Everything You Need To Know About Neverwinter PvE

Neverwinter has only been around for five years, but in that time the game has seen an impressive fifteen expansions, each bringing new content to the PvE endgame.

The sheer volume of quests, hunts, and dungeons is enough to make even an experienced MMO player feel like their brain has been zapped by a mind flayer.

If you want to get the most out of your PvE experience, you’ll need an organized approach: this guide aims to arm you with everything you need to know to succeed in the fun, rewarding, and ever-changing landscape of Neverwinter’s PvE endgame.

Campaigns

There are fourteen single-player campaigns in Neverwinter, and until you’ve finished all of them, they’re going to be a regular part of your endgame. It’s crucial to progress in them because doing so grants you boons (to increase your stats and item level) and unlocks other endgame content (dungeons, skirmishes, and trials).

By the time you make it to level 70 you should have made some progress on Acquisitions Incorporated, Tyranny of Dragons, The Maze Engine, Elemental Evil, and Sharandar as level 70 brings another slate of more difficult campaigns. Keep working on the leveling campaigns and add Underdark, Dread Ring, and Well of Dragons to your rotation.

Curse of Icewind Dale, Storm King's Thunder, The Cloaked Ascendancy, Jungles of Chult/Lost City of Omu, and Ravenloft are much more difficult than the others, and you’ll want to get a little gear and experience before you tackle them.

Ravenloft is a special case. The regular quests in this zone are challenging even for well-geared characters, but if you’ve just hit level 70 then you should complete the introductory quests so you can get the blue-quality Vistani gear. This is the easiest way to obtain viable entry-level gear for your character once you hit level 70.

Heroic Encounters

Along with daily and weekly quests for the campaigns, many of the level 70 zones feature heroic encounters. The larger ones grant campaign currency and refinement points, and some of them even grant seals (which you can use to buy intermediate gear and rough astral diamonds). They can be profitable to run, but make sure you’re running the right ones to avoid wasting your time.

Demonic Heroic Encounters

The demonic heroic encounters in Dread Ring, Icewind Dale, and (especially) Well of Dragons are a great way to earn currency for those campaigns and for the Underdark campaign. In each zone you’ll find a quest to complete three of them. Stick to Demonic Slaughter and Demonic Closure--other players in the zone will usually ignore Demonic Closure.

Dragon Runs

The Heralds of Tiamat in Well of Dragons are a fun and easy way to earn refinement points and campaign currency. They run every hour at 45 minutes after the hour, so get to the Well around 30 minutes after the hour and watch zone chat. Players in zone chat will advertise which instance to go to for the dragon run (DR). Once you transfer to that zone, go to the northeast corner of the map (near the Cultist Garrison) and wait for the event to begin. Follow the crowd to kill all five dragons.

Big Heroic Encounters in Chult, Omu and Ravenloft

The King of Spines in Soshenstar River, The Tyrant in Omu, and Yester Hill in Ravenloft are also good sources of campaign currency, seals, and refinement points for those campaigns. Like the Draconic Heralds you can see them advertised in zone chat.

Guild Stronghold

Get the most out of your Neverwinter PvE experience by joining a guild.

Being in a guild is a big part of enjoying Neverwinter’s endgame, and if you’re in one then you’re going to be doing a lot of quests in that guild’s stronghold. Some level of participation in the Stronghold content is probably a requirement for membership in some guilds. Farming stronghold currency helps your guild obtain access to more powerful boons, consumables, and profession items.

The most important stronghold currency is Influence: each character can earn 400 Influence per day by completing five heroic encounters around the stronghold. The small heroic encounters can be completed solo, while the bigger ones require a group (and also reward other stronghold currencies).

Keep an eye on your guild and alliance chat channels to see when the Dragonflight and Stronghold Marauders events are running. Dragonflight gear may be out-of-date, but the event rewards vouchers for stronghold currency, and Fangs of the Dragonflight can be exchanged for seals. Marauders is a fast, easy way to earn an extra 600 Influence per week on your character.

Random Queues

Random queues are an important part of every player’s endgame. Completing a queue rewards seals and rough astral diamonds: the first completion every day offers the best rewards, while subsequent completions are less lucrative. The chests at the end of the random dungeon, skirmish or trial will include more seals and rough astral diamonds as well as refinement points and (occasionally) gear, companions, and mounts.

There are four queues--Leveling, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert. The Leveling queue content is trivially easy: you should complete at least one every day while you’re leveling up to 70 and keep doing it once you reach level 70. Once you reach level 70 (and item level 9000) you should add the Intermediate queue to your to-do list. The rewards you get from these two queues, and from the chests at the end of the instance, will form the backbone of your rough astral diamond farming.

You can safely solo queue for the Leveling and Intermediate queues, but you should look for pre-made groups (either through your guild/alliance or LFG channels) to take on the Advanced and Expert queues. This is the toughest content in the game and requires some group coordination, but the rewards are better. Some of the chests in the Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert queues require keys which you can craft from the campaigns, so you should work on generating a supply of these keys as soon as you have the spare campaign currency to do so.

