The party's struggle for survival in the jungle gave the Atari demonstrator the opportunity to show off the game's new overland map. This new "living map" stands in stark contrast to the standard static map that merely offered a representation of the land available to explore and static "teleport" buttons that would jump a character between set pieces. Now the map shows off tiny moving representations of the party as well as any friendly or enemy NPC s in sensory range of the party moving about in real-time. By steering the party around the map, the adventurers can hit or avoid a number of randomly generated monster encounters. Depending on which character is in the lead, the map can also use seldom-utilized skills like survival to reveal treasure caches, hidden ruins or even little side-quests that the party can explore. While these won't be terribly extensive in the official campaign that accompanies Storm of Zehir, the developers expect this to be one of the big new features for adventure creators and modders in the Neverwinter Nights 2 community.​

While Volo heads off to negotiate with them, the party has an opportunity to explore some of the new conversation options. Since you're in charge of a four-person party now, you can use each member to access different dialogues. The fighter in our party, for instance, intimidated a soldier into giving up his sword, while our rogue used diplomacy to convince another survivor to hand over her bow. This is all part of the developers' efforts to make your characters' skills more meaningful throughout the game. Another extension of that thinking is the ability of craft-trained characters to create weapons out of the wreckage that has washed ashore.​