Ravenloft Console Maintenance Stream Summary

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Last Tuesday’s console Ravenloft launch came with the usual hour-long maintenance stream to entertain players while they were waiting for the servers to come up. As always, CM Julia and Lead Designer Thomas additionally took time to answer some basic questions. I unfortunately didn’t get to a summary last week, but since there’s some stuff worth mentioning, here’s a late recap!

The most hilarious sequence occurred right at start by the way. While Julia was talking about her technical difficulties (Facebook live wasn’t working) and joked about how Thomas is even worse, the lights went out. They apparently have a motion sensor or something that automatically turns off the light when nobody is around. And well, you don’t usually move too much while talking! So this happened (thanks to Rivodus for clipping it):

Ravenloft Could Have Launched Earlier

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But now let’s get to the actual stream and what was said. Julia started by explaining that Ravenloft on consoles could have launched earlier. That’s interesting because when asked about console launch dates, we’ve always dished out the “PC release + two months” rule of the thumb. But it now looks like Cryptic is actually able to bring it down to more like six weeks. She said that they didn’t want to risk the new update causing issues with another huge maintenance, hence the delay. Them trying to bring launch dates closer together is certainly a good thing. Because of Sony and Microsoft certification processes, it’s very unlikely however that all platforms will ever launch on the same day.

Will There Be Modules That Exclusively Focus on Dungeons?

I’m not sure why this is being brought up time and time again, but as much as some of us would see a larger focus on dungeons, it’s not going to happen unless Cryptic is able to suddenly pull additional resources (devs) out of nowhere. So the clear answer here was an unsurprising “no”.

Upcoming Q&A and Balancing Progress

Julia also mentioned that they are planning additional Q&As for October. There might actually be even two, one at the start and one at the end of month, focusing on M15 and balancing. In terms of the latter Thomas shared that they are pretty much working for 1.5 years on re-balancing all classes, but haven’t had as much time to do so as they would have liked. But he said that changes are coming! Most however won’t make it live before Module 16.

Mod 15 Teasers in Protector’s Enclave

Most of the teasers in the Protector’s Enclave in recent weeks have been resolved with the announcement of the “Heart of Fire” update. Nonetheless Julia felt like she had to “break our heart” by saying that there will be no Bard class in the foreseeable future. I mean… It’s not like we didn’t warn you. That pretty much has been the state of knowledge ever since and there was little evidence that something changed. It’s still telling that for the second time in the last months some hype built around the possibility of a new class being added to the game. The players are hungry, but definitely have to wait much longer to feast.

PVP Updates and Long-Term Plans

I can share slightly more positive news on PVP however, although it’s still very vague. Thomas said that with balancing classes they also hope to bring back meaningful PVP to the game. It’s a big “if” in my opinion, but he definitely mentioned that they want to revive Leaderboard competitions and such.

Twitch Prime Loot for Consoles, Working on Drops

A couple weeks ago there was some controversy about a Twitch Prime incentive (a Purple Owlbear) that Cryptic only made available for PC players. I think I’ve gotten into a little Twitter disagreement back then with angry console folks that felt left out. I told them that it’s a complicated process sometimes and not everything is in Cryptic’s hands. And well, that pretty much got confirmed. They are trying to get console players the mount, but it’s something they have to do in cooperation with Twitch (and probably also Sony and Microsoft).

Another thing they are working on are Twitch Drops. Didn’t sound like there’s something imminent, but that would obviously be nice.

Event Updates

We cover (and criticize) outdated events every month around here and after some disappointing news in July things might start to look a little brighter on that front. People were really disappointed that the Summer Festival got no update, but Thomas said that the focus this year were the Anniversary, Winter Festival, and Halloween events. So it was simply a resource thing (as always).

He also did say that he’s tired of the outdated Call-to-Arms and that they do not have enough different events in the game. There will however be more updates and completely new events soon(tm).


That’s my quick stream summary that hopefully touches on the most important stuff that was said. Do have any further additions or questions? Share them on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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