Super-challenging Tower of the Mad Mage Coming To Neverwinter

Neverwinter's Uprising update will add not only a new race to Perfect World and Cryptic Studios' free-to-play MMO, but also a highly challenging piece of new content. The Tower of the Mad Mage will pit players against the ruler of Undermountain, Halaster Blackcloak, and offer new best-in-slot gear to parties skilled enough to defeat him.

The dev blog introducing the Tower calls it "some of the most challenging content" ever created for Neverwinter, requiring 10 adventurers with an item level requirement of 24,000. As such, it won't be immediately added to random queues until "sufficient time has passed that the average item level of adventurers has risen to the point where the fight no longer provides such a staunch challenge."

Parties that can take down Blackcloak will have a shot at obtaining weapons from the Lionheart set, which have a maximum item level of 1010 at legendary quality. These are intended to be best-in-slot for some time, so if you can't rise to the challenge immediately, you should have plenty of time to get your gear ... well, in gear.