Neverwinter Heart of Fire Preview: Workshop System Basics

As part of our massive preview of Neverwinter’s “Heart of Fire” update, we’ll be going over the new Workshop system in this piece. The rework of the old Professions is a massive thing and we’ll definitely have more advanced tips and info in the future. But to start off, let’s just go over the basics of the system. How will recipes work in Module 15? Where do resources come from? What do you still need, what can you discard? So many stuff, let’s get going!

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Workshop and Recipe Structure

Before we touch on the many changes of the new Workshop system, I’d like to mention the aspects that are still very similar and will look familiar. There is an extensive intro quest line by the way that will walk you through the system. The game is actually doing a decent job of porting its players over. That shouldn’t go unnoticed.

  • The Professions UI has slightly changed, but ultimately you will still browse between different professions that have different recipes.
  • Those recipes require exactly one Craftsman (now called Artisans) and one Tool to complete. You can’t slot multiple ones like in the old system.
  • The devs merged some professions were it made sense. Mailsmithing and Platesmithing have been combined to Armorsmithing for example.
  • Leadership is no longer and will be replaced with a new “Gathering” profession that holds all recipes that produce raw materials for all the other Professions.
  • You can still rush recipes for ADs, but the structure slightly changed. A certain amount per day is free, and you have to pay for more.
  • Professions now have 70 levels and no longer 25. Professions at level 25 will automatically turn to level 70. Also players with any Profession level 25 will get Gathering level 70 for free.
  • Most of the Leadership stuff will move to Jewelcrafting (RP crafting etc.).

As you can see the general structure of getting some sort of resources and turn them into a product is still intact. But pretty much everything else has changed. First of all, the raw percentage system that determined the quality of the result has been reworked into Proficiency and Focus. All Artisans and Tools feature those two stats and the addition of them against the requirements of a recipe will lead to a success percentage (Proficiency) and a chance to get a high-quality version of the reward (Focus). In the picture on the left you see a Masterwork product that has a 56% chance to get crafted and a 0% of a high-quality result. It’s basically just a slight rework of the old percentage system. So it shouldn’t be too hard to get familiar to it.

What you’ll also notice is that all recipes will cost Gold, the so-called “Commission”. It makes the otherwise useless resource an integral and very important part of the system.

Artisans

Since Artisans now feature stats, they obviously take a more prominent role in the Workshop system. You can only have 32 at any time and besides Proficiency and Focus all of them have special skills that give bonuses in certain areas. Artisans just like the Professions level as you complete recipes with them and advance their stats. There are common, rare, and epics and higher quality ones feature more stats and better bonuses. The difference is noticeable. So long-term you will be looking to fill out your 32 slots with epic ones that ideally also have the right “Special Skill” for your needs.

Artisans unlike old Craftsmen can no longer be traded or bought from the Auction House. You recruit them at your Workshop desk. Players will randomly get applications from Artisans that they can accept or reject (happy RNG!). We’ll go over which ones you’ll be looking for in a future article, but for now just know that Craftsmen are no longer items that you can specifically buy or trade. There will however be a ZEN item that will create applications out of thin air.

New Assets vs. Old Assets

Most Professions feature new assets, but players do not have to start from scratch. All the stuff that’s outdated can be converted into new toys. So you do not have to get rid of anything if you don’t want to. On the contrary, it might make sense to stock up on profession items to get a head start in the new system. We’ll cover the exchange system and process in a future article. The same by the way applies to resources. Many old ones will no longer be used, but you can trade them in or sell them for Gold, which as mentioned will be a fairly important resource for completing recipes.

High-Quality Items and Batch Completions

So now you have leveled your Profession, recruited some Artisans and exchanged Tools. I’ve already mentioned high-quality or “+1” results above. Those exist for every recipe and range from extra stats for gear to more refining points on “Black Opals +1”. For lower level recipes it’s relatively easy to always get enough Focus for the high-quality result. It’s not quite the same for some of the higher level stuff.

