Wistrik
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Posts posted by Wistrik
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I was depressed about it. That pretty much sums up how I felt. All that work, gone.
It was nice seeing Capt. Brelaina and Kana doing well though.
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Thanks Spider. I didn't have Grobnar with me the first time in the glowstone cave so I completely missed it.
If you ignore the keep, some things will be different for sure:
- Your Graycloaks will have shoddy weapons and armor.
- They will do poorly at special assignments, if you bother with that.
- They will be next to useless in the events leading up to, and including the siege.
Most of the options seem geared toward Keep income generation, and may determine total XP gain in the end. The quality of the Graycloaks seemed to have the biggest bearing on the actual fighting, though the strength of the outer wall may have contributed to an easier time versus the siege engines, and may have made it possible for the battle magi to survive longer.
Since the keep was able to grow, for the most part, by my entering and leaving through a doorway, I was able to progress rather quickly in my preparations.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to what you experience by ignoring the keep. I don't think that's something I could ever do.
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I currently have a 6800GT PCIE, and I don't recommend it for playing NWN2.
It's playable at 1024x768 with high quality textures, linear/anisotropic filtering, Low shadows (character drop only), bloom, and normal mapping. No water effects, no point shadows, no environment shadows, and no hi-res. (I expect to be able to play at my monitor's native resolution, but the game is only good for screenshots at that setting.)
I'm going to be upgrading to the new 8800GTX soon. (all new core hardware in fact)
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Sorry, wouldn't let me edit my post so I figured someone would correct the info.
I'd forgotten about the dwarf in the Inn, and I never got the cloak (was in a hurry).Light of Heaven was in Port Llast (near the northern worldlink) after NW, and then at Crossroads Keep (farmland portion, on the main trail). Bummer if she disappeared on you, she's a good sargeant for training and whatnot. Her twin sister Joy, the dancer in NW you can hire, mentions not having seen Light for some time, but unfortunately I couldn't find a way to reunite them for a visit. Light of Heaven disappeared after I beat her the final time and the only way I knew she was still around was by Kana's updates. Seems rather odd, or maybe I missed looking somewhere. By then I was anxious to start the plot moving again.
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Ultima IX and NWN run like a dream on my computer, even though NWN2 has issues.
Ultima 9 better run like a dream on your computer. It was released like 6 or 7 years ago.
I know, I was among the first to get copies of it. I was there when Origin shut down the forums prior to european release, and I was one who received a new install disk in the mail. I installed it again after I upgraded my computer a year ago, just to see how it would run, and I wasn't disappointed. But after that I cleaned out my old game CDs and got rid of a bunch of them.
I still have Ultima 1 through 8 archived in a special folder. I'm an old Ultima fan, since 1983. I won't touch the online stuff though.
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Awesome,
I didn't know you could leave her there. I was always Mr. Nice Guy and invited her along, so there was never an abduction. She was with us right up to where we entered AJ's Haven. This next time I'll leave her in the tavern so as not to tarnish my relationship with Elanee. I'm really close to that point now.
I've run into several bugs/issues, but I have an eye for that sort of thing.
Also, revisiting the
dead nobles
issue...
Capt. Brelaina mentioned another dead noble last night, but she makes it sound like there have only been two, yet three names have been dicussed so far (not by her, but by Duncan and Sand, who aren't figures of authority). This particular segment of the game is rather confusing, but thankfully it's cosmetic.
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Ultima IX and NWN run like a dream on my computer, even though NWN2 has issues.
I had the horizons cranked out to the engine's max capacity in U9 and it looked sweet, though it also revealed just how cramped the game 'world' was. The only glitch was a delay when opening books/scrolls that was caused by running it under D3D instead of glide (or glide wrapper), but I finally got rid of the game. At one point I had edited all of the stores, books, and item/object descriptions. Some other fans had released a dialog patch to help eliminate some of the stupidity, but I didn't feel it went far enough.
In NWN I cranked everything I could and often encountered scenes that rivaled NWN2 for beauty and immersiveness. Sure, models were simpler and there wasn't any fog to speak of, but the wind blew, the crickets chirped, the grass and banners swayed, and so on. I enjoyed parking in that game to enjoy the view.
So far in NWN2 I haven't been so inspired, though the view behind Daeghun's house is nice. Perhaps when I upgrade and can finally play this game at a decent resolution (1680x1050) with all features enabled, then I'll be able to use it as a screensaver.
