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

[Pavlos]

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.

 

I have to agree with you there. The Obsidian gang seems to have a real problem coming up with endings but hopefully it will lead onto an expansion pack.

[Jae Onasi]

Yes, I know the entire thread has a spoiler tag on it. I know some of you have posted spoiler alerts at the top of your posts, and I do appreciate that very much, because I'm still playing my first run-through. And I appreciate the care everyone has taken to use spoiler tags in general--it's made the game more fun for me not knowing what's ahead.

Problem is, if you click in on the last person to post, sometimes you end up seeing things before you get to the top of the post to see the warning, especially on the really long posts. One possible solution to cut down the number of spoiler tags (cause I know it's a pain in the butt in the long posts) is to put a spoiler alert at the bottom of a long post. I know not to look at stoffe's posts until I double check the top but not always the other folks. If you quote someone's stuff, can you please make sure to add spoiler tags inside the quote tags, too? I saw info on the ending in Pavlos' quote of stoffe before I realized it was end stuff. I didn't get too far into it, but I had an 'oh, crap.' moment.

 

@Emperor Devon--I liked Shandra (no surprise) except she was almost too good, but she was one heck of a fighter if you got her equipped right.

 

I've managed to get Casavir to proclaim his true like for my character.

 

I love Sand's comments and little quips. I about fell over laughing when

 

you meet the dragon for the first time in the fire giant mountain, she gives you the option of agreeing with her to get the giants or not, and Sand says "Just say yes and we can run!"

 

I'm going to create some kind of heavy duty fighter or sorcerer type next time so I can keep him and Grobnar in the party to see what they say, or Sand and Qara to see them snipe at each other....

[Pavlos]

If you quote someone's stuff, can you please make sure to add spoiler tags inside the quote tags, too? I saw info on the ending in Pavlos' quote of stoffe before I realized it was end stuff. I didn't get too far into it, but I had an 'oh, crap.' moment.

 

Apologies for being a little stupid about that.

[Emperor Devon]

Out of curiosity, what'd you do for the romance options with your favorite ranger? () He'll hit on female characters a few times, and I don't think influence always factors into it.

 

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

 

Definitely. Extra smileys for longer texts would be useful.

 

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.

 

Not exactly. It's completely identical to the good ending if you choose to be power-hungry, and results in you becoming the KoS' 2nd-in-command if you're willing to settle for less.

 

Garius fate should have ringed a warning bell after all.

 

Garius' fate involved some circumstances beyond his control (the player), although when the KoS will basically say 'he's an idiot' when you ask him why Garius' fate wouldn't be your own.

 

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.

 

 

Possible. There's some cut dialogue that implies the player gets killed, though it is cut. The ending's open to interpretation, I guess.

 

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.)

 

That was explicitly stated in the ending cutscene, though. Either Obsidian wants fans to remain in the dark, or

the whole party really is dead/

 

 

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.

 

We can only hope...

 

KotOR II actually had a great ending, though. I found it rather fitting.

 

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.

 

Even if the ending wasn't so awful, it might be worth skipping anyway. Considering how modern an engine NWN 2 has, I was expecting something more impressive than NWN 1-style out-of-game cutscenes. The narrator's voice didn't really do it for me either, though.

 

Skipping to the credits would be better, though. If I'm able to, I'd love to make a module that shows a bunch of Shadows marching around with my character on a hilltop/throne/balcony looking over them (i.e. a Jade Empire or KotOR evil ending), supposing I'm able. The toolset has not proven very user-friendly.

 

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.

 

Dark Forces II had different circumstances, though. In the evil ending Kyle absorbs the power of thousands upon thousands of long-dead Jedi and Sith (a good number of Lords and Masters in there), and is pretty much a living Force God. In the "evil" NWN 2 ending, there's more room more a change.

 

I still wouldn't mind the one where the KoS dies being canon, though. The character can be good or evil when he escapes.

 

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.

 

I don't know if the character becomes a Shadow Reaver. It's implied that they all vanished for some reason. (Another hole in the ending. I highly doubt the ones you kill in the game were ALL the Reavers the KoS had.)

 

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.

 

Although SHIFT, CTRL and the left mouse button moves the camera up and down, can it go directly forward or sideways?

 

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.

 

Or the female spiders might be larger than the ones we've seen (since some evidence points towards Kistrel being male).

 

It's also possible they're equal Lolth had male and female driders, and they looked to be the same size.

 

All in all, though, I doubt the people who thought up spiders in D&D bothered to consider their genders very much.

 

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.)

 

Dealing with Mephasm can be very profitable sometimes, and I don't think it always brings in evil points. Although he'll ask for your most valuable stuff most of the time, you can get out of it by crafting some sort of item for him that he wants, and I think for quite a few times. If you have enough crafting materials, it's a great deal (you can increase your attributes, get gold or items, etc). If you make enough bargains you'll get some sort of feat for that, though I don't know what it does. There's lots of influence opportunities with AJ, too.

 

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.

 

It must've been, since it never triggered.

 

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.

 

That's true as well. I just found it more direct to kill the dryad, and you can gain influence with Elanee there. You can still win the trial without a full evidence score, anyway.

 

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.

 

Garius also should have been attacking then. With his enemies distracted by the Nightwalker and someone reciting his True Name, it would have been the most logical thing to do. But the devs seem to like you getting into near-fights with Garius throughout the game.

 

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.

 

It does, though it's still odd to get chaotic points for lying to some criminals.

 

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.

 

I looked a bit in her dialogue file. It turns out the option is there.

 

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.

 

I don't think she switched sides intentionally, though. From what Kana says, Neverwinter soldiers had to track her down and imprison her. She doesn't like people from that city anyway, so there doesn't seem to be much of a place for her in either.

 

The ending implied that she became a good and patriotic spy for Neverwinter. Doesn't seem very compatible with her evil nature, but the ending wasn't entirely sensible.

 

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.

 

I'd have guessed lawful evil, with her position in the Luskan court. But it is a fairly chaotic city, so I'm not surprised that not everyone in the government is lawful.

 

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

 

Enough to get the master orator feat. I don't know the specific score.

 

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.

 

It's your skills at persuading that matters the most, it seems. You can make her your witness before the trial begins, though I've not looked at the dialogue which involves that.

 

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.

 

A pity. I'd wanted to talk with him when the trial was over, though my character conveniently couldn't get to see him.

 

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 considerbly once you gain some influence with her.

 

Not only that, but she was annoying in other ways. She sounds like some sort of a soccer mom when she talks, (remember "All right everyone, follow me. Grab a buddy and let's head out"?) and was fairly unattractive. With interesting characters I almost never mind the later, but she was far from that.

 

She gets my vote for 'Most Irritating Video Game Character of '06/07'.

 

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.

 

I looked in the dialogue file of that. Interesting how he softens up like that, considering how cold-hearted he is.

 

This pink one.

 

She looks a bit... colorful.

 

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.

 

Oh, it was fun at first, but the level is long enough that it gets plain boring after you kill the 15th group of enemies. I'll probably remove that script in the toolset when I modify that level, or just shorten it by removing all the stuff with the black fog.

 

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.

 

I'd have liked a more efficient healing system for the game to have, myself. I like having a lot of characters possess healing skills and kits (like in KotOR) is better than both of the former being fairly scarce and being able to regain full hit points after practically every fight.

 

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).

 

Challenges are good. I had a similar experience with my wizard, to the point I almost started a new game as a fighter because he got knocked out practically every other fight. It was well worth it at the end, though - high-level spellcasters are more valuable than high-level brawlers.

 

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).

 

My gawd... and to think Obsidian asked for an extension on NWN 2. (I'd hate to think what it would've been liked if they hadn't)

 

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, {snip}

 

I also added a few new invocations I made up myself that seemed to fit with the overall Warlock theme. {snip} I also added a few more shapechanging invocations to different forms, and made it possible to cast invocations while shapechanged.)

 

You should release those. A lot of people would probably like to download them - I know I would.

 

Depends. Against a single target a Melee grunt with good equipment can dish out a lot more damage than a spellcaster.

 

Few can, though. There aren't many melee grunts who can dish out 100 damage per round.

 

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.

 

D&D is a bit over the top in my opinion. If it were left to me, there'd be only a handful of non-party member spellcasters encountered during the game. I like them rare.

 

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.

 

More D&D over-the-topness. I prefer much more toned-down fantasy (like LotR), where magic is rarely used, wizards are extremely rare, and the most magical being the average person will see is an orc.

 

{snip}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.

 

That sounds like quite the mod! I'd port it over if you could. The toolset suposedly can handle scripts from the first game, but given how it's been behaving with me so far, I don't know if it would really be able to.

 

I've been having an incredibly frustrating time with it so far. Even things as mundane as creating new items are unnecessarily difficult - when I make something new, I can only edit the properties menu. With random items, I can only edit certain parts. It's extremely annoying to use at times.

 

Edit: By the way, do you know how to to move the blueprints or terrain toolbars back to normal? While fiddling with some stuff, the blueprints one no longer shows up at all.

[stoffe]

(Again, apply smilies where needed, I ran out of my quota about 25% through...)

 

Spoiler Alert: The the rest of this post contains significant spoilers. Do not read until you've finished the game.

 

Out of curiosity, what'd you do for the romance options with your favorite ranger? () He'll hit on female characters a few times, and I don't think influence always factors into it.

