Neverwinter: PC

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Valos

Golden Knight of the Realm
604
13
All three artifacts at legendary, max vorpal weapon enchant, all the gems at high rank, ect. Basically alot of money, and alot of time.
 

Faltigoth

Bronze Knight of the Realm
1,380
212
I grabbed the stuff that was like 3-4k a piece. Most of them were severe undercuts at equal or even below salvage.. thanks? It's the T1 set with all the arpen and 20% off cooldown proc, so I put crit in the other slots. T2 stuff looks like it still hovers a bit above salvage and would actually cost some AD.

When you say epics are only 11k gs - what pushes it up to the magic 20k line that seems to be the universal minimum, high rank gems that will take months to afford? That's probably beyond the scope of me giving a shit about the game, but we'll see.
There are a couple of T2 sets - one of the hunter ones (master predator I think), Avatar of War for GWF off the top of my head - that will still set you back.

Definitely worth it to get at salvage cost, considering you get all the diamonds you spent on it back after it gets upgraded. You can get rings decently cheap; artifact belt also decently cheap; shirt/pants also cheap (though the shirts/pants with gem slots cost a shitload, search for the rare level 55 versions for those - you can get them with gem slots (at a loss of about 10-15 points per stat) for around 15k while the epic versions cost 5-6x that. Upgrading your regular gem enchants up to rank 5 is easy and cheap, to rank 6 takes a 15k mark of potency with 40% success rate so you want to think about using a preservation ward there; rank 7 is where it starts to get obnoxious. For weapon / armor enchants, even the lesser rank costs a ton, so unless you get lucky with a coalescent ward out of the weekly coin box those require a fairly serious amount of effort.

Also you can start banging your head against Tiamat - every hour on the hour. If you luck out there, you can come out with some of the Draconic Templar gear, which seems like it is T2.25? Not sure where that really falls in the scheme of things, it is kind of better than T2, the set bonus is meh compared to some of the other set bonuses out there but it is heavily loaded with stats and on the preview server it comes in at ilvl 116, with level 70 stuff at 131 and level 61 blues at 90. So it appears it will be a useful at least a bit into the 60-70 levelling curve.

In less than a week, however, almost everything is going out the window so no matter what you do, you definitely don't want to pay more than salvage for any gear.
 

Sabbat

Trakanon Raider
1,940
822
I'm logging in daily to do shit tasks for boons, I don't have the gear to do anything else (read: 18k+ GS for trivial shit like CN).

11k TR!
 

Faltigoth

Bronze Knight of the Realm
1,380
212
I'm on a shitload as well, though my window for actually doing stuff without being interrupted randomly is pretty small, late afternoon-early evenings. My GF is at 15.5k GS or so, though I have pretty much given up on him to prepare myself body and soul for going all in on Paladin next week.

I made a mistake and queued for Castle Never today. Holy shit. Not only is it insanely long and packed to the gills with trash, but that end boss is brutal. Took us about 1.5 hours to clear to the last boss, then there was 2.5 hours of straight wiping. By the time we killed it, I felt pretty damn good, mostly because people actually stuck around to learn the fight and wipe repeatedly. That was pretty tough, lots of kiting and running around all over the damn place to stay out of the kaleidoscope of red death circles. I don't see how the hell any party with a 9.3k gear score (the minimum to enter) would ever get through that. Needless to say, I am never randomly queuing for that again. Ever.
 

Sylas

<Gold Donor>
3,781
4,330
the game has changed a lot, classes and dungeons have been retuned repeatedly. CN fight used to be...different. It wasn't easier, it had a lot more adds, but you could also control those adds with 1 good CW or 2+ mediocre CWs. All of the dungeons used to be much harder than they currently are, one of the original appeals of this game was that it was action combat and it was difficult, really separated the wheat from the chaff. back when everyone was like 8-10k gs and gear wasn't the great separator it is now. But we definitely farmed the fuck out of CN all the way back in beta, shifting gear around just to hit the minimum GS requirement so it was totally doable. but the caliber of player was much better then, and certainly better than whatever random yahoo's you'll get using the group finder.

an old protip is never use the group finder/queue system. Not as big a deal now as it used to be, since they nerfed all the dungeons and buffed/mudflated all the characters up so much, but the average skill level of a random queue group is an order of magnitude below a premade team.
 

