Neverwinter Announces The Maze Engine As Next Module

First of all, sorry if you are waiting on my lowbie diaries in its usual Tuesday spot, but we postponed the next edition to tomorrow, because we obviously want to talk about the big announcement of Neverwinter’s Module 9: The Maze Engine! As educated readers of our site, you already knew about the return of Castle Never, queue improvements and the new mount system, but the official blog doesn’t stop there and adds another four dungeons and a new solo campaign to the excitement.

Bringing back the dungeons is universally great. With Castle Never as the new capstone dungeon, the other four should probably align between the current Tier 2s and epic Demogorgon (2,000 – 2,500 item level). So let’s start speculating which dungeons will make the return. The picture in the blog shows Caverns of Karrundax, so that one might be included. Which leaves three to pick out of the remaining seven if you exclude the Gauntlgrym Crypt’s, which are now used as single player lairs. The Alpha game files mention new loading screens and/or maps related to the Chasm, Icespire Peak and a “Dragon Lair” (Karrundax?), but that could be entirely unrelated to dungeons. Some users in our forum meanwhile have recognized scenery of Lair of the Mad Dragon, Spellplague Caverns and Epic Dread Vault in the official announcement video. I personally would love to get the Spellplague Caverns back, because so many good memories are attached to it. On the other hand, the Caverns would definitely come streamlined as it was one of the larger dungeons back in the day. So the original flair might be gone anyway.

We can already reveal that the campaign boons seem to have a traditional setup with four tiers. Tier one lets you choose between Action Point Gain and Stamina Regeneration, Tier two between Incoming Healing and List Steal Severity, Tier three between Control Resist and Combat Advantage and tier four between Control Bonus,  a proc that enhances Critical Chance, a proc that enhances Healing and a proc that enhances Damage Resistance. It’s a great that the campaign finally closes the progress gap between level 60 and 70. You currently run out of story quests at level 67/68 and need to fill the void by repeating Vigilance Tasks, which is highly annoying and not called “content”. The Portobello campaign hopefully provides the experience to get characters to 70 by only playing through the story.

Overall the Module seems to fill quite a few major requests of the community.

Do you like what you see in the first official announcement? Share your thoughts in the comments or post on our message board!