Developer Blog: Assault on Svardborg

strumslinger · October 2016

Assault on Svardborg is a level 70 trial that can be unlocked within a new expansion of the Storm King’s Thunder Campaign.

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10204323-developer-blog:-assault-on-svardborg

weaver936 · October 2016

"Small folk who complete the trial are rewarded with refinement stones and upgrade reagents for relic weapons, Everfrost rings from Fangbreaker Island, as well as new artifact gear to go along with the new Valhalla set. The master version of Svardborg contains one of the hardest achievements to earn in the game, entitled, “Master of Svardborg”, which can only be earned if no one in your party is put into a downed state during the fight (this includes soulforged, but the death counter is reset if the entire team wipes). Earning this achievement grants players a special neck transmute, which can be reclaimed for free from the Maze Engine campaign."

So, does that mean all you get extra from doing the Epic Version is a title? Will it be basically like nDemo/eDemo wher the only thing really different between teh 2 was twisted Ichor and needing a different key?

mrvincent1959 · October 2016

A frozen Edemo? I didnt get the memo that the company outlawed skirmishes and dungeons, but I guess I will take what I cant get. Looking forward to trying it out. thx for the effort

Unknown · October 2016

This content has been removed.

dodgo · October 2016

whens it go to preview?

dheffernan · October 2016

Oh look, an Everfrost resist requirement.

More content I will never play.

gabrieldourden · October 2016

Patching right now. Everfrost resistance requirement is not a big issue in a 20 min raid if rewards are properly set up (cough, cough). You can even run it with the actual equipment on as the time is anyway short.
It would be good if you could point out the reward differences between the two versions.
Thumbs up for the title. First time I see something which is not "kill X in Y time only".

mrvincent1959 · October 2016

Well, its up on preview but I cant get in unless i have unlocked something in the new campaign

Unknown · October 2016

This content has been removed.

asterdahl · October 2016

weaver936 said:
"Small folk who complete the trial are rewarded with refinement stones and upgrade reagents for relic weapons, Everfrost rings from Fangbreaker Island, as well as new artifact gear to go along with the new Valhalla set. The master version of Svardborg contains one of the hardest achievements to earn in the game, entitled, “Master of Svardborg”, which can only be earned if no one in your party is put into a downed state during the fight (this includes soulforged, but the death counter is reset if the entire team wipes). Earning this achievement grants players a special neck transmute, which can be reclaimed for free from the Maze Engine campaign."

So, does that mean all you get extra from doing the Epic Version is a title? Will it be basically like nDemo/eDemo wher the only thing really different between teh 2 was twisted Ichor and needing a different key?

In terms of unlocking the chests, you'll use the same bonus rewards earned via the three factions to open chests in either version. Obviously master will have better rewards, so if you're able to clear master, that will be ideal, but it won't be so dramatic you won't want to ever spend bonus rewards on normal if they're stacking up.

In terms of the rewards difference, check out collections on preview. There are a few differences. The legendary versions of the runic rings drop only from master. In addition, in order to power up relic weapons to the legendary rank, you'll also need to earn drops from master. In general, you'll also receive better refinement components for the relic weapons in master.

weaver936 · October 2016

asterdahl said:

weaver936 said:
"Small folk who complete the trial are rewarded with refinement stones and upgrade reagents for relic weapons, Everfrost rings from Fangbreaker Island, as well as new artifact gear to go along with the new Valhalla set. The master version of Svardborg contains one of the hardest achievements to earn in the game, entitled, “Master of Svardborg”, which can only be earned if no one in your party is put into a downed state during the fight (this includes soulforged, but the death counter is reset if the entire team wipes). Earning this achievement grants players a special neck transmute, which can be reclaimed for free from the Maze Engine campaign."

So, does that mean all you get extra from doing the Epic Version is a title? Will it be basically like nDemo/eDemo wher the only thing really different between teh 2 was twisted Ichor and needing a different key?
In terms of unlocking the chests, you'll use the same bonus rewards earned via the three factions to open chests in either version. Obviously master will have better rewards, so if you're able to clear master, that will be ideal, but it won't be so dramatic you won't want to ever spend bonus rewards on normal if they're stacking up.

In terms of the rewards difference, check out collections on preview. There are a few differences. The legendary versions of the runic rings drop only from master. In addition, in order to power up relic weapons to the legendary rank, you'll also need to earn drops from master. In general, you'll also receive better refinement components for the relic weapons in master.

Just keep in mind.. if they can get the same thing from the 10 man that they can get from FBI.. FBI will continue to be underpopulated...

