Let’s Reward Daily Dungeon Runs on Alternate Characters

Now that Ravenloft and its change to the Astral Diamond refining limit has all but taken away the ability to farm random queues with alternate characters, I’d like to talk about one way of still rewarding runs on more characters than your main. I’m not too opposed to the change overall by the way. I do believe though that it sucks that your alts suddenly lost a good chunk of their right to exist. Those 12k armies can now enjoy their retirement I guess.

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The change did not only cut into some people’s profits, it also took away a major incentive to play alts. Currently you usually do the random queues on your strongest character and then move on. That’s really a shame since I like to play multiple character, but obviously won’t do it if there are absolutely no or too little rewards attached to that. As a result I’m mostly wrapping up campaigns with them right now, if at all.

Alternate Characters Still Have Value

That being said, alternate characters still have value. It certainly helps to have different classes and roles endgame ready to get into runs faster. Also having at least one DPS, healer, and tank for the random queue is a nice way of profiting from whatever role bonus is up. So yeah, there are definitely still advantages of having alts.

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I would however like a system that also still rewards dungeon runs on them. The devs obviously don’t feel comfortable attaching ADs to it, but there are other rewards that might make sense. What I’m thinking is a second random queue system that’s per character, but hands out different rewards. The account queues are Astral Diamonds and the latest seals, but the character one could be Campaign Choice Packs (currency), Refining Points, Power Points, or Stronghold Shards & Influence. That way you could still log over to an alt and get something out of dungeon runs even after doing your daily account ones.

Dungeons Are No Progression in Neverwinter

I think such a system makes not only sense for players but the game as well. The reason is that Neverwinter dungeons are mostly farm content. You only ever need to do the latest dungeon to progress. So it’s not like new players climb through different tiers of dungeons. They just complete campaigns and in terms of progression can basically skip all group content except the latest one or two modules. Just look at the current Ravenloft release. Basic Heroic Encounters reward Seal of the Brave since M14. Meaning all players can instantly get item level 510 armor once in Chult. Why would you run Lair of Lostmauth that doesn’t hand out any gear you can use?

That’s why keeping old content viable is necessary. The old random queues weren’t optimal by any stretch, but at least it was viable to run dungeons on as many characters as possible. Now that the best way to approach random queues is doing them once on your strongest character only, I bet the overall amount of runs has decreased. Because doing additional ones with alts isn’t really rewarding. Neither in terms of progression nor wealth. With handing out rewards through a second random queue system (or whatever you wanna call it in the end), you bring back those dungeons to your alts for meaningful rewards that don’t break the AD economy.


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j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

3 thoughts on “Let’s Reward Daily Dungeon Runs on Alternate Characters

  • July 24, 2018 at 5:46 pm
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    “I like to play multiple character, but obviously won’t do it if there are absolutely no or too little rewards attached to that.”

    Getting better gear and boons is important, but I also play just for fun. Or a sense of achievement from my nub GF tanking MSP for the first time. Or my DC buffing his way to the end of FBI. Or my newer Alts getting their boons, or soloing Biggrin’s Tomb, Drake Pens etc.

    And for those who are not End-Game Uber-BIS, there ARE still rewards there. Seals and AD to name but two. My high Power, low Crit GF Tank just today got an Owl Bear Cub in MSP! First time! Shame it’s nerfed! LOL! 🙂

    And, of course, Intermediate has stuff I’ve not done, or rarely done, before or have not done for ages because of how crap the original random queue system was. Advanced is almost entirely stuff I have never done before.

    I know a lot of people think that the only point of the game is to get the best gear as fast as possible, but I have always despised speed runs. But I understand that getting better gear is fun for them, but I don’t think it’s the only point of a game, even an MMO.

    When we killed Irenicus in Throne of Bhaal, or the great Evil in Icewind Dale – Heart of Fury etc, did we carry on trying to play the game when it was GAME OVER?

    Or did we roll a new character of a different class and do it all again?

    This problem is not the state of the game, it is entirely the fault of people who spend weeks practicing on the Test Server and then quite, quite intentionally spam new content to max out as quickly as possible and then complain they have nothing to do, the rewards aren’t there etc.

    But they already knew those dungeons inside out before the Mod was ever released! And they already HAVE all the rewards after spamming a few times with equally Uber-BIS Zerg channel friends..

    Their bed. They can lie in it.

    Of course, I want better gear for my characters just like you, so they can do the newer content without being one-shot. The fact that the AD reward goes down after the first run in each queue is irrelevant to me. The fact that the Seals also reduce is significant.

    Until Mod 14 I was running 4 or 5 alts per day and doing all the weeklies and dailies for their boons. Since Mod 14, I tried my hand at farming Seals of the Brave.

    I started by looking at how many Seals of the Brave each had, and used the one with the most to get the DC Main Hand and the chest.
    Then the one with the 2nd most to get the DC off hand, head, arms and feet.
    Then my DC ran randoms, including the RAQ, to get some rings, the GF weapons and some dps GF armour.
    Then my Dwarf GF got the OP weapons, some rings and the rest of the GF armour.

