NWN2 full run

Remove all ads!

I'm about to start a full run through NWN2 and its expansions and since I've already run into problems without having even installed the game I thought starting a thread and throwing all my questions in it might be a good idea. The plan is to finish the OC probably as good-ish and import that character to MotB, then do another run of MotB with a fresh evil character (and then create a party for SoZ). But before getting to character creation I need to get the damn game to run...

I installed the game yesterday evening, in this order: base game, MotB, SoZ. Then I ran the autopatcher, it updated itself, then threw the following error: "Can not find patch file: /nwn2_pcx2_modfix.txt" and that was that. A bit of googling turns up this problem as being very common, and naturally no two people have the same solution. The supposed "golden solution" is to install NWN2, then MotB, then SoZ, and only then run the patcher, but naturally that's what I had done already. So I decided to flip it and patch before and after each expansion. So I wiped the game completely, installed the base game, then ran the autoupdate. This seems to work, as the patches then start downloading. It was late enough that I had to stop, and I plan on installing MotB tonight, then patch, then install SoZ, then finally patch.

Now my question is: does doing this mess up my game?

The Obsidian forums are full of contradictory information about this. Some people claim you should not patch the base game or MotB if you want to install SoZ. Others claim, on the contrary, that installing MotB and SoZ will increase the game's version number but will not update the modules of the OC and MotB, therefore leaving bugs in there, and that the only way to have a fully patched game is to update after each component. Who's right in all this?

In any case once I've dealt with this mess I will need to decide which characters to use. I've always favored Sorcerers so that seemed like a good choice, but I am tempted by the Warlock. Is he a viable choice and does he make the OC more fun? I'm not sure whether to take him all the way through, or take another character for the OC and the good MotB run, and leave the Warlock for the evil MotB run. Suggestions?

 

Thanks BTA. Each round of updating ended with no errors, and this time the autoupdate worked for SoZ. The game runs fine so everything seems to be in place. Now to decide what character to use...

 

the warlock is pretty borring in the beginning but can become quite powerfull in the end. If you running a good warlock I think (and I might be wrong here) you can multiclass him with paladin of all things, to gain insane saves (since both paladin and warlock can add their charisma score to saving throws).

Alternative is to do an evil warlock and throw in 1 or 3 levels of blackguard (which is actually quite fun and not so overpowered).

 

A Paladin has to be Lawful Good.

And a Warlock has to be either any Evil alignment or any Chaotic alignment.

So multiclassing with Paladin might not be so good an idea.

But Blackguard would work for an evil run.

Or multiclass the Warlock with the Hellfire Warlock class introduced in SoZ perhaps?

 

Well I'm doing the OC with a Sorcerer after all, so I don't need to think about the Warlock for now. Once I do start his run I'll need to decide whether to mix him with Hellfire Warlock or with Blackguard, but there's time for this.

As for my Sorcerer I will most definitely be taking levels in Eldritch Knight, and most probably some levels in Arcane Scholar too. For a while I couldn't decide if I wanted to make him an Aasimar or a human, and eventually went for human (I keep having to fight the urge to go back and restart as an Aasimar...). Let's see how this run goes.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

 

Well, you shouldn't run into much problems playing a Sorcerer.

Especially not if you take the buff spells that grants concealment, like Ghostly Visage, Invisibility spells, Displacement and so on.

While fire spells does make a lot of damage you will run into creatures that are immune, so you might want to take some Sonic spells, which no creatures has resistances against, and Acid, which few has resistances against. Ice Storm is nice too, since there isn't a save against it.

And you might look into the Orb spells introduced with SoZ. Max 15d6 damage is not bad.

Anyway, you probably know this already, but just my 2 cents.

Have fun!

 

Thanks, this is actually very useful, especially knowing about immunities in advance. I was relying on my knowledge of NWN1 for the spell selection, but there are a lot of new ones and I wasn't sure how good they are. I did think about the Orb spells, especially since the first level ones do a lot more damage than Magic Missile, but I wasn't sure if they were better since they're ranged touch attacks and can therefore miss. I think there was a sonic orb there, I'll take it and see how it goes.

