Neverwinter Nights 2 (May Contain Spoilers!! - Please Use Tags)

[Jae Onasi]

Hmm, perhaps this is why the NWN2Toolset appears to be entirely undocumented and contains practically no "online help" inside it, unlike the Aurora Toolset: so that they could sell the instructions manual separately and make more money. That kind of marketing is a bit annoying, if that's the case.

 

If that book is really comprehensive, perhaps you could dispense some wisdom regarding the following questions, whenever you have the time? Pretty Please?

 

 

I'll look the stuff up some time today--got some errands to run, but I should be able to look through it and get you some answers hopefully soon. No promises that it'll make sense though, since modding is very much a foreign language to me. I'm just going to regurgitate what the book says.

[Point Man]

Stoffe, from my years of playing PnP D&D, I can tell you what the Vorpal effect is. A vorpal weapon decapitates your enemy when you roll a 20. Let's say my character had a close encounter with a vorpal short sword...

 

I had a paladin who worshipped the goddess of healing. She would automatically resurrect her paladins when they died, except that the only type of death she could not heal them from was decapitation. We had a thief in our party with a Vorpal short sword. When we encountered some Drow elves, one of their priestesses gave a suggestion to our thief that he should attack my paladin. Well, I was out in front, so he got to use his backstab bonuses to apply to his attack roll. My paladin lost his head.

 

I would think the difference between break enchantment and dispel magic is that enchantments are on items, and magic effects are on creatures. Either that, or break enchantment is for spells the original caster casts against enemies and dispel is for spells cast upon friendlies.

[Jae Onasi]

Hmm, perhaps this is why the NWN2Toolset appears to be entirely undocumented and contains practically no "online help" inside it, unlike the Aurora Toolset: so that they could sell the instructions manual separately and make more money. That kind of marketing is a bit annoying, if that's the case.

 

If that book is really comprehensive, perhaps you could dispense some wisdom regarding the following questions, whenever you have the time? Pretty Please?

 

• What does the "Jarring" status effect do, in practice? (I.e. how does it affect the victim?)
   
   
  
• How does the "Break Enchantment" effect differ from "Dispel Magic"?
   
   
  
• What does EffectDisintegrate() do, and how is it used? I can't get it to do anything.

 
So far as I can tell without reading the entire thing, there's not a whole lot in there about any of your questions, but it's very much a beginner's guide, and you're well past that stage. Some of these I suspect are answered in the D&D rules themselves. Online D&D glossary says enchantments are mind-affecting spells: Enchantment spells affect the minds of others, influencing or controlling their behavior. All enchantments are mind-affecting spells. Two types of enchantment spells grant you influence over a subject creature.
Dispel Magic definition: Negate, suppress, or remove one or more existing spells or other effects on a creature, item, or area. Dispel usually refers to a dispel magic spell, though other forms of dispelling are possible. Certain spells cannot be dispelled, as noted in the individual spell descriptions.
 
My uneducated guess--enchantments refer to specifically mind-affecting spells, dispeling magic is for every other effect

What does the "Mesmerize" status effect do, in practice?

 
D&D site says it's similar to gaze attacks:
While the medusa's gaze is well known, gaze attacks can also charm, curse, or even kill. Gaze attacks not produced by a spell are supernatural.
 
A gaze special attack takes effect when opponents look at the creature's eyes. The attack can have almost any sort of effect: petrification, death, charm, and so on. The typical range is 30 feet, but check the creature's entry for details.
 
Each opponent within range of a gaze attack must attempt a saving throw (which can be a Fortitude or Will save; DC 10 + 1/2 gazing creature's racial HD + gazing creature's Cha modifier; the exact DC is given in the creature's descriptive text) each round at the beginning of his or her turn in the initiative order . A successful saving throw negates the effect. A monster's gaze attack is described in abbreviated form in its description. Only looking directly at a creature with a gaze attack leaves an opponent vulnerable. Opponents can avoid the need to make the saving throw by not looking at the creature, in one of two ways.
 
 

Is the "Vorpal" effect a Death magic effect, or does it work on undead? What does the "Damage type" parameter on Vorpal item properties do?

Instant death when rolling a natural 20
 

What affects the Save DC of "OnMonsterHit" Ability Drain and Level Drain effects? The DC seems stuck at very low values even for higher level monsters, making it a very rare occurrence to actually become level drained by vampires and wraiths. (Unlike BG2 where vamps were a pain to fight.)

Don't know, but I don't mind fighting them when at low levels.
 

What is the duration of the effects applied from "OnHit:Ability Drain" and "OnHit:Level drain" weapon properties? Permanent until cured?

Ability drain def'n--
A permanent loss of 1 or more ability score points. The character can regain these points only through magical means. A character with Strength 0 falls to the ground and is helpless. A character with Dexterity 0 is paralyzed. A character with Constitution 0 is dead. A character with Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma 0 is unconscious.
 
If a creature has an attack that deals ability drain, the creature's descriptive text gives the ability and the amount drained. If an attack that causes ability drain scores a critical hit, it drains twice the indicated amount (if the damage is expressed as a die range, roll two dice). Unless otherwise specified in the creature's description, a draining creature gains 5 temporary hit points (10 on a critical hit) whenever it drains an ability score no matter how many points it drains. Temporary hit points gained in this fashion last for a maximum of 1 hour.
 
Some ability drain attacks allow a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1/2 draining creature's racial HD + draining creature's Cha modifier; the exact DC is given in the creature's descriptive text). If no saving throw is mentioned, none is allowed.
 
 
I've noticed that ability drains only get fixed with healing from, say, a cleric, or from restoration spells/potions.
 
Level drains actually drain character levels, but I don't know how it's handled in game vs. PnP.
 

What exactly is required to penetrate alignment-keyed Damage Reduction, for example "10/good"? I can't seem to find any item properties that key weapons to a specific alignment.

Don't know that one.
 

Is there a way to prevent a main character from being forced out of Wild Shape or Shapechange whenever someone initiates conversation with them? (Limited uses/day, hideously annoying during those talk+fight+talk+fight sequences. "You... *cough* you may have me beaten... but now I'll dispel your greatest advantage by merely talking to you! Now we fight again!!" )

Might be able to change the number of uses/day

Those are some things I've been wondering about, which seem to be entirely undocumented and I haven't been able to figure out with trial & error. If anyone knows something about this please enlighten me.

 

I'll keep looking in the book.

[stoffe]

Dispel Magic definition: Negate, suppress, or remove one or more existing spells or other effects on a creature, item, or area. Dispel usually refers to a dispel magic spell, though other forms of dispelling are possible. Certain spells cannot be dispelled, as noted in the individual spell descriptions.

 

I suspect that it's somewhat like you say, that Dispel Magic works against all effects with a Magical subtype, while Break Enchantment works for only a limited set of effects, but regardless of the subtype. Though it'd be nice to know for sure exactly what it does.

 

 

D&D site says it's similar to gaze attacks:

While the medusa's gaze is well known, gaze attacks can also charm, curse, or even kill. Gaze attacks not produced by a spell are supernatural.

 

I think Mesmerize is some kind of debilitating effect similar to Daze or Stun, but one that will end if the victim is attacked or the one applying the effect gets too far away from the victim. I'm not sure if it's a mind-affecting effect though (I'd guess that it is), and if it leaves the victim flat-footed and coup de grace-able.

 

Instant death when rolling a natural 20

 

Hmm, I suspect Vorpal works a bit differently in NWN2 than D&D then. The Vorpal property seems to have a save DC associated with it, and if the victim fails a reflex save against that it dies. Though I'm not sure if it works against creatures immune to death magic (undead, constructs...) or those protected by a Death Ward spell?

 

Don't know, but I don't mind fighting them [Vampires, Wraiths] when at low levels.

 

The "OnMonsterHit:Level drain" property, which can be added to natural creature weapons such as claws, bites, gores and slams, only allows you to set how many levels should be drained, not the save DC (unlike the "OnHit:Level drain" property that can be added to normal weapons, which allows setting DC but not how many levels are drained). So the game must calculate the save DC automatically, but I have been unable to figure out what factors are used in this calculation. A normal wraith has a DC of 12 to avoid level drain, boosting it up to level 20 and setting all ability scores to 30 only increases the DC to 18.

 

A permanent loss of 1 or more ability score points. The character can regain these points only through magical means. A character with Strength 0 falls to the ground and is helpless. A character with Dexterity 0 is paralyzed. A character with Constitution 0 is dead. A character with Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma 0 is unconscious.

 

I think a creature dies if any of its ability scores are drained below 20 in NWN. At least I haven't observed any of those other behaviors you mention (though that could be since characters usually tend to die from Health loss far before their abilities are drained that far. In particular with the low fort save DCs that make anyone hit save against the drain 90% of the time. )

 

Some ability drain attacks allow a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1/2 draining creature's racial HD + draining creature's Cha modifier; the exact DC is given in the creature's descriptive text). If no saving throw is mentioned, none is allowed.

 

I don't think that's possible in NWN2 unless you use a spell that is triggered OnHit. All the "OnHit" and "OnMonsterHit" properties seem to offer a saving throw to avoid their effects. For the "OnHit" weapon properties you can usually set the DC to a value between 10 and 26, but the DC seems to be auto-calculated for all "OnMonsterHit" creature weapon properties.

 

I've noticed that ability drains only get fixed with healing from, say, a cleric, or from restoration spells/potions.

 

This seems to be correct. I've expanded my Inspect script a bit to list more specifics about effects applied to a character and it seems that Level/Ability drain from weapons are applied as Permanent effects.

 

Level drains actually drain character levels, but I don't know how it's handled in game vs. PnP.

 

Level drain in NWN2 seems to decrease the effective character level of the victim, affecting the caster level and BAB, as well as apply a penalty to all saving throws and skills. Doesn't seem to affect ability scores, AC or the hit points of the victim though.

 

 

Might be able to change the number of uses/day

 

As far as I am aware you can't re-memorize a single spell for a mage/cleric/drudi, just all of them by making the character insta-Rest. I may have overlooked something though. And there's still the matter of having to waste your first combat round to change back into your combat shape again after having been in conversation.

 

I'm hoping this is just some scripted annoyance Obsidian has added, and not a core engine functionality, since you are only un-polymorphed if an NPC initiates conversation with you, not if you are the one who initiates conversation by clicking on them. But so far I've been unable to locate where/how this is done.

 

I'll keep looking in the book.

 

Thanks for taking time to look into these things.

 

 

Stoffe, from my years of playing PnP D&D, I can tell you what the Vorpal effect is. A vorpal weapon decapitates your enemy when you roll a 20. Let's say my character had a close encounter with a vorpal short sword...

 

Thanks. NWN2 doesn't seem to be entirely Vorpal by the book then since it offers a Reflex save to avoid death. Might be that it only triggers and offers the save if you roll 20 though, haven't thought about that.

 

 

I had a paladin who worshipped the goddess of healing. She would automatically resurrect her paladins when they died, except that the only type of death she could not heal them from was decapitation. We had a thief in our party with a Vorpal short sword. When we encountered some Drow elves, one of their priestesses gave a suggestion to our thief that he should attack my paladin. Well, I was out in front, so he got to use his backstab bonuses to apply to his attack roll. My paladin lost his head.

 

Seems like a cheerful party where members kill each other whenever an enemy asks them to do it. With friends like these who needs enemies?

 

Isn't the Regenerate/True Resurrection spells supposed to be able to regenerate lost body parts though? Shouldn't it be able to grow a new head as well? (Or grow a new body from the head?) I'd think that in a world where the spirit is separate from the body to the point where someone can be restored to life from having been disintegrated into dust, that decapitation would only be a temporary annoyance.

 

On a tangent, aren't Githyanki Silver Swords supposed to be vorpal weapons, or was that just Baldur's Gate II taking some creative liberties with the sword you get parts of from Saemon Havarian and the Githyanki raiders in the Underdark?

[Emperor Devon]

Well, I finally got it! And with a new computer, I've been almost unable to stop playing. I think I've gone through 38 or so hours in the past two days.

 

There's a lot to say, but I'd prefer to keep this post short so I can cram in a few more NWN 2 minutes.

 

Does your alignment have any effect on the game? So far it's taken some effort to juggle being lawful, evil, (the two aren't very compatible) and influencial with some good-aligned party members. While Obsidian did a better job at the morality system than BioWare (anyone remember the line "Killing is fun! Ha ha ha!"?), it doesn't seem to be very important. There's not a way (that I've seen) to even find out how good/evil or chatoic/lawful my character is. I'd hope it affects the plot at some point?

[stoffe]

Does your alignment have any effect on the game? So far it's taken some effort to juggle being lawful, evil, (the two aren't very compatible) and influencial with some good-aligned party members.

 

Don't know how far along you've gotten in the game, but at one point you get two fairly long mutually exclusive branches of side-quests that are tied to the main plot that differ depending on if you are good or evil (i.e. which side you join in that conflict).

 

Also, if you are evil you get the option of an evil alternate ending of the game as well, which is only possible if your main character is of evil disposition.

 

Other than that it's mostly tied to what classes you want to use I'd guess, since some have alignment restrictions and if you no longer match the alignment you'll be unable to advance any further in that class. Some "special" prestige classes will also only become available as part of the plot depending on how you act (you'll only be able to get the Neverwinter Nine prestige class if you are in good graces with Lord Nasher and will be offered to join that elite group, for example). If you play as a cleric it affects what kind of spells you can cast spontaneous as well (good clerics can spontaneously cast Cure spells, while evil clerics can spontaneously cast Inflict spells).

 

There are also some minor alignment-related dialog here and there, where some NPCs may make remarks on how lawful you have a tendency to be, how benevolent or mean-spirited you are, some demons you run into who can "smell" if you are lawful or chaotic, minor things like that.

 

Some party members may also become more difficult to influence if you are evil since they are good-natured, or lawful since they are less so. (You'll have to be somewhat flexible with the law to go along with Neeshka's side quests for example). And your influence with party members will start to become fairly important in Act 3 since it will have a bearing on how they act and what choices they make during key moments of the main plot.

 

If you want to stay lawful, don't talk to Qara unless you want to lose influence with her. You can gain a fair deal of influence just by chatting with her, but almost all of those dialog choices will lead to substantial chaos-shifts. Rather handy for my "a bit too lawful for her own good" Dark Elf Warlock I'm currently playing to get her alignment back on track.

 

 

If AJ can be "partially redeemed" also depends on how much influence you have with SJ, so the influence does not only affect that particular NPC in all cases.

 

 

Evil characters might also have a bit of a harder time to do well during the events at the start of Act 2, though you can always fall back to brute force there (as always) if all else fails. (Though I think you can talk your way out of it if you find all 4 clues and have good Intimidate, Bluff, Taunt or Diplomacy skill no matter what you've done earlier in the game.)

 

There's not a way (that I've seen) to even find out how good/evil or chatoic/lawful my character is.

 

As far as I can tell ther is no way to see the underlying numbers, just what alignment you currently are, at the character sheet. If you want to know the numbers, put the attached script in your game's override folder then select the character you want to see the alignment values of in-game (right-click on it), pull down the console and type:

DebugMode 1
rs st_inspect
DebugMode 0

This will pop up a window where you can see the actual alignment values of the selected character, among other things. (You can skip the DebugMode parts if you already have DebugMode active. Remember console commands are case sensitive.)

 

(The file is double-packed since you're not allowed to attach RAR files to messages. Unpack both and put the NSS and NCS files in the override folder.)

inspect2.zip

[Jae Onasi]

Well, I finally got it! And with a new computer, I've been almost unable to stop playing. I think I've gone through 38 or so hours in the past two days.

 

Ahhh, that's why you've been curiously quiet. Welcome to the NWN2 black hole.

 

We just heard some news through our history group about a guy who died a few weeks back of a pulmonary embolism at a young age--apparently he'd been sitting a lot playing WoW, and they think that he sat so long he developed a blood clot in his legs that traveled to his lungs.

