Echoes of Prophecy

So Neverwinter released a new "battlepass campaign" in the spirit of the Redeemed Citadel. Only this time, the "server event" aspect of it appears to have been removed, there is no leaderboard, and the "premium pass" doesn't grant a permanent unlock for the campaign either; it just gives you extra rewards and four additional months to do the content.

Instead of endlessly grinding devils and demons, this campaign mainly asks you to focus on re-running existing legacy campaign content and dungeon queues.

My first thought upon reading this was that it didn't sound great. I don't entirely mind the idea of a fresh incentive to repeat old content, as that could actually make for an interesting addition for alts that "need" to do these campaigns at some point anyway... but the time-limited nature of it and the paid pass not giving you permanent access anymore were somewhat off-putting to me.

However, then I found out that this time around, progress is also account-wide, and at least for this milestone, a lot less grindy than Redeemed Citadel ever was. Having just done the intro quests on four characters, I'm already halfway through the milestone.

I guess I'll do it then, though progress being this fast actually makes it a bit of a non-event again, as I might well end up completing the entire milestone by the end of today. Cryptic's new ideas about what kind of "content" is supposed to keep players busy for months on end remain somewhat disappointing.

Aasimar Unlocked

This week I finally unlocked the last of the Redeemed Citadel rewards on my main, which means that I now have access to the Aasimar race. Too bad I like all my existing characters as they are and see little incentive to roll yet another alt until they release another class.

Some of the gear rewards from the milestones were also pretty good - for example I hadn't upgraded my neck and belt since Ravenloft. Sadly the main and off-hand remain un-upgradeable for me though as doing so requires drops from the higher-level Avernus hunts, something I just can't be bothered with at this point.

Lazy Citadel Redemption

The Redeemed Citadel event continues, and both the second and third milestones have come and gone. After how much grinding I did during the first one, my motivation has dropped off sharply. Me and all my guildies have bought the Zen market item to unlock the event permanently, so there's no rush to complete it in time - and since you gain credit for gaining Zariel's favour towards multiple milestones at once, the "optimal" thing in terms of effort vs. reward at this point is to wait for the fourth milestone to begin and then work on progressing them all in one go.

That said, I think we're also getting a bit tired of the Avernus Wastes in general. Usually we'd only spend a month or two in a new module, but due to this event we've been grinding mobs on the same map for more than four months now. At this point we only tend to meet up once a week to do a couple of the weekly dungeons but by now even that is getting quite tiresome to be honest.

First Milestone Complete

The server completed the first milestone on the way to restoring the Citadel last week. I'm not sure if it's been officially stated, but I think the grind for the second milestone won't actually start until the 15th of September.

Somewhat to my own surprise, I've already nearly completed my first personal milestone on my main as well. The weekly objectives have helped a lot with that. Still, I bought the "Reforger's Blessing" to remove the timer anyway, as I also wanted to unlock the whole thing permanently for all my alts.

In terms of progressing the event for everyone, completion of the first milestone dramatically increased the number of angels in the Citadel and unlocked hunts in Avernus, a feature we haven't seen since Ravenloft, though this implementation is more of a throwback to Chult with its multiple layers of randomness stacked on top of each other. We'd already wondered about all those named mobs with special markers next to their names that didn't seem to serve any purpose, but now they finally drop rare items to buy lures. It does spice up the zone a bit, though so far the reward for getting the lures and killing a hunt target doesn't really seem to be worth the effort.

Hardcore Mode

There are some weekly objectives meant to slightly alleviate the grind for Zariel's favour, one of which is to complete selected dungeons in "hardcore mode". Before seeing this requirement, I had never heard of this feature.

We learned that it's a setting you can only turn on when queuing with a pre-made group, and when enabled it requires you to complete the whole run without anyone dying/getting downed. This is pretty sucky.

On our first run of hardcore Malabog's Castle, we breezed through most of it with ease, but then I lagged out on the last boss and got one-shot by the dragon's flyby, forcing us to start over. Fortunately we then got it on the second try.

After the weekly reset we did the whole thing again, and again we failed on the first run, this time due to someone else not dodging the flyby and getting one-shot by the last boss.

It kind of reminds me of the old Undying achievement in WoW, only worse in that you can't even get the normal dungeon rewards after failing, you just get ported out immediately and receive nothing. To be honest I'm neither sure why this mode is in the game nor why Cryptic felt the need to promote it with this event.

Redeemed Citadel Event

Cryptic decided to take event gaming to a new level with a special one-time campaign to restore the redeemed citadel in Avernus. It's pitched as "the entire server working together" to progress through four different phases, however on closer inspection that seems to be nothing but a cosmetic veneer, as the news item also states that "if a milestone is completed by the server early, there will be some time—a few days or weeks—before the next milestone begins". After less than two days we've already progressed more than 20% towards the first milestone, but looking at the pitched event duration on the calendar, I'm guessing that each phase is going to last 28 days regardless.

In a savvy monetisation move, you earn some pretty good rewards for grinding the event - but you can earn double the rewards (including some unique additions) and a new race by also paying. On one level I find this kind of monetisation quite annoying, but I can't deny that I'm tempted. If you're already doing the grind, why deny yourself some of the potential rewards?

Paying also removes the timer for earning the rewards - otherwise you have to complete each grind during its dedicated time slot, which works out to earning about 1000 of Zariel's favour a day - for nearly four months. Based on our efforts the first two nights, this isn't completely unreasonable if Neverwinter is your only MMO and you play every day, but for a more casual player it's quite a big ask.