Protector's Enclave needs my help.
Even taking into account that I've taken several breaks from this blog, it's been a long time since I was last in Neverwinter. Two and a half years, in fact. So it gave me a real nostalgia rush to hear Sergeant Knox's familiar greeting again at the end of the tutorial.
Yes, the tutorial. Neverwinter has undergone a lot of big changes since I played it last, most notably a level squish from 80 to 20 and a revamp of the levelling experience. Rather than trying to make sense of this on my level 80... er, 20... I've decided to start a new character.
She's another Drow Rogue, which gives me a direct point of comparison to judge how much has changed, but I'm not going to pretend that's why I chose this class again. As I've probably mentioned before, Neverwinter is perhaps unique among the MMOs I've played in that while I've tried out several of the other classes, none of them have come close to the Rogue. This may be my all-time favorite class, in any MMO.
Several of the aforementioned changes are immediately apparent. The boss at the end of the tutorial didn't die as fast as he did last time, and Knox is found in the new Adventurer's Guild. There I went through a quick training sequence which geared me up with a full set of abilities, including Stealth, instead of these being acquired gradually over the first ten levels. That makes sense, given that 10 is now halfway to max level.
For now I don't intend to draw on my past experience of the game and wander off the beaten path. I'll be following the quests as handed out, and the biggest change so far has been that Knox then sent me not to Blacklake, but to Neverdeath. Okay, I like Neverdeath and I won't miss Blacklake (much) or Blackdagger Ruins (at all) but no Tower District? No Plague Tower arc?
Moved or removed? Either way the map is looking different.
I can see the reasoning behind some of this. Blacklake is/was not much more than an advanced tutorial, and Blackdagger Ruins later gets reused as Drowned Shore in Elemental Evil. Still, I have to wonder what this means for Cloak Tower and Cragmire Crypts, the first two dungeons in the game.
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