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news on the neverwinter chash shops read atleast to the armour/and weapon rune/enchants
tedgar
Member Posts: 52
Just like in any other F2P MMORPG, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding Neverwinter's Zen shop. I will try to shed some light on the current state of Neverwinter's F2P model by assuming a neutral stance. I hope this helps when you formulate some of your own opinions about this game.
1. Introduction
There are three immediate currency types in Neverwinter: Gold, Astral Diamonds, and Zen. Gold is obatained through normal means and buys the general necessities to play this game such as potions, basic profession items, basic mounts, and basic companions. Astral Diamonds are obtained through special tasks such as special daily quests, skirmish events, invoking your deity, and the Leadership profession. It buys a wide variety items ranging from Identify Scrolls to rare companions to mid-level gear. It is also the only currency usable in the Auction House. Zen is obtained through paying money. It buys many luxuries that helps give paying players a better experience overall. It may also be traded for Astral Diamonds and vice versa. For simplicity's sake, I will list the price of items in terms of USD instead of Zen.
2. Mounts
As a non-paying player of Neverwinter, you get three tokens at level 20 for a standard 50% speed horse that lasts for 5 hours. These horses can also be bought for 5 gold which is entirely manageable. To get a faster mount, you can buy Mount Training which upgrades any horse you own to 80% for 768,000 Astral Diamonds and 110% for 2,064,000 Astral Diamonds. This is progressive so you must buy them in order.
If you decide to drop some Zen for some fancier mounts, a standard 50% mount goes for 5-8 dollars, a rare 80% mount goes for 20-30 dollars, and an epic 110% mount goes for 30-40 dollars. The more expensive mounts of their respective tier has a unique model, such as the Worg and the Howler.
3. Inventory Space
You get a free bag at approximately level 10 and 30. They are 18 and 12 slots respectively. There are no craftable bags. For a free player, that means spending Astral Diamonds to buy extra inventory space. A 12 slot bag costs 6 dollars and a 24 slot bag costs 10 dollars.
A player starts out with 16 bank space. An extra 16 slots of bank space can be bought for 6 dollars.
4. Companions
Starting at level 16, a player is rewarded a free basic companion. These companions have two skills and have a rank cap of 15. An additional companion costs 2 gold each and may be switched anytime out of combat. All companions are disabled in PvP.
Zen buys a couple of companions which have a completely unique aesthetic. 15 dollars nets you an animal of your choice which have a rank cap of 15. 20 dollars hires a friend which has a rank cap of 20. 30-35 dollars gets you an epic quality pet that has a rank cap of 30 and three unique skills.
5. Professions
In Neverwinter, you gain Assets (workers) to do the work for you. Every profession starts you off with the most basic type of worker. You can have them do various amount of tasks on top of hiring more workers. Eventually you can combine 4 workers into an upgraded worker which allows you to tackle harder tasks. On top of these worker Assets, there are also tools Assets. These can be bought for 50s-1g each and have an 8% quality boost. Crafted items have a total of 4 slots for tools and 3 tiers for bonuses that is reached at 100% each.
In the Zen Shop, two different Profession packs exist: Professions Booster Pack and Professions Assets Pack. In the Booster Pack, there is 1 random (both quality and type) worker and random assortments of crafting items. In the Asset pack, there are 1 Purple or Blue Asset, 2 Purple Blue or Green Asset, 1 blue or green Asset and 1 green Asset (for a total of 5 guaranteed Assets). Any player may make any item, but paying customers will get an upwards of 20% stat increase on their crafted equipment.
6. Character
You can make up to 2 characters. Two additional character slots may be purchased for 5 dollars. You may also rename your character for 4 dollars.
Respeccing your skills costs 6 dollars. Respeccing your Feats costs Astral Diamonds determined by your current level.
7. Runes
If nothing else, please read this part. This is potentially their biggest cash grab scheme and everyone should know how it works.
Players are given the option to add additional stats/effects to their equipment in Neverwinter. These come in the forms of Runestones (pets) and Enchantments (Armor/Weapon). For pets, the Runestones are split into Offense and Defense. For Enchantments, they are split into Offense, Utility, and Defense. A single Runestone/Enchantment provides different bonuses depending on which slot there are equipped to. These also have ranks and start from 1 and ends at 9. Four of the same kind may also fuse to move up a tier. The chance of success starts at 95% at rank 1 and 10% at rank 8. You will lose a single Runestone/Enchantment upon failure.
There are two ways to circumvent failure: Preservation Ward and Coalescent Ward. Preservation Wards cost 10 cents each and prevent the loss of materials upon failure. They are also only consumed upon failure. Coalescent Wards cost 10 dollars and guarantees success of fusion. Both these wards may also be obtained on a weekly basis through Celestial Coins (the latter being rarer). Now you may be wondering why there's a huge discrepancy between the two Wards. I was wondering for a while too until I stepped my foot into endgame and found out there was an entirely different type of Enchantments: The Armor/Weapon Enchantments.
Armor/Weapon Enchantments are for specific slots in your weapon/chest and grant special effects. They come in shards and have a chance to drop from Epic Dungeon bosses. You must combine 4 shards to create a Lesser version of the Enchantment. However, the success chance of fusion is at a staggeringly low 1%. To compensate, they have very strong effects. An example would be the Thunderhead Enchantment. However, the real kicker here is that these "Lesser" versions may be fused again to gain a stronger version. Those may also be fused again to create the strongest version. Ultimately, the Greater Thunderhead Enchantment will have a 30% on crit to damage and stun foes. To create the strongest Enchantment possible, it will cost 160 dollars and 64 shards. Unlike companions, these can be used in PvP.
