Sunday

Seminar on Stronghold Development I



Figure 1: The Steward from Nevembers Lackey's on the Preview Shard



Welcome,

This Seminar is meant for everyone who is interested in Managing and Planning a Stronghold in Neverwinter.

Stronghold management includes planning the order of structures you want to build on your stronghold map as well as monitoring and directing the resources required for those Buildings.

In Figure 1 you can see The Steward, he is an important NPC for your Stronghold Development.
By talking to him you can access the Stronghold Overview.


Figure 2: Stronghold Overview , Summary Tab


In Figure 2 you can see the Summary Tab of the Stronghold Overview. Here you‘ll find your current Target and what resources are still needed for its completion. Important to note is that all shown values for the strucures in the Overview already take your Stronghold Alliance Discount into account. Very convenient.
You also see the amount of resources currently stored in your production structures (Farm, Lumberyard, Mine, Quarry).



Figure 3: Stronghold Overview, Construction Tab


Figure 3 is showing the Construction Tab which includes a List of all structures already built on your stronghold map and available Plots for future projects.
By hovering your cursor over a Structure a smaller window will pop up showing you the required resources for the next rank of that building. Again Stronghold Alliance Discount included!

Once you have decided on the next Structure you want to build you can set it as Contribution Target with a click on the button to the bottom of that window. This way your Guildies see what resources are required for their Coffer Donations. You can change the Target as many times as you like.

You can also access this list via your Guild Management Window, but CAUTION the values which are showing here do not include the Stronghold Alliance Discount.


Tending

As mentioned before we have 4 production structures on the stronghold map namely the Farm (Food), Lumberyard (Wood), Mine (Metal) and the Quarry (Stone). Those resources are important for your main buildings but even more so for the Temporary Structures.
All of them have a internal storage capacity which will fill up every 8 hours. Depending on the rank of the Structure and on an exiting support structure that capacity can be increased.
Once they reach capacity they will stop producing resources. So go tend them regularly.
John from Ghost Templars made a video on tending which is linked below.




Resources

There are a lot of diffrent resources required for building structures on the stronghold map. Some of them are prouduced over time (Farm,…) and some can be farmed like the campaign resources, but there are resources which tend to always create a bottleneck for your stronghold progression.
Influence, Shards of Power, Gems and Surplus Equipment will be the most difficult to get resources. Influence and Shards of Power have a daily cap for earning them. Gems are used for refinement and Surplus Equipment helps in earning Astral Diamonds.
Strategies to gather those resources efficiently without cutting into personal gains will be presented and discussed in a later post.



Temporary Structures

With Mod 11.5 we received the option to build temporary structures on stronghold map. If you leave the stronghold through the northwestern tunnel you will arrive at the Millabout Market which presents 4 Plots for the temporary structures. Any temp. Structure will last for 7 days and you can only have one of a kind active at the same time.
We ignore structures which help with Mastercrafting for now and pay closer attention to structures which produce valuable resources for your stronghold coffer, namely the Recruiter and the Gemcutter.


Table 1: Costs for Recruiter and Gemcutter per week without Stronghold Alliance Discount
Structure
Labor
Food
Metal
Stone
Wood
Production/Week
Recruiter
12.000
38.000
27.000
24.000
32.000
16.800 Influence
Gemcutter
23.000

31.000
34.000
40.000
24.000 Gems
Total/Week
35.000
38.000
58.000
58.000
72.000



As you can see in Table 1 temporary structure are basicly exchange buildings were you trade lower valued resources for higher valued ones like Influence and Gems.

The Goal for every Guild still in development should be a constant Uptime of the Recruiter and the Gemcutter to speedup your Stronghold Progression.

With the afore mentioned Goal in mind I suggest the following Roadmap for Stronghold Development. The chosen Boon Structures have a focus on PvE content, but are in my opinion also viable in PvP.



Roadmap

Guild Hall Rank 5
- Stable rank 1-2
- Milling Yard rank 1(if you can effort it)
- Recruiter every week

Guild Hall Rank 6
- Stable to rank 3
- Market Place to rank 3
- Farm, Lumberyard, Mine, Quarry to rank 3
- Recruiter every week

Guild Hall Rank 7
- Warehouse rank 1-3
- Smelter Yard or Masonry Guild rank 1 (if you can effort it)
- Recruiter or Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 8
- Stable to rank 4
- Farm, Lumberyard, Mine , Quarry to rank 4
- Warehouse to rank 4
- Market Place to rank 4
- Recruiter or Gemcutter every week

Guild hall to rank 9
- Wizards Workshop rank 1-4 (depending on your Conquerer‘s Shard Situation you can also build the Barracks at this point, but the Power Boon will only unlock at rank 3+)
- Recruiter or Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 10
- Stable to rank 5
- Wizards Workshop to rank 5
- Warehouse to rank 5
- Market Place to rank 5
- Farm, Lumberyard, Mine , Quarry to rank 5
- Recruiter or Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 11
- Masonry Guild or Smelters Yard rank 1 the one you didn‘t chose earlier (if you can effort it)
- Recruiter or Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 12
- Stable to rank 6
- Wizards Workshop to rank 6
- Warehouse to rank 6
- Market Place to rank 6
- Farm, Lumberyard, Mine , Quarry to rank 6
- Milling Yard rank 2, now you can build the Recruiter and Gemcutter at the same time
- Recruiter and Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 13
- Barracks 1-6, if you have enough Conquerer‘s Shards of Power. The upgrade can be postponed until the Guild Hall upgrade to rank 15.
- Recruiter and Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 14
- Stable to rank 7
- Wizards Workshop to rank 7
- Barracks to rank 7
- Warehouse to rank 7
- Market Place to rank 7
- Farm, Lumberyard, Mine , Quarry to rank 7
- Recruiter and Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 15
- Animal Pen rank 1
- Recruiter and Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 16
- Stable to rank 8
- Wizards Workshop to rank 8
- Barracks to rank 8
- Warehouse to rank 8
- Market Place to rank 8
- Farm, Lumberyard, Mine , Quarry to rank 8
- one of your Support Structures (Milling Yard, Masonry Guild, Smelters Yard, Animal Pen) to rank 8 Animal Pen would be the cheapest in terms of Shards of power
- Recruiter and Gemcutter every week

Guild Hall Rank 17
- Last Boon Plot unlocked: Temple for PvE or Explorer‘s Guild for PvP

With your last Boon Structuer built there is only one big goal left Guild Hall Rank 20 and that road is pretty straight foward.



Thoughts on Boons

Will be added after an open discussion during the Seminar.


Seminar on Stronghold Development II

Since there will be alot of things left unanwsered in 45min of the first Seminar we will give a second one (maybe even a third).

Topics for the 2nd Seminar
- Strategies to overcome the Resource Bottlenecks
- How to make Astral Diamonds with Temporary Structures
- …

Please suggest additional topics either during the first Seminar or via ingame mail to Fennik@rothgarbaerig.

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