 

Romance? There isn't any romance in NWN2 from what I've found. Just an evil ranger who thinks you look pretty while doing his best to alienate you, and a reserved paladin who barely says a word to you during the entire game and then near the end comes up to you and says like "I think I like you, since you do good stuff and all. Wanna hit the sack?". Nothing even remotely romantic about either of them, and nothing like what you get in KotOR1, NWN:HotU or BG2:SoA/TOB. Even the "romances" in TSL were superior, which is quite a feat considering that TSL didn't have any romance either.

 

 

 

and results in you becoming the KoS' 2nd-in-command if you're willing to settle for less.

 

AKA undead combat drone, deluxe model. The centerpiece is his collection of thralls who were willing to give up everything for an ounce of meaningless power. The King of Shadows doesn't exactly strike me as the most pleasant of employers, and the rest of his legions are mostly made up of mindless undead, aside from the occasional Vampire, Lich, Nightwalker and Shadow Reaver. Not exactly a cheerful lot to associate with.

 

although when the KoS will basically say 'he's an idiot' when you ask him why Garius' fate wouldn't be your own.

 

Unlike your character, if you make the same basic choice Garius did? Of course you can expect a Chaotic Evil undead abomination to be completely honest with you, right?

 

KotOR II actually had a great ending, though. I found it rather fitting.

 

Stranded on a barren, inescapable rock in the middle of nowhere, alone, only with the mountain of corpses you carved your way through to get there to keep you company? Doesn't sound like an overly great ending to me (the evil one). At least the good one was more of a cliffhanger which you could interpret as you liked, and fill in the blanks yourself.

 

The narrator's voice didn't really do it for me either, though.

 

Indeed, sounded more like the instructor on one of those educational videos that teach you how to use some application than the narrator of an epic fantasy story.

 

Skipping to the credits would be better, though. If I'm able to, I'd love to make a module that shows a bunch of Shadows marching around with my character on a hilltop/throne/balcony looking over them (i.e. a Jade Empire or KotOR evil ending), supposing I'm able. The toolset has not proven very user-friendly.

 

 

In the "evil" NWN 2 ending, there's more room more a change.

 

Not unless someone kills him/her and casts True Resurrection to undo the Undeath. Which I suppose is entirely possible, even though the plot devices usually disregard of Resurrection rather than make use of it.

 

 

I don't know if the character becomes a Shadow Reaver. It's implied that they all vanished for some reason. (Another hole in the ending. I highly doubt the ones you kill in the game were ALL the Reavers the KoS had.)

 

I got the impression that the Shadow Reavers were spawned from the ritual that the Shadow Priests tricked Black Garius to perform at Crossroad Keep. So there are probably as many Shadow Reavers as there were dead people present at the time when the ritual completed (I.e. Garius, his 4 associates and the other goons in the room you had killed before that).

 

There may have been others in the past, spawned from another performing of that ritual (since Zhjaeve recognized what manner or creature they were when you first encountered one), but they were probably all wiped out along with the rest of the King of Shadows' forces at that time when the Githyanki managed to drive the KoS back and destroy the portal he invaded through.

 

Although SHIFT, CTRL and the left mouse button moves the camera up and down, can it go directly forward or sideways?

 

I don't remember exactly how, but I think you hold down shift and click and hold the left mouse button as you drag the mouse to move the camera around.

 

Dealing with Mephasm can be very profitable sometimes, and I don't think it always brings in evil points.

 

Profitable in the short term perhaps, but I'd suspect rather damning in the long run. The Bateezu are after all depicted as the masters of deals and contracts, and always tend to ensure they win out in the end. Besides, Ammon Jerro's fate should probably serve as a warning of what can happens if you deal too much with fiends.

 

 

Garius also should have been attacking then. With his enemies distracted by the Nightwalker and someone reciting his True Name, it would have been the most logical thing to do.

 

It's possible that Garius was about to attack while you fight the Nightwalker as well, but we probably killed the Nightwalker before he was done buffing himself so we didn't notice much of him. The Nightwalker goes down pretty quick if you have some enchanted silver weapons in store to bypass its damage reduction.

 

 

I don't think she switched sides intentionally, though. From what Kana says, Neverwinter soldiers had to track her down and imprison her.

 

I think she does. Kana says she was arrested in Neverwinter. Since she was expelled from the city along with the rest of the Luskans after you won the trial she had no reason at all to go back there unless she was planning to switch sides. She had obviously left the city after the trial, since she came to see Garius in Crossroad Keep to report her failure. So she had no reason to go back to a city she was banned from entering by its Lord unless she was planning to try to switch sides.

 

 

The ending implied that she became a good and patriotic spy for Neverwinter. Doesn't seem very compatible with her evil nature, but the ending wasn't entirely sensible.

 

It may be more credible if you let Marcus live and hear what he has to say about Torio and Lorne and their background, both during the trial and after it if you visit him in Port Llast again.

 

 

Enough to get the master orator feat. I don't know the specific score.

 

If you still have a savegame left from anywhere in the game after the trial you can open its globals.xml file with a text editor and search for "20_bTrial_Verdict". The value would be listed there.

 

 

It's your skills at persuading that matters the most, it seems. You can make her your witness before the trial begins, though I've not looked at the dialogue which involves that.

 

I don't think it's possible to sway Alaine to your side before the trial and leave Torio without any witnesses at all, since too much of her case hinges on that testimony. But you can negate her story and make her doubt that it really was you she saw though during the trial, either with Shandra's help or with some Skilled dialog option use.

 

 

Not only that, but she was annoying in other ways.

 

I liked her in a way, and didn't like that she had to die like that, though I suppose that's a matter of personal taste.

 

I looked in the dialogue file of that. Interesting how he softens up like that, considering how cold-hearted he is.

 

Not really, if you consider why he's done all he did in the past. He made deals with demons and waged war to protect Neverwinter and his family. I don't think Ammon Jerro was evil-aligned from the beginning. Either the war, his poor choice of allies, or his imprisonment in Baator for 20 years likely shifted him in that direction. His ordeals had hardened him and made him forgot why and for what he was fighting. Shandra became an unpleasant reminder of that.

 

She looks a bit... colorful.

 

Had to do something to make her stand out and look suitably alien like her old appearance. Pink eyes and hair seemed alien enough.

 

I'd have liked a more efficient healing system for the game to have, myself. I like having a lot of characters possess healing skills and kits (like in KotOR)

 

Hmm, perhaps has to do with Random Loot, but at the end of my first playthrough I was carrying around about 50 healing kits and lots of healing potions. Once you got past the early stages of the game healing was rarely a problem. Could be because I was playing as a cleric though.

 

 

Challenges are good. I had a similar experience with my wizard, to the point I almost started a new game as a fighter because he got knocked out practically every other fight. It was well worth it at the end, though - high-level spellcasters are more valuable than high-level brawlers.

 

The problem with a Warlock played like the one I do (no weapons) is just that the Eldritch blast does so relatively little damage early on, so you'll have to wear them down over time instead. Though once you have a melee tank like Khelgar or Bevil to distract enemies you can snipe at them easier.

 

Still, I felt compelled to modify the damage dice from d6 to d8 for the Eldritch blast, and make the status effect durations scale with caster level and not mutually exclusive. Seems to have made the class more balanced compared to the others, while not making it that much more powerful. It'll still not have the raw damage potential of a sorceress or wizard, but makes a magic-only Warlock more capable of holding their own in a fight.

 

 

My gawd... and to think Obsidian asked for an extension on NWN 2. (I'd hate to think what it would've been liked if they hadn't)

You should release those. A lot of people would probably like to download them - I know I would.

 

Warlock invocations seems to have been implemented as a hack using the regular NWN spells system. Which is the cause for many of the bugs, since the methods usually employed in spell scripts to prevent stacking and such won't work reliably with the Eldritch blast invocations.

 

Plenty of other bugs and oddities in there as well, such as Hideous Blow (a buff spell) being enemy-targeted only, making it essentially worthless, and only about half of the invocations had no spell school and verbal/somatic components set (since they are not spells). Plenty of odd behavior in some of the impact scripts as well. The Warlock didn't feel as polished and well-balanced as the other spell casting classes. Luckily those things weren't too hard to fix.

 

As for release, I could upload my fixes of the bugs and balance problems, but the new invocations will need some more polish and tweaking first before they can be considered ready. My current playthough serves as a decent testing ground for them.

 

Few can, though. There aren't many melee grunts who can dish out 100 damage per round.

 

A dual-wielding high-level Khelgar with two enchanted +5 Adamantine War Axes can. Deals 25-30 damage per hit, with 5 attacks/round.

 

I've been having an incredibly frustrating time with it so far. Even things as mundane as creating new items are unnecessarily difficult - when I make something new, I can only edit the properties menu. With random items, I can only edit certain parts. It's extremely annoying to use at times.

 

Edit: By the way, do you know how to to move the blueprints or terrain toolbars back to normal? While fiddling with some stuff, the blueprints one no longer shows up at all.

 

It takes some getting used to, even without it being hideously slow when doing certain things, the thing eating memory like it would be in infinite supply, and the constant crashes and bugs. Better than the Aurora Toolset in some respects, but a step back in others. I'll reserve final judgment for a few more patches and see if Obsidian can get the thing in working order before I decide if I want to try to do more advanced things with it.

 

Have you torn the Blueprint palette loose from the main GUI window? If so it should automatically get moved on top of the main window if you've somehow managed to move it off-screen with the 1.03 patch installed.

 

 

Spoiler Alert: The post above contains significant spoilers. Do not read until you've finished the game.

