25 réponses à ce sujet

[Sircowdog]

Back in the day when the game was originally launched I was pretty burned out from nwn1 and its expansions. So I never played more than a couple hours of NWN2. I did the same thing with Icewind Dale 2(which I just completed for the first time ever today).

So I fired up NWN1 just long enough to realize how bad it is. Then I loaded 2 and really felt the difference. I'm really getting into it, and I've got a few questions. I apologize in advance if I have a little too much enthusiasm for a game this old.

The beamdog remastered Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale games have countless mods to let you customize your playstyle. I know there are modules for NWN 1 and 2 that let you play campaigns, but are there actual mods to the base game?

My build; in IWD2 I ran a party of Deep Gnomes and loved it. So when I saw they were available in NWN2 along with a lot of newer 3.5ed classes, I was hooked.

My plan is 2rog/3swash/5 duelist/wiz til the end. Int heavy for skills, damage, and AC. Melee-oriented in the early game wirh Spells mostly for buffing(since spell DCs will be so far behind).

This looks solid, to me, on paper. Without spoilers, can someone tell me if there's any glaring flaws here?

Another thing. Which campaigns are connected, and which will I have to make a new character for?

And lastly: Are custom portraits a thing you can do in NWN2?

[Dann-J]

Another thing. Which campaigns are connected, and which will I have to make a new character for?

And lastly: Are custom portraits a thing you can do in NWN2?

 

Mask of the Betrayer (levels 20-30) follows on from the OC (levels 1 to 20), so you can continue with the same character. Storm of Zehir is a completely separate campaign (levels 3 on). There's nothing to stop you from starting SoZ with a level 20 character from the OC, but you'll find the campaign very easy if you do. You can also generate a new level 18 character for MoTB if you don't want to use your OC character.

 

And you can certainly use custom portraits: http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Portrait

[Tchos]

Personally, I'm glad to see a new enthusiastic person.  This is a game I never get tired of talking about, myself, so don't fear going overboard. 

 

On the subject of portraits, if you, like me, don't like square "portraits" (a misnomer if I ever heard one -- there's a reason we call page formats "portraits" when they're taller than wide, vs wider than tall "landscapes"), then you can use my UI mod, which restores Infinity Engine and NWN1-style portraits to the game, as well as making all of the panels and the font bigger.

 

Technically, Storm of Zehir takes place a short time after the events of the OC, but as Dann said, the game assumes that you're not playing the same character as in the OC, and characters from the OC will treat you as a different person. 

 

Since you can export you character at any time, you can keep a library of the same character at different levels, with whatever inventory you had at the time, and you can thus play SoZ with the same character and yet not be overleveled for the content, if you choose to use one of the earlier versions of your character.  As long as you don't mind old friends not recognising you. 

 

What I would call the 4th campaign, Mysteries of Westgate (if you have it), is not related to the events from any of the other campaigns, for a number of reasons.

 

I can't really comment on your character build, as I don't multiclass much.

 

I should mention, though, that the campaigns handle party interactions differently.  The OC forces your main character to do the talking, even when it would be more logical for a party member with the appropriate skills to handle certain particular situations.  However, you can still use other party members to handle tasks such as unlocking things or disarming things.  Mask of the Betrayer follows along in this mold generally.  But Storm of Zehir brings back the ability to choose which character in your party handles the talking or interactions, on a case-by-case basis, which is my preference.  If you later play user-created modules and campaigns, you'll see a variety of these systems in use.

[rjshae]

There is an OC Makeover SoZ Edition available. Not sure if that implements party chat functionality though.

[Sircowdog]

Thanks for the replies. 

So I found out that there's some sloppiness/silliness involved with small characters such as deep gnomes. Apparently weapons are all of a set size. There are no small versions of rapiers, for example. Which means that a gnome duelist  can't actually use rapiers without the Monkey Grip feat; only shortswords, daggers, or kukris. This isn't really a big deal, but it is an annoying quirk of my build.  And it reminds me of the age of this game, despite how fun it is.  