Muligan

Trakanon Raider
3,236
913
Gamestop's GameInformer had a little article on this game (actually on all MMOs and their status report) and the image looked like a Quarm battle. The article made the game sound pretty appealing and also mentioned it was going to release an XBOX One version of the game and made it sound as if it was a solid port.

Any insight to this game for someone who has never played it? Not sure what to compare it to or the learning curve for new players. Think i'll be reading about this some tonight. Several friends also gave the game a decent review.
 

Sinzar

Trakanon Raider
3,149
269
Short version is the game is very fun and enjoyable as a new player while you level and briefly at level cap. Very worth your time to play. The endgame is grindy, at which point you either say that was a fun week and move on, continue to play free and start the heavy endgame grind, or open your wallet.
 

Zehnpai

Molten Core Raider
399
1,245
What Sinzar said. All I really do now is log on, do a group dungeon or two because I like the combat but hate the quest grind, then go and play StarCraft or DDO until the kids wake up.
 

Budos

Golden Knight of the Realm
593
10
What Sinzar said. All I really do now is log on, do a group dungeon or two because I like the combat but hate the quest grind, then go and play StarCraft or DDO until the kids wake up.
DDO change much over the past 2 years? I played pretty heavy when Chronoscope came out, got an epic SoS, etc.
 

Goatface

Avatar of War Slayer
10,042
15,996
jumping into it for the 1st time with release on xbox, you certainly have a lot to learn
could a game have any more currencies? lol
controls are not really that bad, some like jumping take a bit to get used to

just wonder if the game will be popular enough to support the zen market, it has sorta stabilized just over 1 to 110
without gateway and less a chance for bots/alt accounts think it will take a while market to get flooded
 

Kreugen

Vyemm Raider
6,599
793
Is there a breakdown somewhere of what all is new with the update or has it changed so often it will just be a giant surprise as to what actually makes it in when the patch hits? I know boons are buffed and new hotness loot is no drop and will phase out the old T1/T2 stuff but I don't know much else. Will new dungeon loot be salvageable? That will certainly put a wrinkle into NBG. (item you want to wear drops = roll need, accept your group kick? Seriously, with the salvage system, this shit should all be personal loot because NBG goes right the fuck out the window) Also, I thought I read that the old module armor sets will be updated (new ones only, not existing ones?) but wouldn't that just mean people with tons of stored up currency could buy up full 70 epics right off the bat?

Also I'm totally lost as to what my $1 worth of AD is best used for, so I spend nothing. The only thing I've bought was a set of stuff I can salvage for exactly what I spent on it. (10.4k HR LFG! <crickets>) Should I at least go ahead and upgrade my freebie artifact to blue? I could always buy a 99 stack of totally not botted mats and sell back what I don't use and save a ton vs the cost of buying a handful at like, 5-10x the per unit cost.

And yet another question: Does the Well of Dragons stuff speed up the boon/unlock phase of the campaign or is it just for loot or whatever? Because with six different tokens, who the fuck can tell? And that shit is hard.

PS: Whoever thought Diablo style loot vomit that you have to pick up manually was a good idea should be forced to eat a printout of every post Zehn has ever made on the subject and then shot. WTB auto-loot with filters, including auto n/g/p settings. I bet when it released you had to click the coins too, didn't you?

PPS: This is what happens when I don't have enough work to keep me engaged. I write a bit, tab over, think of something else, tab back...

Also, first coffee since Thursday.

Balls.
 

Sinzar

Trakanon Raider
3,149
269
Will new dungeon loot be salvageable? That will certainly put a wrinkle into NBG. (item you want to wear drops = roll need, accept your group kick? Seriously, with the salvage system, this shit should all be personal loot because NBG goes right the fuck out the window)
As you suspected, the roll system is also going away with the dungeon changes, and we now get personal loot in dungeons in the expansion. I can only hope every MMO with a random groupfinder continues to make this change.