I reached Fort Locke yesterday and have Neeshka and Khrelgar in my party. The camera is giving me some trouble indoors. I found an excellent setting on Exploration mode for outdoors, and a good isometric one (again on Exploration) for indoors, but I would've liked to be able to take advantage of the ceilings while indoors. However I can't find a good setting for Character mode, and trying to emulate a third-person view with Exploration mode indoors is rather unwieldy.

 

I started act 2 yesterday and have to admit I'm enjoying myself quite a bit. The early game was a big pain, when my Sorc's first-level spells were doing a puny 1d6 damage and my warriors only had one attack per round. Things started to get lively when I finally got Fireball (first area-effect spell), but they really took off when I got Stoneskin. At around this time everyone else had 2 attacks per round and Neeshka's sneak attack was high enough that she could do some real damage with her bow or crossbow. The game has been running very smoothly since. My strategy most of the time is to cast Barkskin and Stoneskin on everyone, Mage Armor (now upgraded to Improved Mage Armor) on my Sorc, then rush in and spam spells while Khrelgar hacks everyone that gets close and Neeshka pelts them with missiles.

Since I started with one level of Paladin, as soon as I hit Sorcerer 6 I automatically had the prerequisites for Eldritch Knight, and I've been throwing levels there since. I've already got all the prerequisites for Arcane Scholar too (one of the prerequisite feats I even got from being an EK), so as soon as I max out EK that's where the rest of the levels will go. I'll eventually throw in one more level of Paladin, but I don't want to do this in the OC as I've already "wasted" two non-spellcasting levels (one for the Paladin, and the first level of EK), so if I waste one more I'll miss out on level 9 spells in the OC. The nice thing about the EK is that the high BAB makes my ranged touch attacks hit almost all the time, and some of them are quite good.

The game is surprisingly fun so far. The forced NPCs are annoying sometimes, especially when they completely destroy the party balance, and there are far too many cutscenes. The story so far is about as generic and cliche as it gets (a shame because it seemed to have much more potential at first), but all in all I find the OC by FAR superior to the first game (having a real party most certainly helps).

 

It's a decent game, all the Oblivion fan boys pushed it down when it first came out . I'm waiting on the trilogy Rogue Dao is doing, I've played the demo and I have to say, the areas are great. MoW looks fun, but I have yet to get it.

Does the 1.23 patch iron out the remaining bugs?

 

I've run into very few bugs with 1.23. The only one I remember is that the game occasionally freezes when I pause and select and Khelgar. It happened a couple of times and I'm not really sure why. It was annoying because it required forcing-close the game from the task manager and running it again, but it's the only bug I remember having. There were some other minor annoyances with the engine being not very well optimised (such as massive slowdowns in some areas for no reason I could see), but nothing too bad.

That said I have revised my opinion of the OC, and the blame lies with the end segment. Up to then the whole thing was alright, enjoyable but not stellar. The twist at the end of act 2 (in the Haven) was more annoying than anything, mainly because everyone involved behaves like a complete idiot. Fortunately it does end with the most interesting NPC by far joining and I thoroughly enjoyed his story arc (compared to the bland Sand and the extremely irritating Qara, having an interesting spellcaster was certainly a nice change).

Unfortunately everything seems to go downhill at the end. The siege was annoying thanks to a small glitch (yeah, there was another annoying bug I had forgotten) that made the incoming siege towers invisible until they hit. Still, since I had my Sorcerer and was using Qara and Sand, both loaded with flame spells, this part wasn't too bad. Where it really fell apart is after being transported to Illefarn. The whole area is one long, boring trek across the dungeon, with one drawn-out fight after the other. Of course I hit another glitch right at the end, where one of the greycloaks with me turned hostile upon reloading the game (for no reason whatsoever - there weren't even enemies around) and become immune to all forms of damage. The fight with the 3 reavers under these conditions was a huge pain, and I may have given up on the game right there if it wasn't so close to the end. The final battle against the KoS was equally irritating: it's just gones on for too long. Starts epic, feels overdone halfway through, and by the end you just start thinkign "is this ever going to end"? Thankfully it did... followed by one of the worst endings I have seen in a video game. I had already been told the ending was bad, but I hadn't realised just how bad. This is exactly the way you don't do cliffhangers.

