Tomb of Annihilation Jungles of Chult Campaign

In our preview series of the “Tomb of Annihilation” we are going to tackle the new “Jungles of Chult” campaign today. At first it presents itself as a usual setup. There are dailies, weeklies and currency that you spend on tasks. But it is a main improvement to other campaigns in key areas.

No more daily progression

Daily progression is a thing of the past in the Jungles of Chult. The devs already started to give players a little bit more freedom on how to do stuff in the River District in letting them progress towards a daily goal by a flurry of zone related tasks. You could run Dig Sites, Heroic Encounters, upgrade Guard Posts or just slay mobs. Now in the Jungles of Chult, players can even decide when to do their “Weekly Haul”. Essentially there is no longer daily progression, just a weekly one. And you are free to choose when and how you are going to fill up that bar.

It’s kind of similar to the early progression in Underdark, where you could farm as much Demonic Ichor as you liked, but with a weekly cap of 400. What this does is it takes away the pressure to log in daily and do tasks to keep up.

Wakanga O’tamu

Whenever you want you can pick up quests at the Merchant Prince Wakanga O’tamu in Port Nayanzaru and progress towards your “Weekly Haul”. Wakanga offers a weekly quest for 25 “Forgotten Totems”, the progression currency, and several so-called “Patrols” for five Totems each. Another quests doubles the Patrol rewards, but that one can only be picked up six times per week. So with these quests alone you can get 85 55 Totems pretty easy on any day. After being done with the weeklies, you can still infinitely repeat the Patrols and the zone quests in Soshenstar River. That’s how you get to 100, or more as the limit can be upped with campaign tasks.

*** UPDATE *** The latest patch on the preview shard scratched the Totems from the Patrol quests. It’s now a bit more tedious to reach the weekly cap on a single day.

Campaign Trees

There are three different campaign trees you can progress in. The Monster Hunt on the left is an independent system that rewards unique gear (check the”Hunts of Chult” collection window on the PTS). We’ll get into Hunting in a separate article. The middle tree ups the Weekly Haul by 25 per task up to 175 and also unlocks the new Dungeon, the Tomb of the Nine Gods. A key for the Tomb has its own task and costs 25 Totems, which seems fairly cheap.

Boons

On the right you have a choice of boons, which are structures a bit differently this time. The tasks give you three points which you can use on any combination of a set of six boons. Each boon also comes in three tiers, making it possible to spend all your points on a single one. All have 800/1200/1600 Hit Points and the six other boosts are:

• 500/750/1000 Power
• 500/750/1000 Regeneration (this one comes with 1200/1600/2000 HP)
• 500/750/1000 Defense
• 500/750/1000 Deflect
• 5%/10%/15% Damage vs. Dinos
• 5%/10%/15% Defense vs. Dinos

The fourth choice is a traditional between four different utility boons:

• Chance on Hit to gain a stack of Death Syphon. On killing a creature, your release all stacks of Death Syphon in a burst at all nearby enemies. Each enemy receives 2000 damage per second lasting 1 second per stack of Death Syphon. You restore 1% of your max health for every stack released. Stacks up to ten times.
• Chance on Hit to apply Lingering Curse to your target which lasts for 10 seconds. Can be applied once per 60 seconds. When a target which has Lingering Curse is killed, its soul explodes out at a random enemy within 20 feet, causing 30,000 damage and applying Lingering Curse.
• Death’s Blessing: When an enemy dies nearby, you reduce incoming damage by 1% and gain 1% increased incoming healing for 10 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Chance on being hit to gain a stack of Impenetrable Jungle. At 10 stacks, the next hit taken will release a burst, rooting all nearby enemies for 4 seconds.

Campaign Length

All tasks add up to a total of 1,715 Totems. Even though you’ll eventually be able to earn more Totems per week, you are probably looking at three months of work. So players basically pay for a more casual campaign approach with an extended grind. I personally don’t think it’s too bad, because you are really only looking at 12-15 days of work, which is way less than in the River District or Storm Kings Thunder with their daily progression system.

Overall I like the setup. It really helps to ease the pressure on the daily load and more importantly let players do what they want to do and not what they fell they have to do. It’s really a step into the right direction and if we would get a rework of all older campaigns with weekly instead of daily caps, yes please!

Even if “Jungles of Chult” comes with the downside of a longer campaign, you are more comfortably able to get multiple chars through it. In times where maintaining alternate characters is nearly impossible, this is more important than catering to the power player that is able to come in daily.

What are your thoughts on the campaign design and the boons? Let us know in the comments or the corresponding thread on our message board!

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