Order of Campaigns

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I'm going to play through the tree official campaigns at once with a Druid 10/Shifter x. Now what would be the best order to do them?
1)OC->SoU->HotU
2)SoU->OC->HotU

This question is in fact the equivalent of the following question which might be answered instead: Which campaign scales best for a high level starting character, the OC (starting with about level 12) or SoU (starting with about level 20)?

I suspect that the answer will be OC so in fact order two, but I'm not sure so I'm looking for some confirmation. (or tell me if I'm wrong)

 

Both the OC and SOU are designed for first level characters. To say that SOU is an expansion is, in my opinion, extremely misleading. It is really just another module designed for it that has story elements of the OC and some background story for the henchmen in that appear in HOtU. So, either way you go, OC first, or SOU first, you will just walk through your second choice. For a challenge, i would suggest playing either the OC or SOU first, then getting one of the modules that were just submitted to bioware for thier "bridge the story between SOU and HOtU" contest. Then play HOtU. that is just my suggestion though... i'm sure many other people have different ideas. either way you pick, should be fun. the Shifter is an entertaining class.

 

Acually, the reason I want to play all tree campaigns is in the hope of getting beyond level 27 at the end of HotU, since I haven't found any decent solo-module yet for epic level characters. (which is logical since the modulemakers haven't had enough time since the launching of the expansion to already finish their modules). I know that the one I do second will be a brease but I thought that I already saw some degree of scaling in OC. And I would only start 11 levels to high in contrast with the 19 levels if I did SoU second.

But concerning those "bridge" modules, how far finished are they?

 

they are finished... and a winner has already been chosen between the 2 best. I would save a link to the page about it, but I can't seem to get thier site to load right now.. errrr.. So, just go to bioware.com and click the Hordes of the Underdark. The news part there in the middle should show some info on the contest and it's winner. I think that is right. could be wrong, since I can't actually see it right now.

As for your plan, a quick way would be to just load your character into a DM'd game and give him the xp you need. Cheap, but effective. You would need two computers that are networked for this however. Or, if you knew how, you could build a leveling up module, join it, and pick your lvl. Then play HOtU when you think you are high enough. just ideas.


yeah, it only took 5 mins to load each screen, but here it is. link to page containing the winner and the runner up.
http://nwn.bioware.com/builders/bridgemodule.html

[ January 11, 2004, 07:01: Message edited by: the bum ]

 

If the ONLY reason is to get your character at a higher level, just turn on Debug Mode and give yourself some XP. Or DL one of the leveling up modules. If you don't like that idea, and want to do it in a more 'legit' way, then I'd say SoU should definitely be the first you play. But the vast majority of the OC is going to be ridiculously easy.
Plus, remember that with the scaling method that you are given XP, when you are ridiculously high level for the module you're playing, you'll hardly be getting ANY XP from encounters. In the long run, you won't end up with all THAT much more XP than if you just did the OC and HOTU. You'll have more XP, but not as much more as you might think.

 

I tried to do the very same thing and was going to do a Sorcerer from OC-SoU-Bridge-HotU and found out that it wasn't really a walk through the park. Most of the encounters are level based so I encountered a Ghoul Lord (I used DebugMode to get myself to level 10) in Beggar's Nest.

 

The reason I thought it would scale well is because the OC was designed to work good in multiplayer, and since there you could easily make groups of 10 level 4-5 characters, I thought that equivalate to 1 level 12 character.
Maybe wrong on the number of characters, it's possible the scaling couldn't handle those 10 characters though.

As for the pre-leveling up, I've already modified The Halls of Advanced Training to take me to level 40, but I only use it to test some builds and to see how they turn out. This is especially usefull since that way you discover things that are not or badly worded in the manual. Only problem is that I should also change the arena so that I can test there a character from any level. (for the moment I have the original module, just changed the dialogues of the dragons) I also used it to get my character at the starting level for some modules, if the modules themself hadn't any way of getting your level 1 character at the right starting level.

But if I level him up to much, I won't be forced to use the lower level abilities of the build, which is the whole point of playing through modules starting at level 1. And concerning not enough difficulty, HotU isn't really hard IMHO. I have only tried it with a Monk though. And I didn't use any upgraded Kama, just my fists.

To maximize the experience, I'm thinking of soloing with only the animal companion, since his level will be way below me, which should increase the XP.

Since the bridge modules are finished, the new order would be: SoU->bridge->OC->HotU. At least if the bridge doesn't automatically launch HotU.