Neverwinter Ravenloft QoL Roundup: Character Select Screen, Home Page Facelift, Item Levels, And Insignias

As part of our massive preview of Neverwinter’s Module 14, Ravenloft, we are going over some quality of life improvements today. As of Module 14, Cryptic has scratched the “B” updates (Shroud of Souls, Swords of Chult) and will incorporate all “QoL” changes in the main modules instead. And oh boy they didn’t disappoint, because Ravenloft’s list of little tweaks and improvements is long. We’ll be going through them one by one and talk about purpose and usefulness.

[su_box title=”More on Ravenloft!” radius=”0″]Want all the latest on the new Ravenloft update? Click here for the full coverage![/su_box]

Insignias Giving Refining Points

We’re not starting off with a game changer, but Insignias giving a small amount of refining points is indeed a nice tweak. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve discarded or vendored green ones for a while now. Sure you could already donate them to your Guild Coffers, but it never seemed worth it. Now you at least get some RP out of them, which adds a little more value. Green ones give 25, blue ones 100, and purple ones 400. For everyone who might speculate on the market and buy up Insignias now, don’t get your hopes up. Rare/Epic ones sell over their RP value and the Amethyst (25 RP) is going for pennies. So you are unlikely to make profit here.

Item Level Changes

When going on preview you might experience a little drop in your item level. This is because PVP-related boons no longer count towards it. It’s a minor change for sure, but the devs stated it’s just the first of many changes to make the system better represent actual power. It would surely have been better to only make the boons add item level in actual PVP content, but for most situations it’s fine to simply exclude them globally.

[su_quote cite=”noworries”]There are other item level changes we’d like to make, but we also didn’t want to lower anyone’s item level too much all at once.[/su_quote]

Home Page Facelift

The next change is actually already live and rocking! The “Home” screen that appears when you log in for the first time each day now features more meaningful content and shortcuts to vendors, events, and news! It also lists very basic playing tips and information, just don’t expect guides or in-depth explanations here. It’s usually just two or three short paragraphs that outline the systems and their features. The news on the right are structured in the same manner. Overall it’s a nice hub that offers most to returning or casual players that quickly want to know what’s currently going on and what has changed lately. Brand-new players on the contrary do not really get the information they need and for the endgame crowd everything should be quite trivial anyway. I think it’s a useful change nonetheless because the home screen was dated and didn’t really serve a purpose before.

Character Select Screen

Our last quality of life change today is one that many have been waiting for! The Character Select Screen now features a few sort options that help to arrange your toons more logically. Many veteran players had the issue that their mains were spread across their account because the list is sorted by creation date by default. This option still exists, but is extended by four others: Last Played Date, Level, Class, and Name. You can also mark one character as main that will always show on top, regardless of the sort. Theoretically this should allow players to find and access the characters that matter the most much faster, but the system has practical flaws that severely hinder its usefulness.

Just imagine a veteran account that has 50 toons, all level 70. This is not unusual as leveling and farming Leadership for months and years will eventually lead to max level. Such an account probably prays with all characters every day, rendering “Last Played Date” and “Level” useless. Same for “Class”, unless all your pray and storage alts feature the same one. So all that’s left is to name your toons in a way that the mains will end up on top and your alts on the bottom, which feels like a workaround.

It would have been much better to allow marking multiple mains or let players freely arrange their toons. I assume that was too difficult or didn’t make it in time, but that still doesn’t change the fact that in its current form, the sort options probably don’t offer as much for the issues that the system was designed to help with. So overall there’s more work to do here and I certainly hope that we’ll see improvements down the road.


What’s your take on the mentioned quality of life improvements? Do you like them or should the devs have spent their time differently? Share your thoughts and experience on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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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.

11 thoughts on “Neverwinter Ravenloft QoL Roundup: Character Select Screen, Home Page Facelift, Item Levels, And Insignias

  • June 5, 2018 at 8:27 am
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    I’m always all for QoL improvements, but this batch seems almost completely ignorable for me. I don’t collect enough insignias to see a meaningful RP gain. Never did PVP, let alone gather gear or boons. New home page is very meh. Sortable character select page seems mostly for players who have more than 10 characters, which will probably never be my case.

    • June 5, 2018 at 8:33 am
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      I would gladly trade in all of these for any of the following:
      – “Collect All” OR “Collect and repeat” buttons in Professions
      – Updated fashion doll that allows me to mix and match fashion and gear visual items
      – Repeatable quest tracker that allows me to view which weeklies, dailies, HE, influence etc. each character has completed
      – Include invocation timer in the character select screen

      • June 6, 2018 at 6:07 am
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        @shadrakt2
        It would be really good, but I really don’t think they will ever do anything like a “Collect and Repeat” button for Professions. That seems too much like a Botter’s Mandate.

        🙁

  • June 5, 2018 at 12:48 pm
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    I think that AD and companion upgrade tokens making it into the shared bank deserves an honorable mention as well.

    Also disabling armor visuals? I guess that’s arguably not QoL, but it will increase my enjoyment quite a bit.

    • June 5, 2018 at 11:04 pm
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      Hey. It’s not mentioned in the article, but I’m planning to do multiple of these “QoL” roundups where I’ll touch on the stuff you said 🙂

      • June 6, 2018 at 3:17 pm
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        Cool cool. Also the individual respects of boons/feats/paragons. There’s a lot coming in terms of QoL!

        Cheers

  • June 6, 2018 at 6:04 am
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    A bit disappointed with the Character Sorter. I was hoping I could CTRL+right click and drag ‘n’ drop them where I like. But I suppose I could sort them by Class or Race. I assume CW and Dragonborn will be first, though.

    Companion Tokens in the bank is a VERY good thing. Should have always been there. One day, we might be able to put ALL currencies in there, but they’d probably need a new server farm for the extra space required! 🙂

    And getting rid of that Trans Bark of Outfit Obscurement and Trans Negation of Fashion visuals will be good.

    But what did you mean by this:
    “As of Module 14, Cryptic has scratched the “B” updates (Shroud of Souls, Swords of Chult) and will incorporate all “QoL” changes in the main modules instead.”

    What do you mean by “scratched” the “B” updates?

    Cheers!

    Oh, and how big is this update in terms of GB?

    🙂

    • June 6, 2018 at 6:10 am
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      DOH! I just noticed, we can’t sort them by Race at all!

      🙁

  • June 6, 2018 at 6:25 pm
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    Would like to see the main screen compressed somewhat so you get more characters per screen. this would cut down on the scroll time.

    Maybe on the sort options a sort desc would be more meaningful. So for example the last login with the character who you haven’t logged into lately is on top. For now the only useful thing is being able to put your 1 main on top which for MOST (not all) of the population is probably at least on the first page so not life changing

  • June 8, 2018 at 8:22 am
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    Sort characters by “level” should really be by item level. That would make it more useful

  • August 22, 2018 at 12:32 pm
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    I hope the character sort had some tweaks since this was written, none of these option will sort mine the way I want them either, unless I start renaming them…Sort by Item Level might have worked for me but really I want to bring one character up a few slots, nothing I see here will let me do that.

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