Review Quandary endorses HotU

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark

<a href=http://www.quandaryland.com>Quandary</a> posted this <a href=http://www.quandaryland.com/jsp/dispArticle.jsp?index=609>review</a> of <a href=http://nwn.bioware.com/underdark>HotU</a>, calling it <i>an exceptionally good addition to the Neverwinter Nights saga</i>
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<blockquote>It is divided into three chapters, and each one has a dominant theme. The first Chapter takes place in the Dungeon of Undermountain and is trap oriented, courtesy of Halasten, with lots of secret doors. So brush up on your trap finding and disarming skills for this one, or get someone to help, or you'll take a lot of damage. The second chapter moves down to the Underdark and has more story elements and various quests to take care of. The decisions you make will have repercussions for the concluding battle at the end of this section. Finally the last chapter is riddled with puzzles and will have you pulling leavers or working out other problems to get through the various areas. If you have the skills you can even make your very own golem companion and there's some romance too if you have the inclination to dally.</blockquote>
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Do they have a role-playing oriented chapter as well?
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://sorcerers.net/">Sorcerer's Place</A>

 

[Volourn]

Role-playing is all over the place in the game; though ch1 really lacks it (though there are soem insatnces in it).

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Chapter 2 didn't have much role-playing in it. Chapter 3 might have in the very beginning, but after you talk to the Sleeping Dude, that's all over. In fact, that's most of what the beginning of Chapter 3 is about as well. The only two things other than the Sleeping Dude stuff is the Aribeth thing and feeding the imp through the grinder, unless I missed something.

 

[EEVIAC]

Who's Halasten?

 

[Psilon]

Halasten: Gerund form of the verb "halast," meaning "to fill a room with arbitrarily scattered and disproportionately lethal traps." Frequently presages a sharp rise in fee schedules from the Guild of Henchmen (Rogues' Local).

Example: "After his carrion crawlers arrived from the importer, the Mad Lord Xerraz started halasten the second floor of the dungeon to ensure a proper food supply."

 

[Jed]

It is divided into three chapters, and each one has a dominant theme. The first Chapter takes place in the Dungeon of Undermountain and is trap oriented, courtesy of Halasten, with lots of secret doors. So brush up on your trap finding and disarming skills for this one, or get someone to help, or you'll take a lot of damage.

Or, alternately, just run through them and rest a lot! BioWare can't even let there be real consequences on the composition of your party; any decent dungeon hack should at least provide that...

 

[Volourn]

You mean like I did with TOEE and it's half a dozen traps?

 

[dagamer667]

In a lot of RPGs traps are easily disarmed by running over them and healing. NWN just makes it extra easy. As long as you have some physical and elemental soak items, most traps do zero damage. The ones that were actually dangerous (doing over a hundred dmg) were too few and far between to worry about them. Honestly, most games need to have more traps that do more than just sap some of your health. Even the old system shock 2 had boobytrapped crates that had to be disarmed or else they went BOOM injuring you and destroying the items inside. In NWN, opening a trapped chest was a matter of using the bash function to set off the trap and smash the chest open to find two gold coins and a pair of level 1 scrolls that miraculously survived the explosion. What about sound traps that will not only stun you on a failed roll but also warn the enemies inside the dungeon who will promptly run to the armory to get bigger weapons and better armor, and then move to secure all exits and important locations? But no, too many game follow the minefield mentality to injure your party members, slowing you down without any other consequences.

 

[Volourn]

Actually, NWN does have sonic and poison traps. It no fun when you step on a trap that causes your strength to be lowered. i do agree that traps could be used to more intelligent effect though.

 

[EEVIAC]

I remember a NWN module in which traps would destroy items - acid traps on the floor would eat away your boots, for example. There were even monsters that caused damage to weapons.

You mean like I did with TOEE and it's half a dozen traps?

There were traps in ToEE?

 

[Volourn]

Ha. Yes there were. very few; but there were some... No floor traps I think though which was just plain dumb...

 

[Jed]

Floor traps are a stupid idea if you want to maintain a deadly dungeon ecosystem. They should only be placed on things such as doors and chests that adventurers would be likely to fuck with. With floor traps, all your deadly beasts would die and set off all the traps...

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I dodn't remember any traps in ToEE either. Well, other than the "Put all your magic and silver items in the container and step threw the door to the East." one, which cracked me up.

I do remember dying a LOT in Chapter 1 of NWN because I hadn't taken along a certain annoying thief though. Then, after that, traps were no threat to me. I just waded through them.

I waded through all the traps in HotU or got my followers to wade through them for me. I don't recall a trap killing me or a follower.

Personally, I prefer traps more of the kind that lead to peril or involve a little trickery rather than the STEP ON FLOOR PLATE, TAKE DAMAGE kind. Things like the Hall of Mirrors is fairly neat in HotU.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Heh. Reminds me of the locked room in the sewer treatment plant of Tarant in Arcanum. The one where almost EVERY FUCKING FLOOR TILE was a trap. :shock: And here my followers are happily tromping their way through them slowly commiting suicide. Needless to say, I reloaded and went solo after that.

 

[Volourn]

I agree SP. Damage traps are easily dealt with - espicially in D&D where healing magic is realtively common.

 

[Whipporowill]

It's pretty hard balancing traps for a game where you can simply reload if you fail - having traps do some damage you just shrug it off, causing death or item decay - reload.

I liked the way the traps in Gothic 2's end dungeon worked - they spawned new undead when you failed the puzzles. I'd like either that or spells that make the odds worse for you, slow et c (like Saint was implying). What the fark is the point of a chest that slows you down when you can sit down next to it and sleep it off? It has to be a floor trap in an ambush zone to make sense.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Randomly placed traps would be nice. Define an area size (like 21x5 tiles), and make it so traps will be placed randomly within that area. Of course this would only be used for some circumnstances, not always.