What Could the Stream of Annihilation Have in Store for D&D, Neverwinter?

It’s time to get the Module 12 hype train started fellas! The Stream of Annihilation is only one day away so let’s theorize a bit about the upcoming D&D storyline and more importantly, how Neverwinter will interact with it.

Tomb of Horrors, Greyhawk and Drizzt

At this point we have two hints about the setting of the new campaign. The first is the “Stream of Annihilation” logo. It shows a green-devil face from Tomb of Horrors, a very popular adventure module by Gary Gygax for his “Greyhawk” campaign setting.

[su_quote cite=”Wiki”]The module’s plot revolves around the tomb of the demi-lich Acererak. The player characters must battle their way past a variety of monsters and traps, with the ultimate goal of destroying Acererak. Tomb of Horrors was considered the third greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by the staff of Dragon in 2004.[/su_quote]

Neverwinter of course plays in the “Forgotten Realms”, the current official setting for published adventures. In R.A. Salvatore’s latest Drizzt book “Hero” however, Acererak and his Tomb were transferred to Chult, a region of the Forgotten Realms. Which brings us to the second hint, a screenshot revealed in a preview video.

Chult, Dinosaurs and the Ring of Winter

The screenshot shows several mounted dinosaurs, which players connected to Chult as well. The city in the picture could be Mezro, where small dinosaurs are not uncommon. A few other dots connect the new storyline with the jungle island. The adventure of Artus Cimber, who first appeared in a Forgotten Realms novel set in Chult, will probably continue. Additionally the last Acquisitions Inc. game ended with the party being guided to Chult.

Thanks by the way for the excellent comments in this article. It helped my a ton to sort out things!

What’s in store for Neverwinter?

Obviously if the above assumptions prove true, the new Neverwinter campaign could also take place in a jungle setting. The assets for these type of adventure maps are already in place thanks to Pirates’ Skyhold. I also think I remember Thomas Foss saying that Module 12 would take players to a completely new location, which would be fitting. Mezro as city was destroyed by the Spellplague, but players could help the Tabaxi tribe to reclaim it from undead and monsters while also taking care of Acererak and his plans.

Companion update

A jungle setting with dinosaurs also has a lot of potential to introduce cool Mounts and Companions. Generally I think if we’re seeing a bigger gameplay update in Module 12, it might be Companions. Most of them are outdated and go for pennies on the Auction House with their useless Active Bonuses. The Bonding “opness” and Augment vs. Bonding imbalance also lingers for quite some time now.

If there’s a completely new area of progression coming, it has to be something like Insignia Bonuses that give advantages beyond stats. We’ve pretty much reached the end point of the current stat progression, so just throwing more at the players makes zero sense.

A second area that desperately needs an update is professions of course. The feature slowly decays and as we’ve pointed out, Masterwork is not really its savior.

Throne of Idris?

As new revamped dungeon I think “Throne of Idris” makes a lot of sense. It certainly fits a “Tomb of Horror” theme and just like Spellplague could feature original Idris in its leveling version and the new foe Acererak in an epic one. The original “Tomb of Horror” by the way heavily focused on traps. It would be nice, and an interesting concept, if the design in the game would also come with a heavy dose of skill and puzzle games.

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW-0kX3LNww” https=”yes”]

Trickster Rogue and level cap raise?

What we already know is that the TR is next in the balancing pass. It’s really hard to give a prediction in what direction the class is headed, but it would seem that Trickster Rogues would appreciate a bit more PVE viability. For PVP certain one-shotting builds will probably get nerfed.

There’s also a possibility of a level cap raise. The level 60 era lasted two years, the level 70 one turned two in April. So just from a timing standpoint it makes sense. As said above we’ve also pretty much reached the end point of the current stat progression. Most DPS builds easily cap Armor Penetration and 100% Critical Strike. Most defensive builds have no issues reaching the resistance cap. So all that’s basically left right now to make builds better is stacking Power and HP, which also was the case in Module 5 right before the level cap raise. I suppose you could get level 73+ monsters more DR and RI, but that would only stall the inevitable.

The counterpoint would be that Module 11 introduced so many new items that it makes no sense to invalidate them only one mod later. On the other hand Cryptic has made other stuff obsolete earlier than we would have liked to in the past. I’m not completely sold on the idea, especially considering how big of a mess Elemental Evil was. We shouldn’t be surprised if it does happen though.


What’s your expectation of the Stream of Annihilation and the next Neverwinter content update? Share your thoughts 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.

4 thoughts on “What Could the Stream of Annihilation Have in Store for D&D, Neverwinter?

  • June 1, 2017 at 1:56 pm
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    Personally I’d love to see an exploration of the Underdark. Menzoberranzen, Blingdenstone and maybe a few others in the upper Underdark or a specific region of the Underdark.

    If not that, I don’t think the player base needs another campaign at this point. Give a full module (4 months?) to allow newer players a chance to complete all the campaigns and long-time players a chance to get alts thru campaigns and geared enough to do the current end-game content like FBI, mSVA and mSP. That’s not to say new content shouldn’t be added. They’ve already brought in “new” versions of Skypirates, Karrundax and Cloak Tower. Why not scale them to 10.6k along with all the existing dungeons and give them appropriate rewards for completion? Maybe even have higher scaled dungeons like 12k, 13k, etc. I’d like to actually have to use the mechanics of Valindra’s Tower and Malabog’s Castle again instead of just burning thru the final boss in a few seconds. Remember the caskets or whatever they are in VT and the portals in MC? When was the last time anyone actually had to deal with those, mod6?

  • June 1, 2017 at 6:32 pm
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    Stream of annihilation? Is that like when you pee when you have a std.

  • June 1, 2017 at 10:43 pm
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    My guess, is The Jungles of Chult. I put so much faith in this answer that I put the efforts into a special episode to tackle Chult’s background story in time for the Stream of Annihilation – https://youtu.be/CtTlPN5N_08

  • June 12, 2017 at 1:40 pm
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    You forgot to mention perma courage break high recovery TRs. If anything needs a nerf it’s that. The one shot build is the old meta and rarely a problem for a veteran player. Perma smoke and perma courage are hilariously broken at present and need a fix.

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