Shroud of Souls Storyline Preview

In the first post of our Shroud of Souls preview series, we are quickly going through the solo campaign story. As always, please do not continue if you don’t like spoilers and want to experience the story yourself. For the rest: Have fun reading through the article!

Finally a bit of free time…

Lukan keeps everyone busy

Since the update mainly targets guilds, the story addition is not really huge. If you’ve already completed chapter five of the original Cloaked Ascendancy storyline, you’ll be welcomed by Sergeant Knox in the Driftwood Tavern. The casual get-together however doesn’t last too long as Kavatos drags Lukan into the scene. The unlucky illusionist has unintentionally broken a warding rune under the River District that opened a portal to the Shadowfell. Now ghostly creatures swarm the District, as if Kabal’s, Nostura’s and Gyrion’s minions weren’t already enough. As the story proceeds it becomes evident that a necromancer called Morlanth is trying to build an army of wraiths. Adventurers need to forge an unholy alliance with a lich to gain access to the Netherese village Evernight and then eventually defeat Morlanth in the Shard of Night to end that threat.

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Shard of Night floating over the River District

Shard of Night becomes repeatable

Once completed the shadowy tower becomes a repeatable instance like the other demiplanes and offers the same loot. The new companion to grab is a Netherese Warlock with an interesting active bonus. It adds damage when foes are not facing you. Especially for melee DPS that constantly fight on the opposite side of the boss this could be a great option. The key to replay the Shard of Night is not included in the packages of the others, but has to be farmed separately. Drop rate is not really great, so it’s a bit of a pain. Especially in the first days when everyone and their mother will be farming ghosts, good luck of getting one…

Evernight

A nice story, but not that long

Overall the story is well told, but also very limited. Even without VIP to cut travel times and taking a slow approach you shouldn’t need more than 60-70 minutes. The end fight in the Shard of Night against Morlanth was surprisingly hard and not paying attention to the AoE attack my 4k CW actually soulforged once. As always there are a few hidden achievements and titles to explore, this time with a heavy drinking theme. The Evernight was a nice change of scenery and I also like the sense of humor shown in the dialogues.

Overall however you realize it’s not a natural addition to the Cloaked Ascendancy storyline and completely unattached to other River District activities. Morlanth and the wraiths would have worked everywhere, maybe thematically even a bit better on the Neverdeath Graveyard. But that’s really just a minor point in an update that does not really focus on the solo adventure anyway and simply delivers an enjoyable side story.


I hope you liked the brief preview of the story additions in Neverwinter’s update 11b! In case you have questions or remarks, make sure to post the in the comments below or 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.