Neverwinter Templars

jse

Neverwinter Templars,

Cryptic is coming out with some major changes, below is just a small part to whet your appetite. Click the READ MORE AT ARC link at the end to see the whole article. There are some really cool, nice changes, and some that will cause distress (see bonding stones). Enjoy!

Why the change?

Refinement is a core part of Neverwinter gameplay, but a lot of the time it could feel like it was weighing down on you as a player. The pure number of items that needed to be held on to, the matching bonuses, the different reagents for different artifact types, and yes the hoarding of items until the 2x Refinement Points weekends to maximize the gains. In the end it felt more like a chore that had to be done than a fun part of the game where the player kept making progress.

For new players, the system is overwhelmingly complicated. They don't know what enchantments to use as food, what to hold, what to look for, and we wanted to make that experience far easier for players to figure out. On top of all of that, there hasn't been any major additions to the system in a long time. We took a hard look at all of this and came up with a plan to improve it in multiple ways.

Refinement Points

Having to match enchantments, stones, and types of items created a massive amount of inventory to maintain and organize. In the end, this doesn't add to the experience as much as it takes away from it all. So we did just that, took it all away. Now players will use Refinement Points (thought you might like to keep your acronym) which will be a currency. Gemstones, Enchantments, Runestones, Artifacts, Artifact Equipment, Uncommon (Green) Equipment (must be identified), will all break down into Refinement Points which will be a currency on the inventory sheet. All of the refining will use Refinement Points for upgrades, along with reagents of course. This means you no longer have to manage all of those different item types and dread looking at your inventory or bank. You can just break it all down into a simple currency that all items share.

To go along with this we have a new conversion window that has some easy options to input all of the different convertible items that you want to break down into Refinement Points in one simple click. In addition, any item which can be converted, can be by using the drop down menu for that item. The refinement upgrade window will now have a nice clean interface where the player can slide a bar to determine how many Refinement Points they wish to add to the item. This bar will default at either the amount needed for the next level, or the maximum a player can deposit if less than a full level as we felt that is the most common action players would do. On top of that, you can now put in the full amount of RP needed to level up and upgrade all in a single button press. Nice and quick and easy!

And you may have noticed how I mentioned Identified Uncommon Equipment can be turned into RP and thought "Man, identifying all of my green drops will be such a pain!", well we are also adding an Identify All button which will take your ID scrolls and identify all the unidentified items in your inventory with one click.

Now because we switched to a currency and want to try for manageable amounts of currency. We reduced both the value of RP points of the items and the cost to upgrade items by a factor of 10. Example a black opal now awards 1,000 RP, but costs are lowered by the same factor as well. To be very clear, this does not change the cost of refinement at all! This simply reduces the values all around so we can keep the currency lower and have room for players to hold plenty of currency and grow the system in the future. We will give the exact progression charts in the technical details post as well so that you can all see for yourselves how it will be functioning.

Neverwinter Templars

Contents

Thursday

Upcoming Neverwinter Changes