Guilds
Guilds are an incredibly important part of Neverwinter, and finding a good one will be Vital towards your success in completing Neverwinter. Guilds offer a community that can help you with advice and help you with content, they can provide additional boons that can greatly increase your stats or xp gain or mount speed. They can run with you through endgame content when you're struggling to get into groups, or just provide information on what the best build for your class might be. While there are a few guild specific achievements that will require you join a guild, finding a good and helpful guild will make every single other achievement in the game significantly easier to obtain. Guilds usually advertise in various zone chats when they're recruiting new players. They'll list what level of a guild they are in relation to their stronghold (SH), on a scale of 1-20. The higher level a SH, the better boons you are likely to get upon joining a guild. These boons are important to have while running endgame content as they can give a significant stat boost, but there is also an Experience boon available that will make leveling significantly easier.
Because choosing a guild can be important, it's best to do your homework. Ideally, you want to join a guild with a higher SH level, but that might not be as important as joining one that is in an active alliance. Don't be afraid to be picky when deciding, and ask questions. Ideally, you're looking for a helpful guild that doesn't mind questions, in an alliance that regularly runs events like Dragonflight (Explained later). Some guilds have Item Level requirements on them, or require you to be level 70. Some guilds also require you have a weekly contribution, which means they want you to participate in at least some events in a week so that you can donate a certain amount of a currency towards the coffer (typically done with influence). Don't forget that like with Neverwinter, success in a guild largely depends on how much effort you put towards being in that guild. It's rare to find a guild that will completely and totally carry you through everything in the game for free. Most guilds will expect you to be active to some degree. Find a guild that fits well with how you like to play and your own personal goals (which will likely be achievements if you're reading this walkthrough), and the game becomes much easier.
Again, Achievement wise, you do need to be in a guild for a small handful of achievements, but finding the right guild is important if you want to complete the game easier. Guilds are much more accommodating when you're looking for endgame content than if you tried to find random players for all your groups.
Alliances
Guilds can group together into an alliance to cooperate with each other. This helps create another pool of players that can be advertised to when you're setting up a group for endgame content. Depending on the Alliance, they may also have organized DragonFlights and other events that anyone in the alliance can join in. Alliances are grouped into tiers, with the Main guild (Helm Guild) being able to have three guilds underneath it (Sword Guilds) which in turn each can have three guilds under them (Gauntlet Guilds). When you're in an Alliance, your guild will take up one of these spots, and depending on where it is, they will receive a certain percentage increase to Experience gain. For a Gauntlet guild, each member in that guild can receive a 25% experience bonus, while a helm guild might receive only 6% experience bonus. This is another reason why joining a guild while leveling can be important, as you will go up much quicker while leveling.
Strongholds
When you join a guild, you will be able to access an all new map labelled Stronghold in the travel menu. This is a large map consisting of you guilds strongholds, its structures, and various enemies and heroics you can complete. If your guild is in an alliance, you can also see the list of alliance strongholds that you can also join. The only real difference between stronghold maps are vendors and structures depending on what your guild has chosen to build. Otherwise, the map is the same for every guild. The stronghold containers several NPC's that will give you quests, as well as events that can be done like Marauders, DragonFlight, and Heroics.
The first time you access your guilds Stronghold map, you should get an achievement. You might have to load into the map and run outside of the main area, however, and towards the travel post for it to register that you've entered the map. Eventually the achievement will pop:
Donations and Guild Marks
In the back of your stronghold, on a raised wooden platform near the bank and the mailbox, you'll find a mimic chest. When you interact with this chest you'll see a full list of your guild and your alliance guilds, and you'll have the ability to donate things to your stronghold coffer, which is used for upgrading the different structures of your stronghold and providing stronger boons and other support options. You can donate most everything to your coffer, including campaign currency, gold, items, and vouchers. Each item you donate has two values towards it. The first value is how many points go towards the coffer supply and what your guild can use, and the second value is how many guild marks you get in return. Guild Marks are a separate currency that you can use to buy stronghold gear, exploration maps, and other stronghold based items at the various vendors within the stronghold.