8. Conclusion
Cryptic wasn't lying when they said this game was 100% F2P. I have done all content on a GF and a DC without fancy Enchantments or Scrolls of Mass Life. However, I fear that a few weeks down the road, players who have paid vast amounts of money will have an incredibly unfair advantage in PvP, including the Gauntlgrym content they have yet to release. And while it is true that you can always buy Zen with Astral Diamonds, simply doing quests/professions/skirmishes is nowhere enough to realistically sustain yourself. I have tried and it is far too difficult to reach 24,000 rough astral diamonds on a daily basis. On Mindflayer, it currently costs 435,000 Astral Diamonds for 10 dollars worth of Zen. I'm sure the market will stabilize soon, but even then it will take non-paying players to take upwards of two weeks to upgrade a single Enchantment.
Any complaints/advice/death threats are welcome. Hope this helps.
Thanks to GreenSix, ziddy1232, fcalife, Kesshisan, and sneakycheeses for adding some information.
Comments
I see good news!
P2W is going to fund my free dungeon adventures. I won't pvp in NWO, and so it is great that there are those who would pay $60 enchantments, so that i can play free instanced dungeons.
And to think when I started playing MMORPGs, $30 got me the basic game and $15/month got me EVERYTHING in the game.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
what people keep forgetting to mention or read over, is that when you're running Tier 2 instances ( the type of thing you'd want good enchants for ) you're able to make millions of astral diamonds each day
160$ is a lot, yes, but getting it in the game really doesn't require as much effort as it would seem, in the end it all ends up being a very average MMO grind when the cash shop is not used, and i personally dont feel It's effect having not spend a dime.
Not to mention these enchants are entirely unnecessary, you can easily get through all the instances in the game with rank 5 enchants, they have like a 60% success rate to fuse and thats what i wear on my armor right now.
Before everyone shouts Fanboy, i still dislike the cash shop, simply because It exists and i will forever hate the Free2Play model, but this definitely isn't the worst I've seen - It just seems terrible when you don't know how much level 60 Tier 2 items go for on the auction house.
That said, I'd avoid this game if you haven't tried it yet, theres so many glitches and bugs, class imbalances, threat issues and general bullcrap that It's just not worth trying, not to mention the screwed up economy due to Duping exploits and chest runs.
People these days never seem to investigate anything, they just assume what they read is true, and that if a lot of people are shouting it that their statements must be infallible, get a freaking clue, do your own research.
Yeah, all the fans the will tell you how "you can get everything for free, it just takes longer".
What they don't tell you is HOW long it will take.
Unless you're running an army of alts...
I have opened 18 "Coffers of Wondrous Augmentation" so far (I have a small army of alts going), and I have received THREE Coalescent Wards (currently worth around 120K AD on Mindflayer).
If you only have 1 character, that works out to 6 weeks played for 1 Coalescent Ward. Of course, that's the only reason why the sell for 120K on the AH, because there's no way to farm them faster.
Of course, you can instantly buy one of these beauties in the Zen Store for $10. But that would mean that you're weak-willed and just "want everything now".
But then someone will say "I buy these Coalescent wards in packs of 10 off the AH, because you can make millions of AD per day selling high-level loot in NW". If it's so easy to do this, why is anyone buying these loot items for millions of AD every day ? Or is the full quote actually "I can make millions of AD per day selling high-level loot on the AH, because I play 6 to 8 hours a day" ?
Let's be honest here, if the average NW player could earn millions of AD with just 2 to 3 hours played every day, PWE would nerf that faster than you could say "Zen Store".
This ^^^^ All day this... Much rather buy the game out forthright and pay monthly and get access to the FULL game, Everything, rather than this nickel and dime, "a la carte" bullcrap.
So YUP, I support this message from the OP! lol
Wrote about it a bit here myself.
http://poisonman.wordpress.com/
It is pretty ridiculous. Game is fun though, I am really liking the combat.
http://www.twitter.com/PoIs0nMaN
http://www.facebook.com/PoIs0nMaN
http://www.youtube.com/PoIs0nMaN
http://steamcommunity.com/id/PoIsOnMaN
http://poisonman.wordpress.com/
If we're talking about EQ and vanilla WoW, 30$ for the box and 15$/month gave you nothing except the right to login and start grinding.
They also did not give you an unfair advantage over other players and used their sub to provide content for the MMO. I would rather the devs had their minds focused on new content and polish than new outfits, booster potions and gear they can sell in the cash shop.
Also are you saying in P2W MMO's there is no grind?
Meh.. so far ive played over 200 hours of Neverwinter and havent spend a dime. Ive got a full purple set, like to pvp and i have reset my powers twice just using astral diamonds i gained from selling stuff on the auctionhouse...
people whine about not getting everything, but in my opinion this is the closest that can come to a fair f2p system that still allows them to earn enough money to maintain the game.
Anyone saying you can make profit while giving people everything for free is just talking bullshit.
The only even slightest advantage you can get is some faster mountspeed in PvP, but tbh i havent seen it affect my pvp
https://ashesofcreation.com/r/Y4U3PQCASUPJ5SED