Neverwinter Nights, Another Classic RPG series Options

[SubRosa]

Macole, I do still get a mustache on my female characters in some angles. It can be frustrating. But I agree, it looks really good for an 18 year old game. The texture quality was really good. Even if the were not very many polys on the meshes.


I just beat Shadows of Undrentide like a red-haired kobold stepchild. The whole thing was decent, but not great. I find I enjoyed the vanilla campaign better than Shadows or Hordes of the Underdark. Though a lot of people appear to think the expansions were better. I guess I am just a contrarian.

Now I might have a go at some of the premium modules. Or I could try going back to finishing the NWN2 game I started with January last year, but never finished.


January wants her mummy

The final battle of Shadows of Undrentide is colorful

[Acadian]

So {little oops/edit } many mummies, so little time.

Colorful indeed!

This post has been edited by Acadian: Jul 5 2020, 08:56 PM

[Lopov]

The first screenie looks like a drawing from some colored comic book!

Heurodis is stupid to call January "wretched creature". Jan will defy her and defeat her!

This post has been edited by Lopov: Jul 5 2020, 07:01 PM

[SubRosa]

I am back to playing Neverwinter Nights 2. Where the combat in NWN1 tended to go by really slow, almost boringly so, in this game it is the opposite. Combat tends to go by so fast it is impossible to tell what is going on, let alone actually command people.

I have really been getting annoyed at the game not allowing me to rest, either because the dungeon is set up to simply disallow it, or because a certain amount of time has not passed since I last rested. I was about to give up playing when I found the Verge of Morpheus, it is part of a group of items called Silverwand Sundries. Using the Verge automatically rests the party, regardless of where you are or how long since you last did so.

Looks like the same person also created Kaldor Silverwand Context Menu Additions. One of the additions is the ability to meditate, which does the same as resting, without restrictions.

[Lopov]

Can you use some mod to rest?

I remember that in vanilla Baldur's Gate you could rest inside inns or in wilderness but not inside caves or any other interior locations, so I used a mod that allowed resting in interiors.

EDIT: I didn't read the final sentence before what I wrote above, so I see that there is a mod to do it.

This post has been edited by Lopov: Jul 9 2020, 06:48 PM

[SubRosa]

I beat the Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign a little while ago. It was meh.

Near the end your castle is attacked by an enemy army. This part gets a little tricky, as the battle is broken up into two main scenes. In the first scene you have to defend the walls from enemy siege towers. You have to destroy the towers, and all the baddies they disgorge. You are allowed to bring two companions, each of which will lead a contingent of troops that you select. You should in the very least have Greycloak infantry and archers. But depending on how you did the quests running up to this, you might have Ironfist Dwarves and Lizardfolk as well.

I took my wizard and sorcerer companions - Sand and Quara - thinking they could use their fire-based spells to destroy the towers at a distance. It did not work out that way. There really was not much opportunity to shoot them as they came up. Instead I spent almost the entire time smashing them after they had docked with the walls. So I could have used melee companions like Casavir or Khelgar instead.

But it all worked out, so no big deal. After you destroy six of the towers you successfully complete the scene, and go to scene two.

This one has you on the ground inside the bailey, defending from more bad guys coming through the gate. Again, you pick two companions, and what groups of soldiers they will lead. You can't use the same companions you used in the first scene. They remain on the walls. This time I went with Elanee and Khelgar, and took the Ironfist Dwarves and Lizardfolk. You fight wave after wave of attackers. But this one went relatively easily. That is when I ran into a bug.

One of the bosses - Garius - is supposed to show up and summon an avatar of the King of Shadows. But he never turned up. I killed all the monsters, and just stood there waiting forever, with nothing happening. I found a fix for this using the console -

Type: DebugMode 1 and hit enter
Type: rs 3541_death_nwalker and hit enter

This runs a script telling the game the avatar has been killed. It worked perfectly, and moved things along.

After that it is a relatively straightforward dungeon crawl against the Big Bad, the King of Shadows. It is notable in that all of your companions come for it. They are not available for the entire dungeon crawl. But they are all there at the end. Depending on how much influence you have gained with them during the game, some might betray you and go over to the bad guys.

Apparently there is an option for you to do the same, and become the henchman of the King of Shadows. As if! Even if I was not playing a Good character, I would never become the slave of some magical creep.

Then you fight, destroy some statues, fight some more, and the game ends. And they kill everyone! Seriously, after you win, the ending slides starts with *rocks fall, the party dies*. I am not pissed. Just incredulous that a game company would do that. But then again, this is Obsidian, and they seem to love trolling their fanbase.

However, the expansion Mask of the Betrayer seems to continue the story. I am going to start that. I imported January from the end of the original campaign already.