Also, I thought I read that the old module armor sets will be updated (new ones only, not existing ones?) but wouldn't that just mean people with tons of stored up currency could buy up full 70 epics right off the bat?
Yes, you can use old currency to buy new armor in some slots. I don't have a comprehensive list of what was updated to 70 and what wasn't.


And yet another question: Does the Well of Dragons stuff speed up the boon/unlock phase of the campaign or is it just for loot or whatever? Because with six different tokens, who the fuck can tell? And that shit is hard.
The bottleneck for dragon boons are the pages from the protectors quests. The quests in well can be skipped if you want.
 

Sabbat

Trakanon Raider
1,940
822
Neverwinter really is a game for the whales. Been pouring over ideas to break into the AD market and try to play the game at the higher level without opening a wallet, and I just can't find anything that wouldn't involve botting a shit ton of accounts. You can get by just running selected dailies and having a few toons to pump out Leadership on, but you'll never get rich.
 

Faltigoth

Bronze Knight of the Realm
1,380
212
Neverwinter really is a game for the whales. Been pouring over ideas to break into the AD market and try to play the game at the higher level without opening a wallet, and I just can't find anything that wouldn't involve botting a shit ton of accounts. You can get by just running selected dailies and having a few toons to pump out Leadership on, but you'll never get rich.
I can't help but feel this game has alot of 'old money' floating around that continues to screw the economy. Exploits that ran rampant early on, allowing people to get massive amounts of AD. Also, they handed out millions in some packs and giveaways. I mean hell, the game started off crazy with people who paid for that first pack starting right off with 2 million AD; shit never really recovered from there. Sure, they tried to institute diamond sinks to siphon them off, but the end result was that shit like upgrading companions or enchantments past rank 7 or so is flat out unreachable by the normal player because of the massive costs. They fucked up making the diamond sinks into things that directly translated into player power, rather than cosmetic my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours shit.
 

Zehnpai

Molten Core Raider
399
1,245
DDO change much over the past 2 years? I played pretty heavy when Chronoscope came out, got an epic SoS, etc.
Dungeons and Dragons Online

Yes and no.

DDO at it's core is the same half dozen mechanics and insane money grab it's always been. They do infrequent passes on the enhancement trees now though since that's there 'easy button' to make certain classes more attractive beyond a '2 splash' or whatever. Rogue just got a pretty big overhaul in the new ToEE release.
 

Sylas

<Gold Donor>
3,781
4,330
I can't help but feel this game has alot of 'old money' floating around that continues to screw the economy. Exploits that ran rampant early on, allowing people to get massive amounts of AD. Also, they handed out millions in some packs and giveaways. I mean hell, the game started off crazy with people who paid for that first pack starting right off with 2 million AD; shit never really recovered from there. Sure, they tried to institute diamond sinks to siphon them off, but the end result was that shit like upgrading companions or enchantments past rank 7 or so is flat out unreachable by the normal player because of the massive costs. They fucked up making the diamond sinks into things that directly translated into player power, rather than cosmetic my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours shit.
Yeah except no. Those ad sinks always existed, they weren't implemented to combat ad inflation. Actually they've reduce the ad costs twice now of those sinks because they are so unrealistic for a non whale player.

The game has had several ad exploits that were known about for months and yet implemented anyway, in addition to the straight ad for cash packs that they rolled out with. They basically rewarded the initial players as "haves" and then systematically removed every reasonable avenue to generate ad so that all subsequent players would be "have nots" to fuel the predatory p2w cash shop that they have.

The "economy" of this game has always been a mess and they have no intentions on fixing it, they've just slowly been removing all tradeable items achievable via gameplay instead. Most long time players have legions of leadership alts run by scripts which generate millions of ad per day. the economy will always be a disaster. other than cash shop items the only things left are enchantments which are heavily monetized via the refinement system.