[Emperor Devon]

Spoiler Alert: Do not read this unless you've finished the game.

 

Romance? There isn't any romance in NWN2 from what I've found. Just an evil ranger who thinks you look pretty while doing his best to alienate you, and a reserved paladin who barely says a word to you during the entire game and then near the end comes up to you and says like "I think I like you, since you do good stuff and all. Wanna hit the sack?".

 

Having not played as a female character (other than Aasimars, most look hideously ugly) I can't say much about the romance for them other than what I saw in Bishop's dialogue file, which implied it existed.

 

It's not a lot worse than what male characters get, though. Shandra and Neeshka make a few hints, though since I disliked both of them, I only spoke to them when the plot demanded it. There's a romance with Elanee, though it struck me as a schoolgirl crush she was afraid to let on at first, and later worked up the courage to 'ask out' the male character. Meh, sounds too much like high school puppy-love to me. No relevance to the main plot at all.

 

After looking throughout various party member's dialogue files, though, it looks like there was more of a buildup to that than I originally noticed. For some reason, though, it appears independent of how much influence you have.

 

Nothing even remotely romantic about either of them, and nothing like what you get in KotOR1, NWN:HotU or BG2:SoA/TOB. Even the "romances" in TSL were superior, which is quite a feat considering that TSL didn't have any romance either.

 

Quite. I like it when it ties into the main plot, or at least has some sort of reasoning other than bottled-up hormones.

 

AKA undead combat drone, deluxe model.

 

 

Pretty much.

 

and the rest of his legions are mostly made up of mindless undead, aside from the occasional Vampire, Lich, Nightwalker and Shadow Reaver. Not exactly a cheerful lot to associate with.

 

Most strike me as quite mindless. Even the Shadow Reavers, former wizards for the most part, seem incapable of saying anything other than 'must obey' and 'let's kill people'. But the KoS sounds rather personality-devoid (his mind being totally burned away by the Weave), so I'm not surprised his servants would be the same way.

 

A pity, that. He had a very interesting-sounding backstory, and it didn't play into the main plot at all or even get mentioned beyond that one area. A shame. Obsidian could've made him an awesome villain, but he ended being not a lot better than Morag and Maugrim.

 

Unlike your character, if you make the same basic choice Garius did?

 

He says that Garius served him out of mindless obedience rather than pledging himself to something greater. There's a pretty blurry line in between those two, though.

 

Of course you can expect a Chaotic Evil undead abomination to be completely honest with you, right?

 

I thought they'd have made him a lawful character, with how devoted he is to carrying out millenia-old commands.

 

Stranded on a barren, inescapable rock in the middle of nowhere, alone, only with the mountain of corpses you carved your way through to get there to keep you company? Doesn't sound like an overly great ending to me (the evil one).

 

Not totally. If Malachor V was really the base of the entire Sith Order's operations, I'd venture it had a population larger than several dozen people.

 

Well, the crew of the Ebon Hawk got the ship repaired during the LS ending, so there's no reason they couldn't with the DS one.

 

It is fairly open to interpretation, though. In my opinion the Exile and T3 went off to the Unknown Regions just like in the LS ending, but left the majority of the party members behind to govern the Trayus Academy.

 

At least the good one was more of a cliffhanger which you could interpret as you liked, and fill in the blanks yourself.

 

It was basically the same as ESB's ending, but with less flash.

 

I got the impression that the Shadow Reavers were spawned from the ritual that the Shadow Priests tricked Black Garius to perform at Crossroad Keep. So there are probably as many Shadow Reavers as there were dead people present at the time when the ritual completed (I.e. Garius, his 4 associates and the other goons in the room you had killed before that).

 

Mmm, I don't think so. If Garius and company were able to do that ritual once, why not again? And with their newfound powers as Shadow Reavers, it would be an even simpler task to perform. Given how much more powerful (and obedient) the ritual makes people, the KoS wouldn't be very smart if he only had it performed once.

 

I don't remember exactly how, but I think you hold down shift and click and hold the left mouse button as you drag the mouse to move the camera around.

 

That moves the camera, though up and down. Ah well, I'll make do.

 

Profitable in the short term perhaps, but I'd suspect rather damning in the long run.

 

Not when you deal with Mephasm. You give him some junk, he pays you/increases your stats/gives you other junk, and you're done.

 

It's possible that Garius was about to attack while you fight the Nightwalker as well, but we probably killed the Nightwalker before he was done buffing himself so we didn't notice much of him.

 

Possibly. I didn't know about the silver weapons, so I took longer to kill it than I could have. Long enough that Garius could finish buffing himself, at any rate.

 

I think she does. Kana says she was arrested in Neverwinter. Since she was expelled from the city along with the rest of the Luskans after you won the trial she had no reason at all to go back there unless she was planning to switch sides.

 

Oh yes, I forgot about that.Going back to Neverwinter certainly was foolish on her part, though. If you choose not to intervene, they automatically put her to death.

 

It may be more credible if you let Marcus live and hear what he has to say about Torio and Lorne and their background, both during the trial and after it if you visit him in Port Llast again.

 

I looked at what he had to say during the trial. Made Torio quite nervous there, though not with reason. I'll have to go look at what he says in Port Llast.

 

The value would be listed there.

 

It says 14, though isn't that too low to get the master orator feat?

 

I wouldn't be too surprised, though. Acting like an @$$ to the witnesses before the trial (or letting them die) pays off.

 

I don't think it's possible to sway Alaine to your side before the trial and leave Torio without any witnesses at all, since too much of her case hinges on that testimony.

 

Some of the dialogue for the trial gives you the option of calling her as your witness, which would imply it.

 

I liked her in a way, and didn't like that she had to die like that, though I suppose that's a matter of personal taste.

 

How on Earth could you like Shandra?

 

Not really, if you consider why he's done all he did in the past. He made deals with demons and waged war to protect Neverwinter and his family. {snip}

 

Probably all of those. His life hasn't ben the most laid-back.

 

Hmm, perhaps has to do with Random Loot, but at the end of my first playthrough I was carrying around about 50 healing kits and lots of healing potions. Once you got past the early stages of the game healing was rarely a problem. Could be because I was playing as a cleric though.

 

Most likely. Healing kits and potions were a rare commodity with my wizard, and I had a finite amount of spells, resting became fairly commonplace.

 

Though once you have a melee tank like Khelgar or Bevil to distract enemies you can snipe at them easier.

 

Or summonings spells. They can be quite useful on solo missions, since spellcasters are so dependent on other NPCs for protection.

 

It'll still not have the raw damage potential of a sorceress or wizard, but makes a magic-only Warlock more capable of holding their own in a fight.

 

It would get pretty tiresome of it did, though. An infinite number of mega-spells would get very old, very fast.

 

{snip} As for release, I could upload my fixes of the bugs and balance problems, but the new invocations will need some more polish and tweaking first before they can be considered ready. My current playthough serves as a decent testing ground for them.

 

I'd love to try them out when you're done. It could be fun to play through the game as a warlock, though certainly not as the regular version. It sounds quite faulty from what you described.

 

A dual-wielding high-level Khelgar with two enchanted +5 Adamantine War Axes can. Deals 25-30 damage per hit, with 5 attacks/round.

 

I said 'most', not 'all'.

 

I'll reserve final judgment for a few more patches and see if Obsidian can get the thing in working order before I decide if I want to try to do more advanced things with it.

 

Hopefully there'll be more, as it's quite buggy at the moment. I can't guess how the devs put a game together with that thing.

 

Have you torn the Blueprint palette loose from the main GUI window? If so it should automatically get moved on top of the main window if you've somehow managed to move it off-screen with the 1.03 patch installed.

 

At first. It's been moved back now, though.

[Point Man]

Well, I finally finished the game (ahead of Jae), and I agree: the ending sucks! Why did they have to tack on that stupid narration?! Obsidian does a great job of improving the game mechanics of Bioware games, but they just cannot figure out how to write a good ending.

[Emperor Devon]

Well, I finally finished the game (ahead of Jae), and I agree: the ending sucks!

 

I imagine you did it as a good character?

 

 

Although everyone gets trapped in the fortress, it's quite likely that Aldanon gave them that tome - they'd have to have some way out of there, since walking hundreds or thousands of miles through a monster-infested swamp is generally a bad idea. In any case, it's enitirely possible, like stoffe said, that they teleported out of there like in SotU (if you haven't played that, the character teleports to another plane while a giant city falls apart) to the Astral Plane or someone else. And with how you become the KoS' servant in the evil ending, there's definite room for an expansion pack.

 

 

but they just cannot figure out how to write a good ending.

 

Having one good ending and one bad ending in sequels to BioWare games isn't the best ratio. (I've addressed why KotOR II's ending was good in my previous post, btw) But at least with the toolset (buggy as it may be), that is easily changeable.

[stoffe]

Spoiler Alert: Do not read this unless you've finished the game.

 

Having not played as a female character (other than Aasimars, most look hideously ugly) I can't say much about the romance for them other than what I saw in Bishop's dialogue file, which implied it existed.

 

Yes, there aren't exactly and great beauties to pick among the female models. One Aasimar head and a couple of the Elven heads could be described as cute/pretty at best, but not exactly beautiful. The weird standard idle stance doesn't exactly improve that impression either. The male heads/bodies aren't much better in that respect either, IMHO. Fortunately the main selling point of the game isn't to ogle your awesome-looking characters.

