Cloaked Ascendancy Preview Patch Notes: NW.75.20170206a.6

terramak

Light set of notes this week. The system requirements change below is pretty significant behind the scenes, and we've still got the Devoted Cleric changes coming up (NOT likely to go live next week, but hopefully getting onto Preview very soon).


System Requirements Update
As of this build, Neverwinter can no longer support the Windows XP operating system, or video cards with a Direct3D Hardware Feature Level less than 10.0. Please see this thread for more details.


Items and Economy
General

• Green-quality insignias from the Many Starred Lockbox now properly drop without binding to the character or account.
  
• Note: Insignias that have already been bound to the account will unfortunately remain bound.

User Interface
Character Sheet

• The Character Sheet and Power Purchase interfaces no longer have elements referring to a mysterious Loadouts feature for a certain subset of characters. Sorry folks, it's not quite ready yet!
  
• Note: This was hotfixed last week, and is now properly integrated into the build.

Localization
General

• Various fixes have been made to localized voice lines in the Cloaked Ascendancy content.
  
• Various text localization fixes have been made.

demonmonger

Smooth

adinosii

A short list indeed. I was slightly disappointed not to see fixes to any of the issues that people have been complaining most about in Mod 11.

So, just for the record, here is that issue list (again).

• HEs bug out, as reported many times before - you get stuck in the "killing reinforcements" phase, as the reinforcements either don't show up or the kills don't count. This applies both to the small and large HEs (with the exception of the ship one - never seen it happen there). This seems to happen much less frequently now than on the first day, when the per-instance player limit was higher, so maybe, just maybe this has something to do with the number of people participating in the HE or how quickly the mobs are killed.
  
• The drop rate of Arcanic Focus is concerning, as it looks like more of a bottleneck than I suspect it was intended to be. I expect that through normal play and a reasonable mix of activities I will have enough to restore the weapons by the time I get them in about 2 weeks - with the exception of Arcanic focus, which might take as much as 6 additional weeks - this is worse than the Lanolin grind ... this goes way beyond "reasonable" and into the realm of "boring and annoying". I really suggest lowering the Arcanic Focus cost of weapon restoration to maybe 10 for offhand and 20 for mainhand.
  
• The reclaimed resources only stack to 99, and may therefore use up excessive inventory space. It would be appreciated if they could stack to 999. Also Ornately carved boxes only stack to 5 ... making them stack to 99 would be appreciated. I am currently sitting on 25 boxes myself - they just pile up more rapidly than I can use the Portal stones,
  
• There seems to be an issue with the 1-hour timer on dig sites. I have not run into this myself, but people are saying that some dig sites stay locked for much longer than one hour - days even.
  

The unlocking of the weekly quest used to be on my list, but it seems it is working as intended, so that's not an issue.

Finally, there is an exploit that is being used to double a certain drop rate. I will not go into details here, but I can send them privately if you are not aware of the issue.

artifleur

A few more things to add to the list of bugs and concerns :

- Fleece : Fleece is the only purple restoration material which is bound to character on pickup. The only way to get it is by doing the gambit skirmish, and you only get one at a time. I've often found up to 3 of the other purple material (fey blood...) from a dig site which takes me less than 5 minutes to clear. If it's not the type I wanted I can then freely trade it with other players. The skirmish takes 15 minutes or so with a decent team, rewards only 1 fleece which is bound. On top of that the chest you get for completing the "rituals" repeatable campaign task lets you choose one type of purple material, but not fleece. Please remove the bound tag and add fleece to the chest.

- The Traveling Merchant : The campaign task to unlock the traveling merchant doesnt work and you have to complete the second task to actually unlock her. To the best of my knowledge nothing tells you who that merchant is and where she can be found.