Anyway this was a week ago, so I'm being much milder. Back then I was screaming and cursing and swearing to never buy an RPG ever again

On the bright side Mask of the Betrayer is very, very good. I'm loving every minute of it, and though I had planned on replaying it once more it seems like I'll be doing it at least twice more (next run will be as an evil warlock devouring everything - assuming I can get a handle on how warlocks work in this game...). Now I'm toying with the idea of getting Mysteries of Westgate next...

 

You should definitely restart with the Yuanti race; they offer a bunch of bonus to abilities and +1 AC.

---------- Added 0 hours, 3 minutes and 3 seconds later... ----------

Good luck! I can't even play this game again after playing DAO. In fact I couldn't even complete SoZ. I didn't have any issues play the OC twice but after that no matter what class I picked it got boring. There was no real morale choices in the game and no matter what you did everything still worked out the same. Kinda boring. Also, the acting was starting to get to me.

If I ever do get bored with DAO I will probably come back and play the OC and MotB again. I can't get into SoZ. I just don't know why.

 

Good to hear; I like MotB, but I would have liked to see Kaelyn as another romance option. And some other things like not helping those schmucks with their crazy crusade and getting another way to get rid of the curse would have been nice. I thought it was rather odd you would help someone who cut you up and dumped you in some cave so you could get some horrible curse inflicted on you . It's fine as it is though. The plot finishes out completely with MotB, so you get something new with SoZ. I like SoZ as well, but I wish it was longer and more plot focused (making a party was fun though). I want to get Mysteries of Westgate, but, I don't want to pay for something and then have it not work right. I have all the premium modules for NWN and it crashes when I try and start Wyvern Crown and Pirates .


DA:O was so boring I actually fell asleep when I was playing it. I also found out that the MC dies at the end, always lame.

 

Munchkin, everything you described seems to be issues with the OC (and maybe SoZ, haven't really got into it yet), but MotB is a different beast. Plenty of choices, multiple ways to do many things, and while I didn't really experiment with some of the far-reaching ones (as I wanted to leave those for the next runs) I think some of them do make a difference. I'd definitely recommend giving it another shot, even if you're bored with the OC (can't blame you there, I don't think I'll ever get back to that one after the atrocious final segment)

Shardnax, you do get the choice to not help the Crusade and side with Kelemvor and the militia defending the City of Judgement (again that's an option I'm exploring in the the next run). Also, while I think you're forced to help the women out at first, once you know what's really going on you do get some... interesting options, such as devouring the soul of the one who started it all (and I'm pretty sure this is not the nice option!). Also, at the very end of the game, you do get the option to either use the Mask or not, and I think the latter isn't a good thing either. I loved the expansion all in all, and I may start my evil Warlock run straighr away before playing SoZ.

 

If MotB had only been the OC then NWN2 would've been so much better. Gann ("I am emotionally wounded. Deeply, I think. What a curious sensation.") and Safiya and Kaji were some very well-thought out NPC's.

Like Munchkin I had issues with SoZ, but only because the shift in gameplay reminded me of older games I used to play. Whenever I start playing SoZ I somehow end up playing other games instead.

I also prefer Dragon Age, but NWN2 had its moments. In fact I find it really odd that Dragon Age makes several references to the BG series but not NWN. I mean what kind of sick fantasy-setting-from-the-same-people/company doesn't make references to NPC's like Deekin? The references to Minsc were nice (those to Gaaxkang/Kangaax were lame), but WTH is Deekin?

 

I chose the helping route the first time, I started a game a month or so ago that I need to finish, choosing not to help them. I liked the feel of SoZ, I just wish there would have been more involving plot.

My real problem with DA is that there is no DnD .

 

The MotB NPCs are great. The only one that was just alright was Kaelyn. Gann and Safiya are both very well written, and Okku is just awesome. A spirit bear god as an NPC? yes please! Certainly beats a drunk dwarf, an annoying kobold (yeah, I'm one of those nutters who don't like Deekin) or Alistair Onassi.