 

It's not a lot worse than what male characters get, though. Shandra and Neeshka make a few hints, though since I disliked both of them, I only spoke to them when the plot demanded it. There's a romance with Elanee, though it struck me as a schoolgirl crush she was afraid to let on at first, and later worked up the courage to 'ask out' the male character.

 

I think Neeshka is just a red herring, kind of like Mira was for male characters in TSL. And Shandra seems interested in you and your background even if you play as a female, though it never struck me as interest of the romantic variety.

 

I don't know if she's any different for male characters, but Elanee seems to have some stalker tendencies, having followed your around and observed you for years, though you never seem to get any answer as to why she did that in the past. After the West Harbor attack I can understand, but before that?

 

 

Most strike me as quite mindless. Even the Shadow Reavers, former wizards for the most part, seem incapable of saying anything other than 'must obey' and 'let's kill people'. But the KoS sounds rather personality-devoid (his mind being totally burned away by the Weave), so I'm not surprised his servants would be the same way.

(snip)

He says that Garius served him out of mindless obedience rather than pledging himself to something greater. There's a pretty blurry line in between those two, though.

 

Most undead who are enslaved to a master are pretty single-minded in carrying out that master's orders, even if they are otherwise quite intelligent. Nightwalkers have genius-level intelligence, vampires have a +2 Int bonus from what they had before death, and Liches are per definition highly intelligent, since they are powerful wizards.

 

Since Shadow Reavers aren't (AFAIK) generic monsters but a unique kind only tied to the King of Shadows it would stand to reason that they are essentially an extension of his will, even if they retain the memories of their past life. And since Garius wasn't loyal to the King of Shadows at all prior to undergoing the ritual, but was converted so completely as a Reaver, it would stand to reason that the player character would be similarily enthralled if joining up with the King of Shadows.

 

 

A pity, that. He had a very interesting-sounding backstory, and it didn't play into the main plot at all or even get mentioned beyond that one area. A shame. Obsidian could've made him an awesome villain, but he ended being not a lot better than Morag and Maugrim.

 

Black Garius represented most of the villainry since he was the one who was actively working against you for most of the game. You didn't really have any interaction with the King of Shadows at all until the final confrontation, you only heard about him through others.

 

By the way, did you get the three books about the Guardian/KOSH from the librarian spirit in the Illefarn ruins? I think he only gives them to you if you pick the right dialog choice at the start of that conversation when you first enter the place.

 

 

I thought they'd have made him a lawful character, with how devoted he is to carrying out millenia-old commands.

 

Apparently we were both wrong, he's listed as Neutral Evil in the game.

 

 

Well, the crew of the Ebon Hawk got the ship repaired during the LS ending, so there's no reason they couldn't with the DS one.

 

It is fairly open to interpretation, though. In my opinion the Exile and T3 went off to the Unknown Regions just like in the LS ending, but left the majority of the party members behind to govern the Trayus Academy.

 

There is the whole contradictory story element of no ships being able to escape the gravity well of Malachor 5, and the Ebon Hawk only being able to escape in the "good" ending since the MSG was activated and disrupted the gravitational fields. But that makes you wonder how Sion was able to come and go there.

 

In my interpretation of the good ending you don't rush off headlong into the unknown at all, but return to Republic space to rebuild the Jedi Order first, before even contemplating following Revan's tracks.

 

 

Mmm, I don't think so. If Garius and company were able to do that ritual once, why not again? And with their newfound powers as Shadow Reavers, it would be an even simpler task to perform. Given how much more powerful (and obedient) the ritual makes people, the KoS wouldn't be very smart if he only had it performed once.

 

I'd assume that the ritual is quite complex and requires some rather esoteric and expensive material components to perform. After all Garius needed several weeks to prepare for the ritual, and apparently needed one of the silver shards in order to perform it, and probably other things as well. They probably had other rituals like it planned to bolster their numbers, but likely didn't have the time to prepare/perform them before the player put a stop to it.

 

If it so easy to produce a Shadow Reaver that the KOSH only needed to snap his fingers to make it happen they wouldn't have had any need for any lesser undead at all; their whole army would have been made up of shadow reavers.

 

 

That moves the camera, though up and down. Ah well, I'll make do.

 

Try out different combinations of mouse buttons and the SHIFT/CTRL keys and you'll find the combo used for moving the camera around soon enough. It's there, I just don't remember it since I consider the toolset too buggy and cumbersome to work with in its current state to do any area editing.

 

 

Not when you deal with Mephasm. You give him some junk, he pays you/increases your stats/gives you other junk, and you're done.

 

Assuming that Mephasm is fully honest with you, which isn't exactly a trait of the Bateezu. The description of the history feat you get also implies that your bargaining may have implications down the line (though of course not in the game). Mephasm is probably a Beteezu equivalent of a Glabrezu; a specialist in tempting mortals into corruption with promises of power which carries a terrible price in the end.

 

Regardless of if there is any actual fallout or not a Good-aligned character likely wouldn't make deals with fiends just to bolster their own power.

 

 

Possibly. I didn't know about the silver weapons, so I took longer to kill it than I could have. Long enough that Garius could finish buffing himself, at any rate.

 

All Nightwalkers have Damage Reduction that can be pierced by Enchanted Silver weapons. One of the reasons why the Sword of Gith is useful against them, since it is one such weapon.

 

I've noticed that DR piercing in general terms seems to be like:

 

Vampires - 10/silver (silver+magical if Elite)

Nightwalkers - 15/silver+magical

Lich - 15/bludgeoning+magical

Succubi - 10/cold iron or good

Hezrou - 10/good

Balor - 15/cold iron+good

Erinyes - 5/good

Cornugon(Horned Devil) - 10/silver+good

Pit Fiend - 15/silver+good

Dragons - 15/magical

Iron Golem - 15/adamantine

 

Stoneskin - 10/adamantine

Gr. Stoneskin - 20/adamantine

Ethereal Visage - 20/adamantine

Premonition - 30/adamantine

Dark Foresight - 10/silver

 

(magical = weapons with +1 enchantment or better)

 

 

Oh yes, I forgot about that.Going back to Neverwinter certainly was foolish on her part, though. If you choose not to intervene, they automatically put her to death.

 

She was probably attempting to seek you or Lord Nasher out and try to strike a deal, but got caught by the City Watch first (since she's forbidden to enter the city after the Trial). It was a gamble that might lead to her death, but if she'd stayed with Garius it would have meant certain death, so apparently she thought it was worth the risk.

 

 

I looked at what he had to say during the trial. Made Torio quite nervous there, though not with reason. I'll have to go look at what he says in Port Llast.

 

Play it instead with a good character. No fun to read all the dialog in advance in the editor.

 

 

Some of the dialogue for the trial gives you the option of calling her as your witness, which would imply it.

 

I suspect it's just a second chance to try to repair the damage of her testimony if you are unable to do so while Torio has her called as a witness. My character is as good as they come, and has high conversation skill ranks, and never got any opportunity to sway Alaine away from thinking you did it before the trial. At best you can get her to consider the possibility that she might have been deceived when you talk to her in Port Llast, but she still shows up at the trial and says the same thing to Torio's questions.

 

 

How on Earth could you like Shandra?

 

Well, she's good-natured, well-meaning, loyal and caring and she looks up to you if you have good influence with her. She may be a bit bullheaded and using barbed humor but I think she can be excused since she was just some average farmer with no aspirations for anything else until you, the Lizardfolk and the Githyanki came along and ruined her life for good. She's just a normal average person forcibly thrust into an all-but-normal situation.

 

I can assume her disposition towards you is less friendly if you are an evil-doer. I'm not about to find out though.

 

At any rate I'd certainly bring her along over someone like Bishop any day.

 

 

Most likely. Healing kits and potions were a rare commodity with my wizard, and I had a finite amount of spells, resting became fairly commonplace.

 

Once you get a couple of Rings of Regeneration and a cleric in the party healing usually isn't a problem, IMHO. Equipping two Rings of Regen on the same character regenerates 8 HP/round (9 if you have an Amulet of Health as well), and you can pass them around the party until everyone is healed up.

 

 

Or summonings spells. They can be quite useful on solo missions, since spellcasters are so dependent on other NPCs for protection.

 

The only summoning spell a Warlock can learn as standard though is pretty much worthless (since your summons get one-hit-killed by pretty much anything you encounter by the time you can learn it), so that isn't much of an option unless you mod the game, like I have (or manage to find loads of Summon spell scrolls to use). I've made the "The Dead Walks" invocation spawn more useful undead, and added a "Gate" invocation that summons a random Tanar'ri, Bateezu, Celestial or Planar beast to aid you.

 

 

It would get pretty tiresome of it did, though. An infinite number of mega-spells would get very old, very fast.

 

Though with NWN2 you essentialy have that already for wizards and sorcerers. You can only cast one spell per round, and a level 20 Sorcerer can cast 6 level 9 spells "per day" (4 for wizards) not counting any bonus slots given by feats and high Int/Cha. There are very few fights in the game that lasts longer than 4-6 rounds, and a "day" only lasts until the end of the fight with the current rest system.

 

 

I'd love to try them out when you're done. It could be fun to play through the game as a warlock, though certainly not as the regular version. It sounds quite faulty from what you described.

 

Right, I'll post here when I've polished it up enough that it might be worth using. Just have to find all the files involved, my override folder is already a big mess.

 

 

I said 'most', not 'all'.

 

Most wizards and sorcerers don't deal over a 100 damage per round either, since the AI is too stupid to use their spells properly, and very few (if any) NPC mages make any use of Empower/Maximize metamagic.