So, pause the game every 2 hours, get up, and walk around a bit. [/public service announcement]

[Emperor Devon]

Don't know how far along you've gotten in the game, but at one point you get two fairly long mutually exclusive branches of side-quests that are tied to the main plot that differ depending on if you are good or evil (i.e. which side you join in that conflict).

 

A few minutes ago, I got to a cave where I killed a Githyanki Sword Stalker and some succubi. Do you mean the quests with the Watch?

 

Also, if you are evil you get the option of an evil alternate ending of the game as well, which is only possible if your main character is of evil disposition.

 

That's a relief to hear. Does it also differ if you're lawful or chaotic?

 

Other than that it's mostly tied to what classes you want to use I'd guess, since some have alignment restrictions and if you no longer match the alignment you'll be unable to advance any further in that class. {snip}

 

That hopefully has some effect on spellcasters, since there haven't been any alignment-dependent spells other than lesser planar blinding. Hopefully Obsidian's made alignment count with wizards more than it did in NWN 1.

 

Some party members may also become more difficult to influence if you are evil since they are good-natured, or lawful since they are less so. (You'll have to be somewhat flexible with the law to go along with Neeshka's side quests for example).

 

Heh, good thing I don't like Neeska. Is there any point in the game she can kill or at least get rid of her, or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

 

And your influence with party members will start to become fairly important in Act 3 since it will have a bearing on how they act and what choices they make during key moments of the main plot.

 

Another good thing to hear. Influence hasn't had much of an effect yet.

 

If you want to stay lawful, don't talk to Qara unless you want to lose influence with her.

 

Are you sure? So far when I talk with her, I've been able to gain evil points without losing any lawful ones. But then again, I've not gotten very far in conversing with my party members. (Hopefully they'll open up eventually, or at least stop charging 20 gold to hear the same thing. )

 

You can gain a fair deal of influence just by chatting with her, but almost all of those dialog choices will lead to substantial chaos-shifts. Rather handy for my "a bit too lawful for her own good" Dark Elf Warlock I'm currently playing to get her alignment back on track.

 

Pfft. You can never be too lawful.

 

Btw, could you try and avoid the spoilers? They show up whenever I reply to you, and I caught the word 'redeem' in there along with a name that started with an 'A'.

 

Evil characters might also have a bit of a harder time to do well during the events at the start of Act 2, though you can always fall back to brute force there (as always) if all else fails.

 

As long it doesn't bring any chaos points, that's fine with me. But my character's not too bad a diplomat, so I might be able to avoid too many direct fights.

 

As far as I can tell ther is no way to see the underlying numbers, just what alignment you currently are, at the character sheet. If you want to know the numbers, put the attached script in your game's override folder {snip}

 

Thanks very much, stoffe!

 

Ahhh, that's why you've been curiously quiet. Welcome to the NWN2 black hole.

 

You shoud be mostly free of me until I finish my first playthrough. Aren't you lucky.

 

It's been very addictive. I've not gotten this sucked into a game since KotOR II.

 

Your anouncement - very, uh, informative.

[stoffe]

A few minutes ago, I got to a cave where I killed a Githyanki Sword Stalker and some succubi. Do you mean the quests with the Watch?

 

Yes, the Watch vs. Shadow Thieves. I suppose an evil character could pick either, seeing the state the Watch is in. Though if you're good or neutral the Shadow Thieves aren't really much of an option.

 

 

That's a relief to hear. Does it also differ if you're lawful or chaotic?

 

I don't think so, as far as I know there are two endings, a "good" one and an evil one.

 

 

That hopefully has some effect on spellcasters, since there haven't been any alignment-dependent spells other than lesser planar blinding. Hopefully Obsidian's made alignment count with wizards more than it did in NWN 1.

 

There are a few spells that differ in effects depending on the alignment of the caster and/or victim, though I don't think there are that many. And seeing as how the game developers still have a hideously hard time to set the stats in NPC templates right the alignment-keyed spells won't work as you expect all too often. If you go by the alignment on their character sheet (using the inspect script) half the murderers, muggers and cutthroats in Neverwinter are Chaotic Good, and Lord Nasher flips from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil depending on where you meet him. Not to mention a few Chaotic Evil Bateezu/Devils and True Neutral Tanar'ri/Demons...

 

Heh, good thing I don't like Neeska. Is there any point in the game she can kill or at least get rid of her

 

Yes, if your influence with her is poor enough at a certain point in the game that can happen. Though since I don't play as a rogue she's useful to bring along since she's the only party member who can open locks and deal with traps. You ruin too much good loot if you bash containers open rather than unlock them with more care. And recovering and selling traps you encounter brings in some extra gold as well.

 

 

Another good thing to hear. Influence hasn't had much of an effect yet.

 

It will affect what happens at key points in Act 3, and high influence with Shandra gives you an easier time during a certain quest in Act 2 (as well as enables another outcome in a quest in act 3). Other than that it affects how much they are willing to talk to you about. Your influence with Khelgar determines if he may become a Monk in Act 2 as well. Influence with Elanee determines if she'll make the correct decision during a quest in Act 3. You can play the game and piss everyone off, but there well be at least some consequences of doing so.

 

Are you sure? So far when I talk with her, I've been able to gain evil points without losing any lawful ones. But then again, I've not gotten very far in conversing with my party members. (Hopefully they'll open up eventually, or at least stop charging 20 gold to hear the same thing. )

 

It's possible she's receptive to evil lines as well. Since I play as a good character I haven't tried the lines that reeks of "evil bastard". If you rightclick-talk with her when she's in the group (or not in the group in the Sunken Flagon) there are a few things you can speak to her that gives +3 influence each along with some Chaotic points.

 

I usually don't bother with Bishop. He's a selfish ass to the core so he can sit and sulk in his corner in silence. I only bring him along on quests where he has to come along; there are much more useful party members to bring along otherwise. He's not exactly the type who can be be "redeemed" so there's no point trying.

 

Pfft. You can never be too lawful.

 

If you play as a Warlock you can. Unless I stick to Chaotic Good I'll be unable to continue to level up as a Warlock, and that class is one with nothing to gain from multiclassing. Fortunately there are plenty of opportunities to lie, pick funny responses and be generally unpredictable that it hasn't been any real problem so far. Haven't gained a single Evil shift during the whole game, so that part of the alignment scale is not a problem.

 

At least it's some variation from the Lawful Good Aasimar cleric I played during my first playthrough.

 

As long it doesn't bring any chaos points, that's fine with me. But my character's not too bad a diplomat, so I might be able to avoid too many direct fights.

 

Sometimes (too often if you ask me) the Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate options just aren't worth it, since you get more XP and some decent loot if you decide to fight instead. In particular when dealing with the bandits outside Fort Locke you get more than twice the amount of XP and some really good loot if you kill everyone instead of persuading the bandits to turn themselves in and join the Fort Locke garrison instead.

 

Thanks very much, stoffe!

 

I've been working on a version where you get a button on the GUI instead so you don't have to use the console to run the script, but I've been too lazy to finish it so far.

[Emperor Devon]

And seeing as how the game developers still have a hideously hard time to set the stats in NPC templates right the alignment-keyed spells won't work as you expect all too often. {snip}

 

Obsidian's made more than a couple errors, from what I've seen. I've even caught some misspellings.

 

Ah well, I'll probably end up tinkering with a lot of their alignments anyway. With NWN 1, I edited more of the HotU campaign than I played it. With all these new features in the toolset, it should be a lot of fun to tinker around with the main campaign.

 

From what I've seen of it, looks more complicated than the one in NWN 1, but I'm not surprised with all the new features Obsidian's given the game. I've played around with it very much yet, but hopefully it's less buggy than some of the posts here have said.

 

Yes, if your influence with her is poor enough at a certain point in the game that can happen.

 

Fantastic!

 

Something about her is extremely annoying, though I'm not totally sure what. But regardless, I'll be glad when she leaves.

 

Though since I don't play as a rogue she's useful to bring along since she's the only party member who can open locks and deal with traps. You ruin too much good loot if you bash containers open rather than unlock them with more care. And recovering and selling traps you encounter brings in some extra gold as well.

 

It won't be too much of a loss. I've made around 100,000 gold already without exploring all the areas in Act I, and I only used Neeshka when there weren't any other party members I could've had instead. Her ability to disable traps doesn't count for much, since they don't do that much damage, and my party can always rest if they lose too many HP. And since I've done pretty well bashing down chests and she's a lot less useful in a fight than other party members, she won't be missed. Any idea how low your influence has to be to make her leave?

 

It will affect what happens at key points in Act 3, and high influence with Shandra gives you an easier time during a certain quest in Act 2 (as well as enables another outcome in a quest in act 3). Other than that it affects how much they are willing to talk to you about. Your influence with Khelgar determines if he may become a Monk in Act 2 as well.

 

Ah, I just started Act II and killed off the teenage goths a little while ago. I'll have to bring Khelgar along some more when my character's off adventuring.

 

Influence with Elanee determines if she'll make the correct decision during a quest in Act 3.

 

I'd want to get a lot of influence with her anyway, since her mouth is closed as to why she wants to help my character. She seems to have more to say that's relevant to the plot than a lot of the other party members.

 

It's possible she's receptive to evil lines as well.

 

She is. There's a thin line between chaos and evil, and her supposedly neutral alignment hasn't stopped her from crossing it. She's been receptive to the 'anyone weak is a stupid idiot' lines, and they've not gotten my character any chaos points. But I've not gotten too far along in my conversations with her.

 

If you rightclick-talk with her when she's in the group (or not in the group in the Sunken Flagon) there are a few things you can speak to her that gives +3 influence each along with some Chaotic points.

 

Those brought me evil points, actually.

 

I usually don't bother with Bishop. He's a selfish ass to the core so he can sit and sulk in his corner in silence. I only bring him along on quests where he has to come along; there are much more useful party members to bring along otherwise. He's not exactly the type who can be be "redeemed" so there's no point trying.

 

Good thing I'm not trying.

 

So far, he's been very easy to gain influence with, although at some expense to the plot... I let him keep that knife of his Marcus wanted, and now that

 

 

My character's been charged with killing his village, that cryptic conversation with him might've been more important than I thought. Ah well, I'll find out more once my character revisits it. Who knows, he might still be alive... Not like a little boy could've defended himself against who knows how many trained soldiers or Shadow priests, whether he had a hunting knife or not.

 

 

If you play as a Warlock you can. Unless I stick to Chaotic Good I'll be unable to continue to level up as a Warlock, and that class is one with nothing to gain from multiclassing.

 

Good? I heard from an NPC or two that this 'King of Shadows' was/is a warlock, and they've not implied he was a particularly nice guy.

 

Fortunately there are plenty of opportunities to lie, pick funny responses and be generally unpredictable that it hasn't been any real problem so far. Haven't gained a single Evil shift during the whole game, so that part of the alignment scale is not a problem.

 

That's surprising. I've gained a couple chaos points by accident, and they were almost always followed by evil ones. But I've tried to avoid the former, so it's to be expected I wouldn't know much about all the ways to get it.

 

Sometimes (too often if you ask me) the Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate options just aren't worth it, since you get more XP and some decent loot if you decide to fight instead. In particular when dealing with the bandits outside Fort Locke you get more than twice the amount of XP and some really good loot if you kill everyone instead of persuading the bandits to turn themselves in and join the Fort Locke garrison instead.

 

So far I've only avoided a large fight with diplomacy once, but it's been useful during other events. Persuading people to do something over threatening to ram a sword through their skulls has gotten better reactions from them so far.

 

I've been working on a version where you get a button on the GUI instead so you don't have to use the console to run the script, but I've been too lazy to finish it so far.

 

It's a definite improvement over remaining in the dark, either way.

[stoffe]

Ah well, I'll probably end up tinkering with a lot of their alignments anyway. With NWN 1, I edited more of the HotU campaign than I played it. With all these new features in the toolset, it should be a lot of fun to tinker around with the main campaign.

 

There certainly is enough that could be polished and fixed, though I am reluctant to mess with any of the campaign modules while Obsidian is still releasing patches for the game since it fouls up the auto-updater and forces you to reinstall the game every time they issue a new patch. At least some files involved in more annoying bugs are uniquely named so the fixed variants can be put in the override folder instead.

 

Something about her [Neeshka] is extremely annoying, though I'm not totally sure what. But regardless, I'll be glad when she leaves.

 

Different tastes I suppose. I kind of like her, though in a protective kind of way. I suppose that comes with playing good alignment that you want to save her from herself, and a Dark Elf who knows what it's like to be looked down upon because of what and not who you are. Besides, you get some nice loot and XP if you do her side-quests (as long as you leave Elanee at home during those quests to avoid losing influence with her) and let her loot in the warehouse, though I don't go along with most of what she suggests.

 

It won't be too much of a loss. I've made around 100,000 gold already without exploring all the areas in Act I, and I only used Neeshka when there weren't any other party members I could've had instead. Her ability to disable traps doesn't count for much, since they don't do that much damage, and my party can always rest if they lose too many HP. And since I've done pretty well bashing down chests and she's a lot less useful in a fight than other party members, she won't be missed. Any idea how low your influence has to be to make her leave?

 

I've noticed that some pretty good items you'd want to keep rather than sell can be ruined if you bash or blast open chests and boxes as well, so I either use a Knock spell or bring along Neeshka when there is looting that needs to be done. If you give her proper gear she's pretty good in a fight as well: I give her a strength belt, make her dual-wield two keen short-swords and sneak-attack anyone who's fighting someone else.

 

I think you are a bit too free to rest in the game, to the point where resting almost becomes something pointless they could just get rid of and just automatically replenish the health and spells of party members after every fight. That's pretty much how it works now anyway. Might as well use those 5 seconds to play if that's how it should be. No point in housekeeping on spells if you can get anything you cast back after the fight anyway. And it makes the Warlock class' greatest advantage meaningless.

 

As for Neeshka's fate, it's not as much a matter of having low influence with her as not having high enough. You don't need to lose any influence with her at all; it's more about not gaining enough influence with her.

 

Ah, I just started Act II and killed off the teenage goths a little while ago. I'll have to bring Khelgar along some more when my character's off adventuring.

 

You'll need decent influence with him both to finish one of the Trials the Tyr priest sets him to, and to make him take the final step when all the trials are completed. If you haven't done so already I'd also suggest doing the "Ironfist Clanhold" side quest in the mountains near Old Owl Well, since it's essential for completing one of the Trials and ties in with another quest in Act 3.

 

 

I'd want to get a lot of influence with her anyway, since her mouth is closed as to why she wants to help my character. She seems to have more to say that's relevant to the plot than a lot of the other party members.

 

Maintaining good influence with Elanee is probably a good idea even if she can be a bit annoying at times. She does have a fair deal to say about the threat in the Mere and the KOSH, and if you do her Skymirror side quest (via the wounded wolf in the docks district) you gain some more insight that way as well. And other than that druids are quite powerful in combat, particularily at higher levels, with their mix of powerful spells and decent melee ability.

 

 

She is. There's a thin line between chaos and evil, and her supposedly neutral alignment hasn't stopped her from crossing it.

 

Well, Chaotic Neutral perhaps. The line between Chaotic Good and Evil is as wide as it is between Lawful Good and Evil. Lawfulness does not equal goodness by any means, as the Bateezu examplify.

 

Qara is a bit too high on her own perceived power for her own good, and she won't get along well with Sand at all, so you'll probably have to choose which one of them you prefer and want good influence with.

 

 

So far, he's been very easy to gain influence with, although at some expense to the plot... I let him keep that knife of his Marcus wanted, and now that...

 

My character's been charged with killing his village, that cryptic conversation with him might've been more important than I thought. Ah well, I'll find out more once my character revisits it. Who knows, he might still be alive... Not like a little boy could've defended himself against who knows how many trained soldiers or Shadow priests, whether he had a hunting knife or not.

