Neverwinteris doing something a little different for module 29, completely revamping the once-vaulted adventure zone Mount Hotenow with some massive improvements. No longer a linear leveling zone, Mount Hotenow is now an endgame area with a new central hub area, featuring the core loop found in Neverwinter’s most recent content offerings.
Game Rant spoke withNeverwinterexecutive producer Brett Norton about the team’s approach to this comprehensive rework of Mount Hotenow and its associated content. He spoke about specific changes that have been made to its layout and enemies, reworks to its associated dungeon content, and weighed in on some of the more impactful quality-of-life improvements that are also arriving with the update.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Mountain of Flame Reimagines a Classic Neverwinter Adventure Zone
Q: Can you briefly walk me through the overall narrative of this expansion? What’s going on with Mount Hotenow, and why are we here?
Norton:Mount Hotenow is a major fixture inthe Sword Coast landscape. A few decades ago, the partial awakening of a Primordial deep underground caused Mount Hotenow to erupt in an explosion of lethal ash and flame, nearly destroying the city of Neverwinter. More recently, the mighty fire giant Gommoth seeks to fully awaken that sleeping Primordial, bringing fiery destruction across the Sword Coast. Deep within the mountain’s uncharted lava chamber is the Magma Golem, an ancient weapon created by the Archons. Even now its massive heat is superheating the magma, advancing Gommoth’s plan to free the Primordial.
The City of Neverwinter (and players) find out Gommoth’s plans when a Dwarven expedition to Mount Hotenow runs afoul of Gommoth’s forces. With many of the expedition’s members missing or dead, a brave few have remained behind to spy on Gommoth’s forces and hold the line for reinforcements. Freshlyreturned from their Adventures in Wildspace, Sergeant Knox reaches out to the adventurers to aid Neverwinter once more…
Q: What have been some of the biggest changes to the zone compared to the original iteration?
Norton:The original zone was a leveling adventure zone, with a simple sort of ‘start to finish’ flow through the map. For this module, since we brought it back for a max-level campaign, we had to substantially rework the layout and flow of the zone. Not only has the flow been completely updated, an entire new hub area has been added to the map, with corresponding ‘spokes’ created to branch the hub out into different neighborhoods of Mount Hotenow.
The team has always loved the desolate, volcanic theme of Mount Hotenow, but as the map was created a decade ago, it needed some modernization to match up torecentNeverwinterstandards. As such, the visuals of the zone were heavily reworked, especially the lighting, colors, and lava flows. The art team spent a lot of time creating a better contrast between the volcanic earth and the intensely radiating lava sections. The resulting updates make the zone look incredible, and make it a really standout adventure zone forNeverwinter.
Apart from the visuals and layout flows though, there were a lot of gameplay updates to the zone as well. Entirely new heroic encounters have been added to the zone, bringing a host of new enemies to tackle in groups. An entirely new Fire Giant boss type, the Blazing Commanders, has been added as well to serve as additional minibosses for the players to tackle in the zone. While the story does pay homage to the original Mount Hotenow storyline, many new quests and NPCs have been added, so players aren’t simply replaying the same story that they may have experienced years ago.
From an overall package standpoint, Mount Hotenow is quite different from its original form. It’s been the most requested zone for us to bring back toNeverwinter, and we’re thrilled to deliver a great glow-up to this amazing location.
Q: The unvaulted Lair of the Mad Dragon dungeon has also seen a rework. How did you approach reworking this dungeon content?
Norton:While the Mount Hotenow zone required a lot of layout updates for the new module, the Lair of the Mad Dragon fit into our ‘standard’ dungeon layout a little more directly. There’s less changes to the layout or flow, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any major changes. Instead, our work on the dungeon focused on the bosses, reworking and revamping them to create entirely new gameplay experiences.
All three of the bosses have undergone a substantial overhaul, and while we kept the themes of the original dungeon, the bosses' gameplay is basically entirely new. Bosses have evolved a lot since the dungeon’sinitial inception inNeverwinter, and as such, we’ve basically rebuilt all three bosses almost from the ground up. It’s a little similar to the updates we did with the Temple of the Spider dungeon, but there are actually even more updates to the bosses in Lair of the Mad Dragon.
Unvaulting Neverwinter Content and Making Quality-Of-Life Improvements
Q: A few zones were vaulted back in Module 21. Why was Mount Hotenow chosen for this unvaulting?
Norton:Popularity and uniqueness! It was a really visually striking zone compared to many of the other vaulted zones, and something many players really wanted us to bring back as an iconic Sword Coast location. Both from a fan standpoint and a dev standpoint, it was one of the remaining vaulted zones that we thought had a lot of potential to create a striking contrast fromNeverwinter’s other campaignsand adventure zones. Fighting massive fire giants and archons amidst deadly pools of lava
Q: The module also comes with some quality-of-life improvements. Can you talk about some of the major changes arriving and what inspired you to implement these?
Norton:Companions were a focus of some QoL updates this module. We’ve fixed up some older companions that were either experiencing technical issues, or just hadn’t aged well withNeverwinter’s more recent balance updates. We’ve updated 20+ companions, including some fan favorites like Xuna and Makos, to expand the pool of viable end-game companions even further.
Guilds (Strongholds) have had another set of updates, adding a few tools for guild management, such as renaming support for Alliances and better guild log filters. We’ve also added the recent Masterwork explorer’s charts to the stronghold stores, giving non-crafters a way to participate in the current Masterwork professions economy.
There are a few other smaller QoL updates as well, such as adding some new stats to the character sheet that track your overall damage and healing boosts. We’ve been using these stats more frequently over time, and we wanted to add a more clear way to track their impact on your character. Expecta few event updatesas well! Some long-requested updates to the Summer Festival’s ticket reward system are finally going live, and we even made a few updates to the Sahaa minigame to make it more enjoyable.
[END]
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