 

 

Hopefully there'll be more, as it's quite buggy at the moment. I can't guess how the devs put a game together with that thing.

 

I have a hard time seeing that too. The script editor in the release Toolset would require the patience of a saint to make any meaningful use of, since 50% of your time is spent doing battle against the user interface and 50% is spent on actually writing any script code.

 

Spoiler Alert: Do not read this unless you've finished the game.

[Renegade Angel]

I've never played NWN, it always looked like a pretty cool game, but it sounds addictive

 

Seeing how i already got addicted to Halo, Halo 2, Battle For Middle Earth 2, and Oblivion, the last thing I need is to waste another 18 hours my life sitting in front of my computer with about 400 coke cans on the desk.

 

RA

[Jae Onasi]

It'll be a lot longer than 18 hours, RA.

[Pavlos]

Try 50-60 hours .

[Jae Onasi]

Or, a zillion for me, since I tinker at the workbench a lot.

Oh, stoffe--the holy weapons/arrows work pretty well. It's very gratifying to look at the little box and see for just one arrow '3 points damage, 4 points electric, 5 points fire, 9 points divine....' Casavir's souped-up uber alchemical silver divine electric warhammer +5 is very nice.

[Tysyacha]

Jae,

 

Where are you at in the game? What class/race/level? Just curious.

[stoffe]

Or, a zillion for me, since I tinker at the workbench a lot.

Oh, stoffe--the holy weapons/arrows work pretty well. It's very gratifying to look at the little box and see for just one arrow '3 points damage, 4 points electric, 5 points fire, 9 points divine....' Casavir's souped-up uber alchemical silver divine electric warhammer +5 is very nice.

 

Hmm, what crafting recipe did you use to make the weapon do Divine damage? I tried the "Holy weapon" one that does 2d6 extra damage vs. evil, but it seems to do Magical damage (with that a bit too large/bright energy explosion visual every time you hit an enemy).

 

Over all weapons with "vs. Evil" properties seem to be rather useful for piercing damage reduction, in particular those made of silver with an enchantment bonus. Seems to work against most undead and fiends with DR. (Only need Cold Iron to deal with Balors and Adamantine to deal with Iron golems or Stoneskinned/Premonitioned mages).

 

And speaking of Holy... Any idea what the "Holy Avenger" property on weapons does?

[Emperor Devon]

Spoiler Alert: Do not read this unless you've finished the game.

 

Yes, there aren't exactly and great beauties to pick among the female models. One Aasimar head and a couple of the Elven heads could be described as cute/pretty at best, but not exactly beautiful.

 

For an engine like NWN 2's, I was expecting less ugly heads. KotOR is several years older, and did a better job on most of them.

 

The male heads/bodies aren't much better in that respect either, IMHO.

 

A lot of them look like small ogres, though there are couple good ones. (Namely the first head and the bearded one)

 

A lot of the heads look kind of silly when you toggle the facial hair. A lot of the goatees look like the sort of stuff that gets drawn on newspapers.

 

Fortunately the main selling point of the game isn't to ogle your awesome-looking characters.

 

Fortunately, yes.

 

I think Neeshka is just a red herring, kind of like Mira was for male characters in TSL.

 

Dunno about that. She's not the most beautiful NPC in the game.

 

And Shandra seems interested in you and your background even if you play as a female, though it never struck me as interest of the romantic variety.

 

I think that's because she's straight.

 

There's a couple options in the dialogue files I noticed and some obvious hints during the game that she's interested in your character if he's male.

 

I don't know if she's any different for male characters, but Elanee seems to have some stalker tendencies, having followed your around and observed you for years, though you never seem to get any answer as to why she did that in the past. After the West Harbor attack I can understand, but before that?

 

The Circle had an interest in the PC, though I can't guess as to why she got so obsessed over a child she'd been watching.

 

Most undead who are enslaved to a master are pretty single-minded in carrying out that master's orders, even if they are otherwise quite intelligent. Nightwalkers have genius-level intelligence, vampires have a +2 Int bonus from what they had before death, and Liches are per definition highly intelligent, since they are powerful wizards.

 

They're quite single-minded in their use of it. I don't think any would be interested in putting it to use in anything unrelated to serving their master, though it's to be expected.

 

Since Shadow Reavers aren't (AFAIK) generic monsters but a unique kind only tied to the King of Shadows it would stand to reason that they are essentially an extension of his will, even if they retain the memories of their past life. And since Garius wasn't loyal to the King of Shadows at all prior to undergoing the ritual, but was converted so completely as a Reaver, it would stand to reason that the player character would be similarily enthralled if joining up with the King of Shadows.

 

Quite likely. If the PC was willing to serve the King of Shadows, it's a fair assumption he'd go through a ritual that makes him stronger at the expense of his humanity. Though the ending says all the Shadow Reavers were gone and replaced by a nameless general, that would be hard to tell with the helmet player character ends up wearing.

 

Black Garius represented most of the villainry since he was the one who was actively working against you for most of the game. You didn't really have any interaction with the King of Shadows at all until the final confrontation, you only heard about him through others.

 

Kind of disappoitning. Garius didn't have much of a backstory other than rising from nothing to everything with the KoS' help. Not much character, either.

 

By the way, did you get the three books about the Guardian/KOSH from the librarian spirit in the Illefarn ruins? I think he only gives them to you if you pick the right dialog choice at the start of that conversation when you first enter the place.

 

I got them. They were quite informative about the KoS, though you won't miss any essential info by not reading them.

 

I don't know about the dialogue choice at the start. I was fairly polite to him, and the option was there several times during the conversation.

 

There is the whole contradictory story element of no ships being able to escape the gravity well of Malachor 5, and the Ebon Hawk only being able to escape in the "good" ending since the MSG was activated and disrupted the gravitational fields. But that makes you wonder how Sion was able to come and go there.

 

There must've been some means to leave. It would be quite impractical to make an unescapable planet your base of operations.

 

In my interpretation of the good ending you don't rush off headlong into the unknown at all, but return to Republic space to rebuild the Jedi Order first, before even contemplating following Revan's tracks.

 

It was probably the later, but we're getting off-topic here. I'd be happy discussing TSL's ending in another thread.

 

I'd assume that the ritual is quite complex and requires some rather esoteric and expensive material components to perform. After all Garius needed several weeks to prepare for the ritual, and apparently needed one of the silver shards in order to perform it, and probably other things as well. They probably had other rituals like it planned to bolster their numbers, but likely didn't have the time to prepare/perform them before the player put a stop to it.

 

It would still be performable, then. I don't think you have all the shards in your possession at that point, and the KoS had the knowledge to perform it. Regardless, it was probably done more times than that. The Shadow Reavers seem to be the generals in the KoS' army, (which by all accounts is quite large) and there were too few created at that ritual to effectively command it.

 

If it so easy to produce a Shadow Reaver that the KOSH only needed to snap his fingers to make it happen they wouldn't have had any need for any lesser undead at all; their whole army would have been made up of shadow reavers.

 

I'd guess only powerful wizards can become Reavers (there were fewer Reavers who emerged from the ritual than there were participants). Otherwise, the KoS would have had no need for Garius.

 

Try out different combinations of mouse buttons and the SHIFT/CTRL keys and you'll find the combo used for moving the camera around soon enough. It's there, I just don't remember it since I consider the toolset too buggy and cumbersome to work with in its current state to do any area editing.

 

I've not been able to find it, but ah well. The toolset, like you said, is too cumbersome for substnatial area tweaking in any case.

 

Assuming that Mephasm is fully honest with you, which isn't exactly a trait of the Bateezu. The description of the history feat you get also implies that your bargaining may have implications down the line (though of course not in the game). Mephasm is probably a Beteezu equivalent of a Glabrezu; a specialist in tempting mortals into corruption with promises of power which carries a terrible price in the end.

 

Not with the bargains you strike with him. He gives you some junk, you give him some junk, and you're done.

 

The cost is at the start of the bargain, anyway. He either wants your favorite weapon or some trinkets you have to whip up (I don't recall, but I don't think they're cheap to make)

 

The deals are fairly straightforward - it's not even a written contract. There weren't any loopholes for him to exploit, and to suddenly change it without the player's consent would violate the lawful nature of the Bateezu.

 

Regardless of if there is any actual fallout or not a Good-aligned character likely wouldn't make deals with fiends just to bolster their own power.

 

No one gets harmed or killed in the deals, so it's not very unethical. I'd still do it, if I were you. You can make some good deals with him, and gain influence with Ammom while doing it.

 

All Nightwalkers have Damage Reduction that can be pierced by Enchanted Silver weapons. One of the reasons why the Sword of Gith is useful against them, since it is one such weapon. {snip}

 

You're probably right in those regards - I've noticed those types of enemies have been particularly vulnerable to those weapons.

 

I'll have to use an adamantine weapon the next time I meet an an iron golem. Those things resist practically every attack you throw at them (Death Armor was a very useful spell there).

 

She was probably attempting to seek you or Lord Nasher out and try to strike a deal, but got caught by the City Watch first (since she's forbidden to enter the city after the Trial). It was a gamble that might lead to her death, but if she'd stayed with Garius it would have meant certain death, so apparently she thought it was worth the risk.

 

The other alternative would've been for her to go somewhere else. By all accounts, the Sword Coast is full of minor city-states.

 

Play it instead with a good character. No fun to read all the dialog in advance in the editor.

 

I'll probably do that for some more variety. Once I finish tweaking the areas to my liking, (that'll be a while ) I think I'll play through as a female Asimar (sp?) paladin.