 

Re Marcus:

 

Ah, yes, the Trial, during which all your past misdeeds will come back to haunt you. The Luskans have been quite diligent to dig up everyone you've threatened, insulted and extorted in the past, if any, for the occasion.

 

As for Marcus it will be as he said, since he isn't ever wrong about anything he says. If you didn't give him Bishop's knife he'll be dead, and you have lost not only a valuable witness in the trial (if you play your cards right), but also some of his insight into the motivations of Torio and Lorne, and his vision of your own future. Well worth pissing off Bishop to make him give up the knife, if you ask me. Besides, if you give him the knife he'd give it back later, only this time quite nicely enchanted.

 

 

 

Good? I heard from an NPC or two that this 'King of Shadows' was/is a warlock, and they've not implied he was a particularly nice guy.

 

The King of Shadows was not particularily nice, no, but you should take what NPCs say of historical events as their interpretation of it, not the plain truth. Facts can get muddled in regard to events happening decades ago with few surviving witnesses, as you will see.

 

As for the alignment, to be a Warlock you need to be "Any Chaotic or Evil alignment", and since my character is as Good as they get she has to stay being Chaotic Good to be able to advance as a Warlock. Sometimes the Good options (or most advantageous options) in dialog are Lawful though, so it's a bit of flipping back and forth on the Law<->Chaos scale. It balances out fairly well though since she's currently Chaotic(2) Good(100).

 

(Just a shame the Warlock seems to have been so hastily implemented. I've had to rewrite the impact scripts of half the Invocations to work properly. Quite a few bugs and oddities in there. Works fine now though. )

 

 

So far I've only avoided a large fight with diplomacy once, but it's been useful during other events. Persuading people to do something over threatening to ram a sword through their skulls has gotten better reactions from them so far.

 

The conversational skills are very useful to get things you want often, no doubt about that. Just not on the occasions where they can be used to avoid a fight, since you often gain little by doing so. (Though there are some rare occasions when avoiding fights are better. When meeting with the Act1 Lizardman Chief outside Highcliff for example.)

[Astrotoy7]

phew, Im done with NWN2 for the moment - only done the drow/good campaign.... have been playing Dark Messiah like its going outta style - now theres a cool game ! Also, finally got my hands on Medieval II - time for the Ottoman Hordes to conquer the world again methinks

 

Hopefully some cool mods/modules will follow, to re-ignite that NWN spark

 

mtfbwya

[Jae Onasi]

@Emperor Devon--it's Neeshka's voice and that cutesy girl thing that's so darn annoying.

 

Heh, I actually managed to gain influence with Sand.

[Emperor Devon]

There certainly is enough that could be polished and fixed, though I am reluctant to mess with any of the campaign modules while Obsidian is still releasing patches for the game since it fouls up the auto-updater and forces you to reinstall the game every time they issue a new patch. At least some files involved in more annoying bugs are uniquely named so the fixed variants can be put in the override folder instead.

 

Curses. I'd been hoping to tinker with the main campaign, and patches usually don't modify a lot of modules. Or at least with the KotOR series. Ah well, I'll just have to wait until Obsidian gets finished, and there are probably some areas that won't be patched. In NWN 1 and HotU, I changed a lot of the environments in addition to what I did with the characters. (On a somewhat unrelated note, that reminds me of the spider daedra. Are there any creatures like those in NWN 2? I checked the abberation category in the toolset, and thankfully they weren't there.)

 

Different tastes I suppose. I kind of like her, though in a protective kind of way. I suppose that comes with playing good alignment that you want to save her from herself, and a Dark Elf who knows what it's like to be looked down upon because of what and not who you are.

 

Mmm, I see her as someone who deserves at least some of it. Taking what one hasn't earned is nothing but senseless looting, and conflicts with my character's lawful alignment and my own views.

 

Besides, you get some nice loot and XP if you do her side-quests (as long as you leave Elanee at home during those quests to avoid losing influence with her) and let her loot in the warehouse, though I don't go along with most of what she suggests.

 

Any opportunities to gain influence with her there? Whenever party member's get into an argument, your character almost always gets drawn in and has to pick who to become more or less influencial with.

 

I've noticed that some pretty good items you'd want to keep rather than sell can be ruined if you bash or blast open chests and boxes as well, so I either use a Knock spell or bring along Neeshka when there is looting that needs to be done.

 

My character's done well enough so far, and I've not done a lot of crafting yet.

 

If you give her proper gear she's pretty good in a fight as well: I give her a strength belt, make her dual-wield two keen short-swords and sneak-attack anyone who's fighting someone else.

 

She'd be to my character's disadvantage in a fight. I usually have a few melee-oriented party members go and abosrb all the damage any enemies dish out, while my spellcasters shoot fireballs and whatnot from the behind. Being a rogue, Neeshka doesn't have a lot of HP.

 

I think you are a bit too free to rest in the game, to the point where resting almost becomes something pointless they could just get rid of and just automatically replenish the health and spells of party members after every fight.

 

Not totally. NWN's system with magic isn't as good as I'ved seen in other games (not having any mana or Force energy), so there has to be something to ensure wizards will be useful at some point other than the game's first few minutes.

 

As for Neeshka's fate, it's not as much a matter of having low influence with her as not having high enough. You don't need to lose any influence with her at all; it's more about not gaining enough influence with her.

 

Ah, -1 influence should do the trick. Thanks.

 

You'll need decent influence with him both to finish one of the Trials the Tyr priest sets him to, and to make him take the final step when all the trials are completed. If you haven't done so already I'd also suggest doing the "Ironfist Clanhold" side quest in the mountains near Old Owl Well, since it's essential for completing one of the Trials and ties in with another quest in Act 3.

 

I'll have to head there. He's a good melee character already, and becoming a monk should make him better. Any tavern fights he can get into, btw? Usually you can get influence, XP, and sometimes evil points with those. (Nturally they're best done without Elanne. I lost a bit with her when my character got into a senseless brawl.)

 

Maintaining good influence with Elanee is probably a good idea even if she can be a bit annoying at times. She does have a fair deal to say about the threat in the Mere and the KOSH, and if you do her Skymirror side quest (via the wounded wolf in the docks district) you gain some more insight that way as well. And other than that druids are quite powerful in combat, particularily at higher levels, with their mix of powerful spells and decent melee ability.

 

I'll have to see if skymirror's still available in Act II. She's had a lot to say in relation the plot, and I'm very curious as to why she was following my character (other than having nowhere else to go).

 

She's been quite useful in a fight, other than that blasted shapeshifting she does. Regular badgers don't do much damage, and stops me from using any of her spells.

 

She's also handy with animal NPCs. I've not been able to figure out what that giant spider in the goblin caves was trying to say (unusual to see an intelligent one), so I'm going to try bringing her along. Druids might be able to understand spiders, since they can talk to deer and whatnot.

 

Well, Chaotic Neutral perhaps. The line between Chaotic Good and Evil is as wide as it is between Lawful Good and Evil. Lawfulness does not equal goodness by any means, as the Bateezu examplify.

 

Oh, I agree about the difference - but regardless, chaos is very compatible with evil, just as order is with good.

 

Qara is a bit too high on her own perceived power for her own good, and she won't get along well with Sand at all, so you'll probably have to choose which one of them you prefer and want good influence with.

 

She's been extremely hot-headed, but [not-so-subtle reference to Jae] what else could you expect from a redhead?

 

Ah, yes, the Trial, during which all your past misdeeds will come back to haunt you. The Luskans have been quite diligent to dig up everyone you've threatened, insulted and extorted in the past, if any, for the occasion.

 

I know that all too well. And I'd found all that evidence, to boot - but they brought back that one woman I basically said "Go **** yourself, ****" too, all in my efforts to gain influence with Bishop. He seems interesting so far, though gaining influence with him has been at a much greater cost to the storyline than I'd thought.

 

As for Marcus it will be as he said, since he isn't ever wrong about anything he says. If you didn't give him Bishop's knife he'll be dead,

 

I don't think a small boy could defend himself against a such an attack, but there's video games for you. Torio's case was full of holes you couldn't point out, but it's still a lot better than that ridiculous "trial" on Manaan.

 

Or maybe not in some areas. I nearly laughed out loud when Sand pointed out the trial could be resolved by brawling with someone. You'd think a city like Neverwinter would have a system of justice more advanced than that of a typical Visigothic tribe. Sheesh, it's like it doesn't matter if you're guilty or not, as long as you can handle yourself in a fight.

 

and you have lost not only a valuable witness in the trial (if you play your cards right), but also some of his insight into the motivations of Torio and Lorne, and his vision of your own future. Well worth pissing off Bishop to make him give up the knife, if you ask me. Besides, if you give him the knife he'd give it back later, only this time quite nicely enchanted.

 

I know that all too well, now. Figures. Is there a savegame editor for NWN 2? I'd gladly decrease my influence with Bishop by 3 and change the variable about Marcus, since it would probably take me an hour or so to replay all that.

 

The King of Shadows was not particularily nice, no, but you should take what NPCs say of historical events as their interpretation of it, not the plain truth. Facts can get muddled in regard to events happening decades ago with few surviving witnesses, as you will see.

 

By all accounts, recollections of the war have been quite vague (even from Lord Nasher). For all I know, it could've been part of the war with Luskan. The former probably took place 20 or so years ago, and all I know about the timeframe of the later is that Nasher isn't dead yet, and was fairly old in the first game.

 

(Just a shame the Warlock seems to have been so hastily implemented. I've had to rewrite the impact scripts of half the Invocations to work properly. Quite a few bugs and oddities in there. Works fine now though. )

 

I've not tried playing as a warlock, though if it's anything like casting spells at Darkwood, I probably never will.

 

The conversational skills are very useful to get things you want often, no doubt about that. Just not on the occasions where they can be used to avoid a fight, since you often gain little by doing so. (Though there are some rare occasions when avoiding fights are better. When meeting with the Act1 Lizardman Chief outside Highcliff for example.)

 

Diplomacy has proved incredibly important in the start of Act II. While's it's invaluable at shifting NPC's dispositions, the lizardman chief is the only situation I've used it in to avoid a fight. I don't know if my low-level wizard could've held out against that many lizards (though I wasn't able to see whether they were 'effortless' or 'challgening), and resolving thr quest peacfully brings in lawful points.

 

By the way, have you ever found the 'Glorious Revolution' crossbow? Although I was in Darkwood when I read the description (incredibly annoying if your party has two wizards), it made me laugh out loud.

[stoffe]

Curses. I'd been hoping to tinker with the main campaign, and patches usually don't modify a lot of modules. Or at least with the KotOR series. Ah well, I'll just have to wait until Obsidian gets finished, and there are probably some areas that won't be patched.

 

Seems like the Updater wants to Touch all game files even it nothing needs to be done to them, and complains if they don't match the expected checksum. Rather clumsy updating system for a game made to be modded, but oh well.

 

(On a somewhat unrelated note, that reminds me of the spider daedra. Are there any creatures like those in NWN 2? I checked the abberation category in the toolset, and thankfully they weren't there.)

 

There are no driders in NWN2 as far as I know, and only a couple of Drow NPCs, so there's not much opportunity for them to show up anyway. There's Kistrel and some smaller giant spiders in the Duskwood caves though, and those golem(?) blade spiders in quite a few places.

 

 

Any opportunities to gain influence with her there? Whenever party member's get into an argument, your character almost always gets drawn in and has to pick who to become more or less influencial with.

 

I'd expect you gain some influence with Elanee if you refuse to go along with Neeshka's plans and thus skip doing her Leldon quest line. At least you do lose influence with her if you help Neeshka out while Elanee is in the party.

 

My character's done well enough so far, and I've not done a lot of crafting yet.

 

Might have a fair bit to do with luck as well, due to the random loot generators. So far I've gotten far less decent loot during my second playthrough than my first one. Seems to be a mix of static and random inventory at vendors and containers.

 

She'd be to my character's disadvantage in a fight. I usually have a few melee-oriented party members go and abosrb all the damage any enemies dish out, while my spellcasters shoot fireballs and whatnot from the behind. Being a rogue, Neeshka doesn't have a lot of HP.

 

But she has pretty good Dexterity, which means she can get a pretty good AC. And she has evasion meaning she has a good chance to dodge any spells offering a Reflex save. As long as she doesn't try to solo a whole group of enemies she does surprisingly well in battle. At least so far.

 

Not totally. NWN's system with magic isn't as good as I'ved seen in other games (not having any mana or Force energy), so there has to be something to ensure wizards will be useful at some point other than the game's first few minutes.

 

But if you can let loose your entire arsenal of spells in every fight without having to housekeep there's little point in having spells slots at all, you could just allow everyone to cast at will. I realize why they do it, since Wizards are too weak compared to Melee brawlers as it is due to the lack of spells like levitation/flight, and since you fight quite a lot in the game, but I still think there could be a happy in-between the draconian Sleep restrictions of D&D and the "sleep at will" restrictions of NWN2.

 

 

I'll have to head there. He's a good melee character already, and becoming a monk should make him better. Any tavern fights he can get into, btw? Usually you can get influence, XP, and sometimes evil points with those.

 

I don't think there are any tavern brawls specifically, since there are so few taverns you can actually enter in the game, but he'll get his share of brawling opportunities.

 

I don't know if it's a bug or intended to be that way, but half the reason why Khelgar becomes so much more powerful as a monk is that when you re-level him from level 1 as a monk he gets to keep any Ability Scores he's gained while he leveled as a Fighter (though he loses all skills and feats previously known). And once he gets the Gauntlets of Ironfist, Belt of Ironfist and Hammer of Ironfist from hsi special quests he kicks some serious behind even though monks usually wouldn't run around using a warhammer.

 

 

I'll have to see if skymirror's still available in Act II. She's had a lot to say in relation the plot, and I'm very curious as to why she was following my character (other than having nowhere else to go).

 

Don't know if the wolf sticks around in Act 2. It's usually found in a small alley right where you get ambushed by Bladelings in the docks district, near the Sunken Flagon. It's called "Wounded Wolf" and if you have Elanee in the party you can speak to it, which puts the Skymirror on the travel map.

 

She's been quite useful in a fight, other than that blasted shapeshifting she does. Regular badgers don't do much damage, and stops me from using any of her spells.

 

I've turned off her spellcasting and handle that part manually. The combat AI is awful when it comes to spellcasting, it has pretty much no situational awareness at all. Seeing Sand and Qara fling fireballs at fire elementals, cast Death or Mind-affecing spells on Undead or Elanee try to use Crumble on non-golems pretty much made me spot-weld the Spell-casting behavior knob for all party members at the Off position.

 

She's also handy with animal NPCs. I've not been able to figure out what that giant spider in the goblin caves was trying to say (unusual to see an intelligent one), so I'm going to try bringing her along. Druids might be able to understand spiders, since they can talk to deer and whatnot.

 

Kistrel. If you are a Dark Elf, have high Lore or have Elanee in the party you can understand it and befriend it. It'll then help you out later in the game. Bringing Elanee to Duskwood is generally a pretty good idea:

 

 

If you decide to fight the Dryad who gave Lorne the polymorphing powder having Elanee in the group will deny the Dryad the aid of all those dire animals in the grove, and you'll only have to take her on herself. And you can gain some influence with Elanee during the conversation when you first arrive if you tell her you want to figure out what's wrong with the wood, even if you don't do anything later.

 

 

 

She can chat up and pacify animals in various other places in the game as well. If you have Elanee with you in the Orc caves near Old Owl Well you can let her handle the cavern full of Winter Wolves peacefully and gain some influence with her.

 

He [bishop] seems interesting so far, though gaining influence with him has been at a much greater cost to the storyline than I'd thought.

 

Heh, you don't know the half of it yet.

