Wonders Of Gond Event Review

Gond, the lord of all smiths, returned to Neverwinter on Easter with a new creation and as always we look back at the event and judge its rewards, structure and fun factor.

I have to say I’m not a huge fan of Wonders of Gond. I never have been and will never grow into one unless there’s going to be a huge change of the overall reward structure. Bottom line: You can’t possible grind out your mount. It’s nice they upgraded the Creations of Wonders pack with a brand new colored Apparatus and Insignias, but the issue is getting to the Doohickey in the first place (while they were at it btw. they should have updated the Doohickey as well, because it has lost any usefulness as damage source).

Let’s talk math to illustrate it: A Doohickey is 24,760 RP, or 4,952 Grommets, not including any possible upgrade failures that have to be compensated with additional RP or Preservation Wards. I unfortunately only had limited playing time this weekend, but from earlier editions I know that a normal game session rewards not more than 100. This means gathering enough Grommets to fully refine your way up to a Doohickey would take approximately fifty days.

Even grinding for the Grommets you are not getting anywhere in reasonable time. And of course this completely takes you away from your daily routine, so you have to invest additional hours. Crafting Sprockets and Gadgets helps to a minor degree, but is highly inefficient. As one of our users in the comments rightfully notes though, professions can land you multiple Doohickey throughout the event if done excessively.

Embellished Apparatus of Gond
Embellished Apparatus of Gond

Overall the consumables are more available, most players however won’t event reach the fashion set at 5,900 RP, which is the first permanent and appealing reward. After all I do not mind as much that the new mount is bound, because players can choose between the original Apparatus to make some cash or the new one to use for themselves.

Which brings us to the Blueprints that are available on the ZEN market and offer a massive 4,000 RP for Gond items. The whole event feels too much like a bait to buy into the refining process once you realize you’re not getting anywhere with the Grommets that drop. That said, it’s cheaper (10-14 AD per RP) to buy stacks of Grommets from bots than using the Blueprint shortcut (~29 AD per RP). One way or another, you need to pay for the top rewards, which is not how an event should work in my eyes.

Ironically the amount of RPs you need vs. the amount of RPs you can get on a weekend would likely fit CtAs, for which I’ve already proposed a long-term goal to add more incentive to the nowadays quite trivial event. But for Gond, which runs twice a year at best, the rewards are completely out of reach for everyone not willing to invest ADs, even through multiple editions.

Thumbs down.


What’s your opinion on the Wonders of Gond event? Share it in the comments or post to our forum!

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.

4 thoughts on “Wonders Of Gond Event Review

  • March 29, 2016 at 2:11 am
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    Hello. I’m from russian server of Neverwinter (server drider), so please sorry my bad english.

    I have another question to this event.

    Crafting items in the profession Jewelcrafting (several characters) gave me enough RP to create 3-Doohickeys. Savings to buy another 4.
    Total: I had 7 Doohickeys and 4 Doohickeys my friend.

    Crations of Wonder Pack description contains line:
    This pack contains a high chance to gain your choice of an Mounts (At russian: Весьма вероятно что Вы достанете одного из скакунов)

    But all 11 Pack after opening give:

    1 Refinement
    1 Wondorous Gizmo
    1 Insignia of Gond
    1 Prefession pack (Jewelcrafting, black ice…)

    All, Carl, ALL! No one mount, no one Colescent ward. Price of that pack on russian server above 700K AD, but reward summ of one pack – below 300K.

    P.S. I thing developers of Bagowinter think that “High chance” evaluate as 0.5% – 1% of chance.

    • March 30, 2016 at 6:45 am
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      Yes, what they call “high” does not really seem to fit a common definition.

  • April 1, 2016 at 11:49 am
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    I was lucky to get a doohickey from winter fest, that one gave me the mount pack.
    They made changes that lower ranks needs no other of the same kind to upgrade, but if they don’t make all upgrades the same, this event will still not be viable. (And it was completely insane before)
    I was able to make another to r6, but that’s all.
    Their problem is that they making event’s top rewards that hard that some may consider cashing in to get it, but they still can’t do a thing about the bots that are cheaper for the same purpose (even if you only buying from them).
    (That’s the reason why the new iteration of Portobello/Respen’s game needs a not really farmable currency (Accreditation) for a campaign, you can hardly get enough, but they introduced a pet to double it, to make sure they get some money from the event.)

    Would it hurt them to write the chances on the boxes (every box)? It would, what they call high chance is still pathetic.

  • June 2, 2017 at 12:47 pm
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    i got lucky i guess i made around 4 bags and got the mount on the first bag plus i just run around killing anything in sight so i didnt really have to big of a problem maybe they changed it but i like the gond event

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