 

I suspect it's just a second chance to try to repair the damage of her testimony if you are unable to do so while Torio has her called as a witness. {snip}

 

Maybe you missed something? In the dialogue you have the option to call her forth as a witness.

 

Well, she's good-natured, well-meaning, loyal and caring and she looks up to you if you have good influence with her.

 

You should see how she acts if you don't. She shows a lot of lip.

 

She may be a bit bullheaded and using barbed humor but I think she can be excused since she was just some average farmer with no aspirations for anything else until you, the Lizardfolk and the Githyanki came along and ruined her life for good.

 

Losing your home would be a traumatic experience, though she whined about it and talked about herself too much for my taste. The relationship between her and my PC got off to a rocky start after tha. (I made frequent use of the 'I'm going to bleed you to death when we get to the Haven, you little ****' lines)

 

She's just a normal average person forcibly thrust into an all-but-normal situation.

 

That's probably why she seemed so out of place with the rest of the party, who were anything but that.

 

At any rate I'd certainly bring her along over someone like Bishop any day.

 

Bishop's more handy in a fight, from my experience. Some of his comments are also a lot more funny than Shandra's (in how bluntly rude they are), such as "Grobnar, you worthless half-man, strike up a tune before I strike you," or "I'd move if all this crap wasn't weighing me down!"

 

Some of his lines had me laughing uncontrollably for several minutes. But I have a strange sense of humor at times.

 

Once you get a couple of Rings of Regeneration and a cleric in the party healing usually isn't a problem, IMHO. Equipping two Rings of Regen on the same character regenerates 8 HP/round (9 if you have an Amulet of Health as well), and you can pass them around the party until everyone is healed up.

 

Where'd you find those? They sound quite useful, and I never ran into any. (Probably because of the random loot)

 

{snip} I've made the "The Dead Walks" invocation spawn more useful undead, and added a "Gate" invocation that summons a random Tanar'ri, Bateezu, Celestial or Planar beast to aid you.

 

I've never used 'The Dead Walks' before, but from your previous description I wouldn't want to. Even the regular undead summoning spells aren't very useful for a while.

 

I'd guess it's alignment-dependent? It would look kind of odd for a paladin to be summoning devils.

 

Though with NWN2 you essentialy have that already for wizards and sorcerers. You can only cast one spell per round, and a level 20 Sorcerer can cast 6 level 9 spells "per day" (4 for wizards) not counting any bonus slots given by feats and high Int/Cha. There are very few fights in the game that lasts longer than 4-6 rounds, and a "day" only lasts until the end of the fight with the current rest system.

 

True, I suppose. I've run out of spells before, though it wasn't very common.

 

Right, I'll post here when I've polished it up enough that it might be worth using. Just have to find all the files involved, my override folder is already a big mess.

 

I'll be glad to see it.

 

I have a hard time seeing that too. The script editor in the release Toolset would require the patience of a saint to make any meaningful use of, since 50% of your time is spent doing battle against the user interface and 50% is spent on actually writing any script code.

 

It's best to write scripts on notepad, or some other text editing program and paste it there when you're done. I had to use the script editor once, and it was maddening.

 

More toolset horror stories... That thing picks the absolute worst possible times to crash. I'd spent a couple hours yesterday tweaking one of the modules, and decided to save it in the case of any random glitches. Naturally, of course, it crashed to desktop then, of all times.

 

My God, this has been one of the most buggy editing programs I've ever encountered.

 

Spoiler Alert: Do not read this unless you've finished the game.

[stoffe]

Spoiler Alert: Do not read this unless you've finished the game.

 

 

For an engine like NWN 2's, I was expecting less ugly heads. KotOR is several years older, and did a better job on most of them.

 

Doesn't matter how advanced engine you have if your modellers don't get enough time to work, or aren't skilled enough, whichever the case might have been here.

 

 

Dunno about that. She's not the most beautiful NPC in the game.

 

Looks aren't everything, you know. there were romances in games like Baldur's Gate where Aerie, Jaheira, Viconia and Anomen were just a bunch of tiny blurry pixels on a screen, and they were pretty popular anyway.

 

 

I think that's because she's straight.

There's a couple options in the dialogue files I noticed and some obvious hints during the game that she's interested in your character if he's male.

 

That's just the thing. She is quite interested in your character even if you're playing as a female. That's why I doubt it's of the romantical nature even for males.

 

 

The Circle had an interest in the PC, though I can't guess as to why she got so obsessed over a child she'd been watching.

 

Yes, but according to the story the circle never sent her to keep the main character under close surveillance. She did that on her own initiative entirely. But you never learn why.

 

 

They're quite single-minded in their use of it. I don't think any would be interested in putting it to use in anything unrelated to serving their master, though it's to be expected.

 

Well, some undead (powerful Vampires, Liches) are often the masters themselves, having no one to order them around. So it depends on the situation how free they are to use their mental assets I suppose.

 

 

Quite likely. If the PC was willing to serve the King of Shadows, it's a fair assumption he'd go through a ritual that makes him stronger at the expense of his humanity.

 

Yes, it's called Undeath. Since everyone who serves the KOSH are either insane priests seeking undeath, undead or golems there isn't much choice there.

 

I got them. They were quite informative about the KoS, though you won't miss any essential info by not reading them.

 

Perhaps they learned from Kreia in TSL that is isn't often a good idea to put plot critical information in optional dialogs or quests...

 

It would still be performable, then. I don't think you have all the shards in your possession at that point, and the KoS had the knowledge to perform it. Regardless, it was probably done more times than that. The Shadow Reavers seem to be the generals in the KoS' army, (which by all accounts is quite large) and there were too few created at that ritual to effectively command it.

 

It would be performable, but it would take time to prepare and perform. Time they didn't get until the player showed up crashing the party. If you hadn't there likely would have been more Reavers scheduled down the line.

 

As for command, it seems like the undead are controlled mentally since most of them are just mindless automatons. Would reduce the need for a large chain of command.

 

I'd guess only powerful wizards can become Reavers (there were fewer Reavers who emerged from the ritual than there were participants). Otherwise, the KoS would have had no need for Garius.

 

You'd get that impression from what was implied by the story, but not all the Shadow Reavers you fight in the game are Wizards. Some of them are Clerics and even Fighters/Barbarians/Frenzied Berserkers. For example the three you fight at once by the bridge in KOSH's fortress. One cleric, one sorcerer and one Fighter.

 

Not with the bargains you strike with him. He gives you some junk, you give him some junk, and you're done.

The deals are fairly straightforward - it's not even a written contract. There weren't any loopholes for him to exploit, and to suddenly change it without the player's consent would violate the lawful nature of the Bateezu.

You can make some good deals with him, and gain influence with Ammom while doing it.

 

But then you have to wonder why he'd strike those deals with you to begin with if he has little to gain from it. What use would your trinkets be to someone like him? If you takes things at face value the deals seem heavily stracked in the player's favor, and Bateezu aren't exactly the charitable types. Dealing with fiends are usually a bad idea, Ammon Jerro if anyone should have learned that lesson (but apparently hasn't).

 

 

I'll have to use an adamantine weapon the next time I meet an an iron golem. Those things resist practically every attack you throw at them (Death Armor was a very useful spell there).

 

Don't bother with damage spells against Iron Golems, they are immune to all spells of level 9 or lower. You'd either have to kill them with weapons, or sommon something to fight them for you. Warlock Eldritch Blasts do work against them though, since those aren't spells but raw magic that's being channelled.

 

If you have Adamantine weapons you can smack them down fairly quickly with your melee grunt party members as well.

 

The other alternative would've been for her to go somewhere else. By all accounts, the Sword Coast is full of minor city-states.

 

Sure, but she'd be more or less a Nobody there. In her Neutral Evil mind she likely imagined that the knowledge she had would be useful as a bargaining chip to give her some position of importance in Neverwinter if she sided with them instead. Nasher's a Paladin though (hard to believe from how he acts sometimes) so they're probably mentally incompatible. But her bargain did pay off if you have her spared and transfered to you instead.

 

Maybe you missed something? In the dialogue you have the option to call her forth as a witness.

 

That option likely doesn't show up if you let Shandra deal with her successfully when Torio called Alaine as a witness. No need to talk to her more after that, since the worth of her testimony already is broken.

 

 

Losing your home would be a traumatic experience, though she whined about it and talked about herself too much for my taste. The relationship between her and my PC got off to a rocky start after tha. (I made frequent use of the 'I'm going to bleed you to death when we get to the Haven, you little ****' lines)

 

Well, if I had to tag along with someone evil like that I probably wouldn't be all that happy about it either (though I likely wouldn't be stubborn enough not to keep my own councel about it). Shandra is the only one who's remotely normal in your group. A crazy dwarf, a bubbly tiefling, a stalker druid, a paladin with moral problems, an ensnared psychopathic ranger, a deranged gnome and a Githzerai... Travelling circus indeed.

 

 

Bishop's more handy in a fight, from my experience.

(snip)

Some of his lines had me laughing uncontrollably for several minutes. But I have a strange sense of humor at times.

 

I strongly disagree, Shandra is a powerhouse Fighter if you level her properly and give her good gear. She has a higher kill ratio than Khelgar in my group and has not been killed a single time (well, except by AJ, but that's unavoidable).

 

And Shandra do have some funny lines on occasion as well, though I suppose Bishop's kind of humor is more suited for an evil bastard.

