Portobello’s Campaign Challenge Review: Artificer’s Workshop

Week two of the Portobello Campaign has passed and we’re looking at the second event map, the Artificer’s Workshop. For a review of Trial of Traps, click here.

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If you thought players had trouble getting the trick behind the first boss in the Trial of Traps, you might be amazed how teams can fail with a mechanic called “splitting up”. Artificer’s Workshop is a little bit more straight forward on the way to its final boss and the only real obstacle is finding ten vents and then ten Svirfneblins. But instead of covering a different area, some players decided to outpace and beat me to the vents. Very clever indeed.

Svirfneblin
Kick it!

Despite that, the map doesn’t have as much potential for frustration overall, but also isn’t as fast as Trial of Traps, which might be important for those wanting to amass their Accreditations on multiple chars. The locations of the vents and Svirfs are random, so quite frequently my groups were stuck looking for that last one. It’s also hella annoying if you thought someone covered the upper area only to find out that they missed something. A funny anecdote is the fact that the devs failed to seal off Flabbergast’s room properly, so you can just sneak into it without the need to gather the group. It saves you like ten to twenty seconds. (this was fixed!)

My groups had little trouble realizing you need to place the crystals to break the shield. But even if only one or two players are actively participating, it’s not slowing down the whole thing as much as the Drider boss in the Trial of Traps is able to. I occasionally had teammates asking for help with the Crystals, but there was much less shouting going on.

Artificer's Workshop Beholder
Impenetrable this!

Just like Trial of Traps, the map visually is very well done and kicking the Svirfneblins is just the type of weird shit the event is all about. Loving it! Doing the vents and then the Svirfs might be a bit too repetitive, but not going to complain too much here. The boss bragging about an impenetrable shield, that isn’t so impenetrable even without the Beholder beams, adds to the list of little jokes and side notes.

Speaking of the Beholder: Interacting with it might pull up the storied Beholder Mount, but the RNG is beyond pathetic, probably on par with legendary rewards in lockboxes. At this point it’s safe to assume that it’s not worth farming the map in order to get the mount. Overall however Artificer’s Workshop offers slightly more fun and creativity in my eyes.


What’s your opinion on the second queue of Portobello’s Campaign? Share it in the comments or visit 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.

One thought on “Portobello’s Campaign Challenge Review: Artificer’s Workshop

  • April 17, 2016 at 1:54 pm
    Permalink

    Saw this online today:

    [Admin] Kron has acquired a Legendary Beholder Tank Mount from the Artificer’s Workshop

    Thus, it does exist and it is dropping, from this map no less. Of course, it must have an extremely low probability. Plus we do not know if there are any prerequisites for it to have a chance of dropping.

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