Tigranes

I screwed it up. I finished the three quests, but I got influence failure and Khelgar said he wanted to think about it more. I figured if I moved on with the story more, then I'd hvae some opportunities to get influence up, since my character tended to generally agree with him, but lost somei nfluence when he was not so happy about fighting EVERYONE. Then, it got to Act 3, and in act 3 the priest isnt available and you cant be a monk anymore! I'll try it next time though.

I would agree with Morgoth's comments, but it does look like Oerwinde hasn't yet finished with details such as grass and other little things. Anyway, hakpaks offered a nice way to merge different things and it got better as NWN got older. I assume a similar thing is possible in NWN2. Still, gameplay mods are a bit rarer because they are swamped by the sheer number of OMGMYOWNMODULE.

The game really shines when you play it, especially the lighting and stuff. Character faces in some lighting can look really bad in screenshots, but they're actually beautiful. I'm playing on medium textures and generally medium settings with a Radeon 9600 Pro, and I love it. It definitely looks better than KOTOR virtually everywhere.

It's odd. Now that I think about it, I seem to remember Sand was greyed out sometimes... but the thing is, I used Sand for a fair while after the trial (he never left my party), then switched to Qara, then back and forth a few times. He always seemed to be available when I wanted him, but I do remember him being unavailable a couple of times. Really odd. Anybody else had roshan's problem?

Ammon Jerro is needed for the final part of the purification ritual, as those rituals are supposed to be required to beat KoS. However, this is an artificial and invented requirement. I find it stupid and made-up. So you go find the fifth statue, but OH NOES! ITS BROKEN! Except, someone else arleady took the power. WHO COULD IT BE? Oh look, the very next plot area you go to has the answer. There is no suspense, it was poor storytelling. It might have worked if the players were made to think that because the statue was broken, the ritual could NEVER be completed; and despite being discouraged you still had to go on and look for other methods, i.e. silver sword. THEN you find out it was Ammon Jerro. That might have worked. But whatever the case, its extremely stupid for roleplaying and gameplay that you have to carry party members around. I never picked the options that seem to suggest you can refuse Khelgar or Neeshka, but I take it that they tag along with you anyway. Why cant you say "Bye Sand, we'll do the trial on our own"? He doesn't actually help. Why can't you say "Bye Sandra, stay on your farm because I don't care about you"? Why can't you say "Go away Elanee, I dont like people who stalk me", etc? I mean, the influence system is all about not being able to get everything and do everything in one game. So why not have the same approach to accepting characters? It's not even like you can have them join your entourage but leave them in the inn all the time, they're compulsory way too often. --------- Anyway, since the thread seems to have moved on (sorry!), I think Khelgar had around 35AC at the end, 24 strength, 22 dexterity and so forth. Even if you just complete the Hammer/Belt/Gloves of Ironfist set, Khelgar becomes pretty damn powerful. On the other hand, I thought in combat Neeshka got pretty useless after the middle of act 2. I kept her around because she's one of my favourite characters, but ehh, micro'ing sneak attacks is way too bothersome in nwn2. Sort of worrying, because I wanted to try a CN Rogue->Assassin.

If you disagree iwth him and believe his attitude is childish, then of course you are going to have disagreements. I know that this doesnt totally reflect reality because in reality you are going to respect some people with different opinions, but this is reflected in the way you are able to persuade them to follow your course of action even if they disagree, and sometimes even gain influence. I think the best way to play the influence system is to play naturally; play as if the influence system is not there *at all*. That's why I think NWN2 shouldnt show those -1 +1 messages. Success/Failure messages are inevitable since otherwise you'll never know which dialogues to try agian, but I think if you get hung up too much on +1 -1 then you get dissatisfied because its harder to roleplay your character and be rewarded for it. On the other hand, if you like to manipulate your characters and pretend you agree with them, the fact that in nwn2 other characters are present to object makes it harder to 'abuse' the system like that. I think its a good system and I think it was improved in NWN2 if only marginally; and I think you get rewarded by it if you just roleplay naturally. If you miss out on some dialogues or options, so what? That is a consequence of roleplaying and You can always try a different tack next time. Remember that even if you might like a particular character and want to get influence with him, getting someone to like you isnt so straightforward anyway. After all, didnt we 'hardcore' players want real failures and consequences?

You think that's bad? I gathered the materials for a Boots of Striding +6 and it wouldn't work. And I had to spend about 4 hours looking at EVERY SHOP IN ACT 3 for a cat's grace scroll.

It's one of those games that shine in action, really. I was shuffling through my 30-something screenies, and I can say that the game nearly always looks better than the screenie for me. (Medium settings on a minimum rig)

Ooh, sorry. I thought it'd be okay since, you know, this is the spoiler topic. Yes, the rest of the post is massive spoilers and I'll cover them up now. Anyway, I meant that I am just as disappointed; however, no, it's not exactly the same as K2's. I'm sure somebody would come and say they loved it.

Oh dear God. Just fought the King of Shadows and finished the game; the ending is about as good as K2's.