One major improvement of the system is the ability to batch order products. You can just let your Artisans complete tasks as long as they have the resources or Gold to do so, and your so-called “Delivery Box” isn’t full. All products from Professions now land in a new special inventory that you have to empty regularly to be able to continue with the crafting. Both the available slots for the tasks and in the Delivery Box depend on your Workshop level. Yes, you can not only level your Professions and Artisans, but also the Workshop itself. Upgrading means delivering certain resources and trading in a massive amount of crafted items to a new “commission vendor“. Getting all the way to level 4 is a major commitment and probably only worth for your main character(s).

I personally like the Delivery Box approach. You can set up your tasks over night for example and then collect what your Artisans produced in the morning. Players have been asking for batch completions for-effing-ever and we’re finally there! That’s major!

Masterworks

On last thing most players will probably inquire about: Masterwork recipes have fully been ported over to the new system. The recipes and all resources are unchanged, but obviously do no longer have a Tier 2 and Tier 3 result, but just a high-quality one. The devs promised that all gear from Masterwork will receive an item level bump. This is not entirely finished on preview, but I think MW1 sets are supposed to be 520, MW2 560 and MW3 600. That’s gear sets and rings, Artifact stuff is not likely getting a boost as well.

Overall I think leveling Masterworks will get a tad easier with the new system, but no guarantees. Going with my gut feeling here. But you don’t have to fear that your investment into Masterworks is going to vanish in Module 15. If anything, it’ll be quite the opposite. Even the most basic Masterwork Tools for example come with nice Proficiency and Focus values!

Conclusion

Phew, I’m sure that’s a lot to digest for now. The good news is: The core functionality of getting resources and turning them into a product using Artisans and Tools stays the same and comes with some nice quality of life improvements. The UI has useful gimmicks like a search and filter function and players are going to love the Delivery Box and its batch completion system. On the other hand it’s probably going to take a while to figure out Proficiency and Focus and what combination of Artisans and Tools work best. We’ll make sure to give you guys a more in-depth look into that during the next weeks. So stay tuned!


This is our basic introduction into the new Workshop system! Do you like what you read? Share your thoughts on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit 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.

11 thoughts on “Neverwinter Heart of Fire Preview: Workshop System Basics

  • October 16, 2018 at 1:31 pm
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    What about armor kits, I don’t see anyone talking about them. The major armor kits take 100,000 each to produce plus items. Can you please look into it, thanks.

    • October 16, 2018 at 1:48 pm
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      There are no recipes for Armor Kits on preview atm. The devs said they’ll add them though.

      • December 13, 2018 at 1:36 pm
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        I was searching for how many Artisans we can have at Rank 4, and you say 32 here. Is that unchanged?

        Rank….Slots..Artisans
        …1………12……….8
        …2………18……..14
        …3………24……..20
        …4………30……..32

        (I wish I knew how to do Tables properly!)

        So that’s +6 Delivery Box Slots per Rank Up and +6, +6, +12 Artisans?

        🙂

        Despite my original concerns, I LIKE Mod 15 Professions. I find it’s easy to get Rank 3, but I have not yet found an easy way to Rank 4.

        I don’t agree that I will want all Epic Artisans, as most of them are +25/+50 or +75% to commission costs. In fact, there are NO EPICS at all with a Commission discount for Gathering, Armorer, Blacksmith and Tailor.

        Furthermore, many of the Epics are costly to pay AND have a Speed penalty, and some don’t even have as high a Proficiency and/or Focus score as some blue ones. I think they must have forgotten about the Uncommon tier completely.

        I agree I might want one of each craft with as close to 400 Proficiency and Focus as possible, once I get a Gond Hammer, for those Masterwork items. But at the moment I am going for the cheapest to run, as I have spent 3000 gold already! Some Alts will just churn out potions of healing to get the gold to keep the others running, as the relative costs of most things look like the system was released before it was completely finished. But I stopped making Black Opals, as she kept running out of gold!

        🙂

  • October 16, 2018 at 2:17 pm
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    I think the vast majority of players concerned about Mod 15 Professions do not have access to Master Work, but they may have one or two characters with Rank 25 in everything.

