NWN Neverwinter Nights (NWN & NWN2) Modules Thread

[DramaticPopcorn]

Crimson Tides of Tethyr

Great mod, heartly recommend. Very solid story with interesting characters and well written dialogue.

The dialogue with that Red Wizard that narrates his own actions was especially priceless

 

[Somberlain]

Crimson Tides of Tethyr

Great mod, heartly recommend. Very solid story with interesting characters and well written dialogue.

The dialogue with that Red Wizard that narrates his own actions was especially priceless

The mod starts very promising with a BG2 feel, since you are in a fairly large city with a fairly good amount of stuff you can do or ignore, but then it gets boring and linear when you're traveling to the elven city. The endgame, however, was actually cool and I was glad I didn't abandon the mod halfway through, which I almost did.

 

[Lilura]

I'd only point out that harvesting all the containers is a foreign playing style for me,

Really? I guess it helps that receptacles containing plot-critical or quest items emit an inexplicable "come loot me!" glow - sort of like a precursor to Oblivion's quest marker.. but as a new player I didn't ignore receptacles in IE, Aurora or Electron games. I ignore them in popamoles like Skyrim, though. Interestingly, I once found a pair of Boots of Speed on an unassuming corpse long before the guaranteed find point.

and I also often avoid monsters.

Soloing as a Rogue, or you just generally run past them?

The problem with that is you run the risk of being under-leveled (-kill Exp), which is probably why you had difficulty against the "bosses".

For a fighter, a room full of enemys and a boss can be the hardest thing in the world to do.

If I didn't take Great Cleave specifically for the trashmobs, I'd fall asleep playing. And yeah, I play on D&D "Hardcore" rules difficulty.

 

[nomask7]

Really? I guess it helps that receptacles containing plot-critical or quest items emit an inexplicable "come loot me!" glow - sort of like a precursor to Oblivion's quest marker.. but as a new player I didn't ignore receptacles in IE, Aurora or Electron games. I ignore them in popamoles like Skyrim, though. Interestingly, I once found a pair of Boots of Speed on an unassuming corpse long before the guaranteed find point.

I remember Baldur's Gate 1/2 and Icewind Dale quests as nothing special, and as relying on combat for interest. NWN scrapped interesting single player combat, probably because it was designed for multiplayer. NWN2 and MotB were for single player again but not well designed in terms of combat encounters. I think CRPGs need to move away from combat centeredness, but not into linear story telling with quest compass. It's like everyone is a retard at these companies (but they make money so it's ok).

My favorite quest in a CRPG is probably getting reports and ore from the ore camps in Gothic 2. You get a map that marks their positions and all you're told to do is go there and investigate and come back. On the face of it, it's nothing more than a realistic little quest, but in practice it's pretty hardcore and interesting because the travelling and avoiding the monsters is dangerous and atmospheric with perfectly designed map, monster positions, monster AI, jogging speed etc. The greatness of the quest doesn't rely on gimmicks but core game design and game mechanics, while quests in NWN and many D&D games feel tacked on to a rather shitty system or they rely on combat for interest as I said.

I think CRPG designers should start making better systems as their first priority and only later think about whether to include many or few containers or whether to include quest compass or not. The bottom line is combat centeredness has been done to death and story faggotry doesn't belong in a game, dangerous travel + monster avoidance on the other hand is always exciting as long as it's not about going back and forth, back and forth via the same route (teleports are an easy solution and used in Gothic 2).

I've been saying the same thing for years and I hate not being listened to. I'm actually in the process of making a game to illustrate these concepts but I don't have any illusions about being able to effect a revolution so I'm not too motivated to work on it...

and I also often avoid monsters.

Soloing as a Rogue, or you just generally run past them?

Run past.

It's partly for realism. Who would actually stop to fight monsters instead of avoiding them while on a mission? Games like this should make avoidance a valid strategy at the least. In Gothic 2 there's magic scrolls so you don't have to grind xp. In NWN there's nothing comparable but you do have stone of recall and rather good opportunities for camping.

 

[Lilura]

I noticed you haven't said anything about NWN mods since you started posting in here; you started off talking about the OC.

Have you played any?

 

[nomask7]

I noticed you haven't said anything about NWN mods since you started posting in here; you started off talking about the OC.

Have you played any?