 

I don't think a small boy could defend himself against a such an attack, but there's video games for you.

 

 

 

He's hiding in the well if you gave him the knife, so he didn't need to fight Lorne and his Circle of Blades assassins when they razed Ember. Since he already knew what was going to happen he managed to stay undetected down there. Apparently he needed the knife to get down there safely.

 

 

 

Or maybe not in some areas. I nearly laughed out loud when Sand pointed out the trial could be resolved by brawling with someone. You'd think a city like Neverwinter would have a system of justice more advanced than that of a typical Visigothic tribe. Sheesh, it's like it doesn't matter if you're guilty or not, as long as you can handle yourself in a fight.

 

I suppose they needed the "Trial by Combat" fallback in order for Half-Orc barbarian players using Int, Wis and Cha as dump stats to be able to proceed with the game beyond the first half of Act 2. But it does seem like a rather peculiar rite of a "God of Justice", unless the justice Tyr stands for is "Might Makes Right" that is, but that doesn't strike me as all that Lawful Good.

 

 

I know that all too well, now. Figures. Is there a savegame editor for NWN 2? I'd gladly decrease my influence with Bishop by 3 and change the variable about Marcus, since it would probably take me an hour or so to replay all that.

 

I don't think there is a savegame editor, but you can use the console to change the value of variables (which are also stored in plaintext XML format for each savegame, so they are fairly easy to check). Or you could just save it for your next Good-aligned playthrough instead. Seems a bit out of character for a Lawful Evil character to help Marcus out without knowing what's going to transpire.

 

 

By all accounts, recollections of the war have been quite vague (even from Lord Nasher). For all I know, it could've been part of the war with Luskan. The former probably took place 20 or so years ago, and all I know about the timeframe of the later is that Nasher isn't dead yet, and was fairly old in the first game.

 

I think the war against the King of Shadows was before Nasher took over as Lord of Neverwinter. If Ammon Jerro died before or just after Shandra was born it was likely at least two decades ago. The Luskan war seems to have happened a lot more recently, like 5-6 years ago at most from what some NPCs say. Bevil's brother Lorne left Harbor Watch to fight in the Luskan War after all, and that doesn't seem to have been that long ago, since he's still fairly young. Not much peace for long around Neverwinter, is there?

 

Still, if you read the intro in the manual and watch the opening FMV sequence something about the common recollection of the war (so far in the story) does seem a bit off, doesn't it?

 

I've not tried playing as a warlock, though if it's anything like casting spells at Darkwood, I probably never will.

 

Warlock is a magic using class that does not cast spells, but use Eldritch Blast "invocations" instead which can be used an unlimited number of times/day and does not need to be memorized. They know a lot fewer invocations than Sorc/Wiz knows spells though, and most of them are beams, requiring ranged touch attacks to hit, and they don't do an awful lot of damage. You can combine Shape invocations (giving the blast longer range, a cone shape, a "chain lightning" beam, or a sphere blast radius) and Essence invocations (giving the blast various types of damage or debilitating effects) in a variety of ways to adapt the Eldritch blast to suit the occasion.

 

I play my Warlock as a kind of "magic archer" who hangs back and tosses magic at enemies while my other party members keep them distracted. She doesn't use a weapon (though Warlocks have higher hit dice and better weapon/armor proficiences than wizards do) but relies on her magic entirely instead (roleplaying handicap, she hates weapons ).

 

As for Duskwood I think that area is bugged. You're supposed to have 50% spell failure there, but since the effect gets applied on every heartbeat you end up with hundreds of them if you hang around long enough, and they appear to stack, so after only 2 rounds in Duskwood you have 100% spell failure.

 

Diplomacy has proved incredibly important in the start of Act II. While's it's invaluable at shifting NPC's dispositions, the lizardman chief is the only situation I've used it in to avoid a fight.

 

Sparing the lizards are probably a good thing, since they may help you out much later in the game if you do.

 

By the way, have you ever found the 'Glorious Revolution' crossbow? Although I was in Darkwood when I read the description (incredibly annoying if your party has two wizards), it made me laugh out loud.

 

I think that crossbow is found as non-ramdom loot on a corpse next to the Ore vein near Kistrel's cave underneath Duskwood. Haven't checked the description though since none in my party use crossbows. I'll check my bag of holding and see if I still have it.

[Emperor Devon]

Seems like the Updater wants to Touch all game files even it nothing needs to be done to them, and complains if they don't match the expected checksum. Rather clumsy updating system for a game made to be modded, but oh well.

 

Maybe they won't be worth downloading. My internet connection's been screwy of late, and I couldn't update my game. Even at version 1.0, though, I've run into hardly any bugs other than two crashes to the desktop. But that's easily worth being able to tinker in the main campaign - with my favorite RPGs, I like to change a lot of the details (giving all Sith troopers light repeating blasters, for instance), and it adds a lot to the replay value. More than a patch or two will, at any rate.

 

There are no driders in NWN2 as far as I know, and only a couple of Drow NPCs, so there's not much opportunity for them to show up anyway. There's Kistrel and some smaller giant spiders in the Duskwood caves though, and those golem(?) blade spiders in quite a few places.

 

Regular spiders I don't mind, although driders are another matter. It would probably mess up the plot and take a lot of effort to get rid of them anyway, as there are so many random encounters (which can be with spiders) around the wilderness, and from something I vaguely recall seeing a while ago, there's a spider-like creature that joins your party.

 

I'd expect you gain some influence with Elanee if you refuse to go along with Neeshka's plans and thus skip doing her Leldon quest line. At least you do lose influence with her if you help Neeshka out while Elanee is in the party.

 

I'll have to go back to Leldon's hideout. At first I was more eager to go along with the main quest and ignored that one, but I'll go along with anything if I can gain more influence.

 

Might have a fair bit to do with luck as well, due to the random loot generators. So far I've gotten far less decent loot during my second playthrough than my first one. Seems to be a mix of static and random inventory at vendors and containers.

 

Maybe not entirely. It would be sensible to give the experienced players more of a challenge.

 

But she has pretty good Dexterity, which means she can get a pretty good AC. And she has evasion meaning she has a good chance to dodge any spells offering a Reflex save. As long as she doesn't try to solo a whole group of enemies she does surprisingly well in battle. At least so far.

 

I prefer brute force with my melee characters. Khelgar's done very well so far, and he has enough HP that he can take a good beating without leaving my wizard vulnerable. Character's like Neeshka may have good dexterity, but they're not very impressive when it comes to constitution.

 

But if you can let loose your entire arsenal of spells in every fight without having to housekeep there's little point in having spells slots at all, you could just allow everyone to cast at will. I realize why they do it, since Wizards are too weak compared to Melee brawlers as it is due to the lack of spells like levitation/flight, and since you fight quite a lot in the game, but I still think there could be a happy in-between the draconian Sleep restrictions of D&D and the "sleep at will" restrictions of NWN2.

 

I don't think resting should be eliminated, but there's no harm in it being reduced. If you can recover all your spells and HP everywhere in the area, there's nothing to stop you from summong Balors and stopping time (does that spell still exist?) when fighting common thugs. I'd prefer a system more like Jade Empire or KotOR's when it comes to magic, though - I think having a sort of 'mana' gives the player more control over their spell usage than the environment.

 

I don't know if it's a bug or intended to be that way, but half the reason why Khelgar becomes so much more powerful as a monk is that when you re-level him from level 1 as a monk he gets to keep any Ability Scores he's gained while he leveled as a Fighter (though he loses all skills and feats previously known).

 

In addition the attributes he'll get from leveling up again, that should make him quite the powerhouse. But fighters are generally better than monks, so there has to be some extra reason to make Khelgar one.

 

And once he gets the Gauntlets of Ironfist, Belt of Ironfist and Hammer of Ironfist from hsi special quests he kicks some serious behind even though monks usually wouldn't run around using a warhammer.

 

Would it be too much to hope those are all with his clan?

 

Don't know if the wolf sticks around in Act 2. It's usually found in a small alley right where you get ambushed by Bladelings in the docks district, near the Sunken Flagon. It's called "Wounded Wolf" and if you have Elanee in the party you can speak to it, which puts the Skymirror on the travel map.

 

I've already met and healed the wolf. I think Skymirror was on the world map when I last saw it, but with my character about to fight Lorne, I probably can't check.

 

I've turned off her spellcasting and handle that part manually. The combat AI is awful when it comes to spellcasting, it has pretty much no situational awareness at all. Seeing Sand and Qara fling fireballs at fire elementals, cast Death or Mind-affecing spells on Undead or Elanee try to use Crumble on non-golems pretty much made me spot-weld the Spell-casting behavior knob for all party members at the Off position.

 

It's usually better than nothing. Quara tends to hurl fireballs against normal enemies and whatnot, so it's usually okay. With Elanee, though, I can always count on the AI to turn her into a badger or something and make her useless during the battle, so I have to give her commands manually. If she'd randomly turn into a dire bear or dire boar I wouldn't mind, but maybe that shapeshifitng feat will become useful eventually...

 

Against specific enemies, though, the AI does suck. Fire works well against shadows, and while I was fighting some, Quara started casting a 1st-level defensive spell (though my entire party was at 8), for whatever reason. Sand has some good spells (he comes with a bad assortment at first, though) and for some reason he *always* uses them. There's not much of a need to cast ability-enhancing ones when you know the fight's going to be short, (as they won't be of use for very long, and will wear off before you get to other enemies) but Sand always makes sure to cast fox's cunning over fireballs...

 

Kistrel. If you are a Dark Elf, have high Lore or have Elanee in the party you can understand it and befriend it. It'll then help you out later in the game. Bringing Elanee to Duskwood is generally a pretty good idea:

 

Drat, I wish I'd brought her. Oh well, there are other opportunities. But Darkwood will have to be another place for my wizard to backtrack to.

 

If you decide to fight the Dryad who gave Lorne the polymorphing powder having Elanee in the group {snip}

 

I ended up killing her, as it took less time than if I'd gone back to the cave, and killed a dozen or so of the goblins. It was the random spell failures that were more annoying than her animals, though. Practically half the time I'd cast something, it would fail not because of my wizard's concentration level, but because of something the devs probably thought would add "variety" to the locations.

 

She can chat up and pacify animals in various other places in the game as well. If you have Elanee with you in the Orc caves near Old Owl Well you can let her handle the cavern full of Winter Wolves peacefully and gain some influence with her.

 

I don't remember if I saw the wolves or not, but that's another place for my character to travel to.

 

Heh, you don't know the half of it yet.

 

Other than charging me for conversations and nearly getting me found guilty in a trial, are saying there are even more things he does to ruin the plot?

 

 

He's hiding in the well if you gave him the knife, so he didn't need to fight Lorne and his Circle of Blades assassins when they razed Ember. Since he already knew what was going to happen he managed to stay undetected down there. Apparently he needed the knife to get down there safely.

 

 

Odd. Not much to do with a knife in the well, other than cut the ropes with the bucket. That would probably be more of a hindrance than a help, since all he could do then is jump twenty or who knows how many feet down a narrow shaft.

 

I suppose they needed the "Trial by Combat" fallback in order for Half-Orc barbarian players using Int, Wis and Cha as dump stats to be able to proceed with the game beyond the first half of Act 2. But it does seem like a rather peculiar rite of a "God of Justice", unless the justice Tyr stands for is "Might Makes Right" that is, but that doesn't strike me as all that Lawful Good.

 

Or the simple legal aspect, in which someone's talents and whatnot usually aren't relevant to the crime. I'd find a trial by combat to be incriminating evidence, though, since someone would need to be at least somewhat skilled at it to kill a whole village of people, unarmed or not.

 

For the half-orc players I can see it, though it ruins the roleplaying aspect of the game if you still have to do the trial by combat if you prove your innocence with your intelligence. Unless it's critical to the plot (I don't know if it'll be a duel to the death or not), I'll probably mod that out at some point.

 

I don't think there is a savegame editor, but you can use the console to change the value of variables (which are also stored in plaintext XML format for each savegame, so they are fairly easy to check).

 

Thanks. I've probably done that trial four or so times to see what the different dialogue options do (a high persuade, apparently, has more bearing than physical evidence. The court barely seemed to consider that at all), and I wouldn't mind going through it again.

 

Or you could just save it for your next Good-aligned playthrough instead. Seems a bit out of character for a Lawful Evil character to help Marcus out without knowing what's going to transpire.

 

Quara and Elanee both pointed out that Marcus had immense magical power. No lawful evil character would squander a resource like that, (Palpatine acted like a rather grandfatherly figure towards a Jedi) since he might have some use later, and only at the expense of Bishop's approval. So no, it would not be out of place.

 

I think the war against the King of Shadows was before Nasher took over as Lord of Neverwinter. If Ammon Jerro died before or just after Shandra was born it was likely at least two decades ago.

 

There's also how your character was an infant doing the battle, and looks to be in his/her early twenties by the time the game takes place. Nasher looks kinda old, (he looked moreso in NWN 1) so he might've come to power then.

 

The Luskan war seems to have happened a lot more recently, like 5-6 years ago at most from what some NPCs say.

 

Some other have said it was "a long time ago", but all accounts of the wars have been quite vague.

 

Bevil's brother Lorne left Harbor Watch to fight in the Luskan War after all, and that doesn't seem to have been that long ago, since he's still fairly young. Not much peace for long around Neverwinter, is there?

 

This is Dungeons & Dragons... Massive invasions from the Underdark and the carrying out of millenia-old schemes seem to be a weekly occurence.

 

Still, if you read the intro in the manual and watch the opening FMV sequence something about the common recollection of the war (so far in the story) does seem a bit off, doesn't it?

 

Maybe not totally. There could've been a fight with a wizard and some shadow creature during the battle, and that sword of his

might've been the Githyanki one, as it did shatter,

though I can't say as I'll probably find out more about the battle in Act III.

 

Warlock is a magic using class that does not cast spells, but use Eldritch Blast "invocations" instead which can be used an unlimited number of times/day and does not need to be memorized. {snip}

 

Kind of like a more focused sorcerer? I've noticed Quara can use a lot of her spells more often than my wizard, though she doesn't have as many. It might be an interesting class to try in my next playthrough, (I'm planning that out already ) though you mentioned it had to be chaotic and was buggy?

 

I play my Warlock as a kind of "magic archer" who hangs back and tosses magic at enemies while my other party members keep them distracted. She doesn't use a weapon (though Warlocks have higher hit dice and better weapon/armor proficiences than wizards do) but relies on her magic entirely instead (roleplaying handicap, she hates weapons).

 

That's mainly what I do with my party's spellcasters, though I give them weapons. Sometimes you run out of spells, or one hack of a dagger can kill an enemy just as well as using firebrand.

 

As for Duskwood I think that area is bugged. You're supposed to have 50% spell failure there, but since the effect gets applied on every heartbeat you end up with hundreds of them if you hang around long enough, and they appear to stack, so after only 2 rounds in Duskwood you have 100% spell failure.

 

I was still able to use spells quite a few heartbeats into Duskwood, though they were buggy. Either way, I'll mod it out. I chose my character to be a wizard so he could be a wizard.

 

Sparing the lizards are probably a good thing, since they may help you out much later in the game if you do.

 

Always good when NPCs can come back to haunt/help you.

 

I think that crossbow is found as non-ramdom loot on a corpse next to the Ore vein near Kistrel's cave underneath Duskwood. Haven't checked the description though since none in my party use crossbows. I'll check my bag of holding and see if I still have it.

 

Some of Obsidian's devs are biased, but it gave me a good chuckle.

 

Off to fight Lorne!

[stoffe]

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! - This post contains plenty of spoilers regarding the beginning of Act 2, which are not spoiler-tagged due to their length. Skip this post if you've not played to Act 2 yet.

 

Maybe they won't be worth downloading.

