Winter Festival Event Review

The annual Winter Festival event is in the books and it’s time to look back and review the third edition of the big seasonal. Unfortunately the event started off on the wrong foot with yet another exploit. Last year the Gift of Simril caused major pain for the devs, this year the a Parcels exploit wreaked havoc and Cryptic’s handling of the situation also left a lot to be desired. But I’d say we roll with the silver lining, because the devs indeed promptly punished exploiters and also lifted unjustified bans within 24 hours. Owners of the Death Slaad know that’s not a given.

Winter Event Racing
Winter Event Racing

The Winter Festival was pretty standard for me personally. As always it paid off majorly to have tons of ALTs on accounts to claim Gifts galore. I didn’t throw as many gift parties this year, which means I missed out on some Starlight Bags and moving the counter earlier in the event, but I really had to be picky with my time and went with other stuff instead. Even without this extra effort I probably walked away with goods worth north of several million AD. It’s simply amazing how much wealth the event is able to generate and I severely hope you caught one of our postings that advised you to pile up character slots in anticipation of the event.

It also means now is the best time to buy into the items that could be had in the Parcels either because you want them yourself or as resell value. The Theurge averaged over a million over the year and is now 150k. A Powrie for 50k instead of 400k? Chicken for a million instead of at least three and the list goes on.

Starlight Master
Starlight Master

I secretly hoped that I would also get one major item on my lowbie, but missed out on that front. But that’s not a real representation of the lowbie life, because normally I would have bought as many character slots as possible. But since the event is already quite busy for my mains, I couldn’t be as much involved with yet another account. I was able to get my Beacon of Simril though. You don’t even need to do the daily each and every day, but gift parties are a must. Otherwise you will lack the RPs, but can come up for it with fishing. I traded all my Stars of Fortune for additional Gifts and the double event was crucial in reaching epic and as well. I don’t think I would have been able to do it without. Overall the Artifact is a fair deal. You need to participate in the event to a certain extent, but it’s not grinding hell.

Contrary to that I was slightly disappointed that I wasn’t able to land myself a Demon Sled. While running the festival I was almost certain that I would get there eventually but nada. Most chars came up around 150 Flakes, so it would have been necessary to invest into fishing and the event profession or the Demons on Ice mini event. It’s not a biggie though. You get plenty rewards already through promotions, ZEN store gifts and Parcels. So doing a little bit more for your cool-looking Sled is absolutely reasonable.

Overall the Winter Festival remains to be my personal favorite and thank god it’s not looking to get tweaked any time soon. Make sure to share your own experience and rewards in the comments below or our forum!

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 “Winter Festival Event Review

  • January 10, 2016 at 12:43 am
    Permalink

    You forgot to mention the character lvl unlock by do a slalom before Monsters on Ice. That never got fixed and gave lvl70s a significant advantage.

    I was really disappointed the simril RP only worked to a rank of epic. I way over farmed RP early on and ended up selling most of it for copper.

Comments are closed.