Hunts

Explore the wildernesses, ruins, and jungles of Neverwinter to earn legendary gear and rewards.

Hunts are a feature of the Jungles of Chult, Lost City of Omu, and Ravenloft campaigns, and they’re the only way to get some of the best gear in the game.

Soshenstar River and Omu

Hunts of Chult and Omu are unlocked through the campaign. There are three tiers of hunts: 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star. The 1-star hunt lure components are acquired by killing rare mobs in the Soshenstar River and Omu zones.

These rare mobs are marked and appear in place of normal mobs. They don’t always drop the lure components, so some farming is involved, but once you get the components you need you can trade them for 1-star lures in Port Nyanzaru.

The 1-star hunts are guaranteed to drop components for the 2-star lures, and you can combine all three 2-star components to create the lure for the capstone 3-star hunt in each zone.

Ravenloft

Hunts in Ravenloft are more straightforward in that you don’t have to unlock them through the campaign. Instead, you acquire wanted posters from mobs in the Ravenloft zone and from the hunts themselves. These posters can even be sold on the auction house, so if you’re looking for a piece of gear from a specific hunt, you can buy up posters and farm until the item drops.

You can combine your hunt poster with Tarokka cards (from weekly quests in Ravenloft) to make the hunts more difficult and earn extra gear drops. Getting a group together to farm hunts with Tarokka cards is an easy way to get intermediate gear that’s a step-up from the blue Vistani gear.

Endgame Dungeon Farming

Delve into the deepest, darkest dungeons.

Random queues will be a big part of your day in the endgame, but as you progress you’ll want to target specific dungeons for farming to get rough astral diamonds, seals, refining points, and valuable drops that you can use or sell on the auction house.

Entry-Level Endgame Dungeons

Temple of the Spider, Shores of Tuern, Lair of Lostmauth, and Valindra’s Tower are classic speed-runs. They can be completed by groups with less-than-optimal gear and are downright easy if you can find even one highly geared DPS character to run with you, which make these dungeons ideal farms for players with minimal item level requirements. Run these dungeons for the free chest at the end, which will include rough astral diamonds, seals, refinement points, and the odd companion or mount drop.

Demogorgon

Normal Demogorgon is another good low-power farm, though more difficult than the dungeons mentioned above. There’s a free chest at the end and you can easily generate one Lesser Demonic Key per day to open the second chest. In addition to the normal RAD, refinement, seals and loot, these chests drop Underdark rings, some of which remain useful for characters and companions well into the endgame.

Merchant Prince’s Folly

This skirmish is an intermediate-difficulty farm, and requires you to craft a key via the Chult campaign, but it’s worth it because it drops unbound companion gear. If you get something good that you don’t need, you can make some astral diamonds by selling it on the auction house. Be careful to only use your key if your group gets gold rewards and use your chest re-rolls from VIP (if you have them) to maximize your chances of getting a good drop.

Tomb of the Nine Gods and Cradle of the Death God

These are the core farms for advanced endgame players. A well-geared, competent party can run these reasonably quickly and reliably to acquire valuable Ultimate Enchanting Stones. These chests require keys from the Chult and Omu campaigns, and they’re the best use of your VIP chest re-rolls. You’ll know you’ve made it as an endgame PvE player when you’re running these two instances regularly.

Castle Ravenloft

Castle Ravenloft is the hardest content in the game, but it isn’t the best endgame farm because it takes so long to complete. You’ll encounter it once you’re ready to run the Expert random queue, but otherwise you probably won’t run it more than is needed to farm seals for one or two pieces of Barovian Lord’s gear.

Tips

Join a Guild

The endgame in Neverwinter is no fun without a guild--it’s almost impossible to regularly get into good groups for endgame content without one. Higher-level guilds will have better boons, but it’s more important to find one that matches your personality and activity level. You’re going to spend a lot of time running with your guildmates, so make sure they’re people whose company you’ll enjoy.

Upgrade Your Companion First

Having a good companion with high-level Bonding Runestones is one of the most critical components of being effective in endgame PvE. Figure out the best companion for your build, upgrade it to purple quality, and outfit it with the highest rank bonding runestones you can afford. Make upgrading those runestones a priority, get decent gear for your companion, and always slot your highest-level enchantments into your companion to maximize the stats you get from the Bonding Runestones.

Optimize Rough Astral Diamond Refining

Gearing up an endgame character requires a lot of astral diamonds, so try to hit your rough astral diamond refining cap as much as you can. Once you’ve purchased the gear you need from seals, make sure to exchange them for RAD regularly because you can only carry 1200 seals at a time. Run your random queues regularly, and farm dungeons to hit the 100,000 RAD refining cap as often as you can.

Get VIP

Whether you fork out the IRL cash or convert astral diamonds to Zen via the exchange, you should have VIP. The daily enchanted key can net you some valuable drops and the chest re-rolls are also very profitable. The quality-of-life features are just icing on the cake, but once you have them, you’ll never want to live without them.

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