Neverwinter Online: The Heart of Fire

After the spectacular Ravenloft Module, Neverwinter followed up by breaking professions with this Acquisitions Incorporated themed release that lets players help the bumbling company in retrieving the titular Heart of Fire (which is a nifty rank 14 enchant), and more!

Well, no - not a lot more. My gut feeling from seeing the trailer was it would be a disappointment, and lo and behold, I was right. I suppose Cryptic wanted to tap into these D&D internet celebrities to gain more players, resulting in a campaign designed as such - with a humorous tone that is so alien to the rest of the game outside from some foundry missions. This might have won over a few more people if they had humor that didn't insult the player in every third sentence.

Also, Xanathar has lost any potential of being a serious threat.

Design wise, the repetition of the campaign quests is even more painful when you try max out the weekly tokens through sheer stupid design with only one repeatable quest to fill out what your weeklies can't. As a whole its so bad that its made me take a break from the game.

In short, this module is utterly garbage and the next one better have the quality of Ravenloft x 100  if Cryptic wants to keep Neverwinter Online alive. At least, alive for me. One of the worst modules EVER. (Storm King's fishing stupidity is pretty hard to beat).

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.

August 2018 Status: Blaugust Reborn!

Not really a Blaugust related post today but I just wanted to keep this status thing going to see how I'm progressing with my task list. Apparently I'm not. That's what happens when you prioritize gaming over other things! Eek!

Expect more Blaugust stuff for the rest of this month, and given my increasing work schedule it's going to be challenging to clear stuff off this list.

    End the year with less weight (-1 kg from last month, running total: -2.9 kg)
    Draw 12 drawings of anything (7/12 - no progress)
    Make board game prototype (no progress)
    Complete web comic chapter 1 (no progress)
    Clean out wardrobe (no progress)
    Complete NWO: Ravenloft (0/2, only boons to go!)
    Prep Eador Story (done)
    Board game re-review (done)
    Witcher board game redemption trial  
    Update Facebook pictures (no progress)
    +Destroy Black Mold invading the house

Backlog Update:

FROM GIFTS (or freebies)
Sims 3
Hand of Fate 2 (in progress)
Sniper Elite 4 (haven't installed)
Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (Done)
Hyper Light Drifter (Done)
Battletech (in progress)
Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown (in progress)

COMPY CAN'T RUN (but I want to play)
Batman: Arkham Knight
Dying Light
Alien Isolation
Shadow of War
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Satellite Reign
Assassins Creed Unity
+Astroneer (Alpha)

The Solved Games

Where enough experience leads to almost certain victory.

After numerous play throughs I'm finding that a few of my cooperative board games have reached a "solved" status - where repetitively using the right tactic often leads to victory. Spoilers / Tips ahead, depending on your point of view!

Police Precinct - never had a defeat in this, the team just to divide labour between keeping crime in check and finding the murderer / preferably focusing on what their character is good at but being fluid enough to adapt to the board. I still really like the "emergency" system. Score Adjustment: -1.

Pandemic / Pandemic: On the Brink - while defeat comes quickly if you go for the full epidemic card set having less than that almost makes for an easy game. The red ones of On the Brink are almost mandatory for us now as we can even win with the full green epidemic cards of the base game. Obviously the bio-terrorist option (which we haven't tried yet) might mix things up. Score Adjustment: -1.

Shadows Over Camelot - on full cooperative it is almost impossible to lose provided the team works together. Defeat only comes if everyone does their own thing and tries tackle the harder group quests solo, or keeps quest hopping. You don't have to win every quest, just be sure to win the important ones. I can see why the traitor mechanic is almost mandatory. Score Adjustment: -1.

Operation Flashpoint: Fire Rescue - while bad luck can ruin any game it can be mitigated a bit here simply through communication. Planning ahead pays well, as does not intentionally damaging the building more than necessary. Almost trivialized if you have the driver in the fire engine to provide cover. Score Adjustment: -1.

Zombicide Season 2: Prison Outbreak - knowing your perks and staying together (more HP to share around) is the main rule here, as well as sharing the XP so that the spawns don't become overpowered ahead of your team mates. Bad things usually happen when people wander off on their own, and most scenarios later on even force the players apart because they know a team together is near unstoppable. And that's even without equipment juggling. Hot potato chainsaw is fun. Score Adjustment: -1.

D&D Adventure Boardgame System - all the ones I currently have reviewed (Ravenloft, Ashardalon, Drizzt, ToEE) fall into this category. Victory lies in finding the quest tile fast, and that usually means splitting up to burn through the tile deck quicker. Yes, this puts more monsters on the board but they are usually more manageable than the dreaded encounter cards. Score Adjustment: -1.

Xenoshyft - though it delivers a few brutal losses at the start, once you know how to manage your card hand properly (don't buy garbage), and how to position troops (weakest dudes NEVER go at the end of the lane) loss becomes a thing of rarity in this game. Just don't expect any of your troops to live through the whole thing. Score Adjustment: -1.

