In today’s episode of our Exploit History we are looking back at the game’s Gateway and the harm it caused. If you’re new to Neverwinter, or play on consoles, you might not know that the game featured a web interface in which players could access and maintain certain aspects of their account.
Gateway Was Superb
The Gateway was indeed a superb tool. Among other things players had full access to inventory management, the Auction House, Astral Diamond exchange, professions and a mini-game called “Sword Coast Adventures”. All that was available everywhere, you just needed a browser and could log in. Especially doing professions while “on the road” was simply amazing. Back then just like today, Leadership was important. The fact that you still could fully manage it even without actually playing the game was major.
Nonetheless Cryptic decided to close down the Gateway in 2016. It featured an API and soon the first scripts became available to automate processes using the Gateway. Botting eventually took its toll, and a great tool away from players. It was a controversial decision as many players felt like they should have gone after the bots instead. But as often Cryptic with their own resources in mind took the more convenient nerf path.
Botting Took Over
Now what did botters do on the Gateway? Well, actually a lot. The basic functionality of the most popular scripts was to automate the professions. You could basically level any profession with a 24/7 uptime. But it didn’t stop there. Convenience scripts auto-sold trash from inventories and mass-opened Leadership boxes. Back when the profession would still grant ADs, bots automatically transferred them to a main character using the AD exchange.
Speaking of which, the ZAX was not always at 500 all the time. Bots would automatically buy ZEN low and sell high, using the usual fluctuations throughout a day. It was an AD generating machine. On the Auction House bots were able to post auctions and undercut the competition automatically, or search for and buy out bargains.
Last but not least, the mini-game “Sword Coast Adventures” was fully botted as well and a large amount of “Loyal” companion gear (example) that dropped there was generated and sold. To date this is still among the best available gear on PC, because it unintentionally features an insane item level of 840.
Quite a List
Looking through the list, you can’t blame anyone for being happy that the Gateway is gone. But it was still a sad display of how little Cryptic was actually able to do against botting other than shutting the whole thing down. You would think that a captcha of some sort would probably already helped at ton. So the closing of the Gateway was never fully about botting, but more about business and resources.
Exploit History: Locking Auctions – Caturday – Masterwork Nodes – Permadodge – Arcane Reservoir – Full GF Runs – Attribute Enhancement – Using the old Refining System – Killing Fulminorax and Valindra From Below – Skipping Shadowfell – Resonator Exploit – Safely Killing Traven Blackdagger – Foundry Power Leveling – Castle Never Picture Frame Shortcut – Infinite Buff Stacks and One-Shotting CWs – Max Level In About One Hour – No Ward Consumption While Fusing Enchantments
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