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Official Feedback Thread: Mercenary Contracts
badbotlimit
Member, NW_CrypticDev, Cryptic Developer Posts: 175Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Greetings Adventurers!
Two powerful groups have come to Icewind Dale. These groups are looking for adventurers to aid them in furthering their agenda and harness the power of Black Ice. The Ten-Towners seek riches while the Arcane Brotherhood seeks to unlock the mystery of the Black Ice.
Overview
When first starting out in Caer-Konig, you will be introduced to the Arcane Brotherhood and the Ten-Towners. Every day you adventure in Icewind Dale you will need to choose and sign a mercenary contract with one of these groups before you can enter Icewind Pass or Dwarven Valley.
Signing a contract
Ten-Towners Mercenary Contract Contact: Bowen Brant
Arcane Brotherhood Mercenary Contract Contact: Anara the Cerulean
When you sign your Mercenary Contract you will then be able to pick up your daily quests from the contacts that represent the interests of your side.
Breaking your contract
If for some reason you want to break your mercenary contract you can visit your contract contact and select the option to break the contract.
When you break your contract you will no longer be able to enter the Icewind Pass or Dwarven Valley zones.
Your PVE quests are not affected and will not drop if you break your contract. You can even pick up a contract for the other side and select some of their quests. You will need to return to the appropriate NPC to turn your quest in. Keep in mind that you can only have so many daily quests at a time no matter what contract you had signed when you obtained the quest. Your daily limit is 3 PVE quests.
Your PVP quests are specific and tied to your mercenary contract. If you break your contract your quests will drop and you will lose progress. The reason for this is that some of the PVP quests are in competition for the same objectives.
You may break your contract and change sides if you need to. Keep in mind that while you can drop your contract you may not be able to pick up the other faction right away.
Contract Expiration
Your contract can expire. Upon expiration you will need to sign another contract. If you are in a zone when your contract expires you will be notified and taken to Caer-Konig.
Disabled Contract Contacts
There is a chance that at some point a contract contact will be disabled. This is due to a balance issue with the groups. Occasionally we will disable a contract contact until a balance is obtained.
For Example:
You log in and go to sign your daily contract with the Ten-Towners. You see that Ten-Towners is not active. You have some daily quests for that side. You move over to the Arcane Brotherhood and sign a contract for them. You see that you didn’t have a full quest log so you pick up one more quest from the Arcane Brotherhood quest NPC’s.
You go to Icewind Pass and complete all of your daily quests and head back to Caer-Konig. You speak with all of the quest NPC’s for both sides, turn in your quests and get your rewards.
Two powerful groups have come to Icewind Dale. These groups are looking for adventurers to aid them in furthering their agenda and harness the power of Black Ice. The Ten-Towners seek riches while the Arcane Brotherhood seeks to unlock the mystery of the Black Ice.
Overview
When first starting out in Caer-Konig, you will be introduced to the Arcane Brotherhood and the Ten-Towners. Every day you adventure in Icewind Dale you will need to choose and sign a mercenary contract with one of these groups before you can enter Icewind Pass or Dwarven Valley.
Signing a contract
Ten-Towners Mercenary Contract Contact: Bowen Brant
Arcane Brotherhood Mercenary Contract Contact: Anara the Cerulean
When you sign your Mercenary Contract you will then be able to pick up your daily quests from the contacts that represent the interests of your side.
Breaking your contract
If for some reason you want to break your mercenary contract you can visit your contract contact and select the option to break the contract.
When you break your contract you will no longer be able to enter the Icewind Pass or Dwarven Valley zones.
Your PVE quests are not affected and will not drop if you break your contract. You can even pick up a contract for the other side and select some of their quests. You will need to return to the appropriate NPC to turn your quest in. Keep in mind that you can only have so many daily quests at a time no matter what contract you had signed when you obtained the quest. Your daily limit is 3 PVE quests.
Your PVP quests are specific and tied to your mercenary contract. If you break your contract your quests will drop and you will lose progress. The reason for this is that some of the PVP quests are in competition for the same objectives.
You may break your contract and change sides if you need to. Keep in mind that while you can drop your contract you may not be able to pick up the other faction right away.
Contract Expiration
Your contract can expire. Upon expiration you will need to sign another contract. If you are in a zone when your contract expires you will be notified and taken to Caer-Konig.
Disabled Contract Contacts
There is a chance that at some point a contract contact will be disabled. This is due to a balance issue with the groups. Occasionally we will disable a contract contact until a balance is obtained.
For Example:
You log in and go to sign your daily contract with the Ten-Towners. You see that Ten-Towners is not active. You have some daily quests for that side. You move over to the Arcane Brotherhood and sign a contract for them. You see that you didn’t have a full quest log so you pick up one more quest from the Arcane Brotherhood quest NPC’s.