Forbidden Desert - PSYCH! This is the true stand out in my current collection. Despite having such a simple premise each game requires active thinking from each participant to mitigate those deadly loss conditions. Such a treasure of a little game, and one I'm going to recommend again right here: if you haven't played Forbidden Desert yet, please go do so! Score Adjustment: +1, and is now the "best" game in my collection.

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

July 2018 Status: Need to Catch up!

As expected last month was quite hectic for me. Fun too, but with significantly less compy and internet time (whose allotment is almost gone this month - I'm not on an unlimited plan). This already hampers July as "the catch up" month as I'm again reduced to dial up speed and means I'll be one month behind on Ravenloft's release as well as more mini-posts for awhile longer - though I'm kinda liking those now. On the plus side it should let me focus on the items that don't need a connection.

So much for dropping the back log section too, as a handful more items have found their way there recently! The list now looks as follows:

    End the year with less weight (-2.2 kg from last month, running total: -1.9 kg)
    Draw 12 drawings of anything (7/12 - no progress)
    Make board game prototype (no progress)
    Complete web comic chapter 1 (no progress)
    Clean out wardrobe (no progress)
    +Complete NWO: Ravenloft (0/2 not happening with slow internet)
    +Prep Eador Story
    +Board game re-review  
    +Witcher board game redemption trial?    
    +Update Facebook pictures (2 years behind lol)

Backlog Update:

FROM GIFTS (or freebies)
Sims 3
Eador: Masters of the Broken World (done)
+Astroneer
+Hand of Fate 2
+Sniper Elite 4
+Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition
+Hyper Light Drifter
+Battletech
+Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown

COMPY CAN'T RUN (but I want to play)
Batman: Arkham Knight
Dying Light
Alien Isolation
Shadow of Mordor (oops: this is meant to be Shadow of War)
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Satellite Reign
Assassins Creed Unity

June 2018 Status: BUSY!

I haven't really added much from last month and that's because June is going to be very busy for me, as I'm having a lot of overseas visitors over. This means I'm going to be behind on Neverwinter's next module: Ravenloft, miss the Jubilee (again), and that I'm not going to get many things done in general. I suspect my blog posting will also decrease for a bit. The updated lists look like so:

    End the year with less weight (+1.5 kg from last month, running total: +.5 kg)
    Complete NWO: Lost City of Omu (2/2)
    Learn 3 more songs (3/3)
    Draw 12 drawings of anything (7/12)
    Make a parody comic (dropped)
    Make board game 19 prototype (procrastinating)
    Complete web comic chapter 1 (needs more condensing)
    Make a simple computer game (dropped for now)
    Clean out computer games (Done)
    Clean out wardrobe

Backlog Update:

FROM GIFTS
Sims 3
Overlord 2 (Done)
Eador: Masters of the Broken World

COMPY CAN'T RUN (but I want to play)
Batman: Arkham Knight
Dying Light
Alien Isolation
Shadow of Mordor
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Satellite Reign
+Assassins Creed Unity

The "learn 3 songs" task was surprising as I learned 3 completely different ones to the ones I had intended to learn, and as I've started doing the drawing tasks I've realized how draining they are again. As such I've dropped the parody thing as I'd rather put effort into the actual comic, and I'm going to have to really plan the comic better to condense down what actually needs to be produced.

Also ditched the computer game inkling for now to focus on the original list. Game wise, Sims and Eador will probably get their own journals at some point but I doubt much will happen with that this month so we'll see how it goes. Step one is for me just to survive.

Either way I'll be dropping the Backlog section for now since it's pretty much under control, at least until I upgrade my PC. Alright June, here we go.

All Things Unrelated

Intellectual Property is an interesting topic I've come across lately while working on my NWO Foundry stuff. There are clauses there to only use IP of Neverwinter related things and nothing else which is obviously to protect Cryptic from copyright violations. For example I can see how putting Batman in my campaign might cause a few problems (least of all plotwise! Don't worry, I'm not. :P) but they don't really make it clear just how much of the D&D multiverse we can use? If I make references to Krynn, Greyhawk or Spelljammer will I get in trouble? Probably not since people are actively recreating Ravenloft there as I type this.

Then I look at other games where the lines blur sometimes - Mabinogi is a great example. I'm not talking about where other Nexon related characters from their other games hop over occasionally, that is understandable. With the latest release players have the ability to pull off a "shadow clone" move, or kage-bunshin exactly like on Naruto down to the the hand seal. Previously they even had the vocaloid Hatsune Miku (a ridiculously popular singing synthesizer) feature prominently in the game as well, in addition to other anime characters who have been or are yet to be in the NA version.

On a much broader scope does this mean a game like Card Hunter (which I'm still waiting for access to, weeks after signing up. Not a good look in my opinion) are in violation for encroaching on Gary Gygax territory? Who even polices this stuff? The answer, in China anyway, is no one - as evidenced by this wonderful copy-pasted League of Legends rip-off called 300 Heroes. It slightly goes over the limit of what I'd call cross-over acceptable, don't you think?