In the upcoming Neverwinter: The Maze Engine, mounts are getting a major overhaul, and it’s been a long time coming. We started discussing improvements to our mounts shortly after the game launched, and have worked on numerous designs for them for almost two years now. We’re excited to be able to finally get these changes into your hands!

Mount Appearances or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Choose a Mount

One of the most common issues we’ve had with the existing mounts, is that once you get a Rank 3 or 4 mount, all of the lower speed options are effectively unusable – you may really like that sweet Armored Ghost Horse or Blue Ribbon Pig that you got, but it’s tough to justify riding it around when it’s so much slower than your Medium Armored Horse or Stormraider Clydesdale. And while you could upgrade a specific mount to higher speeds… it was a bit tough. As such, one of the main goals for our changes to mounts was to separate mount speed from mount appearance. With this new system, you select your mount, and then can attach the speed you want, based on what you’ve acquired (we recommend the fastest you have, but you can do whatever).

With some of our recent offerings, we’ve also introduced the concept of passive powers and active powers on certain mounts. While these have had a great reception, we’ve already started hearing some of the same concerns being brought up – you really want to summon your Coastal Flail Snail in combat, but you still want to ride that Blue Ribbon Pig, naturally. So, we took the same functionality we added for mount speed and applied that to the actives (now called Mount Combat Powers) and the passives (now called Mount Equip Powers) as well. Your new mount screen will look a little something like this:

Actual in-game UI still subject to change.

We’ll also be introducing a way to make all of your mounts useful to you with the Stable, where your various mounts can be equipped with new items called Insignias, providing various small bonuses innately, as well as access to the new Insignia Bonus Powers – like small set bonuses for acquiring appropriate Insignias – but we’ll talk more about those later in a more in-depth blog about Stables & Insignias.

17 Horses in My Adventurer’s Satchel!

Another issue we run into with Mounts is that they’re filling up all our bags! The Adventurer’s Satchel really is a marvel of modern magic, and I’m glad it’s able to keep all of those mounts fed while they’re stuck in there. However, I still wish they weren’t cluttering them up so much, and I do worry that my mounts might get injured by the various swords and spiked armor I have floating right next to them.

With the new system, mounts that you have bound to your character will no longer sit in your bags. That “Change Mount” button you see in the screenshot just takes you to a list of all of the Mounts you own on that character. Same with all of the other buttons – the Combat Power window will list all of the Combat Powers you’ve unlocked, and will just store them there. So for those of you mount enthusiasts out there with dozens of mounts, prepare to have a lot more bag space available.

So Long, and Thanks for all the Horses

Well, time for me to mount up and ride off into the distance for now, but I’ll be back to talk to you again soon with more details about the upcoming changes, with a blog on Stables & Insignias, and another talking about what these changes mean for all of your existing Mounts.

TTFN,

- Chris “Amenar” Matz

Lead Systems Designer

Discuss on the official forums