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> Neverwinter Nights, Another Classic RPG series
SubRosa
post Jul 17 2019, 01:15 PM
Post #101


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QUOTE(RaderOfTheLostArk @ Jul 16 2019, 10:04 PM) *

QUOTE(SubRosa @ Jul 16 2019, 06:39 PM) *

I guess Boo wouldn't be able to go for the eyes on that one...

I started Hordes Of The Underdark yesterday. I have been enjoying it immensely. I did not realize that there was an npc who would give you the rod of resurrection before you went in. Nor did I know you could go up and out of the inn and into the city to shop. I just went straight in. Eventually I went back just to see if I could. Thankfully you can do that. I was wondering what I would do with all the loot I picked up if not.

I also finally figured out how the teleport thing works. I wish I had realized that to start with too.

Wow, there is a lot of loot! I don't really feel bad about losing all my gear to start with. Well, not since I used the console to get some of it back, like my armor and helmet. I just found a pair of uber monk gloves that adds a ton of damage. Plus I think a +4 belt of Agility. January is really geared up already.

I have also been solo'ing it with no problem. I got the rod of resurrection after going back out once and then heading back in, and resurrected Daelan and Sharwyn. But I did not bother teaming up. The same with Deekin. It is kind of fun going it alone in this game. It's a first. January just hit level 18, the highest level I have ever had a character in any D&D game.


The lady in the cellar (White Thelma or something like that, IIRC) sells some stuff, but yeah, the shopkeepers outside the tavern have much better stuff. Just wait until you get even further into the DLC. You get some crazy powerful stuff. I remember finding a decent amount of monk equipment, actually, one being called Gloves of the Hin Fist +7. The loot definitely mitigates the blow of losing your equipment, fortunately.

It took me a while to figure out how the Relic of the Reaper (the teleporter thing) works too.

January sure isn't someone to be trifled with. If 18 is the highest you have ever been in D&D, you're going to blow that personal record out of the water at the end of HOTu. Eliza Maddox was level 18 after the main campaign and Shadows of Undrentide, and at the end of Hordes of the Underdark she was level 27. And that was always with a companion (it is possible to have two at the same time in HOTU), so it'll be interesting to see what January ends up being when she is all done since she will have all the XP to herself. But she has her work cut out for her in chapters 2 and 3, that's for sure.

Deekin really endeared himself to me in SOU, and I was somewhat surprised he popped up again in HOTU. So I took him along again and eventually got my second companion to join us later in the DLC. The second companion, however...had some seriously wonky AI. I'll leave it at that for now so I don't spoil anything.

I remember Deekin from Neverwinter Nights 2. He is a companion and a merchant, and I liked him in that. I also remember him from when I did SOU with a previous character. I love his horrible singing! smile.gif

I skipped SOU with January, so she might not get as high level Eliza did. I was afraid of getting burned out on the game after the original campaign, which often happens since it is so long. I am glad I stuck it out to finally do HOTU.


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SubRosa
post Jul 19 2019, 01:48 AM
Post #102


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He slimed me...

The Purple Man

Looker

Black eye

Can someone give me a hand?




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RaderOfTheLostArk
post Jul 19 2019, 02:59 AM
Post #103


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QUOTE(SubRosa @ Jul 17 2019, 08:15 AM) *

I remember Deekin from Neverwinter Nights 2. He is a companion and a merchant, and I liked him in that. I also remember him from when I did SOU with a previous character. I love his horrible singing! smile.gif

I skipped SOU with January, so she might not get as high level Eliza did. I was afraid of getting burned out on the game after the original campaign, which often happens since it is so long. I am glad I stuck it out to finally do HOTU.


Speaking of NWN2, would you recommend that game as well? How similar/different is it to NWN1? I tried searching for some reviews and such, and it seems to be fairly different. (Also, even though it was only a few people on a couple of websites, I was a bit surprised at how much in some forum posts years ago people trashed the original game. Mostly the original campaign.) But I haven't found enough information to really convince me whether or not to buy the game. I do know that Bioware made 1 while Obsidian made 2, which I found a bit odd.