- River District Interruptable Monster Skills : Monsters in the river distrit do not seem to have any cooldown, or delay between use, for their skills. More often than not, after interrupting one of their skills they would start using that very same skill again. For control skills with a wide area of effect, such as the plague-changed maws' knockdown skill this can be pretty irritating.

treesclimber

adinosii said:

The drop rate of Arcanic Focus is concerning, as it looks like more of a bottleneck than I suspect it was intended to be. I expect that through normal play and a reasonable mix of activities I will have enough to restore the weapons by the time I get them in about 2 weeks - with the exception of Arcanic focus, which might take as much as 6 additional weeks - this is worse than the Lanolin grind ... this goes way beyond "reasonable" and into the realm of "boring and annoying". I really suggest lowering the Arcanic Focus cost of weapon restoration to maybe 10 for offhand and 20 for mainhand.

The

I agree arcanic focus will be the bottleneck for people not going for mirage weapons, getting fieece is not easy because many parties fail to get gold in ilusionist squirmish, but by the end of getting all the fieece needed there will be spare abandoned treasures. Simplifying i do all the dailly quest proggression needed through dig sites, get arcanic focus and do squirmisher's gambit for the abandoned treasures while someone going for fey/aboleth/lifeforged (lifeforged haha, no) needs to run countless HE's just to get the analog reagent to fieece from the specific missions in those weapons. inspite of ending with more AD and with enough abandoned treasures the player will end without arcanic focus, some solutions:

-Add a chance for Arcanic focus to drop on HE's;
-Add a chance for Arcanic focus to drop on the specific mission (Gyrion/Kabal/Nostura);
-Make Arcanic focus bta to compensate some other character that might have already got all that needs but not reagents;
-Make Dig sites count towards specific mission token that drops from ornatly carved lockbox;
-Make it unbound and let people trade it.

adinosii

artifleur said:

A few more things to add to the list of bugs and concerns :

- Fleece : Fleece is the only purple restoration material which is bound to character on pickup.

This is completely incorrect. Each weapon requires two types of purple restoration materials. One is bound, the other unbound.

• Aboleth weapons: Tainted Soil (bound) and Volatile Icor (unbound)
  
• Fey Weapons: Petrified Dust (bound) and Vial of Fey blood (unbound)
  
• Liveforged Weapons; Constructed Iron (bound) and Spell Amber (unbound)
  
• Mirage weapons: Fleece (bound) and Ground Jade (unbound)
  

More details in the mini-guide thread: http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1228756/mod-11-a-mini-guide

artifleur said:

- The Traveling Merchant : The campaign task to unlock the traveling merchant doesnt work and you have to complete the second task to actually unlock her. To the best of my knowledge nothing tells you who that merchant is and where she can be found.

This was described as a known issue from the start, but it is a relatively minor one. Most players will probably do the second task as well anyhow, just for the savings on the weapons (OK, the savings are only 30 EoE, but still...)

The merchant unlocking is really only an issue for people that want the Merchant for the Voninblod trading, but do not want the Mod11 weapons - I have no idea how large that group is, but personally I find the merchant utterly useless.

adinosii

treesclimber said:

I agree arcanic focus will be the bottleneck for people not going for mirage weapons, getting fieece is not easy because many parties fail to get gold in ilusionist squirmish,

Uhm...I have done quite a few skirmishes (I really want a good +5 companion belt) - some with guildies, and some just with random groups. I have not had a single case where a group gave up and quit before reaching the "gold" phase. So, my advice, run the skirmish with a guild/alliance group, not a random PUG with undergeared and/or unskilled people.

treesclimber said:

but by the end of getting all the fleece needed there will be spare abandoned treasures.

Uhm...you do know you need thousands of Abandoned treasures for the weapon restoration, right ?

treesclimber said:

.. fey/aboleth/lifeforged (lifeforged haha, no) needs to run countless HE's

No. Why would they need/want to do that? Anyone wanting the other weapons will need to run a number of boss lairs, but there is really no need for them to do HEs at all.

The easiest fix is just to reduce somewhat the number of Arcanic Focus needed for restoration .... currently, having to farm hundreds of dig sites for them is not much fun.

kangkeok

Pls fix bugged digsite timer.

