Before E3 on the Neverwinter Foundry Focus I was joined by guest host Som Pourfarzaneh. Som is a Community Manager for Cryptic on the Neverwinter team. While Som was unable to log in game and play through the foundry mission with me he was kind enough to heckle me on Skype and answer a few questions from the chat room about the game along the way.
Content creator @Sourcreamking, whose name elicited a sense of hunger from Som, e-mailed me earlier in the week and asked that we play through his creation, Bored of the Rings. While I do not usually consider spoofs my thing this was a fun mission that took an iconic story, Lord of the Rings, and poked fun at it. We start off our quest by being tasked to take a ring and deliver it to Mount Gloom and then throw the ring to its destruction in the lava. At roughly 25 minutes into the video Som and I were discussing how it was nice to be surprised by easter eggs authors placed in their missions. I told Som if we didn’t see Gollum I was going to be disappointed. Less than 5 minutes later we saw a Gollum like creature that helped us destroy a pit fiend named Balrog. This creature was named Trollum. Sourcreamking also had humorous names for all the rest of the cast of characters from Lord of the Rings. Since he created more than a few laugh out loud moments for Som and I and he made effective use of flavor text items Sourcreamking earned a Mithril star for his creation.
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They are just a big old tease.
Besides our foundry mission, a couple weeks back was a big news week for Neverwinter. We finally learned that on June 20th the game will drop the safety net of the "Open Beta" tag and pull up their big kid pants. Cryptic will refer to their new game officially as a released MMORPG. The patch notes for this open beta to release transition are massive. There are a lot of class balancing and even mechanics reworks in store for us. As a Guardian Fighter I’m looking forward to the increase in threat.
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I hope these dwarves have homeowners insurance.
What I’m most interested in for the transition phase is Gauntlgrym being added into the game. Gauntlgrym is a PvE and PvP focused zone for level 60 characters. There will be no gear score limitation to join this event so even the freshest of 60s are welcome. Players will, however, be required to belong to a guild. Guild leaders will also be required to align their guilds to a Gauntlgrym faction. Once the event portion of Gauntlgrym is complete players will be able to progress further on their adventure into the Dwarf King’s Crypt or the Fardelver Crypt. The Dwarf King’s Crypt will only be available to the winning faction and reward participants with Tier 2 gear. The Fardelver Crypt will be available to either the winners or losers and reward player’s heros with Tier 1 gear. Gauntlgrym is the ancestral homeland to the Delzoun dwarves and plays a significant role in the Neverwinter Saga of books written by R. A. Salvatore.
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Looks a little like that teaser image...
Evidently announcing their live date and one content addition, Gauntlgrym, was not enough to put the wraps on a news week for Cryptic. They also decided to go ahead and tease even more details about their first major content update. In keeping with fine D&D tradition Cryptic is referring to these content updates as modules. We now have a name for module 1, Fury of the Feywild. I’ll be the first to admit when the teaser site for module 1 was originally launched I was completely wrong about my guess. Once I stopped to take a look through the 4th Edition Neverwinter Campaign Setting I found this picture and was able to start piecing things together.
Neverwinter Wood was part of the great fey empire of Illefarn which covered a large portion of Faerun. Like any empire the Illefarn began to crumble and split into 3 smaller empires. Iliyanbruen occupied the northern most region and her capital was Sharandar. This elven empire slipped even further into ruins and the remaining elves made their way into the Feywild. The Feywild is another plane that runs parallel to Faerun. Like any ancient ruins Sharandar has relics that are worth small fortunes and this has attracted marauders and other would be treasure seekers. Not willing to sit idly by and watch their ancestral home be ransacked by outsiders the descendants of the Iliyanbruen have stated to reclaim Sharandar for themselves.
It appears that the main group in Fury of the Feywild attacking Sharandar is the Fomorian Giants. In 4th edition D&D the Fomorians live in the Feywild as well. They inhabit the area known as the Feydark. This is an underground system of caverns and tunnels that is similar to Faerun’s Underdark. The Fomorians are brutal in nature and can often be seen wearing the remains of their latest victims as war trophies on their bodies. What they would want with a city that is on the surface built in trees remains to be seen. Hopefully Cryptic has an interesting tale in store for us.
Make sure to keep the suggestions coming to [email protected]. This week Franklin (aka Chief Sarcan) will be filling in as host. You can still catch the action on our MMORPG.com stream channel. This week will start at 5pm EDT. Thanks for watching and remember, stop and read the quest text.
Robert Lashley / Robert Lashley is a Staff Writer and Online host for MMORPG.com and RTSGuru.com. Rob's bald and when he isn't blinding people from the glare on his head talking in front of a camera you can chase him down on twitter @Grakulen
Check out some past Neverwinter Foundry Focus articles:
- The Duplication Debacle
- Foundry Focus Episode 4: Ye Old Chuckle Hut
- Foundry Focus Episode 5: The 27th Level
