Neverwinter Devs Reveal The Reasons Behind The Upcoming Level Squish
With The Odious Court now live in Neverwinter, Cryptic Studios is now focusing on priming players for the release of Module 21, which we initially thought would be rolling out with the final Sharandar episode. Module 21 will implement the previously-announced level squish that will bring the level cap down to 20 in an effort to go back to the game’s Dungeons & Dragons roots.
“The big change with Module 21 is an alignment to Dungeons & Dragons with an adjusted level cap of 20,” the studio explained. “As you play through the new leveling flow, you achieve new levels at key milestones in the stories of each zone. This means we could better message new power unlocks in the quest rewards, and ensure a proper pace and challenge as you work through each zone. No longer will players out-level a story just because they did some side-quests, or a few queues.”
According to Cryptic, it should only take players roughly 12 hours to reach the new level cap. Meanwhile, several zones have been temporarily removed while the developers work on ways to incorporate them into the new progression system. These include Blacklake District, Blackdagger Ruins, Helm’s Hold, Mount Hotenow, Pirate’s Skyhold, Rothe Valley, and Tower District.
“We did not make this decision lightly and we know there are players out there that enjoyed each of these spaces,” said the devs. “First and foremost, we want to make it clear that vaulting in this case is not the same as removal. We have removed content in the past, and we do listen to the concerns about content like old dungeons that have been lost. We have made some past efforts with features like Tales of Old to bring back this lost content.”
“With the new M21 leveling flow, the Throne of Idris was brought back to properly end the story of Ebon Downs. But those are targeted cases, and with vaulting we have a more discrete plan to bring this content back. With the new Adventure system, which we will discuss more in an upcoming post, we will be able to revisit these zones and their stories with updated flow, rewards, and visual polish.”
The new Bard class was also rumored to be making his debut alongside The Odious Court, but alas, we were sadly mistaken. We’re still waiting on word on when the newest class to be added in five years will be gracing the servers. We’ll let you know as soon as Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment announce a release date.
More information can be found on the Neverwinter official site.