 

It's up to you of course, but I still wouldn't want to miss out on any patches. The toolset is buggy as all hell and the script editor will drive you insane within an hour if you don't apply at least the 1.03 patch. The 1.01 patch also contains some new content, including a whole bunch of new Druid spells, some of which are quite useful.

 

 

I vaguely recall seeing a while ago, there's a spider-like creature that joins your party.

 

No spider party members. The closest you come is Kistrel who will be a reoccuring character if you kill the glow spiders and give her some food in the Duskwood caves you find her.

 

 

I don't think resting should be eliminated, but there's no harm in it being reduced. If you can recover all your spells and HP everywhere in the area, there's nothing to stop you from summong Balors and stopping time (does that spell still exist?) when fighting common thugs.

 

The Time Stop spell has been removed (though the effect still exists so it can probably easily be reimplemented if you feel like it.) The Gate spell summons a Cornugon instead of a Balor, but it's powerful enough to tear most enemies apart regardless.

 

 

In addition the attributes he'll get from leveling up again, that should make him quite the powerhouse. But fighters are generally better than monks, so there has to be some extra reason to make Khelgar one.

 

Getting 4 extra Ability points for free is pretty powerful (if you make him a monk at level 16). Aside from that he gets better saving throws, evasion, better movement speed, immunity to poison and disease (you fight A LOT of undead late in the game), spell resistance, immunity to mind-affecting spells, damage reduction and a 50% concealment ability. I wouldn't switch him over to monk too early (I usually go for it just before the end of Act 2, roughly at level 16), but in Act 3 a Monk Khelgar kicks serious butt as a tank.

 

Would it be too much to hope those are all with his clan?

 

More or less, though you'll only be able to get the gauntlets before Act 3, at the ruined Ironfist clanhold (called "Dwarven scouts" on the travel map).

 

 

It's usually better than nothing. Quara tends to hurl fireballs against normal enemies and whatnot, so it's usually okay. With Elanee, though, I can always count on the AI to turn her into a badger or something and make her useless during the battle, so I have to give her commands manually.

 

You get more wildshape forms as she goes up in level, and eventually get some elemental shapes as well. Put the wildshape feat in one of the quickslots and you'll get a sub-menu where you can choose what she should polymorph into. The AI has, as said, no situational awareness so you can't trust it to pick the most suitable form. If you have the "Natural Spell" feat (I think Elanee has that by default) you can cast druid spells while Wildshaped as well (at least with the 1.03 patch).

 

Spellcasting requires more informed decisionmaking to be effective, so I use pause liberally and queue up spells for all party casters manually, and put Sand/Qara in puppet mode so they won't rush into melee if they run out of spells or finish their queued castings before I can reassign them new orders.

 

Drat, I wish I'd brought her. Oh well, there are other opportunities. But Darkwood will have to be another place for my wizard to backtrack to.

 

Make sure to bring Grobnar as well on your return trip and pay a visit to the pools of water in the Glowstone cavern. He'll find something there that you will need later (it only shows up if he's in the party).

 

I ended up killing her, as it took less time than if I'd gone back to the cave, and killed a dozen or so of the goblins.

 

Be aware for your next playthrough that you can only get a perfect "Evidence" score if you acquire the Changing Powder from her peacefully, for some illogical reason. A perfect "evidence" score is 7, you can only get 6 if you kill her. Not that it matters much for the outcome at the trial (you get an extra positive verdict adjustment and Sand has other dialog when they've presented the evidence) though, but it can be worth keeping in mind if you're perfectionist.

 

Also worth keeping in mind that if you get a verdict score of 15 or higher you will get the "Master Orator" history feat, and will get some more XP/Cash and influence with Nasher as reward for winning the trial. (You only need a verdict score of 5+ to be found innocent.)

 

I don't remember if I saw the wolves or not, but that's another place for my character to travel to.

 

They are in either the Bonegnasher or Eyegouger clan lair (don't remember which), which you have to visit as part of the Old Owl Well quest to find the missing Waterdeep Emissary.

 

 

Other than charging me for conversations and nearly getting me found guilty in a trial, are saying there are even more things he does to ruin the plot?

 

He's just warming up now, you know...

 

 

For the half-orc players I can see it, though it ruins the roleplaying aspect of the game if you still have to do the trial by combat if you prove your innocence with your intelligence. Unless it's critical to the plot (I don't know if it'll be a duel to the death or not), I'll probably mod that out at some point.

 

See it as an excellent way to lay the smack down on the one who has framed you for the crime, and who actually is guilty of it. I think the duel is pretty fun to play, so I wouldn't want to skip it. It will be a duel to the death for you (Lorne won't let you surrender), but you can choose if you want to kill Lorne yourself (Evil or Chaotic) or if you want to let him go (Good or Lawful, in which case Black Garius will kill him himself i an excruciatingly painful way in a cutscene a bit later).

 

Thanks. I've probably done that trial four or so times to see what the different dialogue options do (a high persuade, apparently, has more bearing than physical evidence. The court barely seemed to consider that at all), and I wouldn't mind going through it again.

 

Keep an eye on the value of the 20_bTrial_Verdict variable, it contains the verdict score of the trial which decides if you are found guilty (<5), innocent (>5) or "Master Orator" innocent (>15).

 

If you pick up all the evidence I think it is enough to prove yourself innocent unless you let Torio bait you into any conversations during the trial that gives a negative verdict score (or she has a lot of witnesses you are unable to defuse). My record score so far is a verdict score of 19.

 

 

There's also how your character was an infant doing the battle, and looks to be in his/her early twenties by the time the game takes place. Nasher looks kinda old, (he looked moreso in NWN 1) so he might've come to power then.

 

The time scale of the plot seems to assume the player is a human though. My dark elf is 120 years old, which doesn't quite fit within the timeframe given for anything else. But your main char was a baby during the battle at West Harbor where the silver sword was shattered (intro FMV) and a shard of it killed your mother and got lodged inside your body.

 

Nasher looked more like a middle-aged biker than a lord or king in NWN1. I'd speculate that he came to power in Neverwinter shortly after the war against the King of Shadows, since NW lost pretty much its entire army in that battle, leaving it and its power structures weakened.

 

Maybe not totally. There could've been a fight with a wizard and some shadow creature during the battle, and that sword of his, though I can't say as I'll probably find out more about the battle in Act III.

 

You will find out more about that roughly half-ways through Act 2 when you get to pick up a new party member who's quite knowledgeable on that subject.

 

 

[Warlock]Kind of like a more focused sorcerer? I've noticed Quara can use a lot of her spells more often than my wizard, though she doesn't have as many. It might be an interesting class to try in my next playthrough, (I'm planning that out already ) though you mentioned it had to be chaotic and was buggy?

 

Like a sorcerer who can shoot raw beams of magic from her fingertips at will (though still only once/round). Invocations aren't spells though so you can't apply metamagic to them, they don't belong to schools (so the Spell Focus feats are nearly useless for a Warlock) but you can alter the blast shape and damagetype and other status effects of the blasts. There are a few buff/debuff invocations as well that work more like normal spells, except that you can still cast them at will and aren't limited by a set number of uses per day.

 

The ray shapes offer no saving throws to reduce their effects (but are usually subject to spell resistance), but require ranged touch attacks to hit. The Cone and blast-sphere shapes always hit, but offer a reflex save to avoid half the damage. The "Vitriolic" essence pierces Spell Resistance.

 

 

That's mainly what I do with my party's spellcasters, though I give them weapons. Sometimes you run out of spells, or one hack of a dagger can kill an enemy just as well as using firebrand.

 

It was a RP handicap I thought fitted quite well for a Warlock. Since she never runs out of magic she has no reason to fall back to weapons even for badly injured foes. And should someone need some old-fashioned whacking you can imbue your weapon (of fists in this case) with the power of an Eldritch blast that triggers when you hit the opponent as well.

[Emperor Devon]

Well, I finished the game. Suffice to say I did NOT like the ending at all, but I'll save all my thoughts for a later post, as I've typed a lot already.

 

It's up to you of course, but I still wouldn't want to miss out on any patches. The toolset is buggy as all hell and the script editor will drive you insane within an hour if you don't apply at least the 1.03 patch. The 1.01 patch also contains some new content, including a whole bunch of new Druid spells, some of which are quite useful.

 

I was just able to download the patch. Know of any other ones? I'd love to start tweaking the modules to my taste. (And with all those new goodies in the toolset!)

 

No spider party members. The closest you come is Kistrel who will be a reoccuring character if you kill the glow spiders and give her some food in the Duskwood caves you find her.

 

Throughout the game, your character implies Kistrel is male.

 

The Time Stop spell has been removed (though the effect still exists so it can probably easily be reimplemented if you feel like it.)

 

It's really just an unblockable stun spell. But stopping time seemed rather over the top to me, so I probably won't bother.

 

More or less, though you'll only be able to get the gauntlets before Act 3, at the ruined Ironfist clanhold (called "Dwarven scouts" on the travel map).

 

The quest's bugged, I think. I cleared out all the enemies and got the dialogue at the end of the tunnel, though there wasn't an option to say it to the Ironfists.

 

Make sure to bring Grobnar as well on your return trip and pay a visit to the pools of water in the Glowstone cavern. He'll find something there that you will need later (it only shows up if he's in the party).

 

Were you supposed to go somewhere specific? I brought into the cavern and ran around pretty much everywhere, and the dialogue never triggered.

 

Be aware for your next playthrough that you can only get a perfect "Evidence" score if you acquire the Changing Powder from her peacefully, for some illogical reason.

 

Probably a not-so-subtle attempt to make players do more legwork. When the evidence was only four kills away from me, though, there's not much motivation to kill a small village of goblins.

 

They are in either the Bonegnasher or Eyegouger clan lair (don't remember which), which you have to visit as part of the Old Owl Well quest to find the missing Waterdeep Emissary.

 

Another thing for my next playthrough.

 

He's just warming up now, you know...

 

Somehow, stoffe, I've gotten the idea you don't like Bishop.

 

 

With good reason, sometimes! I gained all that influence with him, and the little s*** opened up the gates. I lost some good potions to those enemies, too.

 

 

See it as an excellent way to lay the smack down on the one who has framed you for the crime, and who actually is guilty of it.

 

I guess it is. It kind of ruins the point of the trial, though. But he has to get killed off somehow.

 

I think the duel is pretty fun to play, so I wouldn't want to skip it. It will be a duel to the death for you (Lorne won't let you surrender), but you can choose if you want to kill Lorne yourself (Evil or Chaotic) or if you want to let him go (Good or Lawful, in which case Black Garius will kill him himse lf i an excruciatingly painful way in a cutscene a bit later).

 

There weren't any chaos points that I noticed, though there were some lawful ones. Killing him is definitely worth it, though - you get 10 evil points, and all that's missed out on is part of a cutscene (interesting way Garius killed him).

 

If you pick up all the evidence I think it is enough to prove yourself innocent unless you let Torio bait you into any conversations during the trial that gives a negative verdict score (or she has a lot of witnesses you are unable to defuse). My record score so far is a verdict score of 19.

 

Looks like talk does more good than evidence. I acted like a total @$$ to one of the witnesses at Ember, and insured Marcus' death. But I had a high diplomacy skill, and got the master orator feat at the end of the trial. Surprising.

 

Have you tried bluffing to what's-his-name (the liar), or using diplomacy when Torio asks you questions instead of lore or something else? With what's-his-name, you don't have to choose between what skills to use on him. You can use them all at once, which the court reacts to if. If you bluff, he'll eventually say he might not have even been there, or he could've just been dreaming the entire thing. Torio's sure was pissed with him.

 

It's best to use diplomacy over the other skills with her when she asks you why you killed the people of Ember. With the right responses, the court will start cheering.

 

The time scale of the plot seems to assume the player is a human though. My dark elf is 120 years old, which doesn't quite fit within the timeframe given for anything else.

 

How'd you get that age? I don't remember if the feature to choose that is still in NWN 2 (since it served no purpose at all). But there were some other pointless thingss the devs included, such as choosing a deity. That wasn't brought up even once in my game.

 

Nasher looked more like a middle-aged biker than a lord or king in NWN1. I'd speculate that he came to power in Neverwinter shortly after the war against the King of Shadows, since NW lost pretty much its entire army in that battle, leaving it and its power structures weakened.

 

 

I'm not even sure about that. A lot of people at neverwinter seem to imply that Ammon Jerro was the King of Shadows (they say he summoned devils, devils, and then vanished), though he only had undead. Why Ammon would actually fight Neverwinter I can't guess, though all accounts of the war are terribly vague. There's not even an explanation for how the King was able to travel to Faeurun in his true form, and still loose - by all accounts, he was quite powerful, and won the duel against Ammon.

 

 

You will find out more about that roughly half-ways through Act 2 when you get to pick up a new party member who's quite knowledgeable on that subject.

 

Both of the ones who join you in Act II are. The first one was truly horrid on the eyes to look at at first, though. Wrinkly people dressed like teenagers = bad. The conversations more than made up for that, though.

 

Like a sorcerer who can shoot raw beams of magic from her fingertips at will (though still only once/round). Invocations aren't spells though so you can't apply metamagic to them, they don't belong to schools (so the Spell Focus feats are nearly useless for a Warlock) but you can alter the blast shape and damagetype and other status effects of the blasts. {snip}

 

 

Since Ammon Jerro

is a warlock, I was able to try that class out a bit. It's useful how he can't ever run out of spells, though they did a lot less damage than the wizard/sorcerer ones. Quantity comes at the expense of quality, I guess.

 

Since she never runs out of magic she has no reason to fall back to weapons even for badly injured foes.

 

Sometimes there is. Using a weapon takes less time than it does to use a spell.

[Tupac Amaru]

How'd you get that age? I don't remember if the feature to choose that is still in NWN 2 (since it served no purpose at all).

The default age for strong races is 120. It can be changed in the final screen during character creation. I made my Aasimar over 700 years old, but no one seems to care.

[stoffe]

Warning: This whole post is full of massive spoilers. Do NOT read it unless you've finished the game!

 

Well, I finished the game. Suffice to say I did NOT like the ending at all, but I'll save all my thoughts for a later post, as I've typed a lot already.

 

Which one did you get? The Evil one or the "Good" one? I doubt anyone liked the latter, and if Obsidian doesn't do a sequel or expansion pack that continues the story with an ending like that I'll be gravely disappointed. Seems like a good hook for an expansion pack to reintroduce Epic levels to the game though (like HotU did for NWN1), if you are escaping into the Plane of Shadow or the Astral Plane or somewhere else like that.

 

I was just able to download the patch. Know of any other ones? I'd love to start tweaking the modules to my taste. (And with all those new goodies in the toolset!)

 

Version 1.03 is the latest one for now, though Obsidian are working on a 1.04 patch. Seeing the state the game and toolset are in I doubt it will be the last though (and sincerely hope it won't be), unless it's the Mother of All Patches in size.

 

Throughout the game, your character implies Kistrel is male.

 

Which I chalk up to the character not bothering to check more closely. Female makes more sense, since female spiders are the big ones. Males are small (less than half the size of their female counterpart usually), weak, rarely seen and eaten on sight by the females unless it's mating season (in which case they are eaten after they've mated instead).

 

It's really just an unblockable stun spell. But stopping time seemed rather over the top to me, so I probably won't bother.

 

I think they dropped it after all the complaining about TimeStop in multiplayer in NWN1 that I've read about. A single mage casting Time Stop would bring the whole server to a stop until they were finished. Then imagine a server with 10+ high level mages playing. Stun spells are less disruptive for other players not involved in the fight (though worthless against enemies immune to mind-affecting spells, unlike Time Stop which was impossible to resist).

 

The quest's bugged, I think. I cleared out all the enemies and got the dialogue at the end of the tunnel, though there wasn't an option to say it to the Ironfists.