People will flock to what's able to be done mindlessly (zerg) and still gives equivilant rewards.

lonewolfmk1 · October 2016

FBI is a really nice dugeon. The reason why it is undepopulated is its utter lack of loot. I had runs, where the only usefull thing that dropped (including both chests), was one piece of epic salvage in one of the chests.

Now considering that runs with suboptimal groups (as few people can or want to run the dungeon you often have to take the people you can get) can easily last an hour or more (sometimes you wont even be able to finish after several hours of trying), and that in comparisson a CN run is often finished in 20 min and actually offers better loot, FBI will remain rarely played until its loot is at least doubled, better tripled. And no, the new armour is not really an incentive to run the dungeon. For casual players its simply impossible to keep it fed and even many hard core gamers shy away.

You know, this games first BIS armor setpieces could be obtained by running a 30 to 45 min dungeon around 4 or so times on average (i think i have always been lucky in that regard, as it usually didnt me take longer then 3 runs per piece). And that was it. You had your armour and it worked. If you wanted you could even trade those pieces, that where dropped by the bosses. And the game was fun! Small amount of required grind + acceptable loot per unit of time = happy gamer

Nowadays, lets see... First you have to farm the reciept for every piece, either by running HEs (boots) for hours upon hours (maybe i was just unlucky...) or by running a hard dungeon at nauseatum (i completed FBI around 10 times and only found one arm piece). Then you have to be lucky to get the right armourpieces you need from the available 8 pieces per class. Then you need to build those armourpieces with ressources, that again take many hours to farm. And with the newest plans, to make the finished armour even remotly usefull, you now have to again endlessfarm ressources, to upgrade the armour, but still requiring vorninblodfarming, meaning the basic problem of the armour stays the same.

In a nutshell, this is the reason why mod 10 failed (i keep an eye on the steam playernumbers and they continue to dwindle) and mod 11 will fail, too, if there isnt a massive change in gamedesign:

Utter lack of usefull loot + ever increasing amount of grind to obtain an ever smaller amount of character development = unhappy gamer

Seriously the only reason why i am still here (from my original guild with around 20 core players only 2 players and myself remain) is because i have invested a lot of time and a bit of money in building my chars, one of them can be considered pretty much BIS. But i see all the time new players join our small guild, only to quickly disappear, once they hit level 70 and/or realize what an awefull lot of grind this game truly is. At this point i wish id have stayed with SWOTOR. That game became better with each expansion, as far as i have heard, not worse like NW.

Edit: Ok upon rereading the post, i think i started to rant a bit due to my pent up frustration. But still, the points are in my eyes viable.

demonmonger · October 2016

Many of us are happy to have new content, but we abhor the fact that we cannot access these new places until we obtain 28% efr.

I have mixed feeling about even trying this new place, as I have yet to obtain 28% efr to enter fb island.

What will happen when all the players have finished this zone and new players come across the 28% gate.
This is a horrible choke point "check point".

aleblain · October 2016

About the post, sounds okk! Except for te rewards and what you have us used to. And now a new system to upgrade weapons??, so we can't use or continue the facilite that our already maxed weapons would give us?

"You know, this games first BIS armor setpieces could be obtained by running a 30 to 45 min dungeon around 4 or so times on average (i think i have always been lucky in that regard, as it usually didnt me take longer then 3 runs per piece). And that was it. You had your armour and it worked. If you wanted you could even trade those pieces, that where dropped by the bosses. And the game was fun! Small amount of required grind + acceptable loot per unit of time = happy game", this +100.

"Seriously the only reason why i am still here (from my original guild with around 20 core players only 2 players and myself remain) is because i have invested a lot of time and a bit of money in building my chars, one of them can be considered pretty much BIS. But i see all the time new players join our small guild, only to quickly disappear, once they hit level 70 and/or realize what an awefull lot of grind this game truly is.", this +1m. I started at Mod 2 with three friends, they began to leave with the HAMSTER of artifact-gear and when they tried to come back, Mod 9, they noticed and said: "Whst the hell is this tremendos grind??, This, that, those again this, etc etc etc. And the fun buddy??", and that's it, this game has become a sad and empty shallow shell of what it used to be.

ghoulz66 · October 2016

Spending real money for extra dragon keys to speed up the grind for twisted weapons to a less, painful speed. There's no way in hell I'm doing HAMSTER like that all over again.

lordseth1985 · October 2016

As I said on many other forum posts: Why don't you spend all those time bringing back the old dungeons and reviving/tweaking old gear sets to lvl 70 instead of creating such nonsense content, like fishing and another 10 ppl raid that no1 seems interested in doing? Really, please bring back neverwinter to it's old glory!!!

josephskyrim · October 2016

"[Players] can die and immediately re-enter the arena to continue the fight against Jarl Storvald. [There is] a time limit of 20 minutes to [win]."