So what are your thoughts on NWN2? And that's good to know Deekin is in there, too.

QUOTE(SubRosa @ Jul 18 2019, 08:48 PM) *


Something that did really piss me off in HOTU: Death magic. Death magic is total [censored]. Got hit with it in the beholder lair especially. I couldn't understand why I was getting one-shotted until a later boss did the same thing. From what I gather, that is what death armor potions are for and that is their sole purpose. It is such a cheap move, and it was already tough enough sledding as it is. That beholder pic got me thinking about that again.

In case you didn't know--because I couldn't figure it out until I looked it up--when those goblins slime you, those switches that the one goblin is operating apparently hit you especially hard with damage or stat reductions or something like that if he operates the switch that is the same color as the slime. Luckily, the goblins were pushovers.

The Djinn merchant! Such a useful resource.

There was only one time I encountered that hand, and it was a bunch of them in the same room later on in HOTU. Still not entirely sure what they do.


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Acadian
post Jul 19 2019, 02:26 PM
Post #104


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What a hoot!

Green Woman (beautiful effect btw) and Purple Man.

Beholder vs Jan. . . methinks they're both lookers. wink.gif

And Mr Hand. tongue.gif


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SubRosa
post Jul 19 2019, 03:35 PM
Post #105


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QUOTE(RaderOfTheLostArk @ Jul 18 2019, 09:59 PM) *

QUOTE(SubRosa @ Jul 17 2019, 08:15 AM) *

I remember Deekin from Neverwinter Nights 2. He is a companion and a merchant, and I liked him in that. I also remember him from when I did SOU with a previous character. I love his horrible singing! smile.gif

I skipped SOU with January, so she might not get as high level Eliza did. I was afraid of getting burned out on the game after the original campaign, which often happens since it is so long. I am glad I stuck it out to finally do HOTU.


Speaking of NWN2, would you recommend that game as well? How similar/different is it to NWN1? I tried searching for some reviews and such, and it seems to be fairly different. (Also, even though it was only a few people on a couple of websites, I was a bit surprised at how much in some forum posts years ago people trashed the original game. Mostly the original campaign.) But I haven't found enough information to really convince me whether or not to buy the game. I do know that Bioware made 1 while Obsidian made 2, which I found a bit odd.

So what are your thoughts on NWN2? And that's good to know Deekin is in there, too.

QUOTE(SubRosa @ Jul 18 2019, 08:48 PM) *


Something that did really piss me off in HOTU: Death magic. Death magic is total [censored]. Got hit with it in the beholder lair especially. I couldn't understand why I was getting one-shotted until a later boss did the same thing. From what I gather, that is what death armor potions are for and that is their sole purpose. It is such a cheap move, and it was already tough enough sledding as it is. That beholder pic got me thinking about that again.

In case you didn't know--because I couldn't figure it out until I looked it up--when those goblins slime you, those switches that the one goblin is operating apparently hit you especially hard with damage or stat reductions or something like that if he operates the switch that is the same color as the slime. Luckily, the goblins were pushovers.

The Djinn merchant! Such a useful resource.

There was only one time I encountered that hand, and it was a bunch of them in the same room later on in HOTU. Still not entirely sure what they do.

The Save vs. Death is an old D&D staple. The Beholder is the most infamous for using it. As you have noticed it has a bunch of eyes. In the classic pen and paper version of D&D each of its eyes shoots out a different magical attack. I believe the big center eye is the Death Ray one, though I could be wrong. I never liked it either, though there are other things about D&D I dislike even more, like the whole spellcasting system.

I eventually figured out the goblin slime. One of the goblins actually said that it made it easier for them to hit me. Though starting with an Armor Class in the 30's it really didn't help them any. January rolled through them like the superhero she is.

