Today I Smiled: I scared the Boogeyman

It's a great feeling when Strahd's pet wraith "the night terror", which serves as a wandering boss in Barovia who hunts down and kills people, decides to run and hide from you in its little sphere of invisibility.

I see you! Get out here and fight me!

Obviously its AI broke because after declaring it was chasing me, I spied him fleeing down the hill at the ruins of Berez and get stuck in a corner. Took some coaxing before he finally came out to be slaughtered. Hehehe.

That's almost as good as the time I was harvesting cyclops eyes from the soon to be "old" Sharandar, and upon killing a single cyclops was surprised to find it dropped two eyes...

Neverwinter Online: Faster Weeklies in Barovia

Repetitive tasks get old quick, and while Barovia is quite a nice place here are some pointers to get you through some of the weeklies quicker.

1) Do the Yesterhill BHE earlier during the week cycle. More people trying to do it means more chances for you to get it done.

2) After doing the Pack of Lies instance, you get a weekly that covers the same ground. If you aren't hunting cards then you can skip most of the early combat in the repeating weekly thusly:

-After examining first body, mount up and ride on before spawning wolves catch you.

-After examining 2nd body ride on all the way to the mouth of the cave. If your mount is fast enough, you can avoid all exterior combat. Jump up and Spam F to enter the cave and bypass the wolf man right outside.

-Inside the cave, you must kill the group in the tunnel, then you can run past everything else without aggroing them by running through the lake. Fight the Alpha and run out the same way you came in.

-Once you get out, mount up and circle to your right to flank the pack leaders. Range attack them to lure them to you and then just focus on hurting one till they flee. Note: you will need to pull back after your first attack or your companion will charge and aggro everything. After this point, you'll need to kill everything else.

3) Bypassing enemies in the Old Bonegrinder instance is easier:

- Run past most of the spiders, kill the set at the dead end and kill the witch.

- While mounted, stick to the right side of the forest (hug the mist) when triggering the next cut scene then escape (ESC) out of it as soon as you can and run past the initial scarecrows. If you then hug the left side while crossing the farm you can avoid all those scarecrows too.

- Lure the second witch a little bit and kill her and her summon. If you go too far away she'll call you a coward and reset position/HP. Note: Let the summon aggro you from line of sight. If you range attack, all the field scarecrows will wake up.

- Afterwards, if you are fast enough you might be able to rush and spam F to get into the basement but that only has worked for me when wolves guard the door and not shadow demons. After this point, you'll need to kill everything else.

That's it from me, hope it's been of some help to you!

Developer Appreciation: Neverwinter Online Barovia

It's the start of the Blaugust Developer Appreciation Week and I thought I'd start with the content I've most recently been playing, Neverwinter Online's Barovia zone and Ravenloft campaign in general. This is the best module in the game to date as it captures the horror setting quite well, aided by the day and night cycle currently only found in this zone. It also hands out some decent gear during the intro for those who have lowly alts who get little time to quest for their own equipment.

Great place for screenshots too!

There is no escape from some currency grind but at least here you will unlock all of the story campaign quickly, in fact - the quickest of all the modules. As a bonus, the story actually has a fun, semi conclusion for those like Shintar and myself who don't actually go into the end dungeons. Even so, you will want to hang around as it is an easy place to get riches, especially from the tailored hunt mechanic which sees your party sent to a private instance of Barovia to take down nasty hunt marks who are much more accessible than their Omu counterparts. The optional risk vs reward system there is inspired.

All up, Barovia is fantastic and here's hoping Cryptic continues building on the good parts and culling the bad with whatever adventure comes next.

Neverwinter Online: Ravenloft First Impressions

So misty. So cool. So Strahd.

Just before my internet conks out for the next two weeks I thought I'd give my first impressions of Neverwinter's latest module: Ravenloft, which has a pretty cool intro cinematic. After a cheesy quest hook that lets everyone traverse the "unescapable" mists (which is mandatory in an MMO I suppose), we finally get to the beautifully spooky land of Barovia which just oozes of theme. I especially like how Strahd's castle is literally just so close to everything.

It's nice that Strahd shows up early too.

The weekly bounty thing from Chult is here and the repeating quests are a bit more time consuming not only because of the slightly tougher baddies but also because said tasks are just slightly longer. Instead of killing 20 things, its now kill 20 of these AND 5 of those. Instead of get the 4 doohickeys, its get the 4 doohickeys AND put them somewhere afterwards.

Best parts for me so far are the night and day cycle which changes the spawns slightly. It's definitely scary to know that the Stalker from Warframe Night Terror (miniboss) shows up randomly each night to terrorize some unlucky adventurer.  Then there are the hunts which are amazing! No more grinding for bait, now you just hop into an instance with a difficulty of your own choosing, ala Mabinogi Quest Boards.

My personal favorite so far is using increase aggro range cards, the higher the better. This means the baddies aren't stronger but they come marching out for you from all over. While I first did it for a laugh, it's turned out to be a valid farming tactic since all those mobs can then drop more cool hunt cards. The bad part - I'm hunting all the time, and not actually progressing in the campaign! :P