Housekeeping Required

It's commonly agreed that one of the biggest challenges for players returning to an MMO they haven't visited in a while is remembering how to play their character, figuring out what to do next, and what all the stuff in their bags is. A big patch that makes major systems changes can be similarly confusing for existing players. But seriously, no game I've played is as bad at this as Neverwinter.

I'm still trying to sort out all my characters post-mod 21 launch. Quests reset, stats reset, new stuff to claim and use or stow away (unless you want those flashing notifications to bother you forever), old stuff made redundant and requiring trading in somewhere (why can't they just auto-convert obsolete currencies like most other games?)... just the amount of housekeeping required to keep playing the characters I was happy and comfortable with the day before the patch is insane. And it feels like they do this about once a year. Just why, Cryptic?

Barren, yet Overloaded

 ... is my briefest of day one impressions of mod 21. Barren, because that's how the Sword Coast map looks to me with seven zones removed - see below for which ones got the axe:

Overloaded, because every character has dozens of new rewards to claim for content they've already completed, and just claiming all the boxes without even opening most of them was enough to give me a slight case of inventory panic. I'll have to take all my alts through this process slowly.

Oh, and I gained a new max-level alt because my previously level 65 cleric alt that I created after Undermountain is now also at the new cap of 20.

More Generosity

I only logged in briefly after yesterday's Avernus launch and haven't looked at any of the new content yet, but in that time I was pleased to find - besides another extremely generous package on the claims vendor that includes a free rank 15 enchantment and more, in honour of Cryptic's 20th birthday - that my character's default bag had been increased by 12 slots.

I have to say the game has clearly come a long way since the days when they made a point of patching in more vendor trash to fill up your bags more quickly.

Fashion Bag!

I'm making a serious habit out of getting super excited about user interface changes and quality of life features while totally missing the actual content of a new module, or at least not getting to the latter until much later. So of course, upon logging in after the release of Lost City of Omu, I got super excited about the new fashion bag!

I'm still not sure there is even much of a point to fashion these days when you can just make your normal gear look any way you want, but fact is that it's still a system that exists. Sometimes I still get fashion items for free or as rewards, and unlike my pet tank I hate destroying or leaving things, so I've always dutifully stashed them away in my bank while simultaneously feeling bad about the space they were taking up, because I didn't really care about them that much.

Finally this is no longer going to be a problem, as we now have a separate inventory tab to put a whole bunch of fashion items away for free. Despite of me not using them much, the freed up bank space alone really excited me, and to be honest, not having to worry about where to store new fashion in the future might even encourage me to pick up a few more such items and maybe even use them on occasion. Like with the introduction of the stable, the secret to making people want more of something that they can only use one at a time is to not make it a chore to have more than one.

Vendor Trash

For a game that makes money from selling bag space (among other things), I've never felt that Neverwinter particularly tries to clog up your bags with junk. Things like currencies and crafting materials go into their own, seemingly limitless inventory tabs, and most things you pick up while questing are actually useful. There's never been a whole lot of vendor trash in Neverwinter.

Today while questing on my lowbie great weapon fighter, I killed a bunch of dragon cultists associated with the new module and they dropped junk like crazy. I seemed to get a useless white quality item on every other pull, and Cryptic appears to have created a whole bunch of new grey items purely for the dragon cultists to drop some rubbish. Even as I stopped to sell things whenever I could and refined enchantments away on the go, my inventory kept filling up over and over again.

Someone clearly wants to sell more bags.