Ascendancy, Ascend!

Yes, I know it sounds like some kind of stuff done by a Mr Lee. Yes, I know what I'm referring to. In fact, I also know which Mr Lee I'm referring to.

C/mon, you think this Mr Lee above is related to the late Mr Lee?
You might as well tell me every Lee Wei Ling looks the same, young or old, pretty or not.

Ascendancy, Ascend!

If this sounds like a parody, let me first assure the correct Mr Lee that it is never my intent to mock anyone. In fact, all the better if this guy below will feature as a permanent member of the Avengers.

Yes, I know Magneto will surely rage. Pretty sure Quicksilver is cool with this bro-in-law, though.
Credit: Emily369

Enough about the parody title, let's continue...

Earlier this Tuesday, The Cloaked Ascendancy ascended into the radar. So what should we expect in this module? Is mod 11 really worth your time? What about the future direction where post-mod 11 is concerned? This post is basically a mixture of my views and experience so far in playing TCA.

DISCLAIMER!

I don't profess to endorse anything here. In fact, the views are that of my own (apart from what is factual, of course). In fact, I don't claim responsibility for Cryptic using my surname for free in this zone. As for whether the 문화체육관광부 did approach my sis in order to endorse shows like Running Man and The Legend of the Blue Sea free of charge, you better go ask her instead of me.

There's a reason why I have to up the disclaimer...

Because TCA is really addicting. So far for now, at least. Firstly and foremost, I don't remember the game servers hitting a post-release lag like the one I experienced so far. There were moments where Arylos missed the target with his Rain of Swords due to momentary lag (you thought you nailed the target[s], only to realize the lag caused your hit timing to go terribly wrong. OP users will understand why the Divine Call execution doesn't seem quite right). Yes, I know using Rain of Swords was just me messing around like how a German Löwe is always known to mess his ideas around. The reason why was because I was actually experimenting on the dps end. Not for fun, but for a practical reason (I'll get to this later on).

The system has been streamlined. Period. While this was possibly Cryptic's aim starting from mod 6, TCA basically did right the streamlining in every sense of the word. If there's a blessing in disguise behind the Spellplague known as Elemental Evil, it may possibly be the devs using their past failure to do right the streamlining aspect.

Like Icewind Dale, Storm King's Thunder, and Sea of Moving Ice, The Cloaked Ascendancy basically gives you stuff only useful within the campaign. More specifically, only useful within the zone. What it means is this: All the junk you salvaged from the River District goes straight to the River District.

If you think this sounds like another excruciating black ice/voninblod farming, however, you're wrong. The problem with black ice and voninblod lies in the gamers feeling as if they're being coerced to farm. No farm, no gear. And Neverwinter is all about gear. TCA doesn't have this issue. No one expects the junk to be useful apart from upgrading Neverember's homeland security in the River District (not just that, but mostly for that). In other words, TCA basically destroyed the mental anguish of torturous farming by reducing the need to do so.

And speaking of farming, TCA is no different from SKT or SOMI. The reason why being that we're talking about challenging fights. Malakut (i.e. the super tanky control wizard in my guild alliance) once said this below.

Please ignore the FB part. I was too lazy to cut out the relevant pieces.

Malakut wasn't guilty of telling a lie, let alone the stats. Rather, his statement above was a (bloody) damn lie. Period. TCA is NOT focused towards the casual gamers. Yes, you can afford to run the River District with your alt character. But it also means you'll have to be very good with your alt as well. Which is why I most likely will only use Myrreas and Cyrea apart from Arylos for River District. As for the rest, I will just advance them till the Maze Engine campaign (i.e. completing Sharandar, Dread Ring, Elemental Evil, Underdark, and Maze Engine campaigns with the Tyranny of Dragons boons stopping at tier 4).

In fact, I won't be advancing Myrreas and Cyrea's ToD boons beyond tier 5 (at least for now). Reclaiming the River District turned out to be a blast, but it's also time-consuming as well.

The remaining 4 characters will most likely be used either for standard dungeons (astral diamond income), stronghold builder quests (because I need to the guild marks to buy the damn masterwork stuff) or both (if there's enough time). As for Myrreas and Cyrea, I'll need to finish Arylos' end on the River District first (until then, they will be used for the same purpose as the other 4).

Note: If you wanna try out River District, my personal recommendation will be to get all the campaign boons outside SKT and SOMI at the very least. And that includes the Underdark ones.

The Lord Pretender vs the Great Pretender

I'm not gonna apologize for posting a major spoiler here. Period. After all, it's not as if I'm some rich man's son driving his father's BMW like how Fujiwara Takumi drove his dad's Toyota.

The title above would have indicated the sheer hypocrisy behind Gyrion's claim as rightful heir to the seat of Nasher Alagondar. However, there's a twist behind Gyrion's hypocrisy: I don't know whether he's purposely being the hypocrite or it's the Far Realm itself evolving him instead.

And speaking of the Far Realm, I still don't get it. How did the Order of the Many-Starred Cloak migrate themselves to the Far Realm? We know the Spellplague did open up portals for every manner of aberrant and outsider to enter Faerûn, though. So maybe it's really possible for a bunch of elite wizards moving the other direction. Wonder if we will see any form of divine intervention from Kelemvor's ex, though.

Suffice to say, the storytelling in TCA was an improvement to that of the previous mods. Not that the ppl in Cryptic suck in telling stories, however. It's just that the devs have to release 2 modules per year. Which means no one in the company was entitled the right to be the next Sakaguchi-san. Of course, I've only reached half of the plot. Which means I'm now stuck at the 2nd phase of the campaign.