    So they had zero of the 100k bonus AD pool left after just a few days, as you STILL get AD and Seals from ALL randoms, no matter how many times you run them. Just not as many as the first time.

    Now my Halfling GF Tank is doing it to get the tanky GF armour and some OP armour. Then my OPs will do it to complete their armour and get the SW weapons and so on.

    All BtA!

    So I use a character to farm Seals (the AD is secondary) until I have enough seals for another class’s gear or until his 100k 50% refining bonus is gone. This is a problem with the new RQs, you can wipe out your entire 100k bonus in two or three days. Or less. Then they can build up their 100k pool frm invoking while I farm seals on different Alts and refine on others that still have ?75% bonus AD pool.

    But I can also get Role Bonus, First Time bonus, currencies, salvage, special drops etc.

    I do like the idea of adding campaign currencies, like Demonics have Mod 8 currencies as well as currencies for their local zones.

    🙂

  • July 24, 2018 at 6:53 pm
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    About the Random Queues:

    The thing is, at level 26 or whatever, we cannot queue for Orc Assault, so at level 26, we should never get Cloak Tower unless we enter manually. THIS is the retarded stupidity of random queues – destroying the fun for new payers and ruining the memories and nostalgia of older players re-running it on new alts for the first time in years.

    My own new level 16 TR got kicked from Cloak Tower by 2 level 70 GWFs last year, despite having full Xvim set, Dragon Slayer ring, Ardent Coin Master Thief dagger and rank 11 enchants. Just because I got lost for 15 seconds and just could not keep up with the autistic spastics speed running past all the mobs.

    So I had to stop and kill the mobs when they swamped me.

    Wankers.

    Same sort of thing happened to my 13k Dwarf DC recently. I zoned into VT 4 seconds after the others due to server lag, so they had stampeded off like lemmings, ignored all the mobs and left them all in front of the doors, so I could not interact with the door. And got killed trying, so had to spend the time killing them after I respawned. I was so angry I almost rage quit..

    “We got past them OK. So should you if you weren’t so slow”.

    So when that twat died in the boss room, squealing for help like a little girl, I walked over, didn’t raise him, cast Bastion of Health on the ground next to him and said “FUCK YOU! TOO SLOW!”

    The GWF and me finished the Boss off. Because I L2P’d back in the day. And I buff good and do DoT damage. And can dodge, which increases my Power stat.

    Anyway,

    Craptrick, keep the level 70 steam rollers out of any random run with level 15 characters in it! Then you would not have to ponce around with your ludicrously broken level “normalisation” shitstem. Just keep them the fuck out and stop repeating the same cock-ups over and over and over again! That’s ALL you EVER had to do!

    But let people run level 70 Novice, Intermediate and Advanced queues solo and get AD if they want to.

    But random queues MUST be addressed.

    * Random Queues MUST be level-bound

    * Levelling Queues MUST be abolished and deleted

    * Level 70s CANNOT enter normal Cloak Tower, Cragmire Crypts etc except solo or by private queue and they will NEVER be grouped with players in the Non-70s Random queues.

    * Sub-70 Beginner’s Queue
    This must replace the levelling queues. Non-70s MUST have a set of random queues for their level cohort, and they should be able to random queue for Skirmish and Dungeon separately AND AT THE SAME TIME, so both have a chance to pop. And get full AD bonus for both.
    Normal Master of the Hunt and Normal Malabog’s Castle can be in here, but ONLY for characters from level 64 to 69.
    Nothing should stop people from level 64 to 69 doing the Sharandar Dungeons and Skirmishes as part of the campaign quest and for Boon currencies without being messed about by level 70s rampaging through like a herd of Aurochs on Acid and PCP. They’d also get the fun of exploration and the learning curve.

    * Level 70 Novice Queue.
    This should have Epic MotH, Epic MC, VT, Kessel’s etc. Only level 70s can get in. Non-Epic Demo should be here. Maybe a few things should move to Intermediate, I’ve not checked the full lists recently. That skirmish in Whispering Caverns and all the others, scaled to 70, could be here so people can get achievements the too-rapid XP system cheated them out of. What was it? Stone of Subjugation?

    * Level 70 Intermediate Queue
    This should have what it has, maybe move a few things to Novice. Epic Demogorgon should be here.

    * Level 70 Advanced Queue
    This seems fine as it is.

    * Level 70 Master Queue
    I don’t qualify for this, as I play too many Alts and took only two to Barovia to get the gear so far.

    Maybe, they could adjust the AD Rewards and have separate Dungeon and Skirmish queues at each tier of gear and expertise?

    Any flaws to this idea?

    Maybe there are not enough new players to be able to fill a Beginner’s Sub-70 Random Queue within a few minutes any time of the day or night?

    If that’s the case, then “Houston. We’ve got a problem…”

    >:8o

  • July 25, 2018 at 3:05 pm
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    i run RNG and RNI on alt, RAQ on main, to take advantage of AD bonuses from invokes. You do not get enough bonus from invoking to get full ad bonus on all 3

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