It’s Little Things That Make Tomb of Annihilation a Great Update

In recent weeks we’ve covered Neverwinter’s Tomb of Annihilation extensively. We’ve gone through the new content and systems and previewed all sorts of changes. Next to these major things there are however actually a lot of small changes that contribute to Tomb of Annihilation being a great update. So I’d like to go over these quality of life improvements today.

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Quest Journal Improvements

If you are like me and picking up any quests regardless, you ran into a mess in case you needed to find something in the journal. Prior to Tomb of Annihilation the quests were loosely ordered by level and zone, but you still had to pretty much scroll through anything. So figuring out whether you own a certain quest or activate the quest path had always been annoying. Luckily Module 12 put an end to this and introduced massive quest journal improvements. You can now sort, filter and search quests, making any tasks around the journal a piece of cake. With the change a longstanding player request was filled, and it’s indeed the major improvement we hoped it would be.

Archon Fix

There are more general bug fixes in the module, but I’d like to highlight a specific one. Archon Companions’ Active Bonus should receive a boost based on the total number of Archon Companions used. It never worked though which makes it a blueprint of a low-priority, yet painfully annoying, bug that seems to be floating around forever. The devs simply couldn’t find resources to tackle it in over two years (the companions came with Elemental Evil). It’s exactly the stuff that drives seasoned players nuts, because it gives the impression that the devs lack a genuine interest in quality management. These companions once were indeed premium items dropping from lockboxes, yet never worked as advertised.

The time needed to fix this is obviously unacceptable. So this is more a sigh of relief than a standing ovation. Anyway, good it’s finally out of the way.

Campaign Unlocks

The campaign unlocks are a different type of improvement. Players didn’t exactly get something for free, but at least the unlocks received a severe price reduction. Its worth noting because the devs rarely tweak the ZEN shop this way. We still have outdated and completely overpriced profession packs up, and everyone buying them effectively gets scammed.

2,000 for an unlock (3,000 for SKT) however is really reasonable. That way you can do the easier campaigns like Dread Ring or Sharandar, and buy yourself out of the mess that is Elemental Evil, Storm Kings Thunder or Tyranny of Dragons. The price reduction is actually more than I hoped for, which probably means the stuff wasn’t selling very well. It’s probably as much a business decision as it is a quality of life improvement, but reasonable pricing is always a win for everyone involved.

Campaign Advancement

Not only the boost got a lot cheaper, one campaign was streamlined as well. The Tiamat boons now only cost six and ten Linus. Those for the longest time were not really viable to get for the 80 runs you needed to do. Now the effort does match the reward.

Bank Sorting

All banks come with a sort button equal to the ones in the inventory. While I’m a fan of organizing and grouping my stuff manually, it’s a major help for those that need a one-click solution. You can now just casually throw stuff into banks, hit the button and are good to go.

Zoom

Players long had made themselves custom keybinds that allowed a zoom function. Now it’s hardcoded in the game. I think zooming itself is not the important part here, but setting your default field of view is. For some players the standard option is too near behind the character and they’d like to have a much broader view. It was always kind of easy to change it using a console command, but having it in the game is even better.

Kudos!

I think these are great examples how little things can really complete a module. Especially in Neverwinter where the small issues use to pile up over time, it’s good to see the devs trying to squash at least some of them. Too often you hear about priorities and resources, but to be honest at some point many small problems turn into a big one for the game as well. So I’m very happy about the introduced improvements and think it’s a very underrated part of the update.


How do you like these changes? Have you noticed an improvement or do you find them negligible? Share your thoughts in the comments below and visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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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.

2 thoughts on “It’s Little Things That Make Tomb of Annihilation a Great Update

  • July 27, 2017 at 3:08 pm
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    and now pve sucks even more than before gZ to dev team. better to play pvp is more balanced.

  • July 27, 2017 at 11:22 pm
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    Totally agree, these things are awesome!
    Shame we’ve waited for them so long…

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