[macole]

So, so game story. Yeah, that's how I remember NWN2 also. Mask of the Betrayer, the first expansion was my favorite of the NWN2 series. I still have some pics of my Mask of the Betrayer party.

[SubRosa]

I started Mask of the Betrayer, and so far I am enjoying it, certainly more than the original campaign. I find the whole Spirit Devourer part of it disturbing. But I am avoiding most of that thanks to the rest mods I mentioned above.

I am having an odd bug with it. The first NPC you meet is a Safiya - a Red Wizard of Thay. She is supposed to have a shaven head and tattoos. But she has hair in the game. I found out that it was because of the Nen's Hair mod I am using. Some of its files change Safiya. I thought I had found them and removed those individual files. But apparently not. Ok, I found it. I had to remove the entire Whatbrick subfolder in Nen's.

Now that I have, I think I prefer her with the hair.

[Acadian]

Hair is good. Grats on finishing NWN2.

[SubRosa]

I am still plugging away through Mask of the Betrayer. It is ok, but I am having headscratching moments, and exasperation at times. As seems to be typical of Obisidian, they have level scaling issues, even though it is not an open world, and they know how powerful you will be at every stage in the game.

In one case I opened a door, and 7 ancient vampires appeared out of nowhere behind me. Half the party was literally dead in seconds. In more than one other battle, just seconds into them and everyone was missing half their health. None of these are big boss battles at high points in the game mind you. Just regular encounters while exploring. The boss battles have been much easier in fact.

But then in other battles I literally just walk over the bad guys without breaking a sweat.

Given that I have now played several Obsidian games recently, I am seeing this is a common thing in all of them. Even going back to New Vegas, they were putting Cazadors and Deathclaws right next to the area you start the game in. Is it really that hard to know that your characters will be X level when they reach a specific area, and populate it with creatures that are also X level? Is that asking too much Obsidian?

Otherwise I am mostly enjoying the story. But to be honest, a lot of it takes place on other planes, and that does not do much for me. I play fantasy RPGs to get away from the real world. This is like playing an alternate RPG world to get away from the regular RPG world, to get away from the real world. One step away is good enough for me.

Mighty Talos!

Jan has moves

[Lopov]

Great moves! If there wasn't the enemy behind her, it looks like she's in a middle of a dancing lesson.

At least in New Vegas you can go in other direction, whereas in NWN it sounds like these are all regular encounters and hard to avoid. Then again, original FOs could be merciless as well, if you wandered in some area, where high-leveled enemies were present.

[Acadian]

Heh, looks like Talos got a better gig in TES.

Moves! Lara Croft got nothing on you, Jan!

[SubRosa]

I beat Mask of the Betrayer like a red-haired pit fiend child. It was pretty good. But I really did not much care for all the multiplanar aspects to the story, especially all the time in the Shadow Plane. I did like the final showdown in the City of Judgement and the Wall however.

I found myself having a strange bug with many of the companions. Gann was the worst. When trying to make them cast spells, they would often just do nothing. I checked, and they were not paralyzed, or confused, or feared, or anything of the like. There was nothing preventing them from acting. They just would not cast any spell I selected for them to. They would attack in melee however.

Another really annoying thing was all the enemies that went invisible, or something similar. They would look transparent, and the game would not allow me to attack them. In spite of the fact that my characters had the Blind Fight feat, and tons of points in the Spot and Listen skills. I could only fight these creatures by using area-effect spells.


Jan is getting huge

January Ward and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The Mask Of The Betrayer

[Lopov]

Has January become a giant?

That's one big skull!

That mask is ugly, isn't it?

[Acadian]

Is that the attack of the midget mummies? Love Jan's high ponytail! And that bear has some serious bling going on!

[macole]

Kaelyn the Dove, was my favorite companion. She reminded me of my all time favorite companion Fall-from-Grace of Torment. Kaelyn's endings were very disappointing. I tried several times to get a happier ending but the best I could do left Kaelyn in an endless battle against the wall.

Did Jan use an enlargement spell?

Okku is very colorful. Believe in him so he lives on.

That's a very good picture of Jan's moves.

[SubRosa]

Lopov: Jan had an enlarge person spell on her, that made her giant sized. The penalties to your armor class and dexterity really do not make it worth it. But it did look neat.

The giant skull was a Lich who was on your team. At least for a little while.


Acadian: The bear is a spirit/god, who you can recruit as an companion. He was helpful in the battles.


macole: Kaelyn was my favorite companion too, followed by Safiya. I liked both their voices. I typically use Kaelyn's voice for all my NWN games, and in some other games too I think. I read ahead, so was prepared to get the best ending I could for her.




I have been playing Storm of Zehir for a few days now. It seems to be a big retool of Neverwinter Nights 2, almost like a sequel to it. In many ways, it feels like a different game.