 

Hmm, odd. After you pick up the gauntlets Khelgar will start a conversation about them, at the end of which I got the option to go back and tell the other dwarves, which fast-traveled the party back go the beginning of the outdoors area. Perhaps one of the conversation responses are bugged, I picked the one where you say Khelgar should keep the gauntlets since they belong with an Ironfist.

 

Were you supposed to go somewhere specific? I brought into the cavern and ran around pretty much everywhere, and the dialogue never triggered.

 

Near the pools of water in the cave that contains the Glowstone the goblins are guarding. If you have Grobnar with you he'll take a bottle of water from the pool, which you'll need to use to reactivate the Construct in the Crossroad Keep basement and have it join as a party member.

 

Probably a not-so-subtle attempt to make players do more legwork. When the evidence was only four kills away from me, though, there's not much motivation to kill a small village of goblins.

 

Well you don't have to kill the goblins, you can use an invisibility spell to sneak past them, snatch the stone and go back out without anyone noticing or attacking you. The tribe will be hostile, but you have no real reason to go back that way anyway after you've finished the quest for the Goblin chief.

 

Somehow, stoffe, I've gotten the idea you don't like Bishop.

 

What's there to like about him? He's a traitorous selfish jerk who wastes no opportunity to be rude to everyone. That, and his background as an aspiring Luskan assassin. And who despite his inherent selfishness apparently is willing to throw his life away for no discernible reason at all. I only use him when I have to, there are better party members to bring along otherwise.

 

Re: The Gate

With good reason, sometimes! I gained all that influence with him, and the little s*** opened up the gates. I lost some good potions to those enemies, too.

 

That part of the fight was pretty fun though, since I had a whole bunch of Blade Barrier and Firewall spells left memorized. I just spammed them all in the gateway and not even a single undead made it into the courtyard intact.

 

Well, it was fun until BG decided to show up (in cutscene mode no less) and cast like a million spells per round and kill all my troops there that I had carefully kept alive, while my party was just standing around like idiots without doing anything to stop him. That just made me . As did the fact that the True Name scroll mysteriously doesn't work on him until after you've dispatched his pet Nightwalker, even though he's standing right there, hostile. Seemed like an excellent opportunity to weaken him, but the game thought otherwise.

 

 

I guess it is. It kind of ruins the point of the trial, though. But he has to get killed off somehow.

 

Even though a "Trial By Combat" is a rather incredulous concept for a "God of Justice" like Tyr, the situation does show a bit of the rigidness inherent in the Lawful Good alignment. Had Nasher & RJOU been anything else they'd probably have told Torio what she could go do with herself, but since rules are rules they had to go along with it even though they knew full well they were being used.

 

Speaking of which, did you spare Torio later on, or did you extract revenge on her too?

 

 

There weren't any chaos points that I noticed, though there were some lawful ones. Killing him is definitely worth it, though - you get 10 evil points, and all that's missed out on is part of a cutscene (interesting way Garius killed him).

 

I see no reason to kill him, better to let Black Garius humble him since Lorne constantly is trying to suck up to him. To die that way would probably hurt him more than to die by his enemy's hand. Besides, they somehow manage to make Torio look really scared in that cutscene after Lorne is killed, which was nice to see considering that the game otherwise seems completely devoid of facial expressions matching the characters' emotions. Makes more sense for her to try to switch sides later on after that too, since Garius was about to kill her as well before she mentioned the shards.

 

Looks like talk does more good than evidence. I acted like a total @$$ to one of the witnesses at Ember, and insured Marcus' death. But I had a high diplomacy skill, and got the master orator feat at the end of the trial. Surprising.

 

Yes, evidence helps, but it's the trial conversation itself that can potentially make the greatest difference. If you let torio run the show you'll be found guilty even if you found all the evidence pointing to your innocence. Finding the evidence helps, since it adds a fair bit to your verdict score, but can easily be undone if you make poor decisions at the trial itself.

 

Have you tried bluffing to what's-his-name (the liar)

 

I preferred to deal with him in Port Llast instead, so he wouldn't show up at the trial at all. If you do your preparations well and haven't been nasty in the past Elaine will be the only witness Torio has. And if you've been nice to Shandra she can convince Elaine that she might be mistaken without you having to do anything further, thus spoiling that witness for Torio as well.

 

or using diplomacy when Torio asks you questions instead of lore or something else?

 

I've done a mix of Diplomacy and Lore so far, since there is one point where you can't really win the whole Diplo-exchange, in the sense that no matter what you say you'll gain negative verdict adjustment first, and can only win it back later with a positive adjustment if you succeed the Diplo-check, leaving you back at your previous score. I choose the Lore option there instead, since it gives a positive verdict adjustment.

 

If you're playing as a cleric you have it a bit easier as well, since there is a cleric-specific dialog option near the start of the trial that gives you a positive verdict adjustment if you pick it.

 

It's best to use diplomacy over the other skills with her when she asks you why you killed the people of Ember. With the right responses, the court will start cheering.

 

Hmm, if I remember correctly this is the part that can at best leave you back at your previous verdict score if you choose the Diplo route (auto -1 adjustment first, then a chance to get a +1 adjustment), even though the audience might make it sound otherwise.

 

 

How'd you get that age? I don't remember if the feature to choose that is still in NWN 2 (since it served no purpose at all). But there were some other pointless thingss the devs included, such as choosing a deity. That wasn't brought up even once in my game.

 

I think the chosen deity is touched upon in a few conversations if you are a cleric, but noting very noticable (unless I was imagining things, that is).

 

You set the age at character creation, but it's never used for anything in-game since you are assumed to be of a certain age no matter your race pick for story purposes. It's a bit of a plot hole since a 20 year old human is a young adult while a 20 year old elf probably is a toddler still. But I'd rather have to overlook that than be barred from playing and elf for storyline reasons.

 

I'm not even sure about that. A lot of people at neverwinter seem to imply that Ammon Jerro was the King of Shadows (they say he summoned devils, devils, and then vanished), though he only had undead. Why Ammon would actually fight Neverwinter I can't guess, though all accounts of the war are terribly vague. There's not even an explanation for how the King was able to travel to Faeurun in his true form, and still loose - by all accounts, he was quite powerful, and won the duel against Ammon.

 

As I see it Ammon Jerro never fought against Neverwinter, after all he fought to protect Neverwinter from the King of Shadows. He just picked a rather volatile way of doing it, by summoning an army of demons and devils. Some peasant swamp farmers witnessing a Warlock stride around with a swarm of wicked-looking fiends aren't going to bother asking if he's a friend or foe. In particular after what happens shortly afterwards.

 

From what I've pieced together of what you learn in the game it probably went something like this:

1. 20 years before the game starts: King of Shadows attempting to free himself from his imprisonment in the Plane of Shadows, trouble in the Mere, Neverwinter endangered. The same old drill.
    
    
   
2. Ammon Jerro learns of this, tries to use his position as Court Wizard to warn the leaders of Neverwinter, but they are too busy with their petty squabbles and backstabbing eachother to take any notice.
    
    
   
3. Ammon Jerro decides to do something about it himself and uses his magical talents to create an army of Demons and Devils and with them wages war against the golems and undead hordes of the King of Shadows.
    
    
   
4. Battle at West Harbor. Ammon Jerro battles the avatar of the King of Shadows. The cries of an infant baby (the PC) distracts him briefly, but long enough to break his concentration and for the King of Shadows to gain the upper hand. The Sword of Gith is will-powered and shatters when AJs concentration is broken.
    
    
   
5. The explosion when the sword shatters grievously wounds the King of Shadows (the point of the sword was that it could harm him, after all, and standing next to it when it shatters, tossing lethal shrapnel everywhere, ought to hurt), tossing him back into the Plane of Shadows to lick his wounds, recuperate and regain his strength.
    
    
   
6. Jerro is either tossed into Baator by the same blast, or weakened enough by it that his command over his fiendish hordes is broken and they drag him back down with them. Either way, Ammon Jerro ends up imprisoned in Baator and his fiendish hordes, now free from his influence, run amok and ravage the sword coast, razing West Harbor to the ground and laying siege to Fort Locke, where they are finally beaten and banished back to the Lower Planes, in a battle that leaves pretty much the entire army of Neverwinter dead.
    
    
   
7. Ammon Jerro's family figures this really isn't the time to say "Yes, the Warlock that summoned the demons that just caused havok was Ammon Jerro". So they come up with a story about his death, spread rumors that the Warlock was the King of Shadows, bolstered by what frightened witnesses and survivors tell of their ordeals, sweep it all under the rug and make themselves scarce in Neverwinter just in case the truth would emerge eventually.
    
    
   
8. 20 years later, which is no time at all for an entity such as the King of Shadows, he is done licking his wounds and again sets his eyes on reclaiming the lands of the ancient Illefarn Empire.
   

 

Both of the ones who join you in Act II are. The first one was truly horrid on the eyes to look at at first, though. Wrinkly people dressed like teenagers = bad. The conversations more than made up for that, though.

 

Neither of the Gith peoples are really easy on the eyes, are they? What really bothered me though was those weird knobs on her knees and her veil for some odd reason. Enough so that I changed her appearance to a tiefling instead. Kind of funny that they have lip-sync for all her spoken dialog even though you usually never see any of it behind that veil of hers.

 

A bit shoddy that she'd always look the same, regardless if she was in common clothing or in full plate mail, when all other party members (except Ammon Jerro) change appearance depending on what they wear.

 

I was able to try that class out a bit. It's useful how he can't ever run out of spells, though they did a lot less damage than the wizard/sorcerer ones. Quantity comes at the expense of quality, I guess.

 

Ammon Jerro comes with a pretty poor selection of Invocations, unfortunately, making him less powerful than he could have been. But Warlock spells are generally weaker than wizard/sorcerer spells, which I suppose is to make up for being able to cast them an unlimited number of times. Unfortunately that advantage is more or less completely rendered pointless since you can rest at will in NWN2, giving the other caster classes unlimited spells/day as well.

 

At higher levels this weakness becomes glaringly obvious since a Warlock can only cast one invocation per round no matter if she's level 1 or level 20, while a level 20 fighter can have 6 attacks/round if they dual-wield and have picked the dual-wielding feats. A warlock Eldritch blast does an average of 35-40 damage at level 20 (9d6 dmg), while a fighter with a good weapon and decent strength does 25-30 damage/attack. Both have unlimited attacks/day, both require an attack roll to hit, and melee weapons never break in the game, and invocations (except Vitriolic blast) needs to overcome Spell Resistance on top of that. So a fighter will do roughly 150-180 damage/round, while a warlock is still stuck with their single blast doing 35-40 dmg to at most 4 enemies (unless you want to allow the enemy a reflex save for half damage) at level 20. Meanwhile Wiz/Sorc have spells doing 120+ damage or causing instant death to all enemies over a large area.

 

I've balanced things out a bit by adding some more Warlock invocations to the game, fixing some major bugs with the Eldritch Blast status effects and adjusted some of the other invocations to work more as they should. Makes it more fun to play, while the Warlock still is pretty weak compared to some Frenzied Berserker/Barbarian or a Sorceress.

 

Even though Warlock is hardly the most powerful class out there I still think it's pretty fun to play as one. And with the "no weapons" role playing handicap I was hardly out to power game this character at any rate.

 

Sometimes there is. Using a weapon takes less time than it does to use a spell.

 

It's an interesting aspect of the Neverwinter Nights games, that big burly melee grunts are the most dangerous enemies you can encounter, while spellcasters only pose a problem if you leave them alone. It's probably the abundance of powerful magic weapons and armor that makes the melee classes so much more powerful than Wizards in the game, combined with the lack of some of the more potent wizard spells (such as levitation/fly) they normally use to protect themselves from the melee grunts.

 

This is another reason I've turned off the automatic spellcasting AI for party members. By the time they've finished chanting and let the spell fly the melee grunts in the party have already killed the enemy 75% of the time, making them waste a spell needlessly. They're mostly useful for crowd control, softening up packs of enemies, IMHO.

[Darth333]

ok I just got started with the game and a part a few little things (the camera is one of them) I love it so far...but what did they think when they made that toolset? This thing is the most user unfriendly toolset I've seen

 

I'm trying to figure out how to open the dialogues that are in "\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\Campaigns\Neverwinter Nights 2 Campaign"...can someone help me please ? I can open the module specific ones but not the banter...I am at lost here And is there a way to disable the autosave function in the toolset?

[stoffe]

ok I just got started with the game and a part a few little things (the camera is one of them) I love it so far...but what did they think when they made that toolset? This thing is the most user unfriendly toolset I've seen

 

The user interface could definitely use some more work. So could the whole thing performance and stability wise. You have to save like a maniac when using it since you never know when the thing will crash.

 

It's also a bit too undocumented for my taste. Took quite a while to figure out how to navigate the world view window, for example. Lots of trial and error required make sense of it. Oh, and the 2DA editor is a disaster, I only use it to export the 2DA to formatted text and then use UltraEdit for everything else.

 

I'm trying to figure out how to open the dialogues that are in "\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\Campaigns\Neverwinter Nights 2 Campaign"...can someone help me please ? I can open the module specific ones but not the banter...I am at lost here And is there a way to disable the autosave function in the toolset?

 

You have to open one of the campaign modules first. Then the campaign global scripts and DLG files will become available in the File menu --> Open Conversation/Script box.

 

To disable autosave, go to the View menu --> Options --> General --> Autosave and set it to False. Make sure to do it before opening one of the campaign modules, or you'll need to reinstall the whole game to be able to use the auto-updater later since auto-save fouls up the standard module signature even if you haven't changed anything.

[Pavlos]

After playing through the game and managing to finally collect my thoughts on it, I thought I should, or rather would (since very few people will care), post my feelings here on LucasForums for all those still trapped in the netherworld of “Oh, should I buy this game?”

 

 

In 2002 BioWare released the original Neverwinter Nights, featuring an incredible toolset and revolutionising the CRPG scene by unlocking the secrets of 3D and freeing the genre from the chains of the ageing Infinity engine. Not only this but the game featured an epic and forgettable storyline and some truly boring areas, all of which looked remarkably similar to one another. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game - the story was just a little underwhelming but BioWare’s two expansion packs and constant patching of the game, along with the aforementioned toolset, made it a classic. As such, NWN2 comes as a bit of a surprise: we have a much better graphics engine (admittedly, this is to be expected), a brilliantly written and enjoyable storyline, and *almost* all the things that saved the original from being forgotten.

 

In short, the game returns us to a past that has been forgotten by modern gaming and has a distinctly “Baldur’s Gate-ish” feel about it and if you’ve played any Obsidian/Black Isle games before then you’ll find yourself more than at home with this game. The character customisation options for the game are truly amazing but it is D&D, so what else would you expect? The game opens in true fantasy style with a perfect little village in the middle of nowhere being attacked, thus leaving your character with a task that, while piffling at first, turns out to involve the fate of Faerun. But as with KotOR, a game that had a story so simple a mentally retarded amoeba could have understood it; this somewhat over-used plotline of daemons and shadows is made intricate, original, and interesting via brilliant writing and some interesting twists. While the opening hours of the game can be sluggish, the story soon begins to shine through by the middle of act one (of three) and by the time you reach the third act there is very little doubt that this game’s story is epic in proportions.

 

NWN2’s companions are dazzling, all sporting individual personalities, all beautifully voiced, and all bickering with one another about your decisions – something which the previous Obsidian title (KotOR II: TSL) fell a little short on. As a testament to the designers’ skills with their pens, or keyboards, you feel gripped – in horror, or joy, depending on your gameplay habits – by the mishaps that befall your virtual friends.

