Our massive coverage of Neverwinter’s “Heart of Fire” update continues today with a look into the new “Manycoins Bank Heist Skirmish”. The Acquisitions Incorporated campaign leads into this group content, in which the players have to repel a Zhentarim attack on the Manycoins bank. Jim Darkmagic assists the group in protecting the bank vault, but let’s just say he’s more of a distraction than asset.

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General Structure

The heist follows the general structure of other skirmishes that have been released since Module 8. It has three different phases which, depending on your team’s performance, can be completed as a bronze, silver, or gold score. The better the completion, the better the rewards at the end. A new aspect is that you can actually fail the skirmish. In earlier content, when falling below bronze in one phase, you could still continue and try to get a better score in the other phases. The Manycoins Bank Heist however resets if that’s the case (the Zhentarim got into the bank vault, sorry!). It’s a little bit added difficulty, but most teams shouldn’t have trouble with the challenge to be honest.

Additionally Jim Darkmagic is causing a lot of distraction with his unpredictable “Wand of Wonders”. He casts several effects and buffs, sometimes useful, sometimes annoying, during all phases of the skirmish. It can be compared with some if the environmental effects from the Illusionist’s Gambit skirmish.

Phase 1: Kill Rust Monsters

Phase 2: Closing the Portals

In the first phase of the skirmish, the Zhentarim assault the bank through portals and players have to defend. The key objective is to keep Rust Monsters away from the vault. So you basically just fight the spawning enemies as they appear. Players get a little help from explosive runes that they can pick up in the room and drop on mobs. They do quite a lot of damage and also control enemies for a brief period. Other than that, it’s just run around and kill nine and then 15 Rust Monsters. The score decreases as the vault takes damage.

In the second phase, it’s time to close the portals that the Zhentarim are using to send troops inside the bank. Jim Darkmagic accidentally spawns yellow spheres that have the same effect as the green ones in the TONG Orcus fight. They dish out lethal damage and slowly move towards their target, but can be dragged into portals to destroy them. Teams have to close all portals this way while still holding back the mobs that come through.

Phase 3: Filoon Murkdrifter

Last but not least, the Zhentarim assault leader will appear and challenge the group. In an endgame setup the boss dies fairly quickly, but it has some hard attacks and stuns. So casual teams might have more trouble with him. Overall however the skirmish isn’t meant to be a true challenge and more fits the module theme as fun distraction. I assume the Manycoins Bank Heist will get boring sooner or later, but the map is actually well made and there’s at least some sort of strategy involved.

Rewards

Last but not least, let’s talk about the rewards quickly. The skirmish (gold result) hands out 20 Seal of the Brave, refining points, 2,000 – 5,000 Rough Astral Diamonds, 10 Acorns (progression currency), and 50 Wooden Tokens (store currency). Also there’s a chance for new item level 500 Underwear to drop. Especially the Pants should be interesting to DPS because they grant 1,500 Power on the start of combat. Both the Shirt and the Pants are showcased in the video we’ve attached below.

Overall the Manycoins Bank Heist seems to play the same role as Merchant Prince’s Folly in Chult. It’s an alternate way to gain campaign currency that makes for more variety when filling the Weekly Haul. The Shirt and Pants work as additional incentive, but have reasonable drop rates and shouldn’t take long to get. Since the skirmish is quick to complete for endgame teams, it might also work for farm runs, but it’s probably hard to beat Shores of Tuern for pure “RAD” generation.

Obviously you would like the capstone group content of a module to be a little more challenging, but since the K-Team Challenge and new Tales of Old event format fill that purpose, it’s fine to deliver casual content with a casual campaign. If you go in with the right expectations, the Manycoins Bank Heist is definitely going to be a fun little encounter.

What’s your take on this skirmish? Have you already had a chance to test it on preview? Share your thoughts and experience on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit our message board!

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