I've tried a few, about six to be precise. One was about a snowy village being threatened by barbarians. I found something a little similar while browsing neverwintervault just now but I don't think that's it. I remember it was highly recommended several years ago, but you never hear about it these days. I disliked the fact that it used music from the NWN soundtracks. Using those soundtracks is like stealing mood, and I liked HotU so much that stealing music from it is like a sacrilege.

I tried Aielund years ago. I seem to remember a rather shitty starting town and some sort of railroady cave or passage. I tried Tortured Hearts. I think it was too hard. I tried some sort of weird scifi module that had a lot of tranny stuff in it. It wasn't bad and obviously a lot of effort had gone into it but I lost interest rather soon anyway. I tried a module recommended by Lesifoere but it had some stupid quest in the beginning about finding and meeting everyone of a certain group of new buddies of yours, I didn't find one of them and stopped playing.

I may have tried something else but I can't remember.

I went through this thread yesterday and there are a few modules I want to try at some point, with more patience this time. Thanks for your messages in this thread.

 

[Lilura]

Wow, you sound jaded. But yeah, Hordes of the Underdark is fairly good... A modder I know is thinking of revamping HotU, he's the author of Siege of the Heavens - a mod for fortieth level builds that manages to be challenging due to advanced scripting techniques.

Siege of the Heavens: Vid 1: Salenoth the Hungerer, vid 2: Sorcerer vs. Charion.

Here's a vid of the Mutated Broodmother boss in A Peremptory Summons, a low level combat mod he made - the player only third level at this point.

It would be good to see HotU bosses overhauled similar to this, and the trashmobs and other packs thugged out a bit more. Plus with a visual overhaul and the ability to adventure with four or five companions (instead of just two).

The BioWare thread for the possible HotU revamp project is here.

 

[nomask7]

Anything that brings attention to HotU is fine by me.

Personally though I only find 'bosses' interesting if I'm taking them on, on my own initiative, sooner than expected - so basically doing something everybody else isn't doing. Difficulty would come from fighting them too early.

A perfect example would be Okku, whom I attacked straight after coming out of his lair (or as soon as I was allowed to). I managed to beat him after multiple tries. That was fun.

Another example would be the shadow dragon in BG2. I'm sure many try to defeat it as soon as they bump into him, but many also come back at higher levels, so it's still kind of fun to take him on sooner rather than later.

The point is that if a boss fight is predetermined to occur at a certain point, then it feels compulsory and like someone is saying "you have to beat them now, everyone else does too." That's boring, regardless of how challenging the boss may be.

Also, I think only optional bosses should be so strong that the player has to grind xp in order to defeat them. So I'm not sure increasing the difficulty of compulsory bosses is a great idea unless your playing style is about doing everything and killing everything.

 

[btbgfel]

Played Black Thron which turns out to be a good one. The main goal is to find out a devil before he returns to hell to warn his master about an assassination attempt from force of good.
I found out that devil and cast banish on him, what could possibly go wrong?

 

[Lilura]

Swordflight Chapter Two complete! My impressions of the second part of the proposed five-part Swordflight series for Neverwinter Nights, here.

 

[laclongquan]

Finish playing Pool of Radiance Remastered mod recently and Baldur Gate Reloaded earlier.

You know that original POR is an openworld RPG of a sort? No more. The mod is a structured RPG, with some areas extra you can return, but most are one-off.
The good point? New Phlan is a living town, with much change thanks to story and your own action. Bad point? NPC get in and out of your party without warning so you should always save to just reload back.
Another good point? Good balance in economy. After you buy what you can, end game, you can use spare cash to scribe scrolls of highest level spells to use. Technically you can use up all your golds before the final map. Invest in two crafting perks to make a few magical items even make sense, since the stuffs are sold expensively. Bad point? You dont know when you can return to an area. Use their features when you can because next act you might not have access: extra shops, workbenches, extra raw materials.

Good writings. Even good graphic. camera is still as horrible as OC, but that never bother me much.

Good Final boss: Dragon! Bad? sub-final-boss: Vampire~ My party bash him two strike (exaggeration but not much) and he's dead before the Undead Kings sit up. Them? MC paladin Turn Undead along with Tarl. Not breaking a sweat.Tarl's build is pretty good against undead.

I am thinking of Icewinter mod next~

 

[Jarpie]

I'm going to try to play MOTB again, but are there any must-have mods for NWN2/MOTB which would make playing it less painful gameplay-wise?

