Fixing The Neverwinter Campaigns: Tyranny Of Dragons

The devs are keen on keeping the old content viable and they tweaked old Neverwinter campaigns more than once in the past, but playing my lowbie I realized there are still some annoying inconsistencies that need to be addressed. So let’s look at each of the campaigns and discuss which areas could need a minor improvement.

Please note that this series has been written weeks ago and has to be seen as independent set of fixes and improvements to the ones that will go live with the Maze Engine. It’s based on the current Module 8 state of the game.

The endgame of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign is a special one because of two unique aspects: First ToD was affected by the raise of the level cap in a major way, because its Artifact gear had to make the transition from 60 to 70. And it’s the only campaign so far that spans over two modules. Both aspects spell some problems today that have to be dealt with.

The campaign is still stuffed with old level 60 gear that largely remained its price tag and has to be separated or changed. Like other campaign sets the Eternal gear is in a strange spot. It costs currency that can only be earned as level 70, but as scaling level equipment starting at 61 it has little use beyond that. The set was once thought to be the transitional equip for 60s in Elemental Evil, but since progression now skips the Well of Dragons, it instantly became obsolete.

ToD has sufficient campaign sinks for the Module 4 currency through Dragon Hoard’s Enchantments and the ability to donate for Favors, but you are going to pile up on Fangs, Favors and Pages after completion. Also there is little incentive to run Tiamat after acquiring the boons, which makes it harder for newer players to find help.

Tyranny of Dragons Campaign UI
Tyranny of Dragons Campaign UI

The overall length of the campaign is ok. You need Pages worth eight weeks of questing, which technically makes it as long as Fury of the Feywild, but other than Module 1 you are able to start the campaign early and obtain the first boons way before 70. But a situation has evolved around the necessary books. The amount of needed campaign currency to get them from the store is comically high and since you need to add 50k of ADs, you are much better served buying the Incantations and Breyer’s for pennies in the AH. It’s another story for Haarl, which drops from the much less frequent run Shores of Tuern and is currently around ~50k. While you can actually buy yourself out of that grind madness, the two Rise of Tiamat boons require a combined 80 Favors, which was already a lot at release. Now that Tiamat is only done at 100% Hoard on the weekends, at least the last boon is completely out of range for a decent amount of characters and players. Meanwhile buying enough currency to get Favors costs millions.

Knowing the history of the campaign, its structure makes sense, but nowadays it’s highly annoying that you need to invest five Favors before getting a hand on campaign keys or the Dragon Empire Treasure. The campaign also could need a RP injection, because RPs for Artifact Gear are too hard to obtain even taking bots out of the equation.

Fixes:

  • Reduce the Dragonforged Artifact quest to 10k ADs and 30 Coin and let it drop the old 60s Artifact gear.
  • Let the Adventuring Gear task drop the old Mod 4/5 armor set transmutes.
  • Merge the Mystic and Arcane Dragon Key task and make it available for 10 Coins and 4 Pages, one Secret and one Sigil. Either let the new key open both chests or let the player choose which one to receive.
  • Strip ADs from the Dragon Hoard Enchantments task, but up Sigils and Secrets to 18 each and add 25 Pages.
  • Remove Pages from Dragon Affinity and Mastery.
  • Remove Pages from the WoD weekly Reclaiming the Hoard.
  • Strip Linus from the Prevent Tiamat’s Return task and adjust all three Module 5 progression tasks to 3 Fangs, 2 Sigils and 2 Secrets.
  • Move the Elemental Fire Weapons to the store for 15 Linus.
  • Cut the needed currency for the Imperial Waist and Neck piece in half.
  • Let all boon books drop equally from Tiamat, Lair of Lostmauth and Shores of Tuern.
  • Strip all AD from the boon books in the store and adjust currency values to 30 each.
  • Add one Lesser Resonance Stone to each of the ToD and WoD campaign quests.
  • Add a Resonant Bag to the campaign store for 1 Linu, 10 Pages and 5 Fangs.
  • Make Eternal Gear bind to account, adjust the price to 15 Sigils and Secrets and 100 Coins and lower the minimum level requirement to 30, but let scaling stop at 60.

With these changes outdated tasks will drop transmutes, Linus are no longer needed for progression and like Fey Blessings DHs become a fully farmable item. The fact that ToD is the campaign which makes dungeon keys the hardest to acquire is also dealt with and for the Rise of Tiamat boons you no longer need to complete Mod 4 quests.

Boon books are now randomly available through all content which should help equal prices and currencies in the campaign store are majorly reduced to make it more viable farming them. Since RPs for Artifact Gear are the hardest to get, campaign quests are getting an injection in line with the other campaigns. The added Resonant Bag can be used to get rid of overflow currencies and makes running Tiamat viable even after acquiring all boons.

Eternal Gear becomes leveling gear that can be accessed as early as level 30 and can be farmed for ALTs. I like this change even better now that the devs plan to let the campaign gear from Sharandar and Dread Ring scale starting from level 61. You don’t really need three different sets for 61-70 and to make this one a pre 60 choice makes sense because the campaign starts early.


This campaign wraps up the series and fittingly the devs recently announced their own set of changes to old campaigns that will be introduced with The Maze Engine. In case you missed it, here’s my list of fixes for Fury of the FeywildShadowmantle and Curse of Icewind Dale. Also make sure to share your thoughts in the comments below or our forum!

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 “Fixing The Neverwinter Campaigns: Tyranny Of Dragons

  • February 27, 2016 at 9:24 am
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    You suggest a lot of these changes without making any mention of the changes the devs made last week with regards to the ToD campaign. Many of your changes are duplicates, and others don’t clarify that you want a more extensive above and beyond.

    “Reduce the Dragonforged Artifact quest to 10k ADs and 30 Dragon Hoard Coins and let it drop the old 60s Artifact gear.”
    This doesn’t cost any AD in mod 9 for example, but you still seem to want it to cost AD?

    • February 27, 2016 at 2:10 pm
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      Please note that the series of campaign fixes were written way before anybody could knew that changes were coming (six to eight weeks ago). We decided to put the last post of the series out there although the changes of The Maze Engine were already known and there were only very minor edits. We probably could have noted at the very beginning of the post. Duplicates simply mean j0Shi and the devs had the same ideas.

      We’re going to forward the Dragonforged Artifact issue to the author and he is probably going to check it on the weekend. Thanks for your input!

  • February 29, 2016 at 7:32 am
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    With regard to Linus, the situation is even worse on xbox. You note that PC runs on the weekend when your hoard percentage hits 100%. Xbox has not seen a percentage above 5% in over six months, weekend or no.

    As you can imagine, most people on Xbox have given up hope on getting not just the last boon, but the last two, unless they were playing prior to mod6 and were grinding Tiamat heavily beforehand.

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