In the beta weekend there were just enough people in each zone to make it feel like you were playing with others, but not enough so you were fighting each other for questing targets. The outdoors areas are shared by you and other players whilst interior areas are largely limited to you and those in your party. Instead of a massive, sprawling world of interconnected zones like some MMOs, in Neverwinter each quest area is a self-contained zone. I think the most objectives I had to track was four, all in the same general area. The quests themselves follow the standard MMO trifecta: “Kill 10 X“, “Collect 10 X bits” or “Save Y from the X“, but unlike a lot of MMOs, you rarely have more than two or three at any given time. Out in the WorldĪll of these concepts are introduced in a step-by-step manner in the initial quest line which takes your character up to level 4 and deposits you in the main quest hub: Protector’s Enclave. I imagine this will get… interesting in a frenetic group situation, but it does mean that the Cleric needs to develop a lot more battleground awareness than some games where they spend more time watching the party UI.
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Healing works in a similar way to combat, with the cleric needing to point his targeting reticule at the person he wants to heal. After making a quick search of the weapon vendors at the Enclave for something more appropriate I went back and the quest, whilst still challenging, was at least manageable. Checking my character I noticed that my weapon was a level 11 quest reward.
#NEVERWINTER NIGHTS ONLINE CAN BE PLAYED OFFLINE SERIES#
At level 15 I started a series of level 17 quests that frankly kicked my arse to heck and back. If there’s one big tip I can give anyone it’s keep your weapon upgraded. The GWF ‘s attacks tend to “cleave” to other enemies in front of him, although I believe most of the classes have some way to deal with groups. As befits an Action RPG there’s no auto-attack, but holding down the mouse button will cause your at will to be continuously used, and some powers do extra damage if used in this manner. Fight!Ĭombat’s pretty straightforward, move in range, press the relevant attack button and you hit whatever’s in your targeting reticule. Finally you have the “Daily Powers”, mapped to 1 and 2, which are activated by spending Action Points (AP) from a big D20-shaped meter in the middle of your UI. As a Great Weapon Fighter (GWF from hereon out for sanity’s sake), I generally found myself unable to equip gear intended for the Guardian Fighter.Īs with a lot of ARPGs, your main attacks (or At-Will Powers as they’re called, following the convention set in D&D 4th Edition) are mapped to the left and right mouse buttons, whilst you have up to three “Encounter Powers” on a 10-20 second cooldown mapped to the Q,E and R keys. There’s very little overlap between classes. Your choice in class affects what powers you gain access to and what gear you can equip. They are Guardian Fighter (sword-and-shield wielding tank), Great Weapon Fighter (greatsword-wielding damage dealer), Trickster Rogue (twin dagger-wielding damage dealer), Devoted Cleric (healer with damaging spells) and Control Wizard (caster with crowd control options). “Your choice in class affects what powers you gain access to and what gear you can equip.”Īt launch, there are five classes available, with the promise of more later on. Also people who buy the $199 Founders Pack also get access to the “Menzoberranzan Renegade” race (that’s Dark Elf to you and me) although I assume that will become available in-game for a modest fee later on. Neverwinter has most of the classic D&D races available for you to choose from: Human, Halfling, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Wood Elf, Dwarf and Teifling. The first thing you need to do is create a character. Whilst it definitely borrows WoW’s third person over-the-shoulder camera, almost every other aspect of the game reminds me of and action RPG like Diablo 3 or Dragon Age 2. I think I got a decent feel for the game, at low levels at least.įirst thing to get out of the way: this game is not a World of Warcraft clone.
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Over the course of the weekend I levelled one main character to within spitting distance of level 22 and had a look at three of the other four classes the game offers at launch. I’d like to thank Andrew for hooking me up with access to the Press beta and my better half for understanding that this weekend I would be here in body only. So as I mentioned in Friday’s post, I spent this weekend blasting through the Neverwinter MMO beta.