In my last post I commented on how, with an item level of about 8K, I was barely on par for the legacy campaigns. This was a good thing, since whilst it's fun to power through old content once you've advanced beyond it, it's less fun if that's your starting point. I like to earn my god mode - not have it handed to me on a plate.
So imagine my reaction when five minutes into the introduction to Undermountain I'm handed a whole new set of gear which boosted my item level to 13K instantly.
I should have expected that - Ravenloft did the same thing to ensure that anyone on level for the newest content would have some chance of doing it - but even so I did worry that being powered up for Undermountain in this way would leave me overpowered for the older campaigns. I was so uneasy about this I put the remainder of the introduction on hold and headed back to Dread Ring and Bryn Shander to give my new gear a test run.*
Dread Ring was easier than it had been, but not 5K of item level easier. The bears and big cats of Bryn Shander, meanwhile, continued to maul me with only a little less ferocity than before. Now I could kill them back, but not easily.
After that I extended my test run to another couple
of zones. The level 60-70 levelling content - Sharandar and Elemental
Evil - is substantially easier than they were, but that was to be
expected. Even prior to the changes brought in with Mod 16 it was easy
to outlevel these zones. Levelling is so fast in Neverwinter now that I
doubt they're really needed as levelling content and it would be nice
to see them scaled like the other legacy campaigns, but it's not a great
loss that they aren't. Interestingly the weekly instance for Sharandar
- Arcane Reservoir - does scale up to 70 and the mobs in there put up
more of a fight.
*Dread Ring and Bryn Shander are my go-to zones for measuring just how strong, or otherwise, I am. Dread Ring because it's the first of the real campaign zones, and Bryn Shander because I have vivid memories of being absolutely savaged by the enemies of that zone the first time I ventured into it.
I also ran Ghost Stories, one of the daily instances that comes up during the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, and which was memorable for much the same reason as Bryn Shander. It used to be that it could be picked up by characters below level 70, but always scaled to 70, and running this instance at level 69 was a painful iillustration of the vast difference in power between a scaled up level 69 and an actual experienced level 70. I used to wonder why the general chat in Neverdeath was always so full of players looking to team for GS... until I went into it myself for the first time.
I got nowhere that day, but did eventually finish it after levelling to 70 and raising my item level a bit, and it was really satisfying to beat that instance for the first time. Not now though. Ghost Stories has actually had its level reduced and now scales up only to level 60. Running it on a level 73 as I did it was one hit kills all the way.
Initially I was baffled for this - it's one thing for the old campaigns to stay at level 70 when the max level s now 80, but it's another to actually drop the level of an instance. Thinking about it some more I'm fairly sure that Ghost Stories was intentionally nerfed. There's a general emphasis now on making progression through the legacy campaigns a lot faster than it used to be, and that instance was a major speed bump. Related to that, as much as I love challenging content, I can't deny that Ghost Stories was disproportionately hard in comparison to the rest of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign.
I'll still miss the experience of it though.
All of this revisiting of older content - along with a couple of daily dungeons and all the changes to my character build that I put off doing last time around - has taken up a fair amount of time. There's way more daily content available to me now than I'd ever get get through in one of my typical two hours a day sessions, so I'll have to be very selective in what I actually choose to do.
Especially if I ever want to get into the newer content, since after all this I've not had the time to complete even the introduction to Undermountain. So I'll have to postpone my thoughts on Mod 16's new content until my next post. Again.
I'll get in there eventually.
Comments
Post a Comment