Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment have announced the newest expansion to one of their flagship products, the D&D-inspired MMO, Neverwinter. This new expansion includes a mountain of new content, or more precisely and undermountains worth of new content as the expansion is based on the legendary location within Forgotten Realms campaign of the same name.
The Undermountain expansion adds in a ton of new content to the already sprawling Neverwinter landscape. A lot of it is based on 5th Edition and Forgotten Realms content too, so fans of the tabletop game have something to connect the whole experience too. For example, there’s a new social hub based on the infamous Yawning Portal tavern. The big draw however is the new endgame dungeon.
That dungeon takes players deep into the dangerous and seedy underbelly of Waterdeep on a series of quests and dungeon runs based on the Ark of the Mad Mage storyline. Undermountain brings new equipment ranging from level 71 to 80, new seal gear, new dungeon equipment and a bunch of new high-level challenges for players to overcome.
There’s also increases in the level cap, up to level 80. Each class has at least one new Daily, Encounter and At-Will planned with this increase as well. The various preexisting abilities are all being rebalanced as well to help bring the power curve to a more sane level.
Speaking of power curve, the developers are making some major changes to the way stats and encounters are handled in game. The base code of the game is switching over to an opposing rolls system that brings players and enemies more in line with a clear progression system Stats are being reworked across the board to create this new system. The example given is Critical Strike vs. Critical Avoidance, and the basic process is comparing your ability to succeed versus the enemy ability to succeed. The higher of the two values should win out, offering a much more streamlined means of computing stats and their impact in-game.
Other tweaks are being made as well to rebalance combat in the game. Scaling of both player levels and item powers is being worked on too. The general idea is to give fewer individual stats from a piece of gear, but that the values for stats given will be higher, thus offering a slight buff in power to all players. Read more about the idea here.
The final major update, that’s been announced so far, is a major change to the class system in Neverwinter. Classes will now use their 5th Edition archetype names, but abilities will still be a hybrid of 5th Edition Feats and 4th Edition Powers. The general idea is that each class will be suited to a couple of specialized roles, such as Barbarian being good Tanks and DPS. The other aspect of this system involves nerfs and buffs to the healing and damage systems. Players have managed to turn Life Stealing mechanics into a replacement for traditional healing, so the developers will probably end up nerfing the ability. More details are coming on that front. Until then, check out the official site for details on the class reworks.
Check out the trailer for this newest expansion down below. You can also head over to the official site for more news about the Undermountain and of course more Neverwinter goodness.