 

Where'd you find those? They sound quite useful, and I never ran into any. (Probably because of the random loot)

 

I think at least two Rings of Regen are static drops in the game, at least I've gotten them at the same place in both my playthroughs so far. I know you get one of them from the corpse of either Lord Temar or his Luskan minion if you do Sir Nevalle's quest in the Blacklake district. And I think you get the other from the group of Luskan adventurers who try to collect a bounty on you as a travel encounter some time during act 2. (Not 100% sure about that one though, I'll have to check.)

 

I've never used 'The Dead Walks' before, but from your previous description I wouldn't want to. Even the regular undead summoning spells aren't very useful for a while.

 

Don't bother with it unless you use the improved Warlock impact scripts I posted. The standard "The Dead Walks" summons at best some weak 12 STR skeleton with like 20 health (and the creatures summoned are determined by caster level, ironically enough). Very useful at level 16+ indeed, when you can have a Wiz/Sorc/Cleric summon an emelental with 30 STR and 280 Health at the same level...

 

 

I'd guess it's alignment-dependent? It would look kind of odd for a paladin to be summoning devils.

 

Well no, they are Warlock invocations. Warlocks are best left singleclassed, and would be an extra poor choice to multiclas to/from as Paladin since they have incompatible alignments. A paladin must be Lawful Good, while a Warlock has to be Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral or any Evil alignment.

 

It's best to write scripts on notepad, or some other text editing program and paste it there when you're done. I had to use the script editor once, and it was maddening.

 

I prefer UltraEdit, it has nice syntax highlighting, scripting helpers and built-in functions to run compilers like nwnnsscomp from a keypress or menu selection, allowing you to click on any compiler errors to automatically go to that line and things like that. Coding in Notepad sounds as painful as the NWN2Toolset.

 

Spoiler Alert: Do not read this unless you've finished the game.

[Jae Onasi]

Jae,

 

Where are you at in the game? What class/race/level? Just curious.

 

I think I'm an Elf level 15 ranger/level 2 divine champion (may pick up the NWN9 class next level up) and I'm running around making all sorts of uber-weapons and armor at my keep. I've finished up making my alliances with dwarves/lizardfolk/druids and have to go do the wendersnaven thing next, and then I suspect it gets hot and heavy after that.

 

I've flirted with Casavir, managed to gain influence with Sand, and generally am tinkering way too much and not getting to the end of the story because I'm having too much fun doing all the little piddly sidequests like finding ore and helping the people in the keep.

 

@Emperor Devon--I didn't give the tower to the mage, I gave it to Sir Nevalle, and I have a quartermaster in there who has some kick-butt martial stuff.

[Jae Onasi]

Oh, a question. Jimbo was trying out the "I roll 20's" cheat. He loves the cool katana it gives you, too. However, he discovered on his first level up that the cheat gives you 20's on all your skill points, too, and when he tried to assign his skill points, he wasn't allowed to, and so he couldn't do the level up. Is there any way to adjust the skill points?

[ChAiNz.2da]

Oh, a question. Jimbo was trying out the "I roll 20's" cheat. He loves the cool katana it gives you, too. However, he discovered on his first level up that the cheat gives you 20's on all your skill points, too, and when he tried to assign his skill points, he wasn't allowed to, and so he couldn't do the level up. Is there any way to adjust the skill points?

hehehe.. I love the Katana too

 

Does Jimbo just want the katana.. or keep the skill points too? There's an individual cheat code just to grab the katana itself (just make sure to have the exotic weapon proficiency). I don't think you can edit skill points without a re-roll.

 

Unfortunately, I don't know the code right off-hand

[Jae Onasi]

I think he'd like to keep the skill points if possible (especially the make weapons/armor/alchemical items, open locks and find/disarm traps). Of course, it's more important to play.

 

I think we have the cheat code for the katana in our book. I'll check that out when I get home tonight from work.

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

It's "giveitem roll20s 1".

[Emperor Devon]

@Jae, you and your hubby are such cheaters. Do you ever play through a game the way it's intended to be played?

 

Doesn't matter how advanced engine you have if your modellers don't get enough time to work, or aren't skilled enough, whichever the case might have been here.

 

True. Obsidian made some pretty good models for KotOR II, though, so I was expecting something of similar or higher quality.

 

Looks aren't everything, you know.

 

I agree completely. Nothing to debate about there.

 

Romances (or red herring) will usually be more popular with fans if the romantic interest is easy on the eyes, though. Neeshka was far from that.

 

there were romances in games like Baldur's Gate where Aerie, Jaheira, Viconia and Anomen were just a bunch of tiny blurry pixels on a screen, and they were pretty popular anyway.

 

That would be annoying, with the lack of VOs.

 

That's just the thing. She is quite interested in your character even if you're playing as a female. That's why I doubt it's of the romantical nature even for males.

 

Her comments gave you the impression that she has a romantic interest, but they're probably different depending on your character's gender.

 

Yes, but according to the story the circle never sent her to keep the main character under close surveillance. She did that on her own initiative entirely. But you never learn why.

 

Simple attraction, I guess? Hard to have a romantic interest in a child, though.

 

Yes, it's called Undeath. Since everyone who serves the KOSH are either insane priests seeking undeath, undead or golems there isn't much choice there.

 

More like Reaverhood or Reavership. From what one of the Shadow Priests says, undeath makes people lose a significant amount of their power. Other than when becoming Reavers, that is.

 

Perhaps they learned from Kreia in TSL that is isn't often a good idea to put plot critical information in optional dialogs or quests...

 

Heh, good thing I like to go through every little bit of dialogue the party members I like have.

 

It's still worth reading those tomes, though. They provide some extra info on the KoS that's interesting to read.

 

It would be performable, but it would take time to prepare and perform. Time they didn't get until the player showed up crashing the party. If you hadn't there likely would have been more Reavers scheduled down the line.

 

 

It's quite possible other rituals were conducted at a similar time, somewhere other than in their enemy's territory (why was it held there again?). The KoS had other shards, the knowledge, and probably other followers who would have made good Reavers.

 

 

As for command, it seems like the undead are controlled mentally since most of them are just mindless automatons. Would reduce the need for a large chain of command.

 

It makes them more subordinate and easy to deal with, though there'd still have to generals. Leaders on the battlefield they could do without (sergeants, corporals, etc), though no army can make do without high-ranking officers. Someone has to plan the strategies.

 

{snip} For example the three you fight at once by the bridge in KOSH's fortress. One cleric, one sorcerer and one Fighter.

 

Would explain why one of them never bothered with any spells. I'll have to go fix that when I remodel the KoS' fortress. (That thing really needs some redoing - not at all dark, gloomy, or just plain shadowy enough)

 

But then you have to wonder why he'd strike those deals with you to begin with if he has little to gain from it.

 

He wants those weird trinkets. I don't recall if they're expensive to make or not, but they probably are.

 

What use would your trinkets be to someone like him? If you takes things at face value the deals seem heavily stracked in the player's favor, and Bateezu aren't exactly the charitable types.

 

He doesn't really want trinkets - just something of great value to you. If your favorite weapon (I guess that's determined by what's equipped) is a simple club with no bonuses, he'll take it. If it's The Bastard Sword of Ungodly Might and Dragon Pwning + 78, he'll take that too. Or maybe it's determined by what's the most expensive. I've not looked at the script.

 

I can't guess why he'd want it, but you won't suffer any repercussions for it during the game. And if there's an expansion pack (I hope) I doubt Obsidian would go about including a fairly minor quest.

 

Dealing with fiends are usually a bad idea, Ammon Jerro if anyone should have learned that lesson (but apparently hasn't).

 

Oh, he hates the idea of you summoning Mephasm the whole time. He gives some fairly passionate-sounding rants about when to summon fiends, and still doesn't like the idea much when you've gained something.

 

He won't tell you how to summon Zaxis, though. A pity, he was a funny demon (and you know his True Name).

 

Sure, but she'd be more or less a Nobody there.

 

There are other cities, some of which (like Waterdeep) are bigger and simply more powerful than Neverwinter is. She'd have a lower chance of being executed there. By all accounts, her part in the story was done anyway.

 

Nasher's a Paladin though (hard to believe from how he acts sometimes)

 

Lawful characters follow the rules to the point of plain silliness (and contradiction, in Nasher's case).

 

That option likely doesn't show up if you let Shandra deal with her successfully when Torio called Alaine as a witness. No need to talk to her more after that, since the worth of her testimony already is broken.

 

The option was there, though. I guess I'll find out in my next playthrough as a good character (who won't act like an @$$ to everyone).

 

Well, if I had to tag along with someone evil like that I probably wouldn't be all that happy about it either (though I likely wouldn't be stubborn enough not to keep my own councel about it).

 

 

Shandra was indispensable in regards to finding out about the shards, though any evil character would have disposed of her after getting to the Haven (though Ammon Jerro was kind enough to do that).

 

 

Shandra is the only one who's remotely normal in your group. A crazy dwarf, a bubbly tiefling, a stalker druid, a paladin with moral problems, an ensnared psychopathic ranger, a deranged gnome and a Githzerai... Travelling circus indeed.

 

Few people are normal in D&D, or RPGs in general.

 

I strongly disagree, Shandra is a powerhouse Fighter if you level her properly and give her good gear.

 

Maybe, though I never bothered to find out. I never gave her any good equipment, and only took her along when forced to (though that's all the time you have her).

 

And Shandra do have some funny lines on occasion as well, though I suppose Bishop's kind of humor is more suited for an evil bastard.