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gabrieldourden

And please, if you plan to have more restorable weapons in future, give people a chance to see what the required reagents and quantities needed to restore them are so that you can get feedback prior to launch. You said you didn't put the weapons on a store because you wanted people to give feedback about the level of grind needed to get the, but restoring is a part of "getting them". As of today I don't know anybody who can tell me what the overall cost of restoration is, not even @adinosii who made a great job in writing a guide of the mod (we know the off-hand cost, but can only speculate about the cost of the main-hand).

In SKT the unrestored weapons were delivered early and basically "free of charge" after the introductory quests. People had a chance to look at the components and after a few days of farming on preview had a pretty good idea of the cost/time needed.
In this module, weapons are delivered after some serious grind compared to the testing time in preview (at 30 EoE a day we are talking of 11 days to get the Mirage weapons and 15 for the others). The bug on preview delayed this even more, as the daily was not available and the weekly doesn't help because to unlock it you need to spend even more EoE.

When you acknowledged that the daily was bugged and fixed you should have put the unrestored versions on a store for testing purposes. We don't know what Mirage weapons do at all. If I want to understand whether they are good or not I need to grind 35 skirmishes, get 60 Arcanic Foci digging approximately 300-360 sites, do all the dailies needed to get the EoE, get all the Arcane Magical Writings, just to check because there is no explanation about what the illusions do (Can they be harmed and killed before the 10 secs expire? How do they attack? How much damage do they deal? Are they considered allies for buffing purposes or not?)
If you had placed them for free in a store on preview it would have been easy to go there get them, run some tests and give feedback.

kangkeok

I have a suggestion to even out the grind. Since we have abundance of abandon treasure that is not used, why not let us trade it for weapon restoration mat at travelling merchant. That would help lessen the grind.

adinosii

kangkeok said:

I have a suggestion to even out the grind. Since we have abundance of abandon treasure that is not used, why not let us trade it for weapon restoration mat at travelling merchant. That would help lessen the grind.

Uh...Abandoned treasures are weapon restoration materials. You need 2500 for the offhand and presumably even more for the mainhand.

kangkeok

adinosii said:

kangkeok said:

I have a suggestion to even out the grind. Since we have abundance of abandon treasure that is not used, why not let us trade it for weapon restoration mat at travelling merchant. That would help lessen the grind.

Uh...Abandoned treasures are weapon restoration materials. You need 2500 for the offhand and presumably even more for the mainhand.

My point is let us trade mat for mat so it even out the grind. I mean i dont want to be sitting on 20k of useless abandon treasure while still farming for arcane focus and writing.

szejhuludpuchacz

I have another point. Why not make option to buy mod11 weapons for another classes? If my main has relic set already and Im going straight to unlock SP fast as possible then my bound stuff is obsolete. Resources can remain as bop but give us an option for buying set for alts, and make it boa for that class so we dont have to grind our HAMSTER off on each toon.

treesclimber

@adinosii you got lucky, i have run with probably the worst DC ever, i ended up soloing it, but for me so far 5/8 sucesses at gold, i dont have neither want guild so pugging is the way.

adinosii said:

Uhm...you do know you need thousands of Abandoned treasures for the weapon restoration, right ?

3k per piece + inicial price right? I have 2k now praticly only from IG and some ship he that randomly appears(yes i do donate if i have i'm not leechy), at my current gold success rate and considering the amount of fieece needed i will end up with spare treasures or very near.

adinosii said:

No. Why would they need/want to do that? Anyone wanting the other weapons will need to run a number of boss lairs, but there is really no need for them to do HEs at all.

So what is the fastest way for you to get in the repeatable lair quest again?

szejhuludpuchacz said:

I have another point. Why not make option to buy mod11 weapons for another classes? If my main has relic set already and Im going straight to unlock SP fast as possible then my bound stuff is obsolete. Resources can remain as bop but give us an option for buying set for alts, and make it boa for that class so we dont have to grind our HAMSTER off on each toon.