    But most players will have Rank 25 in:

    1) Leadership
    2) Alchemy
    3) Jewel Crafting
    4) Weapon for their class (Artificing for SW, CW, DC, Weaponsmith for others)
    5) Armour for their class (Leather for HR, TR, SW, Tailor for CW, Mail for DC/GWF, Plate for GF/OP etc)

    In fact, many will even have only Leadership.

    So what most players will be most concerned about will be:

    a) How do we convert our Epic tools and Craftsmen into Epic or better in Mod 15?

    b) Do we have to e-mail them around BEFORE Mod 15 so we aren’t stuck with them on the wrong character?

    c) Or can we trade them when Mod 15 starts and sell or mail UNBOUND Tools and Craftsmen (as the Credits will be BtC as a currency)

    d) What happens to all the pelts, residuum, ores, Dragon eggs, Unified Elements, Salt, wood etc? What do we do with those and when?

    e) Gathering will not produce RP, we have to do it with Jewel Crafting. How will this actually work and HOW MUCH GOLD WILL IT COST?

    f) will we be able to unslot RUNES and ENCHANTS FREE of gold costs,like we can with Mount Insignia?

    Cheers!

    🙂

  • October 16, 2018 at 6:20 pm
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    Why are we still saying that Leadership is being replaced by gathering. Gathering is being removed from all professions and given a separate place in the system. As the article points out anyone with any profession at level 25 will get gathering at 70. You could only say leadership was replaced by gathering where someone had only leadership at 25 (or was their highest profession). The huge investment players have made in leadership is simply vanishing, unlike the much lower investment in something like tailoring.

    • October 17, 2018 at 5:53 am
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      @Anton
      I agree, but it sort of depends on how you look at it.

      On the one hand:
      Leadership is a Non-Crafting Profession – it directs troops and soldiers to do things
      Leadership is NOT being replaced with Gathering.
      Leadership is being ABOLISHED, DELETED, COMPLETELY REMOVED from the game.
      ALL Crafting Professions are having GATHERING and DEEP GATHERING REMOVED
      These craft-specific gathering tasks are being put into a New “Profession” called GATHERING.

      On the other hand:
      Leadership is a Non-Crafting Profession that directs troops to guard things, fetch reagents, RP etc
      All Crafting Professions are having GATHERING and DEEP GATHERING REMOVED
      Leadership is being replaced with GATHERING, which will fetch raw materials for all Crafting professions.
      GATHERING staff will not be fetching bags of Refining Stones. Jewel Crafters will be doing that.

      So people who do not have Leadership at 25 would be well advised to get Jewel Crafting as high as possible, and one of the other Crafting Professions, because I really don’t think there’s time to get Leadership from rank 20 to 25 in the time we have left. But getting a crafting Profession from 15 to 25 is possible.

      Some professions at rank 21 give 2000 Professions XP (some only 1400), and we can run nine at once, whereas the most Leadership will give is 500 XP and we can do only three, plus three for 250 XP and three for 250 XP.

      But what happens to things like EXTRACTION, MASS EXTRACTION, REFINING, MASS REFINING, MASS BLADES AND HAFTS etc?

      I think we should be told! Ed.

      🙂

  • October 17, 2018 at 12:49 am
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    There are no uncommon artisans. Just common, rare and epic. No idea why they skipped greens 😉
    Nice article!

    • October 17, 2018 at 5:56 am
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      Maybe they will add Green before it goes live, Rainer?

      But they seem to be cutting it a bit fine! I’d prefer the entire, complete Professions system to be up on Preview to be fully tested for at least a month.

      🙂

  • October 30, 2018 at 3:57 pm
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    Any progress with covering the exchange system. Some advice about what to do before go live would be useful. As a starter my 25000AD epic grandmaster whatever is worth 12,500 in the stronghold coffer. If I allow it to convert to something else, which, I assume can also be given to the labor category of the coffer, will it be worth more than 12,500, less than that or just the same. At the moment the system looks a mess and stronghold resources look difficult to come by. One viable alternative is to just dump all cratsmen into the coffer and walk away. It becomes even more viable if their value in coffer terms drops on 6 Nov.

  • December 4, 2018 at 4:22 am
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    Too complicated, labor-intensive, costly and generally uninteresting business. I refuse to do this.

Comments are closed.