 

The interface is… interesting. In many ways it is an improvement over the earlier game (the horrific radial menu is gone, leaving in its wake the glittering simplicity of the context menu). Obviously inspired by other games - like Baldur’s Gate, or Planescape: Torment – NWN2 gives us full control over our companions in and out of combat. Queuing actions, moving your party into specific spots, carefully levelling their character at every opportunity… it is all in there, along with the handy puppet mode; this ensures that your companions will not utilise any AI and will only do as you say. It would be wise to leave this on in most situations, especially later in the game - a problem Obsidian (and BioWare, for that matter) seem to have, is that they are completely unable to program an AI system. The AI is dumb, I mean really stupid. But when you’re not stopping your companions from using all the healing potions in your inventory, or making sure that they don’t run through walls of fire (even worse, stand in them), or cancelling the dispel effect spells they seem intent on casting when there are no effects to dispel whatsoever, combat is enjoyable and fast-paced (especially at later levels). The camera can take a little getting used to, though, and there are some clunky aspects to the GUI that I really think should have been smoothed over; there is a “change party” button that is always greyed out and the journal never remembers which quests I want minimised and which I want to be shown. Plus, you cannot set your own map markers, which was a little disappointing, not to mention a step down from almost every D&D RPG I can think of.

 

In traditional CRPG style, branching off from the main plot are dozens of side quests and if you decide to spend time with your companions you’ll find that most of them have their own quests that will allow you to explore their back stories to a greater extent than you would otherwise. All of these quests (be they little, or large) present you with a plethora of moral dilemmas. Improving on BioWare’s attempts in the initial game, Obsidian present you with more types of evil than just plain being a jerk but spoil it a little with a handful of conversations where talking your way out of a fight, or manipulating people to do your bidding, gives you less experience points (and loot) than just killing everyone in sight but at least you can talk yourself out of a lot of situations – something that a lot of other games don’t seem to support. And there are several strange bugs (such as the case of the endlessly repeating conversation, something that got so annoying I had to open up the toolset and fix it myself before I could continue to play) and they mar an otherwise outstanding game.

 

Generally area design is strong and original with few cases of “Oh, this looks familiar” syndrome, as we felt with NWN1. The game’s strong lighting system looks phenomenal when turned up to max with every object casting a shadow for each light source acting on it (be it the sun, or a nearby lamp) and each object, receiving every shadow cast on it. But as can be expected from such an extravagant lighting scheme, it eats up performance and in many cases will half your frame rate in a game which already eats up a lot of your computer’s power. Because this game is a hog and though the graphics really can be staggering (although, you may occasionally feel that area x is a bit shabby and could have done with y) you will be looking at a game that looks good but not good enough to warrant all that power being eaten up.

 

Most of the music is repeated from NWN1, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – we don’t berate a lot of Star Wars games for just using the movie themes again and again. But those new themes that have managed to find their way in are in a class of their own and I found myself humming along to many of them. A little disappointing is that “battle banter” voice over for your character is exactly the same as NWN1’s but the actual sound effects seem well done - the sound of flowing rivers, swamps, and cities are all spot on.

 

To summarise:

 

1) Companions are lively and interesting to listen to.

2) Story is traditional and elaborate and really does make it hard for you to leave your desk to get up and do such basic things as eating or socialising.

3) Voice acting is, on the whole, exceptional in this game, though there are one or two cases where the casting directors must have been drunk/in a relationship with the actor to give them the job (the ending narrator should be shot) and I was a little surprised to find that not all of the game is voiced.

4) Excellent usage of alignment system.

5) The formation of a “Live Team” at Obsidian secures support for the game for a long while – hopefully in the tradition of BioWare’s amazing support for NWN1. It’s even headed by none other than Obsidian’s CEO.

6) One of your companions, Sand, rivals HK-47 in hilarity… but no one can really topple our favourite droid from the pedestal.

7) The ending of the game sports a neat set of betrayals and is truly heroic and sweeping in nature until its climax which is a little off – the Obsidian gang really do have issues with making endings but they have hinted that there may be an expansion.

8) Some annoying bugs and performance issues (performance improves significantly with the 1.03 patch) spoil the game experience for some but the issues can go hang themselves when you realise that you are playing a game that is intricate and engrossing.

 

Undoubtedly, one of the best RPGs in a long time.

 

 

8.8/10

 

 

Edit: The toolset is another matter that I have only had a small while to fiddle with, as such I cannot form an opinion on it.

 

Edit to the edit: Changed my rating from 9/10 to 8.8, which is a little more realistic. 9.0 is my evaluation of the KotORs and I don't think that this game, while a classic, quite matches up to KotOR - probably because it suffers from the severe disadvantage of not being Star Wars.

[Emperor Devon]

Which one did you get? The Evil one or the "Good" one?

 

As an evil character you can get both, actually. Worse yet, picking the typical 'I share my powah with no one, I'm gonna kill you and become the new bad guy' lines over 'My only wish is to be your servant' lines will result in you getting the good ending...

 

 

Both sucked. My thoughts...

 

The supposedly "evil" ending was a disappointment. In all the good RPGs I've played, such as KotOR and Jadce Empire, you kill the big bad guy and become the new Emperor/Dark Lord. With the one in NWN 2, you become the King of Shadows' servant. The final battle sucks, too. You fight your party members, and several empowered ice storms killed them all. Wheee, that was fun.

 

It gets worse. Not only do you become the KoS' servant, but it seems to have absolutely no impact on Neverwinter at all. Even when the Shadows overran the Sword Coast, killed everyone and all that evil stuff, it is apparently all fort not. They stop at the ancient borders of the Illefarn Empire, and advance no further. Not only is it unsatisfying not to conquer everything, but it also contradicts the plot. Since the Guardian was supposed to protect the Empire, it would be only logical for him to destroy all the good guys who oppose him while they're still reeling from the blow.

 

Satisfying, isn't it? Your character becomes a servant, the Shadows stop their advance, and the good gys completely recover from the attack.

 

To elaboratge on that, the ending mentions that Neverwinter become one of the most powerful cities on all the Sword Coast, developing a military all the baddies feared, blah blah blah. How that's possible when they lost all their territory and most of their military, I have no idea... Especially when it stated earlier that the borders of the Illefarn Empire covered all the Coast.

 

Seeing both endings disillusioned me further. Lots of parts from the good ending were recycled into the evil one, giving me the impression of laziness on the part of the devs to make something enjoyable at the end. If I were to pick something that best represented the "evil" ending, it would be a pile of torn rags - lacking anything of true quality, smeared with parts of the good ending and irrelevant details to tarnish it further, and full of holes that contradicted the plot or ruined it for me.

 

About irrelevant details, Captain Whatever-her-name-is and Bevil were brought up for some inexplicable reason. Why I should care about a standard quest-giver and an incredibly minor character, I have no idea at all...

 

There were also how, for another inexplicable reason, my character killed all of his companions and put their heads on pikes. Given how they'd been 'Shadow-ized' for lack of better term, swore their loyalty the KoS and were extremely competent in various things, I have no idea why they would be executed without a provided reason. There can be villains who don't kill random people without a purpose.

 

It sucked as much as the good ending, in my opinion.

 

 

For the "good" one...

 

 

Having everyone get killed by fallling rocks? In all other movies and video games, the heroes always manage to avoid those obstacles. The plot could still have been resolved without killing them, and the timing was particularly awful. To me, it seemed something akin to killing an army single-handedly and then dying of a kidney failure.

 

Really, there could still have been the standard scene of all the good guys getting medals or something in front of a large crowd. NWN 2's ending struck me as a poor attempt to make the game stand out, or to annoy all the fans. Not to mention how it seems to diminish all your accomplishments.

 

My biggest complaint, though, is it how it takes the place of a real evil ending. After saying your companions are tools and killing the KoS only for your own benefit and to take his power for your own, this ending plays. Give me a break. When I first saw it, I was practically gaping in disappointment. Loading a previous save and then seeing my character become a mindless servant did nothing to remedy that, either.

 

 

I doubt anyone liked the latter, and if Obsidian doesn't do a sequel or expansion pack that continues the story with an ending like that I'll be gravely disappointed.

 

 

Possible, but difficult to implement. The KoS is dead in the good ending (and probably the main characters), where he's still alive in the "evil" one. Resurrecting him would be diificult to do without seeming too over the top, and the alternative would be to have different villains for different alignments, which would naturally take more time.

 

 

Seems like a good hook for an expansion pack to reintroduce Epic levels to the game though (like HotU did for NWN1), if you are escaping into the Plane of Shadow or the Astral Plane or somewhere else like that.

 

Epic levels would be an improvement. Multi-classing tended to weaken characters rather than strengthen them.

 

Escaping into a different Plane I don't know about. Zhajaeve (sp?) says their journey is at an end (in some cut content, though) but it is possible. She had to leave the Astral one somehow, so there's no reason she couldn't go back. Bringing along other people along could be possible, too.

 

Version 1.03 is the latest one for now, though Obsidian are working on a 1.04 patch. Seeing the state the game and toolset are in I doubt it will be the last though (and sincerely hope it won't be), unless it's the Mother of All Patches in size.

 

I've not run into a lot of bugs in the game, though the toolset could use some improvement. I've got most of it figured out, though recoloring interior tiles has been annoying to figure out - it's like the devs were trying to make all the buttons to do those things as small and out of the way as possible.

 

Even navigating the toolset is annoying - I've not figured out how to move the camera in it. The best I can do is create a new NPC/placeable/whatever and move directly to it.

 

Female makes more sense, since female spiders are the big ones.

 

You're right, females are the big ones. However, even if Kistrel was a female spider, the male ones would still be significantly larger than the normal ones. But this is D&D, and the regular laws of nature don't seem to matter there. Or for all we know, the ones seen throughout the game could be male and the female might be even larger.

 

It's not just said by the character, though. There's a part of the dialogue that that goes something like [Kistrel blah blah blah. He blah blah blah], which implies his gender. I don't think Obsidian would try to make the character unaware of a detail like that. RPGs usually only give you false information if it serves some purpose in the plot.

 

Males are small (less than half the size of their female counterpart usually), weak, rarely seen and eaten on sight by the females unless it's mating season (in which case they are eaten after they've mated instead).

 

Even if the ones throughout the game are female ones, the males wouldn't be too weak in comparison. They'd be around the size of a horse, so they could probably go around the countryside in relative safety (or at least, as safe as large monsters can get).

 

I'm surprised you let Kistrel back to the keep. I thought you were aracnophobic?

 

A single mage casting Time Stop would bring the whole server to a stop until they were finished. Then imagine a server with 10+ high level mages playing.

 

Pretty bad for the melee characters. Ten mages all taking turns stopping time and casting high-level spells would be enough to kill most other players.

 

Hmm, odd. After you pick up the gauntlets Khelgar will start a conversation about them, at the end of which I got the option to go back and tell the other dwarves, which fast-traveled the party back go the beginning of the outdoors area. Perhaps one of the conversation responses are bugged, I picked the one where you say Khelgar should keep the gauntlets since they belong with an Ironfist.

 

Maybe my game was buggy. I played a lot of it at version 1.00, couldn't find any gauntlets, and later had them show up in my inventory.

 

Near the pools of water in the cave that contains the Glowstone the goblins are guarding. If you have Grobnar with you he'll take a bottle of water from the pool, which you'll need to use to reactivate the Construct in the Crossroad Keep basement and have it join as a party member.

 

Now that is odd. I ran all around the cavern with Grobnar in tow, and he never took out any bottles. Was there something specific which had to happen?

 

Well you don't have to kill the goblins, you can use an invisibility spell to sneak past them, snatch the stone and go back out without anyone noticing or attacking you. The tribe will be hostile, but you have no real reason to go back that way anyway after you've finished the quest for the Goblin chief.

 

True, although it takes longer than just killing the dryad then and there.

 

What's there to like about him? {snip}

 

I'd been kidding.

 

That part of the fight was pretty fun though, since I had a whole bunch of Blade Barrier and Firewall spells left memorized. I just spammed them all in the gateway and not even a single undead made it into the courtyard intact.

 

I should've used those. Oh well, I only got weakened for fighting the Nightwalker, and lost some valuable potions...

 

As did the fact that the True Name scroll mysteriously doesn't work on him until after you've dispatched his pet Nightwalker, even though he's standing right there, hostile. Seemed like an excellent opportunity to weaken him, but the game thought otherwise.

 

Well, you're busy with the Nightwalker. But the NWN/KotOR games are rather awkward when it comes to cenes like that. Since the combat is turn-based, it looks a little wierd when lots of people are fighting/getting killed/ in cutscenes.

 

Even though a "Trial By Combat" is a rather incredulous concept for a "God of Justice" like Tyr, the situation does show a bit of the rigidness inherent in the Lawful Good alignment.

 

Indeed. I'd rather have had Lorne ambush you, challenge you to a duel, or some other method of ensuring a fight without ruining the trial for me.

 

Had Nasher & RJOU been anything else they'd probably have told Torio what she could go do with herself, but since rules are rules they had to go along with it even though they knew full well they were being used.

 

The lawful alignment is a bit silly at times. One example is when you lie to those two thugs that they'll be let off if they surrender, and then you send them off to the dugneons. Since a greater stability would be achieved by getting them locked away (reducing crime by a slight %) and ending the standoff without killing another Watchman, it seemed far more lawful to give your word and break it for the sake of greater order, rather than sticking to a promise that only helps chaos.

 

That law was ridiculous in the first place. Any truly "lawful" character would realize when some laws don't help preserve order at all.

 

Speaking of which, did you spare Torio later on, or did you extract revenge on her too?

 

You can kill Torio? After the fight with Lorne she vanishes completely, and later reappears in Crossroad Keep. There was an evil thing to say to her, though I didn't notice any options to kill her.

 

I see no reason to kill him, better to let Black Garius humble him since Lorne constantly is trying to suck up to him. To die that way would probably hurt him more than to die by his enemy's hand.

 

It probably was more humiliating, though it seemed a bit too merciful on my character's part. The cutscene was more interesting if you let him live, though I wanted some evil points (and wasn't in a mood to reload it).

 

Makes more sense for her to try to switch sides later on after that too, since Garius was about to kill her as well before she mentioned the shards.

 

The dialogue options at Crossroad Keep implied she was captured, though I don't recall them that well. Seemed odd she'd join the good guys, though, since she's rather evil in her nature.

 

Yes, evidence helps, but it's the trial conversation itself that can potentially make the greatest difference. If you let torio run the show you'll be found guilty even if you found all the evidence pointing to your innocence. Finding the evidence helps, since it adds a fair bit to your verdict score, but can easily be undone if you make poor decisions at the trial itself.

 

Oh yes. It's drama the court in Neverwinter seems to appreciate, rather than actual proof - some of the evidence was quite incrominating. But video games don't usually model trials very well, but at leadt this one was better than KotOR's.

 

I preferred to deal with him in Port Llast instead, so he wouldn't show up at the trial at all.

 

It'll add more credence towards your case if you prove his story false in front of the court. It makes Torio look bad in how one of her witnesses isn't even sure if the event happened, or he was just dreaming. She'll get very upset when he admits that.

 

And if you've been nice to Shandra she can convince Elaine that she might be mistaken without you having to do anything further, thus spoiling that witness for Torio as well.

 

Looks like Elaine won't ever admit being mistaken with me.

 

 

I did not like Shandra at all. During the scene where Ammon killed her,

I'd literally been chanting "YES! YES!! YES!!!!" while doing a little dance in front of the computer. That part of the game made me very happy.

 

I choose the Lore option there instead, since it gives a positive verdict adjustment.

 

Using diplomacy (if you have a high enough skill) can be the best one. I got the master orator feat when I did that, so I must've done something right there.

 

Hmm, if I remember correctly this is the part that can at best leave you back at your previous verdict score if you choose the Diplo route (auto -1 adjustment first, then a chance to get a +1 adjustment), even though the audience might make it sound otherwise.

 

You might be thinking of another instance - it was be very odd for the verdict score to go down then. I'll have to check the dialogue.

 

As I see it Ammon Jerro never fought against Neverwinter, after all he fought to protect Neverwinter from the King of Shadows.

