Developer Blog: Fangbreaker Island

strumslinger

Fangbreaker Island will be our toughest dungeon yet and our first dungeon requiring a higher tier of gear.

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10088673-developer-blog:-fangbreaker-island

mrvincent1959

Item level requirement? Approx length of dungeon? Rewards? Where are the other end-game dungeons that were removed with Mod 6?

urabask

mrvincent1959 said:

Item level requirement? Approx length of dungeon? Rewards? Where are the other end-game dungeons that were removed with Mod 6?

Yeah these hype blogs that offer basically no information are kind of annoying : \

hawkblaze1954

My guess is no higher than 3000 item level

urabask

hawkblaze1954#5209 said:

My guess is no higher than 3000 item level

lol 3k. The DC shortage will become very apparent then. Wouldn't be surprised to see people start inflating ilvl with armor kits and such.

mightyeriksson

urabask said:

hawkblaze1954#5209 said:

My guess is no higher than 3000 item level

lol 3k. The DC shortage will become very apparent then. Wouldn't be surprised to see people start inflating ilvl with armor kits and such.

Too late, already seen plenty of player with R10-12 Radiant in utility
If they at least would have gone Azure or Dark...

oldbaldyone

Please unlock it to all without the campaign for testing. PLEASE. Thats point 1. Point 2.....PLEEEEASE listen to feedback.

These 2 things alone will help dramatically.

Decide now also whether you are a hardcore game or a casual game....this instance may be the line that gets drawn between those two theories. Casual - you'll nerf it so that anyone can finish it, cause you know, the world is all about not making people WORK for anything anymore....Hardcore: it will be hard but not impossible, and may actually present a challenge for the hardcore folks for a bit.

ghoulz66

Glad I skipped IWD on launch. Black Ice Resists and recharging...

All over again, but it's dull and unoriginal this time around. Same old gear grind and gate.

Seeing how big of a flop CN was I have zero expectations on this dungeon having any remotely fair challenge added to it aside from huge numbers and cheap mechanics.

I'll just wait until death for the old dungeons to finally return.

greyhawk

If it's minimum of 3k then I doubt it'll be enough challenge for the truly elite, so they'll be complaining and asking for nerfs for other classes in short order.

If it's much higher than 3k they run the risk of alienating too many players...

I want to know the req so I can start gearing one char for it. I'm at about 2850 on my GWF but may concentrate on a support class instead - healadin or my as yet unknown GF.

Edit: dang auto correct!

beckylunatic

3k is also right at the point that you can gear up to without really starting to break the bank. Not as a measure of effectiveness, since you can be effective much lower. Simply as a measure of whether or not you've refined all your items as high as they can go or stopped at a lower tier, are you using reinforcement kits/jewels, do you have 4 extra enchant slots filled from legendary gear, are you using enchants that require you to have sunk the cost of a bunch of SMoPs and wards in some way, and so forth.

Two pieces legendary and two epic artifact equipment, three legendary artifacts and one mythic, a mix of enchants from rank 8-10 (including normal DH in all utility slots), Trans weapon enchant and Lesser armor enchant, Dusk and Elemental Drowcraft armor, personalized rings, no kits... that's already way more than a lot of players without my resources can easily achieve, and that puts them right around 3k in Inscribed undergarments, more with slotted undies and two more enchants equipped.

I don't want to say that making the iLvl requirement greater than 3k locks the content out for anyone but people who've paid real money to improve their characters, but it would be restricting it to players who have fully engaged with the system of making marginal gains on their characters by paying through the nose for them (even though their way of "paying" might have been by investing copious amounts of time).

lwedar

did i just read "Dragon Turtle". Well played Cryptic!

ghoulz66

beckylunatic said:

3k is also right at the point that you can gear up to without really starting to break the bank. Not as a measure of effectiveness, since you can be effective much lower. Simply as a measure of whether or not you've refined all your items as high as they can go or stopped at a lower tier, are you using reinforcement kits/jewels, do you have 4 extra enchant slots filled from legendary gear, are you using enchants that require you to have sunk the cost of a bunch of SMoPs and wards in some way, and so forth.

Two pieces legendary and two epic artifact equipment, three legendary artifacts and one mythic, a mix of enchants from rank 8-10 (including normal DH in all utility slots), Trans weapon enchant and Lesser armor enchant, Dusk and Elemental Drowcraft armor, personalized rings, no kits... that's already way more than a lot of players without my resources can easily achieve, and that puts them right around 3k in Inscribed undergarments, more with slotted undies and two more enchants equipped.

