Neverwinter Blog Post Highlights Changes Intended To Make Item Level Better Represent Character Capabilities

Changes are in the works to address some of the issues with item levels in Neverwinter. While they're still a bit off, the dev team wanted to outline some of what players can expect regarding bonding runestones and companions. The post isn't incredibly long, and more words are spent on companions than the bonding runestones -- mostly because runestones are dependent on companions.

As far as the bonding runestone portion goes, the general gist is that the devs realize they have never matched item level properly because of their reliance on the stats of companions, companion equipment, and, yes, runestones. So, in order to fix it -- well, they're not really fixing runestones. Instead, they're doing away with them altogether and shifting their focus to reworking companions.

One of the first changes to companions is an increased item level -- to make up for taking bonding runestones away. An example given in the post is that a companion that has attained legendary rank will now have a base item level of 100 rather than 1000. Bolster is being increased as well, with it increasing the companion item level, and that increasing the stats received. Overall, most of the changes offer ways to increase the item levels in companions. Another of those changes is that companions will be upgradable to Mythic, resulting in a base item level of 1500, similar to mounts.

To see all the changes, and the number crunching, hit up the post on the Arc Games site.