 

That's what's been said, though I never unlocked all his dialogue in my first playthrough. There's probably some reason for the confusin about that battle.

 

From what I've pieced together of what you learn in the game it probably went something like this: {snip}

 

That was quite the summary there! Thanks for clearing the plot up.

 

Neither of the Gith peoples are really easy on the eyes, are they?

 

The male Gith I can stomach, though the female ones (more like 'one') is far from that. I though she'd caught some sort of disease when I first saw her.

 

What really bothered me though was those weird knobs on her knees and her veil for some odd reason.

 

I was kind of glad about the veil. I wouldn't have wanted to see her face.

 

The knobs were pretty weird, though. What kind of teifling did you change her to?

 

Ammon Jerro comes with a pretty poor selection of Invocations,

 

Another thing for to change...

 

Unfortunately that advantage is more or less completely rendered pointless since you can rest at will in NWN2, giving the other caster classes unlimited spells/day as well.

 

All except in the KoS' fortress. That was incredibly annoying. Whenever you'd rest more enmies would spawn, which overall made you lose health by doing it. The level got pretty tiring after a little while.

 

At higher levels this weakness becomes glaringly obvious since a Warlock can only cast one invocation per round no matter if she's level 1 or level 20, while a level 20 fighter can [snip}

 

Short and long term benefits. I've observed that the best classes tend to be crappy at the start (wizards and sorcerers), while the okay ones start out a pretty good.

 

I've balanced things out a bit by adding some more Warlock invocations to the game, fixing some major bugs with the Eldritch Blast status effects and adjusted some of the other invocations to work more as they should.

 

What did you end of up adjusting? I've not run into any bugs with the warlock spells.

 

Even though Warlock is hardly the most powerful class out there I still think it's pretty fun to play as one. And with the "no weapons" role playing handicap I was hardly out to power game this character at any rate.

 

Warlocks aren't too bad with weapons. Since they have weaker spells, they're better brawlers (from what I've seen), though it can be a little overkill, since they still have an infinite number of spells.

 

It's an interesting aspect of the Neverwinter Nights games, that big burly melee grunts are the most dangerous enemies you can encounter, while spellcasters only pose a problem if you leave them alone.

 

There has to be some compensation for it. A powerful spellcaster can cause far more damage than a powerful melee one, and they'd be quite overpowered if both had the same amount of HP. Personally I think that wizards/sorcerers are way too weak at low levels, but that's what modding is for.

 

It's probably the abundance of powerful magic weapons and armor that makes the melee classes so much more powerful than Wizards in the game, combined with the lack of some of the more potent wizard spells (such as levitation/fly) they normally use to protect themselves from the melee grunts.

 

It is an odd concept. In real life, the guy who can shoot fireballs out of his bare hands has an advantage over the one with a club. In other fantasy books I've read, there are far fewer wizards, though they are much more powerful. I think that spellcasters were made a bit too commonplace, myself - they are supposed to be practitioners of arcane arts, after all.

 

This is another reason I've turned off the automatic spellcasting AI for party members. By the time they've finished chanting and let the spell fly the melee grunts in the party have already killed the enemy 75% of the time, making them waste a spell needlessly. They're mostly useful for crowd control, softening up packs of enemies, IMHO.

 

Usually. In one-on-one duels, most spells aren't very useful. But the AI is bad enough in how it uses its spells, in addition to when it uses them. I've seen spells like 'harm' casted on undead - very annoying when any enemies are healed.

[stoffe]

(Insert smileys where applicable. The 10 smileys/post limit is insanely annoying when you write posts as long as this...)

 

Warning: The rest of this post is full of massive spoilers. Do NOT read it unless you've finished the game!

 

 

As an evil character you can get both, actually. Worse yet, picking the typical 'I share my powah with no one, I'm gonna kill you and become the new bad guy' lines over 'My only wish is to be your servant' lines will result in you getting the good ending...

 

From what you describe of it the evil ending sounds something like a "that's what you get for selling out and betraying people" ending. Kind of like the LaCroix or Kuei-Jin endings in VtM:Bloodlines if you've played that game. Garius fate should have ringed a warning bell after all.

 

As for the light ending I assume the party survived and wasn't killed by the collapse, seeing as how they just vanished without a trace. Reminds me a bit about the ending of the SoU expansion for NWN1 where Undrentide falls to the ground and you escape through the shadow door just before it crashes after killing Heurodis. (Which then ties in with the beginning of the HotU expansion.) I sincerely hope it was meant as a cliffhanger and not a final end. Though I suppose the Obsidian crew doesn't really have a good track record when it comes to endings, with the huge anticlimax in PS:Torment and the cliffhanger in KotOR2 as well.

 

I think I'll just skip the ending sequence after beating the KOSH this time when I get there. The rest of the game is good, so why let the ending spoil it? I can think up a better ending for myself in my head instead.

 

As for the difficulty of separate endings in a sequel they could go the same route as Dark Forces II:Jedi Knight and simply pick the ending that gives more room to expand the story in the next game and make it canon. In NWN2's case that is preferably the one where the main character isn't an undead combat drone and the rest of the main cast aren't dead.

 

 

Escaping into a different Plane I don't know about. Zhajaeve (sp?) says their journey is at an end (in some cut content, though) but it is possible. She had to leave the Astral one somehow, so there's no reason she couldn't go back. Bringing along other people along could be possible, too.

 

Perhaps it was a bug, but I still had the Tome of Iltkhazar(sp?) in my inventory after arriving in the KOSH's fortress. I prefer to believe that Aldanon gave you the tome so you could get back after the deed was done, and the party used the tome to escape the collapsing fortress but ended up on another plane instead, since they vanished without a trace.

 

Even navigating the toolset is annoying - I've not figured out how to move the camera in it. The best I can do is create a new NPC/placeable/whatever and move directly to it.

 

You use some arcane combinations of all three mouse buttons (the wheel counted as a button) and the SHIFT and CTRL keys to drag, zoom, rotate and move the camera around the area. Why they didn't add navigation buttons at the bottom like in the Aurora Toolset I cannot even begin to imagine.

 

You're right, females are the big ones. However, even if Kistrel was a female spider, the male ones would still be significantly larger than the normal ones. But this is D&D, and the regular laws of nature don't seem to matter there.

 

I'm surprised you let Kistrel back to the keep. I thought you were aracnophobic?

 

Well, since the Spider Queen, Lolth, seems to favor females (as seen by the Drow matriarchy) you'd figure she made female spiders bigger and stronger in D&D as well. Not that it matters. And somehow I doubt the main character is an expert on arachnid reproductive anatomy (unless you play as a Dark Elf) so the "he" might just be the default "he" you use when referring to an individual of unknown gender.

 

As for Kistrel she doesn't look quite as horrid as many other game spiders for some reason, so I can stand looking at her even though she isn't exactly pretty. But since she just sits in the basement weaving a cloak for you it doesn't matter that much, really. The only other reason you have to go down to the ritual chamber is if you want to summon Mephasm in that glowing circle and make deals with him. (Not my good character's first choice if action, since making deals with Bateezu generally is a bad idea. They embody lawful evil and twisting the meanings of words and deals, after all.)

 

Maybe my game was buggy. I played a lot of it at version 1.00, couldn't find any gauntlets, and later had them show up in my inventory.

 

Both the 1.01 and 1.02 patches were supposed to fix some potentially showstopping and quest breaking bugs, so it's possible this is one of them.

 

 

Now that is odd. I ran all around the cavern with Grobnar in tow, and he never took out any bottles. Was there something specific which had to happen?

 

Just bring Grobnar into the cave where the Glowstone was/is, and walk near the other pool of water in the chamber and he should automatically start conversation about the stone and what it's done with the water. If he doesn't perhaps it's another of those bugs fixed by the patches.

 

 

True, although it takes longer than just killing the dryad then and there.

 

Not unless you bring the stone on the way out to Duskwood after collecting your reward from the Goblin chief. Then you won't have to go back for it.

 

 

Well, you're busy with the Nightwalker. But the NWN/KotOR games are rather awkward when it comes to cenes like that. Since the combat is turn-based, it looks a little wierd when lots of people are fighting/getting killed/ in cutscenes.

 

The rest of my party could handle the Nightwalker nicely while Ammon Jerro attempted to use the scroll on Garius, with meager results. The plot designers have been a bit too linear in their thinking at some points, not really rewarding thinking ahead. I think they fixed it in the latest patch, but in 1.02 and earlier you could toss the dimensional barrier thing into the Githyanki leader's portal through the doorway before entering the room, making it collapse and making her hostile, thus skipping the long dialog where she snatches the shards and reveals the one inside your chest, possibly breaking things down the line (I reloaded, seemed risky to continue like that).

 

Seemed like the sensible thing to do, rather than just stroll into a room full of Githyanki warriors, since Mephasm had told you that you needed to close the portal to be able to beat her.

 

The lawful alignment is a bit silly at times. One example is when you lie to those two thugs that they'll be let off if they surrender, and then you send them off to the dugneons.

 

I just tell them that they can't go free, but that I'll tell the guards to be gentle with them, and they'll give up rather than get killed (must be the first two-bit thugs in the game who does not think they can take you). At least it works if you have high enough Diplomacy.

 

You can kill Torio? After the fight with Lorne she vanishes completely, and later reappears in Crossroad Keep. There was an evil thing to say to her, though I didn't notice any options to kill her.

The dialogue options at Crossroad Keep implied she was captured, though I don't recall them that well. Seemed odd she'd join the good guys, though, since she's rather evil in her nature.

 

Not personally, though I got the impression that you could have her executed in Neverwinter rather than brought to Crossroad Keep if you so chose during your chat with Kana.

 

Not so strange that she would switch sides. The Luskans probably aren't too happy with her after she botched the trial, and her association with a maverick such as Garius doesn't improve her case, so she couldn't go back there. And since she knew that Garius was about to kill her after he completed his Ritual (since he wouldn't need anyone) I guess she figured it was better not to stick around there either. She's neutral evil, which implies looking out for yours truly first and foremost. If your current alliances are no longer in your best interests they you're best served to be flexible in who you swear loyalty to.

 

It'll add more credence towards your case if you prove his story false in front of the court.

 

What verdict score did you manage to arrive at after the trial was done?

 

Looks like Elaine won't ever admit being mistaken with me.

 

It might have something to do with alignment as well, perhaps. I suppose it's easier to believe that a halo-wearing do-gooder is innocent of senseless slaughter than one who's on the record for indulging in evil acts on occasion. (Even though the idiots in Port Llast put more stock in the Luskan rumors than in the words of their Neverwinter allies and protectors no matter what you say. And then First Captain Jerk makes himself scarce after the trial so he won't even have to admit that he was passing judgement on you falsely. )

 

I did not like Shandra at all.

 

I suppose that has to do with alignment, how well she gets along with you. She's the no-compromise do-gooder type so I can imagine she'll be a pain for someone of evil disposition. Even though she's a bit bullheaded at times she softens up considerably once you gain some influence with her and is fairly likable.

 

 

Using diplomacy (if you have a high enough skill) can be the best one. I got the master orator feat when I did that, so I must've done something right there.

 

You don't need a perfect verdict score to get that feat though. There is some room for screw-ups and you can still get it if you handle the rest of the trial well.

 

 

That's what's been said, though I never unlocked all his dialogue in my first playthrough. There's probably some reason for the confusin about that battle.

 

He's quite interesting to talk to if you can get him to open up. And during the sequence at Shandra's farm where his old Pit Fiend associate drops by for a chat, if you persist and have high enough influence with Shandra, you can get him to soften up a bit, regret killing her and reveal some more background info.

 

 

The knobs were pretty weird, though. What kind of teifling did you change her to?

 

This pink one. I kept her gray Zerth cloak but replaced pretty much everything else with something a bit more colorful than the swamp-green and mud-yellow she normally was. Looks alien enough (though hardly like a Githzerai, but whatever...)

 

 

All except in the KoS' fortress. That was incredibly annoying. Whenever you'd rest more enmies would spawn, which overall made you lose health by doing it. The level got pretty tiring after a little while.

 

If it bothers you you can briefly set the game difficulty to Easy while resting, then you'll never be bothered by monsters. That only seems to happen on Normal or higher difficulty.

 

I still think the game should have some rest restrictions (perhaps a few in-game hours had to pass between each rest) to make housekeeping with spells and planning resting more meaningful. But at least I can determine myself how restrictive to be with using the rest button while playing.

 

Short and long term benefits. I've observed that the best classes tend to be crappy at the start (wizards and sorcerers), while the okay ones start out a pretty good.

 

Well, the Warlock isn't all that strong early on either. You manage decently during the West Harbor attack since the bladelings and duergar have so little hitpoints, and you can snipe at them from afar without running out of spells or arrows/bolts. But after that I think the warlock was a bit more challenging to play than my previous cleric early on. But that's not necessarily a bad thing (so long as the challenge doesn't stem from bugs and flawed invocations).

 

 

What did you end of up adjusting? I've not run into any bugs with the warlock spells.

 

The damage and workings of a few of the invocations. But primarily how the status effects applied by an eldritch blast would be cancelled out as soon as you cast another eldritch blast at the same target with the same blast shape (but not necessarily the same essence). Status effects only lasting a round until you hit them again aren't terribly meaningful or useful. So I made the duration of the invocation status effects scale with caster level, and made them only remove old status effects if you shoot a blast with the same essence at the target to prevent effect stacking. The draining blast, beshadowed blast, frightful blast and noxious blasts became much more worthwhile to pick after those adjustments.

 

I also added a few new invocations I made up myself that seemed to fit with the overall Warlock theme. (Such as a summoning spell that calls Outsiders, instead of just ridiculously weak undead like the "The Dead Walk" invocation does. You don't see Ammon Jerro use undead as minions ever (at least until he joins), but plenty of outsiders, so it made sense to add a Gate invocation that summons a random outsider. I also added a few more shapechanging invocations to different forms, and made it possible to cast invocations while shapechanged.)

 

There has to be some compensation for it. A powerful spellcaster can cause far more damage than a powerful melee one, and they'd be quite overpowered if both had the same amount of HP. Personally I think that wizards/sorcerers are way too weak at low levels, but that's what modding is for.

 

Depends. At high levels against a single target a Melee grunt with good equipment can dish out a lot more damage than a spellcaster per round. Not to mention keep them from fighting back. That Knockdown feat is a brutal disabler with unlimited uses/day. In particular against someone with less strength than the attacker, but it works often enough otherwise anyway. I don't think any of the Shadow Reavers ever got off a single spell during my first playthrough since they spent all their time knocked down while I True Named them.

 

In other fantasy books I've read, there are far fewer wizards, though they are much more powerful. I think that spellcasters were made a bit too commonplace, myself - they are supposed to be practitioners of arcane arts, after all.

 

I think there were too many generic enemy spellcasters as well. Some I can understand, but when every single encounters with low-life bandits and muggers contained at least one and sometimes as many as 4 wizards things start to get ridiculous. And not your cantrip-casting hedge-wizard either; having level 10 wizards (with 18 int) as freaking bandits robbing people is ridiculous. Someone as powerful as that who have genius level intelligence should probably be able to support themselves in other ways than robbery and theft.

 

Usually. In one-on-one duels, most spells aren't very useful. But the AI is bad enough in how it uses its spells, in addition to when it uses them. I've seen spells like 'harm' casted on undead - very annoying when any enemies are healed.

 

Hmm, they usually substitute Harm for Heal when dealing with undead, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's bugged as well. I really should port my improved AI from NWN1 over to NWN2 so I can cease constantly rolling my eyes in disbelief whenever I'm encountering AI controlled spellcasters (or allow my party members some automated casting time). Took almost a complete rewrite of the NWN1 AI, but I finally managed to get NPCs to act somewhat rationally there after a few months of tinkering.