My Top 5 Neverwinter Modules

Ever since Neverwinter Unblogged wrote a great article ranking the game's many modules by quality, I've been meaning to write my own (shorter) version of this. (I'm not going to link the original article because sadly the dead site's domain trips security warnings in all my browsers nowadays.) Without further ado, my five favourite modules and the reasons why I love them:

5. Mod 18: Infernal Descent (January 2020)

Yes, I'm putting the most recently completed mod on this list because while it wasn't particularly innovative, it managed to get me back into the game after a very long absence (by my standards) and after having been majorly put off by the previous releases. It returned to using systems that I'd enjoyed before, and the devil theme kept things sufficiently fresh as they aren't really an enemy we've had to fight in great numbers before.

4. Mod 1: Fury of the Feywild (August 2013)

I wasn't actually playing when this was released, but when I came back to the game for the first time it was still very relevant content. In terms of theme, in a fantasy setting you can't really go wrong by having elves and a magical forest, and while somewhat grindy in its initial iteration, I enjoyed the content from the beginning. I believe my initial assessment was "similar to New Romulus in STO, but better". While much faster and easier these days, I still always enjoy coming back to this campaign on alts too.

3. Mod 14: Ravenloft (June 2018)

Based on an iconic property that immediately sparked interest, this mod managed to do the land of Barovia and its ruler justice by representing them through gameplay elements that managed to be a refinement of things that had worked well before and making them even better and more fun. Another map that I'm very happy to come back to.

2. Mod 3: Curse of Icewind Dale (May 2014)

This was the current mod when I first returned to the game after having drifted away not long after launch, and I loved it enough that it got me to stay semi-permanently. I loved the whole setup of Caer-Konig with the two competing factions, the snowy environments and the music; and new features like the heroic encounters dotted around the map and the optional open world PvP were appealing. While the difficulty felt kind of brutal for a solo player at the time, there was also something satisfying about playing an MMO again where "everything goes much more smoothly in a group" made for an incentive to group up with friends even for simple tasks like doing dailies.

1. Mod 7: Strongholds (August 2015)

It may seem odd to give the top spot to a module that didn't feature a campaign and didn't have much of a story attached to it, but I've really come to adore my little guild's stronghold. I'm not really a huge fan of housing in general, but the stronghold map is more like a privately shared adventure zone, and I enjoyed seeing our mini guild slowly improve ours as time went on. To be honest I think this is one of the main reasons I've stayed so attached to Neverwinter over the years: Our stronghold offers a virtual home, and even after periods of absence I never have to wonder what to do upon returning - checking on the stronghold is always the first order of business, and everything else can be figured out later.

Avernus

Last week Cryptic announced that the next module will be called Avernus. They haven't really said much more about it other than that it will come out "soon" (™) and that we'll continue our adventures in the first circle of hell under the guidance of Makos.

All I keep thinking is that "Avernus" seems like a very confusing name for a module that is the second one to take place there. That's kind of as if Underdark had been called "Going down" and then Maze Engine had been called "Underdark", when in fact both of them (mostly) took place in the Underdark.

Chicken Farm

During one of our first visits to Avernus I saw a player talk in general chat about soon being able to open a chicken farm, and I remember wondering what that was all about.

As it turns out, one of the reward mechanisms in Infernal Descent is that you can use the currency acquired from repeatable quests and heroic encounters to buy "surprise bags", which have a chance of containing good gear, astral diamonds, or a random companion, vanity pet or mount. As it happens, by far the most common drop from them is the "infernal chick" vanity pet, and after a few weeks of buying these bags I, too, am up to owning 24 of the little things.

Unfortunately you can neither trade nor sell them, not even to a vendor, so they've just been accumulating in my vanity pet inventory. As of now there's still plenty of space in there, but I do wish Cryptic would let me do something with them other than delete them. As I generally hate deleting things in MMOs, I'll stick to the chicken farm in my bags for now.

Shorthand

In-game shorthand can tell you a lot about new content even when you don't quite know yet what all the acronyms stand for.

For example, when we first started questing in Avernus, we quickly noticed that chat was full of "+siege" and "+ape". This indicated that there were at least two big heroic encounters (BHEs, or "beehees" as my husband likes to call them) on the map that people liked to run for the rewards.

"Ape" seemed like a bit of an odd name, mind you, but we soon found out that this was because while the encounter was technically called "Demonic Summoning", it involved killing a giant Barlgura, a type of demon that looks like - you guessed it - some kind of ape. Why waste precious syllables when a simple "ape" will do it?

In Hell

Infernal Descent takes place in Avernus, the first circle of hell according to D&D lore. Players are provided with a safe haven there in the form of your base of operations, a stronghold that was pulled down into hell due to a curse or something, but otherwise the environment is (understandably) very hostile.

I think it's always challenging to make players spend extended amounts of time in zones that are by their very nature extremely hostile and unpleasant, because if the environment truly lives up to its reputation, no amount of rewards will make people want to hang around.

Avernus, too, largely manages to deliver on what you'd expect from a circle of hell, with a slightly grating soundtrack and everything being tinted in unpleasant shades of red. Even the mobs contribute, as the Erinyes' screeching for example is a proper pain in the rear. It's bearable for the duration it takes to get your weeklies done and the gameplay is fun, but unsurprisingly the first circle of hell is not a place where I'd like to spend more time in the long run.

Infernal Descent

As much as Uprising was a letdown, fortunately the newest module seems to be a good one again. In fact, my immediate impression was that after something like three lacklustre modules in a row, someone at Cryptic must have sat down to check which one was the last module that players really liked (Ravenloft) and decided to simply copy that.

Infernal Descent doesn't feature as iconic a setting, but it also has an introduction with some neat-ish cut scenes, interesting NPCs, and the way the overall campaign works is almost a straight copy and paste from Ravenloft: a map with a mix of big and small heroic encounters, endlessly repeatable quests on a randomised rotation and some very rewarding weeklies.

Feeling The Pull

After seeing first Telwyn, then Syp, and finally even Bhagpuss talk about Neverwinter in the past month, I finally reinstalled it. (I never uninstalled it actually; I just got a new PC and never bothered to install it there.) I haven't played it yet, but I'm guessing that will be the next step.

I thought I was done with the game after how they followed up a disappointing mod 15 with a seemingly even worse mod 16 that left me feeling completely detached from all my characters. But it seems that I can't quite let go. While it's never been my primary MMO, I guess it's hard not to feel somewhat attached after so many years of playing and getting eight characters to max level at one point.

When I quit retail World of Warcraft I was quite sure that it was over because the devs had made it pretty explicit that they thought the sort of things I enjoyed were not fun in their book and their design wasn't going to support them any longer. Cryptic on the other hand is just terribly incompetent at times from what I can tell, so one can always hope that things get better again I guess? There are three whole campaigns that I haven't played through at this point.

(By the way, what's up with the weird new music on the login screen? If you let it run for a bit it turns oddly metal. Is Infernal Descent a metal module?)