You go to Icewind Pass and complete all of your daily quests and head back to Caer-Konig. You speak with all of the quest NPC’s for both sides, turn in your quests and get your rewards.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Mercenary Contracts are pretty cool and obviously new. There are some interesting mechanics driving the balance of the sides and how we handle dropping and obtaining a contract. We need to collect as much feedback as possible on gameplay and balance. Given that, we would like you to categorize and color code your feedback so we can sort it and act on it most effectively! Please use the below format to submit bugs/feedback.
Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
Topic: (Dailies, contacts, contracts, balance, expiration)
Please use “Bold” face text for the Type & Topic then type your feedback in the body of your post. If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use BLUE.
(Concise Feedback & Screen Shots are much appreciated)
Examples:
Bug: Dailies, I was able to pick up all the dailies
I kept dropping contracts and picking up quests. I was able to get them all.
Feedback: I want to drop my contract on the fly
it would be better if I could drop my contract without talking to anyone
Signing a contract gets you:
Access to PVE campaign quest NPC's
Access to the zones
A "side" to fight along side with in PVP
seriously right into pvp land from a contract, and i was flagged and DID NOT know i was flagged, no warning, just some tr jumps me and kills me.
There are some rather large and angry looking words warning you that you are about to be flagged and another notification when you are flagged. In addition some rather large FX play on your character.
There is also some FX that show at the border of the pvp area. crossing that border flags you for PVP.
About the PVE qust path taking you to PVP. Did your path lead to the bridge? The bridge in the area is not a PVP flag area. you can cross without being flagged for pvp. What is the name of the quest that you were on that took you into PVP?
or i kill something, and loot drops on pvp side, really funny HAMSTER.
if this goes live anywhere near this build, i quit, period, my wallet goes with me and i will never support a game that feels the need to mix pvp and pve again.
it is not "forced" pvp but it is way to friggen easy to get caught in it. so bad, the so called "PVE" portion is HAMSTER because you spend more time trying to avoid pvp areas.
BUG: I could never finish this task. I tried twice and I finished 7/8 beacons each time. On the eighth beacon, I interacted with it, but then it said I needed a vial of that bile. I went back to the place where I got the bile, but it wasn't active. I checked all of them again, and although it was sparkling and I could press f, the message about the missing vial kept coming up. Essentially, I couldn't finish the quest.
Some beacons I couldn't interact with, even though I hadn't lit them yet
Some beacons were in the PVP area (map was red), aothough I wasn't flagged immediately, so it wasn't clear whether or not I was in it or not.
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
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Feedback: It would be nice to see some statistics for the current faction ratio while picking up a contract (ideally both flagged and not flagged for pvp). That way you give players a way to balance the factions themselves.
I think that will only promote people clumping towards one side.
Some people will do as what you suggested, but most players are complete *** and will do the opposite
this actually cannot happen. if the numbers become unbalanced, the mechanic is set to disable one side until it is balanced.
Well, I encountered it this morning and was kind of boggled by it. So we're told there is some kind of penalty switching factions, and our entry to the areas depends on us signing with a faction. But my faction was "full" this morning when I needed to re-sign a contract, and I'm working up the campaign for that faction. So is the intent that we have to switch and work both campaigns simultaneously? It's disappointing that we can't stay with the same faction long enough to accomplish something. Maybe we should re-sign less frequently? Not sure what the answer is, but I'm still waiting to see if I can get back in my faction to do the dailies.
A bit confused on what you are stating here??? It does not make any difference for you dailies on which side you choose to advance in the campaign. There are not different campaigns for each Merc contract. You only get different dailies, which only give exp no reputation, no town coins, no jewels, and no dwarf gold.
You can only do the town quest once per day that awards town reputation and coins. The reward is the same whether you choose Arcane Brotherhood or Ten Towners.
Now if your doing it for a RP point of view I can sort of understand...however...from a RP state of view...if they have hired all the contract mercs they need for the day or whatever time period...go have an ale at the Hook and Sinker. Or you could RP well I am a Merc For Hire...so I will go work for whoever has the coins, (as a true merc would.) ;-0
On a different note on this subject..Possible Bug
If you and a party member are not on the same contract...you are not allowed to travel to Icewind Pass or Dwarven Valley. This happened yesterday to me and buddy once grouped. He was already in Icewind Pass, and his contract was full, so I picked up the other contract and could not travel to join him.
Thanks for this clarification. I somehow was under the assumption that there were separate campaigns for each faction. However, I did go back in after posting my comment and was able to join the same one again, so I guess the "full" is fairly quick and temporary.