Contest of Liars Guide

The “Contest of Liars” is an addition to the “Masquerade of Liars” event that the game runs on Halloween each year. It’s a competitive format in which players contribute treats to one of three factions. The one with with most contributions gets a free reward at the end of the event while all other teams have to pay for it. In this article we are quickly going through the format and look at the possible rewards!

Choosing Your Faction

Starting off is as simple as picking one of the three available factions. Each has a unique theme and fashion mask that comes with it. The choice of your team is account-wide and cannot be reverted. Once chosen, you can start completing daily quests for the faction and contribute to a global stockpile of treats. This is done by completing a set of five available daily quests that all involve sporting your team’s mask. First you have to visit all the hub areas and seek out “Spectral Tricksters”. You are also tasked to kill critters and collect treats.

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I can’t deny the fact that doing the dailies gets old really fast, especially on multiple characters. Seeking out the “Spectral Tricksters” is amusing first and annoying later. You trick or treat them and when they’re not in a giving mood, they teleport you to a random location on the map. That’s funny and kinda cool for a while, but when you’re going through the quests for the umpteenth time there’s some serious rage potential. Second, you normally don’t get to the 50 treats you need to collect by killing critters while doing your regular daily stuff. So you might need to get extra work done, which is never great.

The Competitive Aspect

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What is there to gain for helping your team winning the Contest of Liars? Well.. bragging rights, first and foremost. All members of the winning faction that contributed a minimum amount indicated by the tracker in the event UI will also get an illusion mask item that grants an illusion similar to the team representative for free. All other players have to pay for it. This might not sound like much, but given that the mask will also be removed from future reincarnations of the event, it’s your only chance to get the one from the victorious team. So all those completionists or those that simply like the look have an additional incentive to get serious about the contest. You can’t miss out however, you might just have to pay for the reward.

Usually big alliances and guilds collectively join a faction. So it helps asking around in your friends list or even global chat to get an idea where everyone is headed each year. It would also certainly be possible that the whole server collaborates. There doesn’t seem to be a system in place that evens out teams, like Ten-Towners and Arcane Brotherhood in Icewind Dale. So you could game the event and essentially give everyone the rewards for free. But it takes the fun out of the whole thing and might not be worth it just to save a couple ADs and campaign currency.

The Rewards

Speaking of campaign currency, there are a few other new rewards coming with the Contest of Liars! They are not directly tied to the contest, but are still new additions to the event vendor. The “Splinters Companion” is a Striker pet with three offensive and three ring slots. It lacks a debuff like the current “best-in-slot” alternatives, but for 600 Masquerade Tokens it is a very gettable budget option with a control power. In case you’re interested in the best way to obtain tokens, please check out or general guide for the event by the way. Alt characters or casuals should strongly consider the pet. Please note though that it binds to character. So you have to farm with the toon that you want to give the companion to. It’s actually unbound so you can farm it on any character and then freely pass it along or sell it.

The other major addition is a Mount called “Enchanted Broom”. With that the Masquerade adds to the list of events that hand out epic Mounts for participating. The Broom has a nice look, binds to account, and adds 2,000 Power as Equip Bonus. There’s not much to complain here. Oh wait, of course there is, because getting the Mount comes with a considerable grind. You not only need 800 Masquerade Tokens and [sc name=”astralicon”]50,000, but also extra materials from Pinatas and Bags that have a “low-ish” drop rate. So you will have to farm Illusionist’s for a while. Please look up the official blog for all details or check out the video I’ve attached below!

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Conclusion

I like the idea of unique yearly rewards and a competitive format. The way it was pulled off here is a bit too generic though. In the end you’re talking about a fairly basic daily grind and simply farming more Masquerade Tokens. Other than the outfits there’s not really something that thematically links the Masquerade and Halloween. Where other games deliver spooky and scary quests or even entire story lines, Neverwinter just sends its playerbase out to find random NPCs.

