Improved Trade Bar Store To Feature Lockbox Items, Vastly Reduced Prices

Although we are a little bit late as the dev blog is from last week, we wanted to quickly look at the improved Trade Bar store, because the changes are potentially big for players.

To sum it up: The rework is amazing!

It’s really as simple as that because Trade Bars will finally become a useful premium currency that contributes to character progression. I’m not sure what their goals were designing the first version, but it’s safe to say it didn’t exactly work out as nearly every item in the store was overpriced. Nobody in a sane mind is going to invest 1,000 Bars (~125 lockboxes) for a Nightmare weapon skin. Maybe they thought players would be willing to pay a lot more for good looking and unique stuff, but it never developed that way especially with the way the transmute system works. Therefore it makes sense the Transmutes are getting the greatest reduction and are being dropped to five Trade Bars. Include the small prices for Dye Packs from the ZEN market, Rank 7 Enchantments and Novelty items and you get the idea that somebody in PWE HQ has finally realized that those weekend players and even VIPs, who open a lockbox each day, need to get something out of there Trade Bars as well.

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Speaking of additions: Players will be able to get old lockbox items from the Trade Bar Store as well and it’s probably safe to assume that the selection will be extended in the future. Add the new Dusk gear and you can get a decent amount of progression out of your lockboxes even if you miss out on the RNG front. This also lessens the frustrating gambling character because you now get guaranteed stuff over time. One minor issue is consistency though: Artifacts (1,200), Companions (800) and Mounts (2,400) have different prices, their drop chance from the lockboxes however are mostly the same.

The biggest impact on the market will have the price changes to Wards. First of all they got rid of another major design error and severely lowered the pack of Preservation Wards, which is now appropriately priced in relation to the Coalescent Ward. The Coal itself will be set to 75 Trade Bars down from 200 and I’d expect the Enchantment market to adjust as well. Everything that needs a Coal will get cheaper. This also brings the Ward in line with its ZEN value of 1k, because given the current Trade Bar drop amount you get one Coal out of nine lockbox keys, which cost 1012 ZEN.

After the gear preview feature this is the second QoL change in Neverwinter Underdark that players can really look forward to.

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.

One thought on “Improved Trade Bar Store To Feature Lockbox Items, Vastly Reduced Prices

  • November 7, 2015 at 8:03 am
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    The reduced prices are great, especially for wards, but this begs the question if hey are not going to, for example, reduce the amount of bars you get from lockboxes (again). It would not surprise me one bit.

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