it can probably be finished quickly. :P Please give it a try when you get the chance.

Quest Name: Arroway Manor
Short Code: NW-DP3GLWRDP

Quest List so far:
Arroway Manor [NW-DP3GLWRDP] (8-15 minutes)
Spiders of the Glade [NW-DUWK7BEE7] (15-25 minutes)
Dirty Rats [NW-DGLB37WLW] (15-25 minutes)
Rebel Incursion [NW-DFHLFGNQY] (15-20 minutes)
One Step to Darkness [NW-DNJC9SK7A]  (1 hour running time)

Blaugust Bonus: I quite enjoy creating and playing through player generated content. Not only does it speak of the devotion of the said players to the game but it also usually produces some of my favorite experiences. I actually started making quests back in the free shards of Ultima Online by painstakingly hiding stuff around places, making flash animated "cut scenes", and getting guildies to help lure monsters to desired combat points (some across oceans) and act out parts of the quest. Soon after, I was invited to become a game master to even better my quest generation stuff which I gladly accepted. I did it again on a later shard and once more became a GM. Those were some great times.

Neverwinter Online: Fire up your Foundries!

For those who play Neverwinter Online, you have just under two weeks to enter the Cult of the Dragon Foundry contest that Cryptic is holding to celebrate the new module coming out next month "The Tyranny of Dragons". The requirements aren't that severe and while winning is decided by the community (so, we probably won't win) you still get a green level companion just for participating!

Well, this might come in handy...

This might be the time to give the foundry a try if you haven't already, and if you require help or knowledge then feel free to ask and I will try help to the best of my ability.

Just a quick run down on the main requirements:
-one entry per Author, must be new quest (easy)
-include the Cult of the Dragon (easy, just plan for them to be included)
-adhere to Foundry EULA (easy, just stick to D&D, don't add people from Star Trek or Warcraft etc. and don't make it too "sexual")
-average duration of 15 minutes or more

That last one will be what makes or breaks your adventure as a contender. The only way to get that time balance right is to play test a lot, which means actually having something to test BEFORE you submit your finished work to the official thread. Doing too much of one thing for 15 minutes will also lower the enjoyability so you'll need to be smart!

As a slight bonus: Your mission will get plays, even if it is just from other contestants gauging the opposition. That is one of the hardest things when making a mission - advertising and spruiking it, so it's best to take advantage of the official spotlight while you get the chance as foundry contests do not come about very often!