 

I never saw any from Shandra, though Bishop's funny whether you're an evil bastard or not. His open bluntness and rudeness to the point of a mental disorder was funny in a weird sort of way.

 

I think at least two Rings of Regen are static drops in the game, at least I've gotten them at the same place in both my playthroughs so far. {snip}

 

It could be class-dependent, or part of the patch. I didn't do the quest in Blacklake, though I never found a ring on the adventurers.

 

Well no, they are Warlock invocations.

 

Gah, forgetfulness. What I meant was 'are the planar summonings alignment-depedent?'

 

I prefer UltraEdit, it has nice syntax highlighting, scripting helpers and built-in functions to run compilers like nwnnsscomp from a keypress or menu selection, allowing you to click on any compiler errors to automatically go to that line and things like that. Coding in Notepad sounds as painful as the NWN2Toolset.

 

I knew what to type, so it wasn't too bad. With the toolset the script editor has a small interface, and there's the all bugs that come with it.

 

Speaking of the toolset, do you have any idea how to properly build a module? It's so simple with KotOR, though with the toolset all the contents of the module is erased if I ever open it again after saving it.

[stoffe]

True. Obsidian made some pretty good models for KotOR II, though, so I was expecting something of similar or higher quality.

 

In some ways the models felt improved over what was in TSL, but in other ways it seemed like a step back. If the NWN2 models have facial animations/expressions beyond moving their mouth and eyes and blinking they seem to have forgotten to use it, since everyone seemed to have the same facial expressions no matter what they said.

 

A bunch of models seem quite hastily made as well with missing animations and clearly visible deformations of the the model shape, which more seem to indicate a lack of time to finish things up properly rather than lack of talent.

 

Spoiler alert: This post below contains spoilers, read at your own risk if you haven't finished the game.

 

Romances (or red herring) will usually be more popular with fans if the romantic interest is easy on the eyes, though. Neeshka was far from that.

 

Well, Annah was quite popular as a "semi romance" in Planescape:Torment from what I hear and she was a tiefling like Neeshka was, though admittedly that whole game was pretty odd to say the least.

 

 

Her comments gave you the impression that she has a romantic interest, but they're probably different depending on your character's gender.

 

Not so sure there are any major dialog differences with Shandra depending on if the main char is male of female. But if you play as a female next I suppose you're about to find out.

 

Simple attraction, I guess? Hard to have a romantic interest in a child, though.

 

Indeed, she implies that she's been watching you your whole life more or less (again assuming human age maturity rate for the main char. She wouldn't be much older than you if you plan an elf). That, and she still does it if the main char is female, so I don't think it's a romantic interest (nothing in the game hints at her being bisexual that I've seen).

 

More like Reaverhood or Reavership. From what one of the Shadow Priests says, undeath makes people lose a significant amount of their power. Other than when becoming Reavers, that is.

 

And the Reavers are undead. That whole part doesn't make much sense to me though. Liches are very powerful wizards who have chosen to prolong their existance by turning to undeath. If anything they are more powerful as spellcasters than they were in life. Nothing about losing magical talents when undying there at all.

 

It makes them more subordinate and easy to deal with, though there'd still have to generals. Leaders on the battlefield they could do without (sergeants, corporals, etc), though no army can make do without high-ranking officers. Someone has to plan the strategies.

 

Unless you employ the "Rampaging Orc Horde" strategy that is, and simply overwhelm your opponent by outnumbering them 100 to 1 or more. That strategy would be suitable for undead armies as well, since any fallen enemy is a new recruit for your army, and there seems to be no shortage of undead (or previously dead to turn to undeath) to begin with. Since your average undead tend to be stronger and more durable than your average human soldier there might not be that much additional strategy required if your goal isn't conquest but rather the annihilation of your enemy.

 

Would explain why one of them never bothered with any spells. I'll have to go fix that when I remodel the KoS' fortress.

(That thing really needs some redoing - not at all dark, gloomy, or just plain shadowy enough)

 

Fix? There's nothing that says a Shadow Reaver has to be a wizard as far as I know. Most of them are not. And Black Garius at the end is a lvl 20 Wizard/lvl 18 Cleric multiclass....

 

As for the Fortress, it's not really the KOSH's fortress per se, but rather a ruined Illefarn temple that has been taken over by the followers of the KOSH. Since the Illefarn weren't that keen on building dark and gloomy places I think it's currently fairly acceptable in its current shape. (Once a magnificent temple, now ruined for thousands of years.)

 

He doesn't really want trinkets - just something of great value to you. If your favorite weapon (I guess that's determined by what's equipped) is a simple club with no bonuses, he'll take it. If it's The Bastard Sword of Ungodly Might and Dragon Pwning + 78, he'll take that too.

 

Just seems like he stands significantly less to gain from your bargains than you do. Permanent improvement of a being in exchange for an item that isn't even an artifact. Now if he'd wanted you to give up the Sword of Gith in exchange it might have been more understandable. I still think old Meph will have a nasty surprise for you down the line. (Though for a Lawful Evil character it probably doesn't matter much since you're bound for Baator regardless once you die...)

 

 

He won't tell you how to summon Zaxis, though. A pity, he was a funny demon (and you know his True Name).

 

Zaxis is a she, apparently, might be hard to tell with Hezrou. If you have Neeshka in your party while you chat with Blooden, and haven't already taunted the true name of Baalbisan's matron from him, then Blooden will reveal that Zaxis is Baalbisan's matron, and give you the true name.

 

You'll also learn from her that one of Neeshka's progenitors apparently is present in the Haven (which would mean Hezebel, Koraboros or Mephasm since Baalbisan claims Neeshka smells of Baator. I'm leaning towards the latter but haven't managed to find any more conclusive evidence about it).

 

 

There are other cities, some of which (like Waterdeep) are bigger and simply more powerful than Neverwinter is. She'd have a lower chance of being executed there. By all accounts, her part in the story was done anyway.

 

Yes, but as said, she'd be a nobody there, having to start out in the gutter and build a new life for herself there, which might not be all that appealing to someone who's reached her station. In Neverwinter she does manage to bargain her way into a reasonable social station with what and who she knows as bargain chips.

 

 

Lawful characters follow the rules to the point of plain silliness (and contradiction, in Nasher's case).

 

Nasher's most defining trait in both NWN1 and NWN2 seems to be incompetence, which he compensates for by being populist; giving the people what they want in the short term even though it might have terrible consequences down the line.

 

 

Few people are normal in D&D, or RPGs in general.

 

Perhaps not, unusual characters tend to the games a bit more unique. Though it's done to the point where a normal person put into that situation is unusual as well. I thought Shandra was pretty refreshing with her down-to-earth viewpoints in that regard.

 

Maybe, though I never bothered to find out. I never gave her any good equipment, and only took her along when forced to (though that's all the time you have her).

 

If you're going to have her along for the ride all the time in Act 2 you might as well make good use of her. She's an excellent tank and melee brawler if you just equip and train her properly.

 

I never saw any from Shandra, though Bishop's funny whether you're an evil bastard or not. His open bluntness and rudeness to the point of a mental disorder was funny in a weird sort of way.

 

I thought Bishop was more of a jackass than he was funny, but I suppose it comes down to personal taste.

 

 

It could be class-dependent, or part of the patch. I didn't do the quest in Blacklake, though I never found a ring on the adventurers.

 

Don't think so, since I've played different characters on both playthroughs and got them at the same place both times. I know you get one from Nevalle's Lord Temar quest, but I can't remember at the moment where you get the second one.

 

 

Spoiler alert: This post above contains spoilers, read at your own risk if you haven't finished the game.

 

Gah, forgetfulness. What I meant was 'are the planar summonings alignment-depedent?'

 

Not currently, they are picked semi-randomly, weighted by their relative power. The Gate can produce anything from an Imp to a Solar, though imps, hellhounds and other lesser planars have a lot higher chance of appearing than the top dogs like Solars, Balors and Pit Fiends. There are a few named unique "boss" summons of each type as well that are more specialized, making them more dangerous against some types of enemies while worthless against others (for example: one that focuses entirely on mind-affecting abilities and sneak attacks, unloading Blindness, Curse, Doom, Paralysis etc on the enemy before sneak attacking them, which is dangerous against organics but worthless against undead, elementals and constructs). So it's a matter of luck what you get when you open the Gate.

 

Speaking of the toolset, do you have any idea how to properly build a module? It's so simple with KotOR, though with the toolset all the contents of the module is erased if I ever open it again after saving it.

 

Not sure, I'm avoiding module editing until the toolset is at least remotely trustworthy. Nothing worse than working on something for hours only to have it all corrupted and destroyed when the application crashes. I think you need to Bake and Save it in the File menu.

 

As for moving the camera in the 3D view I checked what the controls were. You hold down the CTRL key and the left mouse button and then move the mouse to drag the camera around on the X/Y axis. To change it's elevation (Z axis) hold down both CTRL + SHIFT + Left mouse button while moving the mouse.

[Pavlos]

As for moving the camera in the 3D view I checked what the controls were. You hould down the CTRL key and the left mouse button and then move the mouse to drag the gamera around on the X/Y axis. To change it's elevation (Z axis) hold down both CTRL + SHIFT + Left mouse button while dragging.

 

Using the middle mouse button seems to be the easiest option for controlling the elevation and orientation. The odd thing is, stoffe, while I agree that in many ways the toolset really is an interface nightmare - I've never had any stability issues at all. Strange the way different setups yield different results, eh?