I don't want to say that making the iLvl requirement greater than 3k locks the content out for anyone but people who've paid real money to improve their characters, but it would be restricting it to players who have fully engaged with the system of making marginal gains on their characters by paying through the nose for them (even though their way of "paying" might have been by investing copious amounts of time).

Getting to 3k USED to be fairly easy. Now it's not with rising costs to reach mythic artifacts now. If someone didn't pile up preserve wards from tradebars or coals from TBs or invoke armies, they're simply trying to climb Niagara Falls now with their bare hands.

You either slave yourself to get the ADs for both enchants or wards now. New players are screwed. You honestly expect new players with 1-4 character slots to get enough wards in record time to upgrade their gear and boost their ilvl without breaking the bank? Waste all your AD on some preserve wards and lose em all on failures. That's what new players are going to face. And they'll most likely leave the game out of frustration.

armadeonx

It's the 'higher tier of gear' that concerns me. From what I've seen the gear is bad and requires regular black ice infusion - which means regular farming of IWD - and the set bonus is specifically related to giants.

Sounds tedious.

qexotic

armadeonx said:

It's the 'higher tier of gear' that concerns me. From what I've seen the gear is bad and requires regular black ice infusion - which means regular farming of IWD - and the set bonus is specifically related to giants.

Sounds tedious.

The final gear has not yet been seen on the Preview Server. It has been said elsewhere on the forums there will be no need to farm Black Ice instead you will have to farm some kind of relic in the new zone to keep it charged up. The whole recharging aspect will still be a right royal pain though

kemnimtarkas

strumslinger said:

Fangbreaker Island will be our toughest dungeon yet and our first dungeon requiring a higher tier of gear.

Yeah, thanks but no thanks. Sounds like an absolutely awesome way for Cryptic to stripmine the uber $$$ to win players though. Best of luck with that - hope you make a mint off them.

I'll just keep hanging out waiting to see if you ever decide to add actual new content that matters to me, like a new race or class.

award9

Looks awesome! I'm ready for some more information. The boss encounters sound like they will be intense.

kangkeok

Sound exciting

balufunke

And again it´s all about grinding and gear score....

greyhawk

Is the dungeon on the preview shard? If so, does anyone know the ilvl req, or anything else about it?

livefast1

All I can say is bring on the content. But if this is some more B.S. like maze engine. I will not be very happy, take a lesson from blizzard cryptic. Sixteen years ago Diablo 2 came out, after awhile they came out with an epic expansion pack with two new races and hours of new gameplay. Your mods are pitiful. Th

namelesshero347

I don't see a reason why they would lock this in preview. Think how embarrassing it would be when someone post a video of the run being done in 5 minutes the same day it comes out. They never get the difficulty quite right. Expect them to error on making it too difficult. Then when the 4K players complain, they will tone it down.

valwryn

No need to rush to unlock this island today as it will take a few weeks before anyone can unlock it unless they sell packs with enough Reputation and Ten Town supplies to do so earlier. The first 2 areas Bryn Shadar and Lonelywood are just about ready to go, just a few minor map issues and Place holder details to deal with. One more town to work with before we can venture onto the Island.

If the bosses on the first 2 areas are any indication of what to expect on Fangy Island...............

You're all gonna die of severe frostbite!!! >:)

rafaelda

Fangbreaker Island Gears Score gate will be 3.1K

SO i will not work on that, i may get there but this will not be my target,
my toons are between 2,5 and 2,9 and at 2,9 the only content that gives any fun is Epic Dungeons, i dont see why should i get 3K and join a closed club like some players are doig atm...

asterdahl

To those of you wondering whether or not we'll be making it possible to test Fangbreaker on preview, I'll reiterate what Commander Ander stated in the most recent preview patch notes thread.

commanderander said:

When Fangbreaker is released onto Preview, we will be providing a way for players to automatically jump ahead and get into it, along with ways to jump ahead in Everfrost progression to easily see more of the system.

Commander Ander did a lot of work to make sure our preview shard is setup to allow players to more easily meet the requirements and get in to the dungeon on preview.