While I have no inclination to grind up the Everfrost Resistance for the new stuff, I do quite like the sound of that. If Cryptic implemented a similar thing to every other dungeon I'd probably be more inclined to run them because a) runs would now be a "fixed" time and b) there is less player downtime for those who die to a boss since you can jump right back in. *thumbs up*

weaver936 · October 2016

lordseth1985 said:
As I said on many other forum posts: Why don't you spend all those time bringing back the old dungeons and reviving/tweaking old gear sets to lvl 70 instead of creating such nonsense content, like fishing and another 10 ppl raid that no1 seems interested in doing? Really, please bring back neverwinter to it's old glory!!!

Look at CN... if they bring a dungeon back it will be a Leveling Dungeon or soiled with w/e stuff WotC is doing in their stuff. If they had brought back old dungeons this mod they all would have some Ice Giants and other critters in them...

I'd rather they not bring them back if all they are going to do is twist them into something else.

Fishing and treasure hunting are good additions to the game. they both provide unbound items that normal/casual players can farm to sell for AD to get up to speed with their gear...

Instead of the old way of get high IL and just zerg the instance with the best loot until you are bored to tears.. and crying about there not being enough content... the devs are adding some depth and width to the game.. and i love it.

No longer can you grind for 2 weeks and be BiS and spend the next 3 months whining about needing new class or w/e... and no longer is it possible to autopilot millions of AD...

The game is becoming more well rounded and easier for the MAJORITY of players to advance at a steady pace...

. That's good all around.

d4rkh0rs3 · October 2016

@asterdahl

"In terms of the rewards difference, check out collections on preview. There are a few differences. The legendary versions of the runic rings drop only from master."

Do the legendary versions of the runic rings have the same drop chance as legendary versions of Underdark rings? If so, do you feel the drop chances should be improved, considering the difference in content difficulty? Will drop chances be improved if no single party member drops?

genjundead · October 2016

i just spent 6 hours and 20 minutes inside fbi and got the worst loot i have ever gotten from any of my prier runs. just woke up from the long and painful dungeon, hands are feeling better from the button mashing.considering their are 2 sets of relic gear and everyone only wants one of them, in my opinion i think the drop rate on random pieces of relic gear should be much higher, maybe 1 relic gear per run or 50% drop rate.

lordseth1985 · October 2016

genjundead said:
i just spent 6 hours and 20 minutes inside fbi and got the worst loot i have ever gotten from any of my prier runs. just woke up from the long and painful dungeon, hands are feeling better from the button mashing.considering their are 2 sets of relic gear and everyone only wants one of them, in my opinion i think the drop rate on random pieces of relic gear should be much higher, maybe 1 relic gear per run or 50% drop rate.

Just for example, when you finished one of the old dungeons you could choose one piece of armor or weapon from two choices of the chest. And all of the dungeons you had 100% certain that will drop one of possible sets. This new drop rate is ridiculous and irritating.

rafaelda · October 2016

lordseth1985 said:

genjundead said:
i just spent 6 hours and 20 minutes inside fbi and got the worst loot i have ever gotten from any of my prier runs. just woke up from the long and painful dungeon, hands are feeling better from the button mashing.considering their are 2 sets of relic gear and everyone only wants one of them, in my opinion i think the drop rate on random pieces of relic gear should be much higher, maybe 1 relic gear per run or 50% drop rate.
Just for example, when you finished one of the old dungeons you could choose one piece of armor or weapon from two choices of the chest. And all of the dungeons you had 100% certain that will drop one of possible sets. This new drop rate is ridiculous and irritating.

The first randon drop we get was the farm for Black Ice Gloves, i've started just after IWD release and i remember that a lot of complain about that (in game i wasnt a forum user back there)... from there is a long fall...

lordseth1985 · October 2016

rafaelda said:

The first randon drop we get was the farm for Black Ice Gloves, i've started just after IWD release and i remember that a lot of complain about that (in game i wasnt a forum user back there)... from there is a long fall...

yeah, and some few mods later, what they do? put black ice gloves on campaign store, remove black ice damage and black ice resistance from the game.

xxmantaraxx · October 2016

"You'll also be upgrading your new relic weapons with special rune marks as opposed to the usual marks of power, stability and union."

