Hey Guys, my first NWN2 mod is about ready to go final

[Crichton]

I don't have NWN2 and it'll be a while before I do, but I'm curious, what was your approach to balancing and handling level/loot escalation?

It's pretty simple. There is no level escalation (the module just gives you enough experience for ECL=8 at the start and you can do whatever you want with it).

There is some loot escalation, but it's not that big a deal because you can't get super flaming, holy, +8 magic weapons. You can craft weapons that are almost as good as anything you can find at the start of the module and if you can't craft, going from a scythe to a great-club to a falchion isn't that big a deal in terms of raw power.

Armor does go up as time goes on, both because enemies in the temple have better armor than bandits or pirates and because armor molds cost moolah so you can't just buy as many as you want at the start. But the fights also get tougher as you proceed throuth the story (temple bugbears >> spiderfolk), so I think it works out fine. Parties that can craft plate mail for themselves will definitely have an edge, but I'm ok with that, if you want a tougher game, don't craft.

 

[Volourn]

Dumb question: I only see the open file for the mod; but no campaign/module stuff to put them in the NWN2 folders. Are they hidden in the big file as all I se ein there are various little files no .campaign or .mod ones..

I'm probably missing soemthing obvious. L0L

P.S. There's also the read me, and the Bugbear Battle video; but they don't help...

 

[Crichton]

The folder goes in "My Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2\Campaigns"

The file (windows thinks *.mod files are videos, blame Bill Gates) goes in "My Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2\modules"

In Vista, "My Documents" is "$USER\Documents"

 

[Volourn]

K.

Got it working thanks.

Looks good so far. Alreayd a better opening than TOEE's opening.

Only beef was I thoguht scout meant a more open rogue that wasn't actually a theif. Instead it made the character a ranger. So, I have to start over now. L0L

 

[Sodomy]

Major exploit- if you've got a character with crafting skills, you can easily buy all of the armor molds you want by simply making a shit-ton of chain shirts and selling them off.

 

[Crichton]

@Sodomy-

Whether it's a good idea or not, it's intentional; Smythe does say that he'll be happy to pay a good price for any armor you make for him. You can also make money on heavy shields. Most heavier armor is a loss because he'll only pay 100 for anything.

If people want to make money by crafting instead of killing lizardmen and selling their junk, I don't really care.

 

[Murk]

50 gold return on buying greatswords

 

[Sodomy]

It's also a 50 gold profit on Chain Shirts (40 for the mold + 2 ingots = 50 gold; he buys them for 100).

 

[Murk]

the poison arrows are hawt to, sell em in stacks of 13-14 for maximum profit

if the price is a clean 100, chances are that's the cap of what the merchant is willing to pay and its real price is higher

 

[Volourn]

Haven't played.. baisclaly, just made the characters. mOutside of my relatively small complaint above; I like the character creation process, and the story intro is 100x superior to TOEE's lameo vignettes.

btw, I alreayd know that the set levels is gonna annoy me. One of the 'cool' things about RPGs in my opinion is the leveling up process so that will take some of the fun out of it since we're stuck with the same feats, and skill set for the whole game.

Still, looks like a good mod and cna't wait to actually start playing it...

 

[Murk]

the static level aspect i liked - what i do see as a major flaw in it however is that a lot of times you build your characters as you envision the challenges to come - in this case your asked to pick your weapon before you're told what you're fighting against

 

[Sodomy]

One big failing I see- so far, I've come across exactly one dialog skill check (a Diplomacy/Appraise with the jewelers). It really feels like those points I put into Bluff completely went to waste...

 

[Crichton]

Bluff is used for a few convos in the temple, but they aren't critical, it's a lot more use for feint than for anything else. The dialog skill I think I did the most with was intimidate, after that, probably diplomacy with bluff bringing up the rear.

 

[Sodomy]

Hmm, I've encountered a problem:

I've taken the quest from Romag to get a message from Rentch; however, when I talk to him, I get no new dialog options; just the same [Lie] I've got a message for you from Lareth, asking for a drink, or goodbye. Lying about Lareth doesn't seem to get me anywhere (not surprising, given that I did give Rentch the message from Lareth earlier), and I'm given nothing that would indicate asking for a message. Am I just missing something?

Also, am I ever going to run across the gems necessary for magic crafting, or was buying a couple of books just a complete waste of money? Does Slight of Hand have ANY uses at all (so far everyone I've tried it on has had no money or items; perhaps it should be changed so that anything that someone is carrying and doesn't have equipped can be stolen?)? Happily, I did finally run across a use for Bluff, and now my party is sporting Cold Iron and Alchemical Silver weaponry.