 

I'm also discovering just how mind-numbingly dumb the AI is.  My companions will stop fighting a group near by, and run halfway across the map to aggro everything to get to an enemy that hasn't been engaged yet.  It's pretty funny, even if I have to reload a lot.  I now see the use for having a hotkey to toggle party AI.  xD 

 

[Tchos]

You will want to go through the Behaviour tab on the character sheets for each of your party members, and set what they are and aren't allowed to do.  TonyK's Monster and Companion AI mod adds additional options to that tab.  You can also choose to put them in puppet mode so that they only do what you command them to do, which is a different function than the AI toggle.  Aside from that, you can use the voice command menu (V) to command the party to stand their ground, follow you passively, or attack the nearest target.

[Thorsson64]

 

My plan is 2rog/3swash/5 duelist/wiz til the end. Int heavy for skills, damage, and AC.

 

So I found out that there's some sloppiness/silliness involved with small characters such as deep gnomes. Apparently weapons are all of a set size. There are no small versions of rapiers, for example. Which means that a gnome duelist  can't actually use rapiers without the Monkey Grip feat

 

The Rogue levels are largely a waste, unless you are going for Expose Weakness Epic feat. You might want to get 6 Duelist levels for Flourish.

 

While you need Monkey Grip, it doesn't give a -2 Penalty on a Small Race; moreover you wield it 2-Handed with Weapon Finesse; this is a favourable bug, in case you didn't realise. You can do the same thing with Short Sword without Monkey Grip.

 

Be sure to get Combat Insight in Epic levels.

 

Also visit nwn2db.com where you can plan your build.

[Arkalezth]

Small races CAN use rapiers without MG; they just can't use Finesse or Insightful Strike with them and without the feat. But yeah, it's a mess.

 

Rogue levels are OK if you want them for the traps and lock skills, but if you have another rogue in the party, I'd leave those duties to them. I'd pass on duelist, or at least leave it for last, and I'd take 10 levels in eldritch knight. Frankly, I'd find it a pain to play that sort of build with that race: ECL +3 for starters, you'll probably incur an XP penalty sooner or later, and too much multiclassing will delay your wizard progression even further. All things considered, it's a very late bloomer.

 

The AI has its flaws, but I've never had anything like what you describe happen to me. I echo what Tchos said, but I wanted to add that such behaviour sounds weird to me.

[Tchos]

The AI has its flaws, but I've never had anything like what you describe happen to me. I echo what Tchos said, but I wanted to add that such behaviour sounds weird to me.

 

I'm not sure it happened for me in the middle of a fight where there were enemies in close range, but in the OC I've definitely had experiences where one of my companions will spot or hear an enemy far away from the group and run off to engage it.  I learned to quickly pause in those cases and use one of the numerous options for reining them in.

 

Possibly setting their perception skills lower would prevent such things without needing to deal with the AI or behaviour settings.

[Sircowdog]

The two main reasons I went with rogue levels was skill points and for evasion. The ability to run through traps and have friendlies drop AoE without worry is nice. But I may be biased due to years of playing DDO.

I'm also starting to see the power/cheese of how resting works in NWN2, so I might reconsider my build entirely. Abilities that are only per 'day' suddenly seem a lot more useful since its actually only 5 seconds of resting which doesn't appear to actually advance time within the game more than 5 seconds.

[Tchos]

That's only in the OC.  The expansions after that incorporate a new resting interface, with a wandering monster system akin to the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, etc.), where resting has risk based on where you are, and area-appropriate wandering monsters may interrupt your rest.  Successful rest will advance time 8 hours.  Unlike in the IE games, the resting interface will tell you how risky the area looks before you decide to rest.  You can also simply choose in the resting interface to advance time to dawn or dusk without sleeping, and no wandering monsters will attack in that case.

 

One of many gameplay irritants that were fixed in the expansions.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

My OC Makeover SoZ Edition addresses some of the things mentioned in this thread.  The death and rest systems, for example, and with the Makeover installed you are not forced to have your main PC do all of the talking all of the time. You also have the ability to create your own party members, use the SoZ crafting system, and other enhancements.  The MotB Makeover SoZ Edition does the same sorts of things for MotB, but also adds additional areas, companions, and alternative ways to solve some of the game puzzles.  Both also fix some bugged items.

 

You can download the Makeovers from my blog or the Nexus or the new vault.

 

Regards

[Sircowdog]

I think having actual death in the game would be VERY irritating at the low levels, when a single crit can force you to reload the game due to a dead character.  I suppose the same is true at later levels when a single failed save can kill a character too.   I've never much cared for boiling down an entire character to a single die roll.  