Maria: This is how I realised it. Through forum searching, I discovered that if you do everything possible, Sand says "we definitely have all the evidence." I had every single thing you could get (again checked with forum searching), and yet Sand says he thinks this may do it, but he is not sure. Yep, Marcus, Nya's corpse burials, quartermaster's log, poisoned corpse, Signet Ring of spy, Callum's testimony, etc, etc. Anyway, as far as I could tell the "good" option was not to help the nymph; if you attack the nymph Elanee accuses it of being an abomination that should be destroyed; the goblins depend on the glowstone for survival; and Elanee doesnt want you to take it. Of course, I dont think theres a good or evil option anywhere in that quest.

I love Zaxis. "Game looks bad without shadows, normal mapping, high textures or a rig above minimum specs." WRONG! Look at that lovely Earth Elemental. The Wendersnaven are awesome, talk to Grobnar a bit and it's obvious what they're a parody of.

In dungeons I make sure to only rest once at least one level is clear. Ideally I wouldnt rest at all in a single dungeon, but the OC's dungeons are way too long and it's not fun to fight 30 enemies without spells. I also dont rest if the story puts me on a time limit (i.e. rescue that person) or if there is a boss right in front of me. It's stupid that they'll just stand there and let you rest, and its more challenging anyway. Also, excessive resting makes clerics and potions pointless. You haven't known excitement until you are down to your last freakin potion and 3 people have 1hp. Volo, arent you the one that claimed traps do laughable damage? I certainly think so, after a while I stopped bothering to wait 5 seconds to disarm traps even though I like Neeshka and keep her around. In this aspect Oblivion was excellent, you'd get hit by something out of nowhere and it could kill you in early levels. A "Deadly" trap should do at least 60 damage.

He meant that thanks to being forced this kind of stuff so often in JRPG, he doesnt mind too much anymore. Surely Volo, you are smarter than that. But yes, the only 2 major gripes I have with NWN2 are that companions are forced (one for freaking 1/3 of the game?! you have to admit its a poor design choice even if you love the said char, Volo), and you cant attack neutrals / friendlies. You can't make any choice that the devs did not account for. Furthermore, even the quests seem to be odd; for example, in a particular quest , instead of doing the quest-giver's bidding I simply pickpocketed the item I wanted from her. The journal, and thus the quest-scripts never recognised this, and when it came to the trial, the scripts didnt realise that I had this item! NWN2 is much mor erestrictive than IE games when it comes to this, and this was not necessary at all. In most cases it would require very little extra scripting.

roshan; have you JUST finished the trial or are you some way ahead? Where are you in the story?

Kreia was unique and defined the story, regardless of whether one liked her or not. I liked her, so the story was lovelay. I agree that the plot itself was better in KOTOR2; however, in terms of gameplay implementation I say NWN2 was superior (i.e. bringing the trial and Crossroads keep and recurring elements into the game).

You have to, yes. I had to have Khelgar use res-rods to get someone to read the names, then lure the reavers to Khelgar. It was really hard because effectively i had only Khelgar fighting 3 people and keeping Ammon alive. Could have used more rods, but not much my mage or Qara is going to do with no spells. Same with the cleric.

Mainly I had the problem with the final dungeon because I got lost and ended up fighting every single critter in the place. Then I tried to rest about 10 times. Then I fought the Reavers. Still, yeah, it's good to have one area like that that screws you over. Gonna go out, but Ive just killed Garius and about to fight the King of Shadows. I still get 10fps indoors so managing 10 party members is a beach whale, but it's fun. Speaking of betrayals, I had

Both NWN1 adn NWN2 are linear. YOu can argue NWN1 was more open-ended; I'll concede that. THe fact is that it doesnt matter at all because 1/ the story was so crap you didnt want to go ANYWHERE, 2/ you could choose where to go but the choices once you got there were poor, and 3/ I dont call "Get 4 Objects, YOu can choose in which order to get them even though they're all exactly the same and you do exactly the same things" choice. I call it stupid design.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAA

I agree with Volo.

You can do it and you always could do it. I dont know what DR's on about.

I don't think so. Anyway, at least you dont have to carry Ammon around in your party for 10 hours like you do with Sandra. I'm in t he final dungoen now and it SUCKS NUTS you can't rest AT ALL. Apparently every once out of about 10 tries you CAN, but all the other times you get swarmed by stupid minions. What i hate about final dungeons is that they try to make it hard by spawning lots of enemies, but allt hose enemies suck. I ran out of spells a long time ago, and Khelgar alone has killed about 50 shadows, shadow priests, mummies, blade golems and crap. And now I"m about to fight some Reavers except I CANT REST. Gah. Just tried 10 rests, 10 spawned monsters.

Yeah, because it's real immersive, ain't it? Bio did get a lot of criticism for it, but of course, this being on message boards, who knows. Bio themselves admitted that lots of people did not agree with the OC's implementation. If you want to be anally retentive and ask for exact quotes by Bio devs with dates, secure links and signatures by the Pope, go find someone else.

Depends on the person. Some complain about the camera but for me its not buggy at all. Its a little wonky because zoom speed is too slow and sometimes the camera changes (i.e. when you're under a bridge or an arch), but this happened in NWN1 as well, isnt frequent for me, etc. I've encountered virtually no bugs and I'm nearly done with the game. What's more, I"m playing on 1.00. The only bug that I even noticed was Blacklake crashing at a particular moment, but I discovered that was because I Used the console to have too many party members. It's not like my system is great either, I"m barely minimum but with medium settings (looks good) I get good fps outdoors and laggy but sorta ok indoors. Performance and bug wise I have no complaints, whereas some will say this is a beta.