Yesterday, Perfect World Entertainment announced Neverwinter’s ninth expansion, The Maze Engine. Today, we’re finding out the philosophy behind the update, or at least the dungeon-related portions. Senior Game Designer Randy “Arkayne” Mosiondz explains in a new dev blog that PWE is “putting the dungeons back in D&D“:
“Our goal here was to shorten the leveling dungeons, reduce them to a smaller required team size, make them accessible at higher levels, and provide better dungeon gear that mattered to players. We started by turning off a lot of the leveling dungeons as we started doing revisions on them, mainly to prevent confusion between the older-style and new-style dungeons that were being introduced. As you’ve told us, you’ve been missing the ability to go dungeon-crawling with your friends. Fear not, for a number of dungeons have returned in all their glory!”
The dungeons will be split into two types: regular three-man dungeons, which are unlocked as you level and are scaled in difficulty, XP, and loot according to your level; and epic dungeons, which unlock at level 70 and are “considerably harder” then their three-man counterparts, requiring five warm bodies and encompassing multiple tiers of difficulty and rewards. Returning dungeons will also receive some much-needed visual overhauls.
