Chettlebell Explains It All Vol. 6: What you Need From the ZEN Market

Good day! Tristopher Chettlebell, Neverwinter’s preeminent historian at your service. In my capacity as an expert in all things Neverwinter, I’ve agreed to author a series of articles detailing various situations in Neverwinter that adventurers regularly have trouble understanding. It’s a big job, but nevertheless, I must persevere.

Annoying, but needed

Today we’re continuing our mini-series about the ZEN market. After pointing out items you want to avoid, we’re following up by stuff that might not be a true bargain, but is surely needed on your adventures. Value buys can be found here.

Lockbox Keys

Testing your luck can be annoying, but it’s not like the Forgotten Realms Anti Unemployment Daily Lottery (“FRAUD” Lottery) isn’t doing good things. It keeps the city rolling and there are some rumors the Protector himself might even have run out of money lately. So by all means, get your daily tickets and help Neverember and the city grow. The prizes are even worth it for the most part. You might not get a gigantic new Mount or legendary Artifact from the drawing, but the little things already will get you most of your money back, if not more.

Bags and Bank space

The same can probably be said for bags. You don’t want to run into a treasure room only to realize that you can’t take all the gold with you! It’s also recommended to rent protected storage space at the Enclave. It’s a good investment.

Character Slots

It’s good to have friends guys. No matter whether they store your stuff, help increasing your wealth or are just there for you when you need someone to talk to, you can’t have too few. Actually, while I think about it, try to limit yourself to around 50. You kinda start to lose track after that and risk neglecting some. After all you also need quality me-time to slay a dragon or two.

Companion Upgrade Token Packs

Although the Companion Upgrade Token Pack makes not much sense in most situations, it can be a decent way to upgrade companions if there’s a major discount going on and you only need a few more tokens to upgrade. At no point should you solely use these packs to bring up your companions however.

Retraining Tokens

Finding a tutor to teach you new things is unavoidable in case you feel that the current skill-set doesn’t match the requirements along the Sword Coast. I know it’s not cheap, but quality guidance comes with a certain price tag. Just note that the folks at Twilight Tor in the annual Winter Festival are normally generous and hand them out for free. So if it’s that time of the year, visit the festival ground and you might not need to make that investment.

Campaign Unlock Tokens

Since the fight has largely moved on from some of the former hot-spots, the local Lords, Sergeants, and Sovereigns allow adventurers to buy themselves out of their daily duties. These shortcuts are slightly overpriced, but still save you a lot of trouble especially in areas like Storm Kings Thunder.

Stronghold Progression

Alliances BannerI guess this is a questionable one. Materials for your Stronghold cannot directly be valued, because having a sized Stronghold comes with prestige and other advantages. The packs some merchants sell aren’t exactly a bargain, but some high-profile guilds might want you to buy them. It’s not a bad investment for those that like to rush, much less considering that you get quite a few Guild Marks out of it. Over time however your guild will get progress anyway.


I hope today’s lesson helped explain which items on the ZEN market are a necessary evil. Until next time, I must continue my research.

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6 thoughts on “Chettlebell Explains It All Vol. 6: What you Need From the ZEN Market

  • March 15, 2017 at 8:29 am
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    I would keep my hands off retraining tokens off zen market until mod 12 loadouts. It would likely make sense to switch from one universal build to several specialized one like dungeon (better fitness to role), questing (AoE dps and solo survival), or pvp (things differ here). Currently one have to make some compromizes. Or some more strange variants like SW heal (in case of buffer DC that focus on dps in dungeon) vs SW dps. It would be better to keep retraining tokens until that time.

  • November 24, 2017 at 5:16 am
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    Since PVP is basically a waist of time and farming conq shards in pve is time-gated to 10 per 5 day on a character it is a good idea to buy the SH stuff to get that during this event

  • November 24, 2017 at 5:17 am
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    Yes and the winter festival is days away and you have high chance of it dropping there too

  • June 5, 2018 at 4:39 am
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    No way in hell you advise people to pay for lockbox keys; get VIP instead

  • November 23, 2018 at 3:23 am
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    No way do you buy the Stronghold packs, Conqueror Shards have been removed so you are buy the packs at the same price as before, but getting three sets of 100 usable shards and 100 useless Conqueror shards.

    Only posted this as it’s on my Unbloogged feed and the information is now inaccurate.

    • November 23, 2018 at 6:48 am
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      Thanks. We’ll make sure to adjust the post asap.

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