The big glowing hand is a classic D&D wizard spell, actually several. There is Bigby's Grasping Hand, Bigby's Crushing Hand, Bigby's Interposing Hand, etc...

The whole Bioware/Obsidian team up was kind of common for a while. After Bioware did KOTOR 1, Obsidian made KOTOR 2. So apparently back in the day the two companies had some kind of deal with Obsidian came behind and did all their sequels.

Neverwinter Nights 2 has a lot to recommend it. It uses the D&D 3.5 rules instead of 3.0 as NWN 1 does. That adds a few small improvements. The graphics are certainly vastly improved in NWN 2. It plays mostly the same, except you have more companions, and more control over the companion AI and inventories.

There were a lot of things I did not like about NWN 2 however. The companions are forced on you by the game's plot (although you can later dismiss them). The landmass to explore is dramatically smaller., and the game is much more linear. Most of all I did not much like the plot of the original campaign, which forced a background on your character. But that is a minor grievance compared to things later in the plot which annoyed me. I have never been able to finish it. Maybe after I do HOTU I will take another crack at it with January.



QUOTE(Acadian @ Jul 19 2019, 09:26 AM) *

What a hoot!

Green Woman (beautiful effect btw) and Purple Man.

Beholder vs Jan. . . methinks they're both lookers. wink.gif

And Mr Hand. tongue.gif

I thought the whole green thing was hilarious. It immediately had me thinking of Ghostbusters and getting slimed.

The Purple Man is actually a djinn, whose bottle you find. He is a merchant you can trade with whenever you call him out of his bottle. I keep forgetting I have him though!


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SubRosa
post Jul 21 2019, 11:28 PM
Post #106


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Drow

Driders

Drider convention

January is fully buffed up on potions

A nice quiet day at the library

Ewww

Laying the smack down

Unlimited Power!


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Acadian
post Jul 22 2019, 01:22 AM
Post #107


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Wow, what a variety of foes Jan fights in these shots. Dark elves, spider daedra, flesh astronauts and zombies. Best of all was the trio in the library - Wing Gurl, Vulture Dude and Big Red Bonehead. tongue.gif

And all solo it appears!


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SubRosa
post Jul 24 2019, 12:10 AM
Post #108


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All solo.

Tonight I finally beat Hordes of the Underdark like a bad stepchild. I have to say, I did not like it much. It started out fine. I did not even mind having my stuff stolen, since there was so much amazing loot just all over the place. But that was the problem. It is what we would have called a Monty Haul in the old days of pen and paper gaming. There are too many uber magic items being showered on the player. In the end it makes them all feel worthless.

I really hated the big battle you are forced to do. Whenever RPGs like NWN or Pillars of Eternity try this, it just falls flat, because they are not made for it. That is what games like the Total War franchise are for. It was just a major pain. The pain got worse later when I had to start shapeshifting to get through dungeons, or putting that stupid puzzle ring on and off an on and off ad nauseum. The longer the game went, the more frustrating it all became. I am so glad to be done with it.

But with that out of the way, I think I will try taking another crack at NWN2. This time with a superhero monk.

Iron Giant

Face off

Gelatinous Cube!

Draco-Lich!

All eyes

Close my eyes forever

Beholder!

Behold This!

Stereo-vision

Be careful what you wish for

Smackdown

Reuinited with Aribeth

Big Bad

Endgame


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Acadian
post Jul 24 2019, 08:56 PM
Post #109


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Wow, that game is full of interesting encounters/foes. The beholders look pretty scary - the ones in ESO have lots of eyes but no mouth. Grats to January for completing the game!


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RaderOfTheLostArk
post Jul 25 2019, 12:14 AM
Post #110


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QUOTE(SubRosa @ Jul 23 2019, 07:10 PM) *

*snip*


Shame that you didn't like it after you started off liking it a lot. But at least you got to go through it this time.