I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed, but since they finally updated an event, I would have hoped for a little more creativity and attention to detail. That said though, the rewards are mostly worth it. The Broom Companion is a viable budget alternative for DPS toons, the Broom Mount universally useful, and the Empowered Illusionist’s Mask even “bis” as secondary Artifact for some builds. So if you are still up to farm those tokens, or have leftover currency from previous editions, you will have some pretty rewards to show for it at the end of the event!


What’s your take on the Contest of Liars? Share your thoughts and experience on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit our message board!

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7 thoughts on “Contest of Liars Guide

  • October 26, 2018 at 8:24 am
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    Just sad Cryptics idea of an update for an event…. make extreme grind 5+ hours just to get 650 tasty treats. Then add major more grind and RNG to the same old event to get a few new rewards. Really how many hours perday does the devs think we have to farm an event?

  • October 26, 2018 at 11:09 am
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    Excellent Guide, along with Alphastream’s blog!

    The Splinters broom companion says it’s BoE and I see them in the AH. Are they actually BoP, but can drop unbound from other places?

    Shame about the ludicrous RNG and 50k AD for the mount. I could get the Sash and no Bristles on one character, and a huge bunch of bristles and no Sash on another! I wonder if they will introduce that for Siege of Neverwinter, Summer and Winter Festival etc? I only want the mount on one character, though, for Cosmetic reasons. and I REALLY want a Fashion Witchypoo Hat!

    Farming on very many multiple characters can be a problem. On a LOT of Alts, I think it’s only feasible to get the basic, normal Illusionist’s Mask to Legendary. The other things need too many Masquerade Tokens, which are bound and cannot be mailed around.

    So what I do is:
    a) Cycle through Alts and go to Event Vendor and get quests (joined Toil and Trouble).
    b) VIP Teleport to Moonstone Mask to learn the Secret from the NPC
    c) Ride around looting Pumpkins, trade with Illusionists.
    d) Maybe ride around talking to Trickster Ghosts for the faction Crunchy Treats – only get 1 Illusionist bag for that, so not sure it’s worth it
    e) Maybe go out and get some Treats for killing Mobs, EG weekly Protecting the Portal or Biggrin’s Tomb etc so I get rAD as well
    f) turn in.
    g) pick characters I want to farm for the Empowered artifact, as I need 1000 Masquerade Tokens just for that.

    I do have up to 30 Beholder Pinata on some characters from last year. I hate the BoP food buffs so I never used them before.

    Depending on your luck with finding active Pumpkins, active Illusionists and not getting Tricked by the Ghosts, the whole lot can be done in maybe 15 to 30 minutes per character. Woe to those with 20 to 50 toons!

    The Secrets and the Illusionist quests are needed for Mementos of Lleira and Mementos of Mask, and I think we need 5 of each to upgrade the basic Mask Artifact from White to Legendary. We also need 20 Veils of Mist and Veils of Shadow, and these do not have a fixed farming rate, they are random from Illusionist Bags.

    Getting the basic Mask from Epic to Legendary needs 8 of both and, of course, last year many toons had 10 to 16 of one and 2 to 6 of the other! So I converted them to RP.

    So I want the Empowered Mask on my AC DCs and TRs and the mount on one SW. The others, I might get some dye packs or permanent fashion masks or whatever.

    🙂

  • October 27, 2018 at 11:37 pm
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    This ‘event’ reinforced the concept that this whole game is about basically the same kind of boring grinding mindlessness. Totally useless and it made me quit the game.

  • October 28, 2018 at 7:24 am
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    were I can find enchanted witch’s sash?

  • October 28, 2018 at 10:07 pm
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    Sash comes from Beholder Pinata, and the Pinata come from Illusionist’s Bags.

    🙂

  • November 2, 2018 at 8:48 am
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    RNG inside of RNG inside of RNG…. ya i love it /sarcasm

  • November 2, 2018 at 12:56 pm
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    Just had failed upgrades on illusionists masks. 3 fails. Out of 4 tries. Two fails @95% and one fail @90%. Just thought i’d make you all feel better about your rng.

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