In any case I'm all set on an evil soul-devouring run of MotB. After days of reading and experimenting I think I have FINALLY figured out how Warlocks work and how to use their invocations. I'll therefore take a female evil warlock, romance Gann, take One Of Many, and generally devour everything in my path (whatever One Of Many doesn't end up devouring anyway)

There's only one last thing I need to decide... pure Warlock or Hellfire Warlock? Normally it would be no real choice, as most of the regular classes offer nothing special after level 20. This was especially true with my Sorcerer, where there was really no point in going above even level 6 when Eldritch Knight and Arcane Scholar provided the same increase in new spells on top of all the prestige class benefits. But the Warlock keeps growing in power all the way to level 30. Now missing out on the extra energy resistance at level 30 is something I can live with (the Fire Resistance from the Hellfire Warlock more than makes up for it), but I'll also lose out on 2d6 extra damage to Eldritch Blast. Which means that I would only be getting 4d6 extra damage from the Hellfire blast... at the cost of 1 point of CON for every use). I am... undecided over whether this is worth it. Now if there is a way to make myself immune to this CON drain then it most certainly would be worth it, but otherwise... I'm not so sure. What do you guys suggest?

 

Constitution draining can be pretty vicious, especially in longer drawn out fights. The Warlock is a safer choice, if you want to make things a little more interesting, go for the Hellfire.

 

My evil warlock run of Motb is done, and I have to say I enjoyed it immensely. Doing both runs back to back was perhaps not a very good idea as I was too familiar with the game the second time around, but I enjoyed the many differences. The warlock is just insanely powerful at high levels. Starting one in the expansion meant I had Eldritch Doom and Vitriolic Blast right off the bat, and it didn't take long before I added Utterdark Blast too. From there combat was a walk in the park. Spamming blasts left and right is great fun!

I ended up devouring mostly everyone in my path, with a few exceptions because either One Of Many devoured them or the increase in craving was just too much to ignore (Wood Man escaped being devoured purely for this reason - doing so fills up HALF the hunger bar!). Some of the evil alternatives to quests were also interesting. At the final act I sided with the militia and lost one of my NPCs as a result, but the replacement was a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately I didn't end up using most of the items I got from special essences, as their drawbacks were really too much (-10 to all saves just isn't worth the advantages). I let the hunger loose again at the end, which I thought would give an evil ending, and it did, sort of. Then I read that there was another evil ending from devouring all the companions except One Of Many... needless to say I'm impressed with the sheer number of choices in this game and how deeply they affect not only the ending, but also what happens during the game. I think I'll be replaying MotB a few more times...

But not now, for now I'm moving to SoZ! After I decided on a party of course. I haven't read on which cohorts are available, but this is the party I have in mind: Fighter/Dwarven Defender, Rogue/Ranger, a divine caster and a Sorcerer. I'm unsure about the divine caster, as I initially planned on taking a cleric, but I was so impressed with Gann that I thought about a spirit shaman instead... or I may test the favored soul. As for the Rogue/Ranger I'm not sure how many levels to put in each, as I don't know what level I'll be at the end (reports range anywhere between 16 and 18). Does this seem like a good idea for a party, and which cohorts would complement it well?

I've also heard that, unlike the OC or MotB, the difficulty level affects how much XP you get from combat. Is this true?

 

Spirit Shaman is a very specialized class IMHO. In MotB where there is a lot of spirits, it shines. But in SoZ, not so much.

You would do better with a Cleric or a Favored Soul in SoZ. While a pure Cleric is arguably the most powerful class, I don't think a Favored Soul falls much behind.

Weapon Focus plus Weapon Specialization, Energy Resistance, and Damage Reduction is nice bonuses for the Favored Soul and does make that an interesting class, I think.

I can't really figure out how many levels of each your Rogue/Ranger should have, but I strongly advice you to create that char first.

Many times when you go from an area to the OLM, the game switches from your selected char to the char you created first. That will attract quite some random encounters if your char doesn't have invested skill points in Hide and/or Move Sliently.

A Rogue with good Search, Open Lock and Disable Device skills does make the game easier, more profitable and interesting I also think.

Anyway, if you do all sidequests, you will be close to level 17, and it is quite easy to reach level 18 with some high level random encounters on the OLM.

As for cohorts, there is a druid you can pick up early on that has a powerful dino companion. In my opinion it would compliment your party nicely.

In random encounters your experience level does effect the XP. But perhaps that wasn't what you meant?

Anyway there's a cheasy exploit for that. Summoning some low level summons will reduce the average party level and grant you more XP.