Neverwinter: Beta Weekend Two Impressions

Ragar gives his thoughts on two weekends with Cryptic's new D&D MMO

Skills - Because There's More to Dungeoneering Than Killing Orcs

Moving beyond combat, there is another area of gameplay that I found interesting. When you pick your character class, besides all of your normal class abilities, you also gain access to a Skill. As a Guardian Fighter, I learned Dungeoneering. Trickster Rogues get Thievery, Devoted Clerics get Religion and Control Wizards get Arcana. These four skills, along with Nature, are related to certain interactable objects in both the open world and in instances. Dungeoneers would find secret doors in dungeons with treasure chests or see traps on the floor. Thieves could see those traps as well as disarm them. Those players with Religion could interact with altars for some buffs. Not quite sure what Arcane could do that was special since all I found for them were loot boxes. The bulk of your interaction with the Skills is opening these boxes/bags/altars you find everywhere that have loot inside, typically crafting materials.

If you're running around by yourself and you happen upon one of these lockboxes/secret doors/etc. that doesn't match your class Skill, fret not - there is a way around this. Many of the general goods vendors sell kits that allow you to interact with those skill-locked items. In the first beta weekend these kits gave you a blanket "you have X skill for three minutes" buff, but they appear to have moved to a much more consumable idea with the current "one-time use and 65% chance of succeeding" model. While this does mean that players will have to spend more on consumables, I think it's a better fit for the system as a whole. Besides the fact that classes who aren't trained in that skill shouldn't be as proficient as someone that was (e.g. my Guardian Fighter should not be as good a Thief as the Trickster Rogue), it doesn't break up the flow of the instance when they're one-shot items. During the first weekend I cleared quite a bit of a dungeon to make sure I could get multiple uses out of one 3-minute skill consumable. I wonder if they'll keep the Skill system at the current binary "you have the skill/kit active or you don't" level or if we'll ever see tiers to the skill. On the one hand it fits more with D&D to have it where an experienced Rogue can deal with any and all locks, but someone with a couple of skill points can take care of simple things. On the other hand, it's a matter of convenience for players in case they're missing a Rogue, but they'd prefer to not disarm traps with their faces.


Watch live video from zamofficial on TwitchTV

Creating Your Own Quests For Fun and Profit

Lastly I'll touch upon the Foundry for a bit. While I wasn't able to try out any Foundry missions this weekend, I did four or five of them the first weekend. For those who are unfamiliar with the Foundry, it's basically a mission creator for Neverwinter. Players can craft their own instanced quests using tools Cryptic has provided. The players will place NPCs, write dialogue, design encounters - if you can think of it and the tools allow it, you can make it and show it off to the rest of the players. I played through one person's three-mission story chain and another player's three- or four-mission chain. They needed some polish, but they were well-done for something on a beta server. At the end I even got a piece of random gear as a reward. It's possible this was done by the player on purpose, but I'd imagine Cryptic has some controls in there to prevent someone making a "Come here and get a free +5 Holy Avenger of Awesome" mission.

If I'm going to talk about the Foundry, I should also get into the tipping system. Neverwinter has three main currencies: normal coins, Zen (money shop), and Astral Diamonds. Astral Diamonds are used for many things, including companions (at least you could the first weekend - couldn't find any this time), some random blue-quality gear, and mounts/riding skill. If you want the higher level riding skills, you'll need those Astral Diamonds. How do you get them? You can do the once-an-hour Invocation cooldown for some random amount, you can trade Zen for Astral Diamonds on the market or you can try for tips in the Foundry. When I completed missions from the Foundry, I was asked for reviews as well as if I wanted to tip the creator with some Astral Diamonds. It's a small amount (around 100 - less than one Invocation gives), but bear in mind your Foundry missions are available to everyone. If you become a well-known mission crafter or you get featured one week, you could end up earning enough for your riding skill or a new companion without having to Invocate at all.

Comments

Post Comment
Neverwinter
# Mar 13 2013 at 2:23 PM Rating: Decent
28 posts
And of course, as always, there is GIANT ARMORED SPIDER MOUNTS!!!
Post Comment

Free account required to post

You must log in or create an account to post messages.