For the next achievement, you're going to need to accumulate 60 thousand Guild Marks through donating. This is an Account Wide Goal, meaning that you can spread the responsibility over multiple characters, and once you have reached 60,000 for your account, you will unlock the achievement. This achievement is also Cumulative, meaning you don't need to have the whole sum at one time. This is good because, if you're only doing this with one character, there is a 30,000 cap on how much currency you can have at any given time. So find something to spend your currency on, either for salvage or for crafting materials, so you aren't stuck at the cap.
There are several quests in the Stronghold that will give you rewards that can be donated to the coffer, and there are heroics littered throughout the stronghold that, when completed, will reward you further with shards and influence which most guilds usually require in abundance. Guilds will also host events such as DragonFlight, and occasionally Neverwinter will hold events that drop vouchers for the strongholds, so there are plenty of ways to collect guild marks and this achievement. Once you've hit that 60,000 mark for your account, you'll receive the achievement:
Dragonflight
Dragonflight (Commonly referred to as DF) is one of the main events an alliance can run. Finding an guild that's in an alliance that runs them frequently is important towards obtaining several achievements you'll be looking for, including the larger one of killing one thousand dragons. Typically an alliance will have set days and times for when a Dragonflight happens, such as Monday, Wednesday, Friday or something similar. When choosing a guild to join, make sure you find one that regularly does this event, or getting a few achievements will become significantly more difficult. While you will need to fully complete at least one Dragonflight for an achievement,
Dragonflight involves summoning Four Dragons onto the Stronghold map, one in roughly each corner of the map. Usually in an alliance that's large enough to regularly do a Dragonflight, there will be a significant amount of people taking part. Different guilds have different methods, but the most common way a Dragonflight is done is by splitting everyone on the map into two teams. One team will start at Green Dragon, located in the Southeast, and another will start at Red Dragon, located in the Northwest. Whichever guild in your alliance that is hosting will likely be speaking in alliance chat directing who should go where and which side needs more people. When the Dragonflight starts there will be a notification and a timer under your mission objectives that will count down a single minute, at which point all four dragons on the map will begin.
The Standard Dragonflight Method
Two teams will form of however many people are participating, with one team being at Red Dragon, and the other being at Green Dragon. It is very important towards a successful Dragonflight that you do not kill a dragon until all FOUR dragons have had their healths lowered significantly. While you have ten minutes to complete the event, when any dragon dies, a one minute timer immediately starts. After this one minute, whatever dragons still alive will flee. This is why it's important to watch the health bars. Because of how the game is, it's much more common in a Dragonflight for a Dragon to be accidentally killed too quickly due to high DPS then it is for there to not be enough damage. Always watch the health bar and be prepared to run away from the Dragon. Don't wait for a callout. The process of a Dragonflight goes roughly like this:
- When the dragons land, teams at green and red will begin attacking their dragon until the dragon reaches roughly 20%. Sometimes this will go very fast or slow depending on who has shown up where.
- At 20%, everyone at Green will pull away and start heading towards Black dragon. When Red reaches 20%, everyone at Red will pull away and start heading towards Blue dragon. Typically the guild that's hosting the Dragonflight will leave one or two people behind at Green and Red as a 'Kill Team', who are responsible for closing out the dragon. These are usually high DPS characters who will whittle down the remaining health to around 5%
- Everyone at Black and Blue will start killing their dragons as fast as possible. At this point, watching the health on the right side of the screen under mission objectives is important. Typically whoever is running the Dragonflight will announce that one of the dragons, either Blue or Black, 'has kill', which means they get to be the first to kill their dragon. Once one dragon is down, everyone finishes off the dragon they're at. If it looks like either Green or Red is struggling, there's enough time to head back over there and help them finish.
Most guilds in a Dragonflight do them in sets of 5, because of how the summoning bells are purchased off the zen market. After a Dragonflight is complete typically another stronghold in the alliance will be called out, and everyone will travel to that one for the next summon. This way you'll usually swap between strongholds during a Dragonflight so that you avoid having to wait for the cooldown on the ability to call them in. Next we'll go over a real basic 'all you need to know' explanation of the mechanics to each dragon, from easiest to hardest:
Green Dragon - Southeast - Easy
This dragon is probably the easiest to do as there's not a large amount of mechanics to him. The area surrounding where the dragon lands will be filled with a green poison mist that will constantly be doing damage to your character. If you have healers around this won't be much of a problem at all. Like all dragons, try to avoid standing directly behind it or in front of it. Occasionally he will put a red AOE on the ground with more poison, so make sure you avoid that too.
