Guide to the Foundry

This is a detailed guide to using the Foundry to create and publish quests that other players can experience and complete for awards. A quick starter guide is available to cover the basics of using the editor.

Overview
The Foundry is primarily a Quest creator that is integrated into Neverwinter. It is a quest creation tool which can be seen as a LEGO for Neverwinter game in which you create a map and define a logic and the story for a quest. It is a complex tool with which you can use indoor and outdoor maps like mountains, plains, sea coasts, caves, sewers etc. and use various objects in the library to design it according to your requirements. The learning curve for Foundry is not very high if you want to create a simple quest, but to create a decent quest with conditions you need to invest a lot of time to be efficient in foundry. Contained within these wiki pages you'll find details on the various edits, tips and tricks on doing certain tasks, and answers to common (and perhaps uncommon) questions. And if you feel you have something to add to these pages, don't hesitate! That's what a wiki is for.

What the Foundry isn't: It is not a tool set for modifying ("modding") the game. You cannot change the statistics or game-mechanics when using the foundry. Mesh editing and resizing of objects is also not possible, though clever things can be done with placement and rotation of objects. Also, you cannot upload completely new artwork or copyrighted images to the Foundry. At this time you can't make items that will exist outside the confines of the quest.

Getting Started
To start the Foundry from the game is a simple three step process. From the character screen, press the "Enter Foundry" button. This will open up a Selection Menu. From this screen, you can click on "Create Quest" to create your first quest and it will open up Quest Editor. You can also edit the quest from said Selection Menu if you have already created a quest. Once you have a few quests created, you can collect them into a campaign by creating a campaign from Selection Menu and then choosing the quests and their sequence from the campaign editor.

Quest and Campaign management
It is important to understand the difference between a Quest and a Campaign, and how they work together. A Quest is something that you actually do. These show up in your Journal, give you the sparkly path, and award XP upon completion. Quests created by the Foundry are completely separate from each other: custom items do not transfer between quests, and there is no (easy) way to force a player to complete Quest A before doing Quest B.

A Campaign is simply a collection of quests that are related to each other in a particular sequence. If a player chooses to do an individual quest from the game, they can still order them in any sequence they want to. However if, they accept a campaign instead of accepting an individual quest, they would be presented with a sequence of quests. For example, you have a campaign X wrapping the Quests A, B, C, D and E in a sequence. The player can open your campaign and select the quests individually to do them in any order. However, if the player chooses the Campaign X, the player will automatically receive Quest A. Then, upon completion of Quest A, the player will be asked if they want to continue the campaign. If the player chooses to continue, they will be presented with Quest B automatically. This will continue unless the player opts out of campaign after completing a quest or completes all the quests in the campaign sequentially.

Campaign creation is quite simple. From the Selection Menu press the button to create the Campaign. Once that is done, you'll be taken to Campaign Editor where you can set the name, description, preview image and assign which quests belong to it with a particular sequence. Once you're done there, just hit save and then back, and you'll be back to the Selection Menu.

Ratings
Cryptic uses the Lower Bound of Wilson Score Interval to determine the rating of quests.

First of all a weighted average is calculated. This means a single bad review score will not cripple your quest's rating. Also keep in mind that a player can only rate your quest once. They can change that rating at a later date, but they can only review it once.

The star ratings are then adjusted which depend heavily on the number of plays your quest has. Thus if you have more number of plays, your quest will represent the ratings which your quest has received (weighted average). If you have only a few play-throughs, your quest will display an adjusted rating close to 3 star with a little or no reflection of average rating your quest has received.

Ratings of the campaign are calculated from the adjusted ratings of the quests in that campaign.

To see a specific quest's ratings and reviews, you will have to edit that quest and look in the Quest Editor. You(and everyone else) can also have a look by selecting the quest in-game or selecting the quest in the Selection Menu of the Foundry.

Tips from Players
When rating a Foundry quest, players can give the author a tip of up to 500. However, players can only give tips three times a day, to prevent large funds from being transferred this way. There is no (known) limit to how much an author could receive through those donations, so creating high quality Foundry missions that are enjoyable to other players can be a sustained source of income.

Play Time and Daily Rewards
Players get a daily reward of Astral Diamonds for playing Foundry quests. However, to prevent "pull this lever to complete" type quests, Cryptic has a minimum length of 15 minutes of play time for a quest to be eligible. In addition to this, a quest has to have at least 20 play-throughs before it is eligible for the daily reward. It is a good idea to try and put enough content in your quest to ensure it lasts for at least 15 minutes so players can get their daily reward out of it. On the flip side, keep in mind that time is precious. Having an average playtime of an hour will also drive some players away.

Editors

 * Quest Editor
 * Story Editor
 * Map editor-Getting Started
 * Map editor-Basics of the Major Sections
 * Dialogue Trees
 * Costume Editor
 * Item Editor
 * Encounter Editor
 * Menu Bar and GUI buttons