Day Of The Dungeon Master Event Review

After wrapping up the event maps yesterday with the review of “Strange Things At The Burrow Dawn Inn“, it’s time to look at the Day of the Dungeon Master as a whole today. Portobello and Flabbergast evaluated players for a month, but do they pass their own evaluation as well?

Burrow Dawn Inn Map
Burrow Dawn Inn Map

So Cute <3

As I’ve written in my map reviews, the design and overall theme of the event is just amazing. The players running on bases, Staldorf and Watler, the Burrow Dawn Inn. There’s so much to explore even outside the maps. Neverwinter’s heros have character sheets in front of them and layout’s of the event maps. The cupboards in the room hold more scenery pieces like rocks and mountains and damage meters. I bet there’s more, but I unfortunately don’t have the patience to look around the replays I made right now. I still like the original Respen’s event and its maps the most, but Portobello is a worthy extension of the whole tabletop theme.

Portobello Race
Portobello Race

The only thing that really fell short were the mini-challenges in my eyes. First and foremost the potential of the race was completely wasted with a strange start mechanism. This should have been a three-player queue so that you can actually compete against other humans. Racing against yourself or a random player with no clue what to do took a lot of fun away from an otherwise great concept. Others challenges were fun, but the damage meters didn’t seem to work for me sometimes. So I started to only complete the dodge and control one for the daily evaluation.

 

Heroic Feats Of Heroism

Portobello Campaign UI
Portobello Campaign UI

Let’s talk the campaigns. The Respen one was a super-quick and the grand prize was to pick from different Lathander’s Dew flavors. It’s nice, a breath of fresh air and hence perfectly suited for the event. Portobello’s evaluation was fairly easy to complete on one char as well. The daily, repeatable race, Heroic Feats and event queues were enough to rush through the weekly 100 Accreditation‘s in no time even without Watler, but on a big account this could absolutely turn into a grind and heavy time investment.

 

Burrow Dawn Inn
Burrow Dawn Inn

A big minus for me personally was that you had to be on the Burrow Dawn Inn map to be able to queue into the challenges, because that completely separated you from other things of your daily routine. It was especially annoying when you tried to queue for something else than the Artificer’s Workshop, because that could actually take some time. I would have loved to do other dailies while waiting for the queue to pop.

The Beholder Pipe Dream

After participating in a month-long event players naturally are going to look into their inventory and ask themselves what they got out of it. And most might think too little. An uncommon companion, artifact and some fashion (which I like btw.) is a bit low, especially compared to the other big month-long seasonals. You might say that the comparison with the Winter and Summer Festival is a bit unfair, because those had a few years to grow, but why would you participate for four weeks and then walk away with virtually no progression? The amount of toons that can really use the offered companion is slim, same for the Artifact. CtA greens like the Armored Orc Wolf go for pennies on the AH and the Winter Festival and even the weekender Masquerade of Liars give away purple Artifacts for reasonable effort.

Burrow Dawn Inn Grave
R.I.P. Beholder

Of course there was the unique reward, the one thing everybody anticipated, but it was gated behind insurmountable RNG and only a few lucky ones got the Beholder. I’m not a fan of randomness, much less if it determines whether you benefit off an event or not. I got none, which means that on most chars I could have skipped the whole thing and wouldn’t have missed anything. Could have done a few runs on each map to enjoy the fine work of the devs and call it a day. In the end I grinded one Pocket Pet and Pewter Golem and sold both. Running CN instead of the event maps probably would have netted more.

I get that you can’t just hand out legendary mounts like candy, even in an event that runs for four weeks. But then just settle for a reward that’s appropriate and actually possible to get. Make it a certain equip power or legendary speed if a full mount is too much. Or make the Beholder a token system that’s designed to span over multiple editions of Respen’s and Portobello. I’d rather have 100 players make 150k off an event than a single one 15M.

That’s why the reward structure is disappointing. The prizes you can get are underwhelming and the one that’s cool is out of reach. Not working for me.

Evaluation Evaluated

I’m torn. Thematically the devs absolutely nailed it in every possible area. You might have made Strange Things the first event queue, because like I stated in my review it’s actually the weakest of the maps. It would have also fit the ‘story’, because saving the Borrow Dawn Inn first and then set it up as your base, from which you can continue to do other stuff, makes as much sense.

But the rewards of four weeks of participating are just too low, too random. If you really and absolutely have to stick with the Beholder at least find ways to integrate the drop in the other maps as well. Players were running the Workshop to the ground while widely ignoring everything else after the cat was out of the bag. The maps are great, let players run the ones they like the most.

My two QoL request are making the race a queue and getting rid of the requirement to sign up for the event queues inside the Burrow Dawn Inn. With a few tweaks here and there, the already lovely Day of the Dungeon Master could absolutely become great.


What’s you impression of the event? Share it in the comments below or post to the corresponding forum thread!

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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.

3 thoughts on “Day Of The Dungeon Master Event Review

  • May 11, 2017 at 4:40 am
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    I have been completing the dungeon on a daily basis and have 91 Adventuring Accreditations and 12 Credit notes. The weekly limit is 100 however I cannot earn any more until the new week starts (hence the credit notes). Does this mean I will not make 400 AA’s by the end of 4 weeks now. Cannot see the point of continuing this path if I cannot?

  • May 21, 2017 at 6:49 am
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    what are the surveys for&do they need to be kept?
    ?

    • May 21, 2017 at 7:05 am
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      They are used for certain tasks in the campaign. But you always only need one of them and successive ones can be discarded.

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