So along with the already rediculus amount of bag space filled with the standard refinement items, in all their various states of bindin, we have another addition to the out of controll bage pressure situation?

empalas · October 2016

xxmantaraxx said:
"You'll also be upgrading your new relic weapons with special rune marks as opposed to the usual marks of power, stability and union."

So along with the already rediculus amount of bag space filled with the standard refinement items, in all their various states of bindin, we have another addition to the out of controll bage pressure situation?

This was the exact thing I was going to comment on...C'mon man! This is just ridiculous to introduce new marks to fill up our bag space. And I'm sure there will be uncommon, rare, and epic versions...and then of course you have unbound, BtoA, and BtoC so up to 9 spaces taken up again if so.

genjundead · October 2016

my runic bags cant handle all the stuff i pick up. gonna need to make several guilds on alts and store stuff in build banks.

theguiido · October 2016

asterdahl said:

weaver936 said:
"Small folk who complete the trial are rewarded with refinement stones and upgrade reagents for relic weapons, Everfrost rings from Fangbreaker Island, as well as new artifact gear to go along with the new Valhalla set. The master version of Svardborg contains one of the hardest achievements to earn in the game, entitled, “Master of Svardborg”, which can only be earned if no one in your party is put into a downed state during the fight (this includes soulforged, but the death counter is reset if the entire team wipes). Earning this achievement grants players a special neck transmute, which can be reclaimed for free from the Maze Engine campaign."

So, does that mean all you get extra from doing the Epic Version is a title? Will it be basically like nDemo/eDemo wher the only thing really different between teh 2 was twisted Ichor and needing a different key?
In terms of unlocking the chests, you'll use the same bonus rewards earned via the three factions to open chests in either version. Obviously master will have better rewards, so if you're able to clear master, that will be ideal, but it won't be so dramatic you won't want to ever spend bonus rewards on normal if they're stacking up.

In terms of the rewards difference, check out collections on preview. There are a few differences. The legendary versions of the runic rings drop only from master. In addition, in order to power up relic weapons to the legendary rank, you'll also need to earn drops from master. In general, you'll also receive better refinement components for the relic weapons in master.

So you can not upgrade the weapons with existing refinement or your previous weapons you have at legendary?

Is the refinement you earn more common and is the reagents and rp required far less if this is the case?

asterdahl · October 2016

theguiido said:

asterdahl said:

weaver936 said:
"Small folk who complete the trial are rewarded with refinement stones and upgrade reagents for relic weapons, Everfrost rings from Fangbreaker Island, as well as new artifact gear to go along with the new Valhalla set. The master version of Svardborg contains one of the hardest achievements to earn in the game, entitled, “Master of Svardborg”, which can only be earned if no one in your party is put into a downed state during the fight (this includes soulforged, but the death counter is reset if the entire team wipes). Earning this achievement grants players a special neck transmute, which can be reclaimed for free from the Maze Engine campaign."

So, does that mean all you get extra from doing the Epic Version is a title? Will it be basically like nDemo/eDemo wher the only thing really different between teh 2 was twisted Ichor and needing a different key?
In terms of unlocking the chests, you'll use the same bonus rewards earned via the three factions to open chests in either version. Obviously master will have better rewards, so if you're able to clear master, that will be ideal, but it won't be so dramatic you won't want to ever spend bonus rewards on normal if they're stacking up.

In terms of the rewards difference, check out collections on preview. There are a few differences. The legendary versions of the runic rings drop only from master. In addition, in order to power up relic weapons to the legendary rank, you'll also need to earn drops from master. In general, you'll also receive better refinement components for the relic weapons in master.
So you can not upgrade the weapons with existing refinement or your previous weapons you have at legendary?

Is the refinement you earn more common and is the reagents and rp required far less if this is the case?

You'll still be able to feed your old weapon into a relic weapon. Just like with normal artifact weapons, any refinement past your current rank will remain until you unlock the next rank by using the required marks. Normal refinement items will work. The cost of refining between ranks matches normal artifact weapons, but there will also be special refinement items which give huge bonus RP to the relic weapons, so if you're running Assault on Svardborg, you'll definitely be upgrading the weapon faster than normal.

cromejohnsen · October 2016

asterdahl said:

theguiido said:

asterdahl said:

weaver936 said:
"Small folk who complete the trial are rewarded with refinement stones and upgrade reagents for relic weapons, Everfrost rings from Fangbreaker Island, as well as new artifact gear to go along with the new Valhalla set. The master version of Svardborg contains one of the hardest achievements to earn in the game, entitled, “Master of Svardborg”, which can only be earned if no one in your party is put into a downed state during the fight (this includes soulforged, but the death counter is reset if the entire team wipes). Earning this achievement grants players a special neck transmute, which can be reclaimed for free from the Maze Engine campaign."