And speaking of the campaign, TCA is now going on a plot based progress similar to Elemental Evil. In other words, you only need to finish the relevant intro quests. But because you need enough campaign currency to advance, a daily cap on the number of quests available means you can't one shot the zone like what you did in the Elemental Evil zones. Once I've done enough to progress, I'll try writing up about my experience in fighting the Ascending Three.

AI challenge

Let me just say that unlike the mobs you fight in places like Bryn Shander and Sea of Moving Ice, the mobs in River District doesn't hit that hard. Sounds like an easy deal? Wrong. Defensively speaking, the TCA enemies are top tier. Atop the top, no less. Their durability is extremely absurd if we're talking abt the dps alone. That's why I said Malakut was telling a (bloody) damn lie. The AI is operating in another manner totally different from the mobs in SKT and SOMI. In the two zones I'm talking abt here, mobility is secondary to damage (even for enemies like winter wolves and crag cats, they're more interesting in biting and pouncing instead of moving).

Coupled with the kind of durability Superman is more famous for, you'll need to fight like Batman in order to survive and win. Like SKT and SOMI, your movement is key to victory. Unlike the SKT and SOMI, however, the mobs won't let you flank them so easily. You'll need to have a good positioning sense. In this aspect, one can say TCA is more about tactical awareness than technique, unlike SKT and SOMI where technique arguably is more important. I don't have to spell it out for you on how easy it is for any mob to gank you via attrition.

There are basically 4 types of mobs available. Namely, the humans, Gyrion's underlings, Kabal's mooks, and Nostura's stormtroopers.

Let's talk about the humans first. They will form the bulk of the enemies you have to fight for much of the first half of the plot. This mob comprises of four roles. Namely, wizards, snipers, melee dps, and tank. The wizards are not really that problematic beyond their AP drain. If you're caster instead of a fighter, then you really have to let fly from range since the AP drain will only create numerous AoE pits around the wizard. The tank is also not much of an issue so long you leave that fellow for the last. The melee dps is basically a mixture of rogue and barbarian. Basically, this means the ability to go stealth and having that guano loco slashing move (which will have a chance to knock you down). The snipers are the most problematic ones. Firstly, they can execute that one-shot aim bs commonly spammed by the Green Dragonfang. Unlike the original version, however, the snipers won't spam it (but yes, they will execute this move more than once. Just not once per 2-3 seconds). If you think the only way is to kill the archers first, you're most likely on the wrong track. Yes, you need to close down on them. However, this is to disrupt their dps so that you won't get CA'd to death. You have to find ways to reach the archers, but you also need to kill the nearest fellow instead of targeting that fellow with a bow specifically.

As for Gyrion's underlings, they're basically all plaguechanged people. All in all, the only problem lies in any mob with a plaguechanged maw. Not only is that thing extremely hard to kill (read: top tier tanking durability), it will also release wide reaching AoE attacks. One covers the frontal circle. This one is very easy to dodge. When it pulls off the other version where the AoE is a surrounding circle, that's where the trick part. If you can get away, good. Otherwise, you can only take the hit. Thankfully, the AoE attacks in any River District mob won't give you a one-shot fatality. Another thing worthy of mention will be the plaguefire skeletons. The reason why being that the fire blast coming from them is not a joke. Once it hits you, you'll go prone. Not to mention the absurdly large AoE as well.

As for Kabal's mooks, I rate them as the toughest mob. Some of the enemies are quite easy to deal with (like the fire archon archers and animated flaming weapons). However, there's one particular enemy which is nothing short of annoying. Namely that fire archon wizard. Every now and then, it will just glide backward like Patrick Swayze in the movie Ghost. You'll really have to go straight at it, but that thing will never walk alone. If it's the general fire archon mob, then it's not so bad. A minor inconvenience at most. The moment you start dealing with a flaming dreadnought, that's it. I won't say you're effectively done for, but the chances of that happening is quite high. Firstly, that thing has high damage and high defense/HP/both. If this is not enough, it also has that one thing plaguechanged maws and trolls do not have. Mobility. It doesn't matter where you run. Chances are, the dreadnought will just turn around without looking like a cumbersome Hondam (Sengoku Basara fans will get the joke here). Coupled with the fact that the dreadnought is meant to be the tank of Kabal's army, what it means is that any mob with that thing can (and will) go top gear against you. In particular, setting fire on the ground has to be the most frustrating aspect in fighting any dreadnought led mob. I really hate that. I really do. The moment you get hit by the scorched earth tactic, you better focus on the dreadnought. Once you drop that fellow, the rest of the mob should be very easy to deal with (albeit a mob including a dreadnought and a couple of eldritch spell casters is definitely the hardest fight you can get).

Onto Nostura's stormtroopers, all I can say is that Tainted Grove is more n00b friendly than Ember Hollow or the Realm's Edge. Even the more difficult ones like the gorgon, bulette, and nothic plaguegazer are relatively easy to deal with so long you move out of their firing range (and trust, it's very easy to do so). For the trolls, their AoE attack will only knock you back. Damage wise, it's not a big deal. If you want to train your alt in the River District, just go for Tainted Grove. Only annoying thing is that the dryad archers will always do the same thing as that fire archon ghost. And yes, the lightning bolt isn't that damaging to start with.

As for the terrain, there's a chance that you cannot move about blindly. The reason why being that while mobility, in general, will not be restrained, more often than not you won't be moving about in open space. In particular, the three ritual zones tend to have walls or overgrown flora surrounding you. Which is why positioning is very important. Once you get it wrong, you might as well respawn before the inevitable happens. My suggestion is to either engage the mob from the front (for tank) or forcing them to close in by attacking the rear (for dps).

Next up: Sewers, crypts, and dungeons. And also why the Lostmauth set is looking less ideal for Arylos now.

Edit: Did some proofreading today. Apparently, I need to quit my Tesla guy sleeping habit.
[Dated 25th Feb]