^^^^^^^^This^^^^^^^^^^^

Having to grind 4 sets at the moment is just too much i dont know if i can keep the rhythm, having the discount for my other chars instead having to do the discount quest over and over would be awesome.

artifleur

adinosii said:

This is completely incorrect. Each weapon requires two types of purple restoration materials. One is bound, the other unbound.

• Aboleth weapons: Tainted Soil (bound) and Volatile Icor (unbound)
  
• Fey Weapons: Petrified Dust (bound) and Vial of Fey blood (unbound)
  
• Liveforged Weapons; Constructed Iron (bound) and Spell Amber (unbound)
  
• Mirage weapons: Fleece (bound) and Ground Jade (unbound)
  

Thank you for the clarification.

treesclimber said:

I agree arcanic focus will be the bottleneck for people not going for mirage weapons

Mirage weapons require arcanic focus just like the other 3 types.

darthtzarr

treesclimber said:

adinosii said:

Uhm...you do know you need thousands of Abandoned treasures for the weapon restoration, right ?

3k per piece + inicial price right? I have 2k now praticly only from IG and some ship he that randomly appears(yes i do donate if i have i'm not leechy), at my current gold success rate and considering the amount of fieece needed i will end up with spare treasures or very near.

I have just completed the Confront Gyrion task yesterday and have about 40 Evidence of Evil at the moment, and I already have over 6000 treasures. I haven't run much of the skirmish.

treesclimber said:

adinosii said:

No. Why would they need/want to do that? Anyone wanting the other weapons will need to run a number of boss lairs, but there is really no need for them to do HEs at all.

So what is the fastest way for you to get in the repeatable lair quest again?

Using ~40 Reclaimed Magic at a defeated HE to complete the repeatable campaign task "Resist the Rituals"

treesclimber said:

szejhuludpuchacz said:

I have another point. Why not make option to buy mod11 weapons for another classes? If my main has relic set already and Im going straight to unlock SP fast as possible then my bound stuff is obsolete. Resources can remain as bop but give us an option for buying set for alts, and make it boa for that class so we dont have to grind our HAMSTER off on each toon.

^^^^^^^^This^^^^^^^^^^^

Having to grind 4 sets at the moment is just too much i dont know if i can keep the rhythm, having the discount for my other chars instead having to do the discount quest over and over would be awesome.

So much this.

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xreverusx

Hmm... I decided to hold off on the new campaign, considering that I am still working on getting all the goodies from the last one (took FOREVER to get into a group that could kill FBI and is currently taking a long time to MSVA my weapons up to legendary)
I understand the SKT weapons are said to be more powerful, but the new River District content is there so people can get a slightly less powerful set without the harsh grind??
After reading this thread I am really just thinking of using SKT weapons for most my ALTs ... at least I can BUY most the components to reduce the grind. And the way these folks are portraying the new grind to get the new weapons...

" I expect that through normal play and a reasonable mix of activities I will have enough to restore the weapons by the time I get them in about 2 weeks - with the exception of Arcanic focus, which might take as much as 6 additional weeks - this is worse than the Lanolin grind" -adinosii

ouch, I'm a slowpoke, there will be 3 new content releases by the time I could grind those things lololol

treesclimber

Hum....ornately carved box is bta soooooo, if anyone is doing i char mirage and 1 char fey/aboleth can perfectly pass the boxes containing the repeatable token, this is quite good actually making 4/day shouldn't be hard, the problem is really just arcanic focus shortage.

adinosii

xreverusx said:

actually making 4/day shouldn't be hard, the problem is really just arcanic focus shortage.

It is very easy to make the Ornately carved boxes, as each one basically costs just 25 Reclaimed Magic - so a little bit of Dungeon-type digsite farming should cover that very nicely.