Regarding the powerful weapons, I see where you are coming from. Personally, it didn't bother me too much with how the difficulty kept mostly scaling up. I got my astral blade up to +10 enhancement along with the keen and electrical damage upgrades through Rizolvir's smithing.

I liked the big battle if only for it being something different. There were some things that bothered me about the whole process leading up to it, but I didn't mind the battle itself. That being said, the mechanics weren't the most well-suited for it, like you said.

The puzzle ring was pretty annoying, I'll definitely agree on that. Getting to the Knower of Names was a big chore, even though I understand it is supposed to be difficult to get there.

I felt the length of the main campaign was what was obnoxiously long, not so much HOTU. If I wasn't so invested in the game and having so much fun, it would have been downright infuriating. But HOTU did have some unfairly difficult encounters that extended its length. I know it is supposed to be more difficult than the original campaign and SOU, and I am cool with that. But goodness, sometimes it was just ridiculous.

Overall, though, I enjoyed it. The whole of NWN was a very enjoyable experience. I'm still debating about getting NWN2. From what you said about it, I'm going to hold off on it. No biggie, I got other stuff to play, and I'm not chomping at the bit for another really long adventure.

What did you think about NWN as a whole now that you have gone through it again (except for SOU)?

QUOTE(Acadian @ Jul 24 2019, 03:56 PM) *

Wow, that game is full of interesting encounters/foes. The beholders look pretty scary - the ones in ESO have lots of eyes but no mouth. Grats to January for completing the game!


Totally forgot beholders were in ESO. Been so long since I've played that game.

This post has been edited by RaderOfTheLostArk: Jul 25 2019, 12:14 AM


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SubRosa
post Jul 25 2019, 01:16 AM
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I still love NWN over all. It brings back that classic pen and paper RPG feel. I just love the old isometric style games like it, the Baldur's Gate games, Icewind Dales, and Pillars of Eternity. I did play SOU, it was just a few years ago. I liked it too, except for the whole slavery part near the end. There are also a crap ton of user created modules that I have never even touched. Some came with the Enhanced Edition. I just found The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh online. It's a classic pen and paper D&D module. So I might go back to NWN1 to try that.


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SubRosa
post Jul 28 2019, 02:17 AM
Post #112


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I started NWN 2 a few days ago. I created January as an Aasimar (basically a nephilim). She is still a monk. I have looked at some of the other classes I might multiclass her with, but do not see anything that seems worth trading any of her monk levels for. The Favored Soul looked interesting. It is basically a cleric that does not have to memorize spells (like the Sorcerer is with Arcane Magic). But the Feats the Favored Soul receives are based on using weapons, which is counter-productive for a monk.

Here are January, Khelgar, and Neeshka

I have been experimenting with some new mods this time around.


Tchos' HD UI panels and dialogue compilation and expansion - This mainly just makes it easier to read the text in 1920 x 1080 resolution.

It also increases the size of the character portraits to 256x400 pixels, which is good and bad. The good thing is they are higher resolution. The bad news is the original portraits get all stretched out of proportion and look terrible. So you need all new portraits for your player character and companions. I Googled the companion names and found some decent pics or artwork for each, that I cropped down to use as portraits. So I covered that. I found some mods that add new companion portraits, but they just look bad.

Tchos' HD Widescreen UI Menu and Loading Screen = This restores the pre-expansion menu artwork. I think it looks better than the replacements that the expansion packs put there.

Companion and Monster AI 2.2 = This improves the AI of your companions. The vanilla AI is pretty bad. It still is not good. But any improvement is better than how it is in vanilla.

NENs Final Face Head Hair Combination Project = Adds our old favorite Ren's Hairs from Oblivion to the game. It also has a bunch of replacement heads. I was not impressed with those, so I deleted them. But the new hairs were worth it.


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Acadian
post Jul 28 2019, 05:04 PM
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Welcome to January's adventures in NWN2! Looks like some good mods you have going and things are looking very nice.