Anyways, aside from the above criticisms, fun mod so far. The combat is challenging, but seems mostly fair (I killed the Orcs and Bugbears on the Earth Temple floor; don't know how much harder it gets from there).

 

[Crichton]

Just go back and talk to Romag again, you should have some options. I'm pretty sure you can't actually get the message unless you delivered the real one from Lareth, but you should be able to tell Romag something anyway.

Re: gems, no. Magic weapons were cut due to balance issues. The books at Rannos and Gremag's should have been cut too, I must have missed them.

You should be able to pickpocket people in taverns (The Welcome Wench and the Waterside Hostel anyway) for money. There are also some quest items that can be pickpocked here and there. I think some people also have knives that you can pickpocket.

 

[DefJam101]

R00fles!

 

[Sodomy]

I DID deliver the real message from Lareth, "The Moon is Rising" (after dealing with those spiders under the moathouse, I wasn't about to piss her off, heh). Anyways, I'll try that.

EDIT- I just talked to Romag, and got a dialog option "[Truth] Rentch is dead", which ended the quest. Of course, Rentch is perfectly alive, so obviously there's some bug with this quest.

 

[Crichton]

Yeah, I checked it out, probably half of the paths through that quest were non-functional; Romag's convo had the wrong tag for Rentsch so he thought he was dead and Rentsch's convo had the wrong tag for the earth temple quest line so you couldn't ask him about the message.

I've got fixed convos I can post if anyone wants to put them in their override.

 

[Sodomy]

I'd like the fixes for future playthroughs, if they won't break my current saves (I just plowed through the air temple, and am gunning for Antonio now).

One thing I realized earlier- if you're going to make magic crafting impossible, you may want to warn the player as such in the readme, to keep people from wasting feats on it like I did.

 

[Crichton]

When the final version is posted on the vault (probably tues), they'll be included.

Re: magic weapons, if I can find a way to allow enchantments (+1) without allow all those bonus damage dice (frosty, flaming, holy, acid, whatever), I'll include that. But when I looked it over, with the OC crafting system, unlike MotB, it's pretty tough to separate them out since they all overlap in terms of essences.

 

[Sodomy]

Don't Fire, Frost, etc. all require 10 caster levels to create? I remember looking at "The Book of All Elements" and thinking "why did he put this in here, when there's no way to craft any of it?".

 

[Crichton]

Not according to the FAQ on gamefaqs

Anarchic Weapon: +2d6 Damage against Lawful creatures
Requires: Caster Level 7, Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat
Ingredients: Faint Power Essence + Faint Air Essence + Canary Diamond
Spell: Inflict Critical Wounds

Axiomatic Weapon: +2d6 Damage against Chaotic creatures
Requires: Caster Level 7, Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat
Ingredients: Faint Power Essence + Faint Earth Essence + Jacinth
Spell: Inflict Critical Wounds

Holy Weapon: +2d6 Damage against Evil creatures
Requires: Caster Level 7, Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat
Ingredients: Faint Power Essence + Faint Water Essence + Diamond
Spell: Cure Critical Wounds

Flaming Weapon: +1d6 Fire Damage
Requires: Caster Level 5, Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat
Ingredients: Weak Fire Essence + Ruby
Spell: Fireball or Flame Strike

http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/922154/45560

I confess that I've never done must crafting until the end-game, so I can't confirm the level req. stuff.

As for the books, they're standard blueprints, they come with the TS, so I just lassoed them all and threw them in for anyone that didn't feel like alt-tabbing to look the stuff up.

However there may be some subset of the gems that doesn't let in anything bad (for instance, what if I just didn't include the four gems listed above). I'll look into it before the final release.

Edit: link

 

[Sodomy]

Removing diamond will mean losing +2's; I don't know if that's desired or not. +1's should still be fine, as they need obsidian.

Also, LOL @ the vampire bat battle on floor 5. I've never seen a fireball kill so much stuff at once, nor have I ever seen so many consecutive great cleaves.

 

[Crichton]

Alright, it's on the vault. The vault version is identical to the filefront one save

-Fixed Rentsch/Romag quest dialog (courtesy of Sodomy)

-Melubb now sells a small selection of gems, and some of them can also be bought from the fire temple or found on bodies. This allows for some magic weapon/armor crafting, hopefully nothing too cheesy made it in.



http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=292

 

[Jaesun]

I'll ask again, is this 100% compatible with Tony K's AI? I'll assume you have not made any script changes to listening etc...?