For those of you looking for more information on the dungeon and the bosses, we'll be holding some of those details back for you to try out for yourself, whether that be on preview, or when the dungeon goes live with Storm King's Thunder. That being said, I have an upcoming blog post featuring some more in depth information on bosses and Patrick has an upcoming blog post featuring environment details. So please look forward to those!

rafaelda said:

Fangbreaker Island Gears Score gate will be 3.1K

Since this information is up on preview, I can confirm that the entry requirements for Fangbreaker Island will be 3100 total item level. There will also be an everfrost resistance entry requirement. However, this entry requirement should be relatively simple to surmount if you can meet the 3100 item level requirement. There will be a variety of ways to gain everfrost resistance, including equipment, armor kits, potions and even new stronghold food. You shouldn't have much trouble reaching this requirement by the time you've unlocked the dungeon.

In the past some of our content's entry level requirements have not been very realistic. This results is a less than stellar experience if you trust the entry level requirement on the queue without finding out what the rest of the community feels is the real item level requirement. Fangbreaker represents not only a new tier of challenge but an attempt to move the entry level requirement closer to a more realistic value. That's why this value may seem like a large step up.

Fangbreaker certainly won't be a walk in the park with a full group at 3100, but we think it's a more realistic entry requirement than some of our previous dungeons. We appreciate your continued feedback and can't wait for you all to try it out!

oldbaldyone

I think everyone knew there would be a frost resistance requirement. This being copied almost directly from the setup of IWD and KR, that is not a surprise.

However, if this goes live and is popular (unfortunatley this mechanic, chargeable armor and resistance requirements have failed before so I doubt it will work better this time), we NEED you guys to address the idea of separate sets of gear for different content, inventory space and enhancements.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect people to have different gear for different areas - not ideal, but reasonable. That said, expecting them to have multiple complete sets of enchants for every area, including armor kits and such, is totally unreasonable.


I think a reasonable change is to remove slots from gear and put the slots on the CHARACTER instead. If I put a soulforge on my chest armor enhancement slot, i should be able to change out armors and still get the bonus. This would almost totally solve this issue.

I have major concerns also regarding holding content back till its live. This has not lead to a lot of success. Either there will be a game breaking bug that will allow it to be completed easily, or one that will make it impossible. Things need to be tested - have people sign an NDA if needed.

scathias

oldbaldyone said:

I think everyone knew there would be a frost resistance requirement. This being copied almost directly from the setup of IWD and KR, that is not a surprise.

However, if this goes live and is popular (unfortunatley this mechanic, chargeable armor and resistance requirements have failed before so I doubt it will work better this time), we NEED you guys to address the idea of separate sets of gear for different content, inventory space and enhancements.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect people to have different gear for different areas - not ideal, but reasonable. That said, expecting them to have multiple complete sets of enchants for every area, including armor kits and such, is totally unreasonable.


I think a reasonable change is to remove slots from gear and put the slots on the CHARACTER instead. If I put a soulforge on my chest armor enhancement slot, i should be able to change out armors and still get the bonus. This would almost totally solve this issue.

I have major concerns also regarding holding content back till its live. This has not lead to a lot of success. Either there will be a game breaking bug that will allow it to be completed easily, or one that will make it impossible. Things need to be tested - have people sign an NDA if needed.

I believe what he meant by holding the info back was that he wasn't going to tell us, but it will be available to test on preview and players can either discover the info on preview, or wait and play it on live. he just isn't going to hand out the info right now.

And i somewhat like having the ability to have 2 different sets of gear with different enchants. Makes gearing for pvp from pve so much faster. that being said, not everyone has that ability to have that many enchants, so i'd like your idea to be modified to have armor profiles. including pets, insignia bonuses (and asking for this again, dual spec so we can have a good spec for pvp and for pve)

archangelzorak01

What I've always read, and what most people I've spoken to never seemed to consider:

Item level requirements are to ENTER a dungeon and in no way guarantee that you can COMPLETE the dungeon.

If you take that into consideration I feel that the current item level requirements are more than sufficient.

The dungeons in Neverwinter are woefully lacking in so many different ways but I wont go into how disappointing they are in this post.

(I'd be more than willing to sign an NDA to test the content, and I know I could bring another 5-6 people along for the ride willing to do the same.)

sorce

And test it we did - Fangbreaker is doable: http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1219735/fangbreaker-broken

feanor70118

No one wants charged gear. No one wants to have to grind to keep gear charged. No one wants to have to grind literally thousands of major HEs to build their gear. This is full of terrible ideas. Undo them while you still can before you hemorrhage players the way you did in mod 6.