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SubRosa
post Aug 2 2019, 11:05 PM
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I am working my way through Neverwinter Nights 2 with January. I ended up discarding my AI mods and taking that part of the game back to vanilla. I have been having trouble with animal companions this time (a Druid NPC has one). It won't attack in combat. Instead it just stands there. That is even if you use the party command to attack.

Last night I finally figured out that I can manually command it to attack individual monsters. First you have to left click on the animal companion to select it the same as you would any of the companions. Then you right click on the monster, hold the button down until a box pops up, and from that you can left click on Attack. That forces the animal companion to attack that specific monster.

Speaking of which, for the longest time I thought that right clicks did not even work. In NWN1 if you right click on a character it brings up a radial menu, and from there you can do things like select spells to cast, activate feats, do emotes, etc... In NWN2, to make that radial menu work you have to not just click, but hold down the mouse for a few seconds before the menu pops up. Doh!


Burn

High...

...Kick

Spleckt!

Bad day to be a bad guy



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Acadian
post Aug 2 2019, 11:53 PM
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So glad you're sorting out the interface differences and getting everything to work okay. Wow, January looks great. I very much like her look and she is really stylin' with that hat! In fact the game seems to look pretty good. Glad you and January are enjoying it. smile.gif


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SubRosa
post Jul 3 2020, 05:35 AM
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I decided to go back to Neverwinter Nights 1. I have been doing Shadows of Undrentide. Finishing it will round out my NWN1 official campaigns. Afterward I might do some of the modules that came with the enhanced edition.

It has been a tough go around with SOU. I had a lot of trouble in the first act. To the point where I constantly had to use the cheat codes just to stay alive. I think I did the various areas out of order (though naturally the game does not tell you what order to clear the areas). For example, I saved the dragon for last. It looks like I should have done that first, as there is a magical phylactery you get that turns you into a frost giant which you can use when you fight it. It pretty much guarantees victory.

But once I got into the second act things smoothed out. It all went fine today. I wrapped up at the start of the third act.



Trying to parley

Failing to parley

Batwoman

Who let the dogs out?

Hot stuff

Dragon

Jan has a power up

Jan is the tall one

The scorpion king


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Lopov
post Jul 3 2020, 06:58 AM
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These kobolds don't seem to be the talking type.

Nice black jacket. Is it vanilla?

Hit that gnoll!

The dragon looks like to be made of stone.

January lives up to her name, when she transforms into a frost giants.


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Acadian
post Jul 3 2020, 07:22 PM
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Glad to see January enjoying NWN1 after her somewhat rocky start. Do I gather she is running solo? Though I never played NWN nor TESIII, the pix remind me a bit of shots from the Morrowind game.

I smiled when I saw Jan with the Scorpion King. I pretty much liked everything The Rock did related to those 'Mummy' movies.


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SubRosa
post Jul 3 2020, 08:13 PM
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Lopov: I was able to talk with the first group of Kobolds for a little while. But eventually they went hostile and I had to kill them all. I think the game is designed so that you have to, because they stole an artifact which you have to get back, and they won't surrender it peacefully.

All of Jan's gear is vanilla. I just use a mod that allows me to change any armor or weapon to the appearance of any other one in the game.


Acadian: I was going solo for the first act, and that is probably one of the reasons I had so much trouble. Though granted, I don't think any of the companions could have survived the fights Jan was in. For the second act I have had Deekin the Kobold Bard as a companion. I liked having him around. He stayed back out of the way and gave Jan a lot of buffs from his bardic song.

The Rock was really good in the new Jumanji movies. Definitely give them a try. They were delightful!


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macole
post Jul 4 2020, 03:39 AM
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NWN-1 is looking pretty good! Much better than I remember in fact. In my game all the characters had this dark chin shadow that made them look like they had a heavy beard.

There was a Witcher mod for NWN1 that I played once. That was long before the Witcher game came out.


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