So, does that mean all you get extra from doing the Epic Version is a title? Will it be basically like nDemo/eDemo wher the only thing really different between teh 2 was twisted Ichor and needing a different key?
In terms of unlocking the chests, you'll use the same bonus rewards earned via the three factions to open chests in either version. Obviously master will have better rewards, so if you're able to clear master, that will be ideal, but it won't be so dramatic you won't want to ever spend bonus rewards on normal if they're stacking up.

In terms of the rewards difference, check out collections on preview. There are a few differences. The legendary versions of the runic rings drop only from master. In addition, in order to power up relic weapons to the legendary rank, you'll also need to earn drops from master. In general, you'll also receive better refinement components for the relic weapons in master.
So you can not upgrade the weapons with existing refinement or your previous weapons you have at legendary?

Is the refinement you earn more common and is the reagents and rp required far less if this is the case?
You'll still be able to feed your old weapon into a relic weapon. Just like with normal artifact weapons, any refinement past your current rank will remain until you unlock the next rank by using the required marks. Normal refinement items will work. The cost of refining between ranks matches normal artifact weapons, but there will also be special refinement items which give huge bonus RP to the relic weapons, so if you're running Assault on Svardborg, you'll definitely be upgrading the weapon faster than normal.

How is it any faster to upgrade weapons with material which need to be refined with items from the SKT campaign. Just look at the blue gems that would net 50k of exp and compare the price needed to refine it to a simple peridot stack. Or compare the time needed to farm those 50k in well of dragons once an hour to the time needed for those masterwork items. How am i any faster ?

theguiido · October 2016

asterdahl said:

theguiido said:

asterdahl said:

weaver936 said:
"Small folk who complete the trial are rewarded with refinement stones and upgrade reagents for relic weapons, Everfrost rings from Fangbreaker Island, as well as new artifact gear to go along with the new Valhalla set. The master version of Svardborg contains one of the hardest achievements to earn in the game, entitled, “Master of Svardborg”, which can only be earned if no one in your party is put into a downed state during the fight (this includes soulforged, but the death counter is reset if the entire team wipes). Earning this achievement grants players a special neck transmute, which can be reclaimed for free from the Maze Engine campaign."

So, does that mean all you get extra from doing the Epic Version is a title? Will it be basically like nDemo/eDemo wher the only thing really different between teh 2 was twisted Ichor and needing a different key?
In terms of unlocking the chests, you'll use the same bonus rewards earned via the three factions to open chests in either version. Obviously master will have better rewards, so if you're able to clear master, that will be ideal, but it won't be so dramatic you won't want to ever spend bonus rewards on normal if they're stacking up.

In terms of the rewards difference, check out collections on preview. There are a few differences. The legendary versions of the runic rings drop only from master. In addition, in order to power up relic weapons to the legendary rank, you'll also need to earn drops from master. In general, you'll also receive better refinement components for the relic weapons in master.
So you can not upgrade the weapons with existing refinement or your previous weapons you have at legendary?

Is the refinement you earn more common and is the reagents and rp required far less if this is the case?
You'll still be able to feed your old weapon into a relic weapon. Just like with normal artifact weapons, any refinement past your current rank will remain until you unlock the next rank by using the required marks. Normal refinement items will work. The cost of refining between ranks matches normal artifact weapons, but there will also be special refinement items which give huge bonus RP to the relic weapons, so if you're running Assault on Svardborg, you'll definitely be upgrading the weapon faster than normal.

Thanks asterdahl

rafaelda · October 2016

@asterdahl

asterdahl said:

You'll still be able to feed your old weapon into a relic weapon. Just like with normal artifact weapons, any refinement past your current rank will remain until you unlock the next rank by using the required marks. Normal refinement items will work. The cost of refining between ranks matches normal artifact weapons, but there will also be special refinement items which give huge bonus RP to the relic weapons, so if you're running Assault on Svardborg, you'll definitely be upgrading the weapon faster than normal.

So this new RP item only give exrta poits for the new weapons ? or it will give'us bonus for other atifact weapons like Twisted, because i'm not in for the new weapons buffs i would like to send it to an alt weapon if possible...

Developer Blog: Assault on Svardborg

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