But yes, you are right - the Arcanic focus is an issue. I have been playing Mod 11 pretty heavily, and I only have 15. One person in my guild who has been farming the dig sites has 25, but most people have way less than that. I should have the weapons in 7 or 8 days (depending on how many random drops of Evidence of Evil I get), and It looks like I will have more than enough of most resources to restore them, but barely enough Writings, and absolutely not enough of the Arcane Focus. So, yes...it is a problem, if I have to continue to farm for several weeks more, just for that.

Let's hope the cost will be adjusted or the drop rate increased.

gabrieldourden

I got to 23 on one toon and 16 on another today but it's a painful grind

artifleur

Regarding the dig site bug, it seems to be a bug on characters, not dig sites. Changing instance doesn't change the dig sites I can't enter.

At the moment my HR can't enter N'halien, Coneth, Shoce and Tamper dig sites. At this rate I will soon be unable to enter any dig site.

weaver936

adinosii said:

treesclimber said:

I agree arcanic focus will be the bottleneck for people not going for mirage weapons, getting fieece is not easy because many parties fail to get gold in ilusionist squirmish,

Uhm...I have done quite a few skirmishes (I really want a good +5 companion belt) - some with guildies, and some just with random groups. I have not had a single case where a group gave up and quit before reaching the "gold" phase. So, my advice, run the skirmish with a guild/alliance group, not a random PUG with undergeared and/or unskilled people.

treesclimber said:

but by the end of getting all the fleece needed there will be spare abandoned treasures.

Uhm...you do know you need thousands of Abandoned treasures for the weapon restoration, right ?

treesclimber said:

.. fey/aboleth/lifeforged (lifeforged haha, no) needs to run countless HE's

No. Why would they need/want to do that? Anyone wanting the other weapons will need to run a number of boss lairs, but there is really no need for them to do HEs at all.

The easiest fix is just to reduce somewhat the number of Arcanic Focus needed for restoration .... currently, having to farm hundreds of dig sites for them is not much fun.

ANNNNNDDDDD they give you guys an easier way to get weapons ANNNNNNDDD you still want it to be easier still. How about they just give an Insta-win button. Click it and done. Move on to next game.

treesclimber

@weaver936 If you like to play multiple classes, go on try to get arcanic focus for 4 characters then tell me how much you enjoyed it, there is not much of a point of penalizing people that play multiple classes because in the end we will spend time shared between them so the investment in the weapons is much higher i'm getting 2 pairs of lifeforged and 2 pairs of fey for that same reason so put yourself in our place.

ghoulz66

treesclimber said:

@weaver936 If you like to play multiple classes, go on try to get arcanic focus for 4 characters then tell me how much you enjoyed it, there is not much of a point of penalizing people that play multiple classes because in the end we will spend time shared between them so the investment in the weapons is much higher i'm getting 2 pairs of lifeforged and 2 pairs of fey for that same reason so put yourself in our place.

Would do 8, but I have no time or sanity to do it on my GWF or TR.

weaver936

treesclimber said:

@weaver936 If you like to play multiple classes, go on try to get arcanic focus for 4 characters then tell me how much you enjoyed it, there is not much of a point of penalizing people that play multiple classes because in the end we will spend time shared between them so the investment in the weapons is much higher i'm getting 2 pairs of lifeforged and 2 pairs of fey for that same reason so put yourself in our place.

I have 3 toons that need the fey.. it'll be a challenge.. yes.. but not as much as doing Relic on 5 toons which i already have done . and working on my 6th which is limited in those thingies you get on;y 1 per quest. So 20 quests per OH and 20 per MH... not including everything else needed..

adinosii

I had previously written

adinosii said:

The merchant unlocking is really only an issue for people that want the Merchant for the Voninblod trading, but do not want the Mod11 weapons - I have no idea how large that group is, but personally I find the merchant utterly useless.

I am now retracting this, and have updated the guide accordingly. When I first saw the merchant it only offered Voninblod, but now he has quite a lot more to offer - and some of that is highly useful.

See the guide, but basically, I now recommend unlocking the merchant for everyone.