 

[laclongquan]

Probabbly Kaedrin Pack. It made quite a few changes to the classes' abilities, so you have fun finding out what is what. I know I have mine in playing Baldur's Gate Reloaded. Examples: you can choose feats that provide a damage dealing ability based on what spell you memorize.

Finish Icewind Dale mod.

It feels much more actionpacked than the original (which felt somewhat sluggish). Almost all the dungeon are kept in, or incorporated into one big, so you can run through them quickly.

Design for 4man parties (level 17) and drop off in difficulty and xp for 6man (lvl 12).

Item crafting is seriously a choice/consequence pivot point now thanks to the above design. If you choose crafting, you can make new, or improve current items. but once you choose it, you lack feats to choose metamagic, so your magic is less effective, and reduce your casters to buffers. Choose!

 

[laclongquan]

I am trying Mysteries of Westgate

The goddamn MoW require we contact atari server to authenticate. Since the server is down (I think) they cant auth... ergo, cant play.

Now what?

No wonder the goddamn MoW is so less known or less recommended to play, even though it's about the first major mod for NWN2.

An object lesson for sucking up to developer's idiot DRM scheme.

 

[Semper]

nwn2 complete from gog includes a version of mow totally stripped of drm. it can be even opened in the toolset.
besides there was crack floating around years ago to play mow without the authentification.

 

[laclongquan]

I would love to have those cracks, but google reveal none.

 

[Semper]

if you can't find the crack, then go for the gog version. shouldn't be too hard to find this one. just install it and copy the mow content to your installation.

 

[laclongquan]

I might have to do that.

DRM scheme~. Any guy who praise it, I want to smash his face in.

 

[groundhog]

I might have to do that.

DRM scheme~. Any guy who praise it, I want to smash his face in.

Just to make you aware, NWN2 complete has just gone on sale at GOG, together with a number of other RPGs.

 

[Xeon]

Never played any of the official campaigns of NWN1, only modded ones. I am watching Kikoskia's NWN1 videos and liked the LP.

Would like to know if there is any must have mods that could possibly improve the official campaigns. mainly quality of life improvements or something like that.

 

[deuxhero]

Replaying Conan Chronicles. The hunt/rescue mission is OK taken on it's own but I feel it's a poor lead into to the very nice and very different arena module. It's a bit buggy (there's two vendors in the main area that flat out don't work), but fairly nice when played as a "skilled" character. I actually think some of the writing is pretty good by normal standards (the mentor and owner are pretty well done and I could easily see them in a professional title), though there's certainly some lacking parts.

One thing that bugs me is that the player character's youth is a big deal in the first part, then never mentioned during the arena segment as far as I can tell. There's no significant time skip beyond the traveling, and even a 17 year old who was older than you was considered a youth in the first part. If you told me two seperate people made them, I wouldn't be all that surprised.

 

[laclongquan]

Fucking hell~

The GOG Complete version run smoothly from start to finish. Mysteries of Westgate run fine.

Pity I got distracted into replaying Original Campaign.

Suck it, haters!

 

[Xeon]

Comfortable with the camera control? Tried to replay it recently and camera was extremely retarded.

 

[laclongquan]

Camera control never is that big a problem with me~ Sure, it's retarded, especially in closed space like indoor and corridor~. But once you disregard that... no problem.

 

[deuxhero]

I dug into the toolset to try to fix the conan chronicles merchants, but their dialog isn't even in the conversations field. I can find the merchants just fine, but the dialog assigned to them is completely different from what shows up in-game. What the hell?


(and while I'm asking about the editor, how do "or" conditions combined with "and" conditions worked. For example a dialog option that only opens if the player if the player has an item AND is Dwarf OR a Gnome)


Edit: OK seems the armorer was defaulting to a copy of Conan Chronicles 2's armorer dialog under the campaign conversations tab I missed. I deleted it because it wasn't used anywhere. Can't find what's wrong with the silk merchant.

edit 2: Found it. That merchant is tagged with the wrong conversation entirely. Fixed that. Hope my save before entering the compound updates it properly, or at least the one before the zombie fight.

edit 3: fixed the silk merchant (though I did cut half the dialog trying to fix her). Not the armorer. There seems to be a duplicate armorer, but I have no idea how he is still talking, let alone with the CC2 dialog, when I deleted that conversation wholesale.