Celebration of Lliira Event Review

NWO:Unblogged continues an event-heavy week with a review of the Celebration of Lliira. We already featured two event-related Bag of Tricks and I’ll be following up with a general take on events in the next days. So stay tuned!

I have been very critical in my last review of the event. One year ago the devs took away a guaranteed reward from the Celebration of Lliira, which I though was a major mistake. Events need an incentive to participate, but also a login reward. By erasing the Favors from the dailies, this was no longer the case.

[su_quote cite=”j0Shi” url=”https://blog.nwo-uncensored.com/celebration-of-lliira-event-review/”]I’m cool that payers have to get additional work or ZEN in for all the rewards, but in my eyes you need to give people some dyes and Favors from the daily like it used to be so that they at least can get the Ceremonial Mask at the end of the event and walk away with something. As currently structured, for most it will be a bust and players mentioned they are indeed skipping it.[/su_quote]

Good to see the devs listened and reverted that decision, enabling players to get at least the Mask. The more desirable Starry Panther still needs some effort, but that’s ok.

No major updates

Otherwise the event came back without major updates, which of course made it a bit more unattractive for seasoned players. The reason why you shouldn’t be too mad about it is that we just had an insanely good event in the Jubilee and will have an insanely good event in the Summer event. Sandwiched in that way Lliira was only a filler this year, and hence didn’t need to offer a whole lot itself.

Most players probably didn’t have too much use for the ZEN vouchers after the Jubilee. But you can stash them away to use at a later time. As we reported it’s actually possible to get one Favor per event contest, which made the grind reasonable. If you wanted to get some of the rewards, you were able to. Otherwise consider it as an off week event wise and look forward to the Summer Festival.

Fireworks

Just like last year it was better to grab Fireworks off the Auction House instead of buying the Pack in the ZEN market. For the same amount of ADs you could get more Favors, which is not ideal for the devs. The lack of new rewards and the donation bug sure helped devalueing Fireworks even more. This also made farming the event borderline rewarding. Stacks of 100 Fireworks sold for 15,000 AD during the first days, but quickly plummeted down to 5,000 over the course of the event.

Speaking of Fireworks I realized how under-utilized the buffs are. Standing next to the display and buffing each other could result in up to eight Fireworks per drop. The only way however to effectively get buffs were at the end of contests. Player weren’t sharing them at all in other places. Doing Stronghold HEs with the buffs active I was able to get up to 50 Fireworks in the 10 minute duration of the buffs. That’s not bad. I still don’t think it’s worth farming that way, but if you’re doing dailies anyway it’s a nice boost of event drops.

Still some issues

The Celebration of Lliira still has some weird issues. Even if working correctly the Gold reward tier is worse than the Silver one in terms of Fireworks donated per Favor. The devs might think saving time comes with a decreased efficiency, but acquiring so many Fireworks is actually pretty grindy. Somebody that goes out and farms 500 Fireworks should be awarded appropriately.

The reward tiers are still not documented well enough, too. Zone chat was full of irritated players and donations showed most participants weren’t getting it even late into the event.


The event worked because it only had to be a filler this year. Isolated however Lliira, unlike its fireworks, is pretty unspectacular and aligns with the CtAs as events that are no longer decent.

What’s your take on the celebration? Post it in the comments below or the corresponding thread on our message board!

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.