I'll give it a try, though, just to see if it improves the game overall. 

[Tchos]

Considering how cheap Raise Dead scrolls are (you can use them even at low levels), and the fact that NWN2 doesn't impose the normal D&D costs and penalties for casting it, even "actual" death isn't so bad.  But where else are you going to spend the millions of gold pieces you'll accumulate?

[Kaldor Silverwand]

The Makeover allows the death system to behave more like a party system, where the death of the main PC doesn't force the game to end. This way you do not have to protect the main PC as much. I say "allows" because most of the rest, death, and crafting features are readily customizable through a 2da file.

Regards

[Sircowdog]

Just a quick update. Still enjoying the game for the most part, although the AI and pathing is still extremely stupid sometimes. Animal companions and summons continuously get stuck on objects, or stand around doing nothing.  Pathing often chooses the longest, most obscure path to get somewhere.  Party NPCs still run across the entire map to attack things, even when set to follow NEAR and guard close(none of the settings seem to matter in this regard).  My player often rubberbands as though I'm playing an online game, which is strange since it's a single player game.  

And my most recent bug:  I had a magic bag which I was storing all my gems and crafting items in. But I noticed after one save/reload that it was gone.  I'm not sure what happened to it. It's not on any of my characters.  I don't even know if I got any of the items from it or not, and I can't recall when it disappeared.  None of my previous saves have the bag either.  It's VERY strange.   

Despite ALL that, I'm still having fun.  It would just be nice if the game ran a little cleaner.  I'm surprised that a game this old hasn't had all the bugs patched by now.  

[GCoyote]

The last 'patch' was years ago. Nothing's been done to it since except for improvements by the volunteers here and on the vault. If the bug is in the hard coded parts of the game it's never going to change.

 

Otherwise I agree. I'm 3/4 of the way through MotB right now and still enjoying it.

[rjshae]

Is this with or without Companion and Monster AI 2.2?

 

Getting stuck on objects is probably the fault of the walk mesh bake. I don't know of a good fix, other than reworking the area in the toolset.

[Dann-J]

Pathfinding has always been a problem in this game. The pathing algorithm seems to choose a path based on the least number of walkmesh triangles between two locations, with no regard to the *size* of those walkmesh triangles. If all areas had walkmesh triangles of roughly equal size then that wouldn't be an issue, however that's often not the case. You'll frequently be taking the long way around, especially in areas where walkmesh cutters have been used, or where static placeables have mangled the walkmesh.

 

Rubber-banding is so common to the game that it's practically a feature. One interesting thing I discovered is that the actual player location remains correct. It's the visual location of the model that's the issue. I have an overland map area that lays down footprints behind the player as they traverse the terrain, which eventually fade behind them. If I rubber-band in that area, the footprint effects (based on the player location) continue to walk ahead of the apparent location of the 'moonwalking' model.

[Tchos]

The unofficial patch you probably don't have, which fixes some otherwise unpatched bugs, is Skywing's NWN2 Client Extension.  Any report of mine that mentions not being affected by some bugs that affect others may be due to the fact that I've almost always had this extension in use.

[Sircowdog]

I'm running the version straight off of GOG that includes MotB and SoZ(and maybe westgate something or other? I'm at work so I can't check).

The only mod I've installed is the one to allow NPC companions to multiclass, because not allowing it doesn't make any sense.I could understand if each NPC had a pre-determined build with skills and feats, skills, and classes that matched their story. But that isn't the case.

I'll give the two community made patches a try when I get home tonight. Hopefully that'll make my melee heavy party a little more effective.

[Tchos]

Yeah, I don't understand why they chose not to allow the companions to multiclass in the OC, either, unless the ability to do so was a feature added late in development.

 

The client extension is akin to Morrowind's MWE or MWSE.  Once you install it, you need to change your game launch shortcuts so that it always launches using the client extension launcher, and then some of those problems should clear up.

[GCoyote]

The OC isn't terribly hard to begin with. Multi-class companions would make it easier yet.

[Tchos]

Easier if you know what you're doing, perhaps, but if I had been able to multiclass the companions the same way I multiclassed my first character, it would have been a real handicap.

[GCoyote]

Well yes, there is that. Perhaps they decided to go with the KISS principle.