Red Dragon - Northwest - Easy
This dragon is only considered harder because many of the red AOE's it lays down have a good chance of instantly killing any non-tank character. If you can dodge them, you'll be fine. The dragon will shoot a series of three fireballs around the area he's in that will be lit aflame, as well as occasionally call down a series of fire rain from the sky. He also has a conal attack directly in front of them that can be challenging. Again, if you dodge all the red circles, you'll be fine.
Black Dragon - Southeast - Medium
This dragon is more annoying than anything else for one primary reason: Soul Puppets. Whenever anyone fighting him dies, a ghost will spawn with a red circle around it. The ghost will latch on to the nearest player and start moving towards them. You want to pull these soul puppets away from the dragon and stay out of their red circle. If you die on this dragon, you want to immediately run back into the fight again, as once you do your soul puppet will disappear. This dragon only really becomes a problem if too many people start dying and too many soul puppets are created, as well as if people keep the soul puppets directly next to the dragon so that melee people can't really attack. Pull the puppets away and get back in quickly if you die, and you're fine.
Blue Dragon - Northeast - Annoying & Hard
This dragon is mostly hard just because it's so annoying. It doesn't have many attacks, but one that it does instantly kills everyone around it, wiping the group who then have to respawn and charge back in to continue fighting. This is why you will largely see Blue Dragon's health go down in chunks before stopping when everyone gets killed, and then resuming. There's not much else to this dragon other than getting past being instantly murdered.
Completing a Dragonflight gives you a significant amount of vouchers and a chance at strongboxes that you can donate into your guilds coffer, accruing a significant amount of guild marks that will go towards your achievement for collecting 60 thousand of them. The first Dragonflight where all four dragons are killed, you'll get an achievement:
The main reason to run Dragonflight at whatever opportunity you get, however, has to do with one of the grindier achievements. There are two main ways to farm Dragon kills, and Dragonflight is the second best way. The reason for this is simple. When you participate in a Dragonflight to get a reward, you will get credit for however many dragons are killed, regardless of what dragons you were at and fought during the event. This means that if you are at Green Dragon, and only fight Green Dragon, and the event ends with all four dragons being killed, you will get credit for Four dragons killed. So a fully successful 5 bell Dragonflight that you participate in will get you 20 dragons killed towards your achievement, along with the guild marks for the other achievement. On top of all that, the vouchers and boxes help your guild. Dragonflight is a good, quick way to supplement your dragon killing total, but the best way can be found in the Tyranny of Dragons Campaign page.
Stronghold Siege
Stronghold Siege is a 20 v 20 player versus player gametype available within Neverwinter. The only requirements to be able to access this match type is that you are in a guild. While the framework implies that it's one guild versus one guild, that actually does not matter, and anyone can be on either team from any number of guilds, as long as they are actually in a guild themselves. The match type involves an East versus West battle, in a format similar to a MOBA, like League of Legends or Dota. You have three lanes with supply depots in each one, and engineers traveling through each lane. Your overall goal is to push each lane so that you control the lane, where you can then start using supplies you collect throughout the match to build catapults and assault the enemy stronghold. Through this, you will have to defeat enemy players, take part in group events, etc.
To get the only achievement involved in this gametype, you need to score 300 overall points within a single match of Stronghold Siege. Although the achievement says win, all that matters is you collect the required points in the match, win or lose. Overall that's not a problem, what IS a problem however is that as of July 2018, it is incredibly difficult to get a match via public queuing of Stronghold Siege. Since 40 players are required for the match to start, the odds of 40 players queuing up is very low. Some players have reported sitting in the queue for 12 hours a day, every day of the week in prime playing hours, and still not seeing it pop. To get this session, it is very important to try and organize help from your guild to have guild mates queue, or create/join a session on this website and gather other players that will queue on an organized day, or queue and advertise in zone chat in Protector's Enclave asking people to queue for Stronghold Siege. It's best to put this achievement off till later, when your character is geared up as well, to make collecting the 300 points required to get the achievement easier. Note that these matches can go on for a significantly long time, over an hour, so be prepared for staying the whole way through if you do get into a match, as the achievement pops at the end.
Note: Private Queuing SH Siege, which people do for the Storming the Castle quest towards Chult campaign completion, does NOT count for this achievement. You may organize a group before queuing, but the queue must be public.
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