For starters, it looks like all those things about preventing resting that I hated were added by SOZ. They were added by that same mod that allows you to resurrect Shandra Jerro. I just deleted that, since I do not expect to ever play NWN2 again. In any case, I am glad I found those mods that allow you to rest anywhere, anytime, as I will need them for SOZ.

They changed the crafting system. Now you are given a bunch of crafting books. You find recipes in the game, and they are automatically added to the appropriate book. When you want to make something, you do it from the book, and it creates the item if you have the right materials. I was hoping I might be able to take existing items and enchant them. But that does not seem to be possible. It looks like you have to create the enchanted item whole cloth. But I could be wrong.

The strategy map is different. Instead of a big map where you click on where you want to go and you are teleported there, you actually move on the map. It reminds me of the strat maps in the Total War games, where you can see hills and mountains and lakes and the like, which funnel your movement. There are tons of random encounters on the strat map. They just randomly appear right in front of your eyes. If your lead character has a decent Survival, Move Silent, and think Hide skill you can avoid the encounters if you want. I think if you have good Search or Spot, you will get lots of random treasure spawns as well. Ryo does, so I gets lots of goodies just walking around.

Speaking of which, in this game you can switch characters during dialogue and on the strat map, in order to make use of your party's skills. So if you want to Intimidate someone, you can switch to your character with a high Intimidate skill, and so on. This makes the whole party much more useful, and worth creating with a diverse set of skills, rather than just being extra swords in a fight.

There is not much to the strat map however, at least in Act I. I think the game moves to a new location in Act II however. Encounters on the map with random monsters are really simple. It takes you to a small tactical map that is usually just a wide open space with you and the monsters. You fight them, and then you are done, and go back to the strat map. Places to explore are tiny, unless they are tied to specific quests. It intensely reminds me of Pillars of Eternity 2 (also made by Obisidian), which does things in exactly the same way.

The basic story is that you start out shipwrecked, and get back to civilization. The first civilized people who find you take you prisoner and are threatening to execute you. Except a merchant steps in and speaks on your behalf. That makes you her employee (Let's not used that ugly 'slave' word). Becoming a merchant seems to be a big component in SOZ. They seem to want you to work your way up through this person's trading company, make deals, etc... I could not give a crap. I do not play fantasy RPGs because I am looking for a merchant simulator. It is like the strongholds that are so popular in these games. I don't want to play a castle administrator game either. I play these games because I want to create toons, kill monsters, take their treasures, smite the Dark Lord, save the realm, and all that good Aragorn stuff.

I also did not like the heavy-handed way the game basically arrests you and forces you into serving this merchant. You are literally given no other options to take. Even playing a nice person like January, my first reaction was "Why don't I just kill you all instead?" A less nice character like Persephone would have literally killed the entire city.

It also starts you out with basically nothing. However, I short-circuited that by creating my party in the NWN2 original campaign, skipping the tutorial, then exporting each one of them. That starts them out with the XP to make 3rd level. Then I went into the character editor and tweaked their stats, feats, and starting items. After all, they are superheros. I created January as a Paladin this time, and gave her a pair of wings from a mod I found. Avery is a Favored Soul, basically the Sorcerer version of a Cleric, who does not have to memorize their spells). Ryo is a ranged Rogue. Finally Hannah is a Sorcerer.

Speaking of which, in this game you can create up to 4 starting characters. I think the first one is still considered "you", while the others are basically companions. But as I said before, you can switch between characters during dialogue and tests, so in a lot of ways your team in interchangeable. Basically that is it, a team experience, rather than one person with some helpers, which I like.


The Alliance - (from left to right, Avery, January, Hannah, and Ryo).

The Allies without the hud

Exploring on the strategy map

Ryo found a dungeon

This place is driving Jan batty!

[Acadian]

Nice that you can really customize your team. Also sounds good that you can 'play' as different characters within your party. Jan's team looks good!

[Lopov]

I like Ryo's outfit.

Quite a battle in the Singing caverns.

So your team can explore the island one by one, they don't need to travel in a group?

Can you enter that walled place in the upper left corner of the map?

[SubRosa]

You have to all travel in the same group. The character that you select is considered the "lead", and the game uses their Survival, Move Silent, Spot, etc... skills to avoid monsters and find random treasure on the strat map.

The walled area to the side is a city. There are several that you can visit. But there is almost nothing to them. You can visit inside a tavern in each, and talk to the bartender to sleep, or one npc who might have a quest. There is also generic trade menu you can use. Not to sell your normal loot, but the special trade crates you can find in the game. It is part of the whole "be a merchant" subplot.

I finished the first Act of the game, and got a little way into Act II. It just was not making me excited however. I remember when Skyrim came out people loved to say it was a mile wide, but only an inch deep. Well, this is not nearly that wide, and certainly less deep. It all feels really generic and shallow, especially given its preponderance of random encounters.