Oh, regarding NWN2 bugs...
The vein of ore that doesn't work is in the bottom level of
Logram's caves, where the shadow priest is located. You can click on it and click on it and it won't work. No XP, no mining later when you have a stronghold.
Also I find it odd that all the ore deposits have immersion-killing names, like TILE_ORE_CV1 or some such.
If you're interested, you can go to your savegame folder, under the Neverwinter Nights 2 folder in My Documents, and edit the Globals.xml file. This file contains all the current global variables for that saved game. Among other things, there are the variables for current ore deposit count (I added one point to account for the bugged deposit I found), and companion influence levels (I'm currently at 12 with
Elanee
, 11 with
Khelgar
, 7 with
Casavir
, and -3 with
Neeshka
). Note that influence variables aren't added to the file until you've adventured with someone long enough to influence them once. If you open the file in IE, you can right-click and View Source, then edit the source file and save it. Refresh IE to see the changes. Be careful with this file because you could break quests and possibly even ruin your chances of finishing the game.
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Heavy ally spoilers below. I didn't want to use spoiler tags in this thread so that's your only warning. ^_^
I tried the druids and Wendersnaven, here are my results, even with super high dialog skills (not mine, my character's)
" The Druid Circle was corrupt, and the only good druid remaining was trapped in a 'tree cage'. I used my influence with Elanee to help her see their corruption and in the end they attacked us. We freed the uncorrupted druid and he thanked us, but also refused to get involved with the city-dwellers' war.
We brought Grobnar along and talked to the gnomes in that northern town (I forget the name already) and they led us to a new area where Wendersnaven might be found. All we found was a dead bard who had a unique book on his corpse, and then we were attacked by orcs. Grobnar acted like he found an invisible music instrument, and I played along with his silliness just in case it was real. It wasn't.
Finally, according to the experience reward tables, you can only get an XP reward for having up to two allies. There is no reward for having more than two allies. In my experience, there were no more than two allies. (Ironfist Clan and Lizardfolk)
I'd like to be proven wrong on this, but I don't know if that'll happen. I hunted high and low for allies.
As for your allies' presence...
The lizard folk send one representative who hides out in the coolness of your stronghold's 'basement'. You can't have a meaningful discussion with this creature. During the siege, there's a point where you can select the lizard folk to help you with a battle.
The Ironfist Clan send no representatives, since you've already got Khelgar. However, they are selectable for all battles in the siege, and are quite tough.
The giant spider doesn't really count as an ally as far as the battle goes, but she'll spin you a magical cloak if you give her some time beforehand.
I wasn't able to finish the repairs on the blade golem (missing some sort of glowing liquid I could never find) so it wasn't present for any battles. I found the iron alloy with runes on it, and the Tome of Ilthazar (sp) and had Grobnar do what he could, but I don't think I got it working completely. At least the game gave no feedback to make me feel like I had.
I had one less sargeant than was possible, but I don't know if he would have helped much. My troops already had great training thanks to Katriona and Light of Heaven. I wasn't in the habit of hiring mercenaries (I refused a prior group) so it didn't make sense to me to pay this guy to work for me either. Things were very peaceful at my keep until the battle. Bishop made the usual nuisance of himself, which is about all he's good for. (I may edit the campaign just to get rid of him, he annoys me that much.)
I'm speeding my way to the stronghold in my second game, and I'm looking forward to another glorious victory. Except for contrived situations and dialogs, bad guys never have a chance against me.
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Here's a funny one...
I was returning to
Capt. Brelaina (she's beautiful so I return often) to tell her of our elimination of the githyanki 'assassin' threat. Upon arrival I found a female member of the Nine waiting to address the Captain.
I clicked on this knight to see her description and what pops up? "This is a lizardman."
I have a gig (1024mb) of RAM and things run okay for me. I get slowdowns when enemies spawn onto the map, and in the fire giant mountains, but I usually have to play for hours before the game becomes unstable. Then again, rarely it will lock up just minutes into play. I never see an error as it either locks the system completely so I have to do a hard reset, or it bombs to the desktop. Kind of hard to report errors when there's no information provided.
If your virtual memory subsystem isn't up to par, you can experience memory errors. Remember than all modern Windows systems treat your hard drive like an extension of system memory. Thus it's good to defrag regularly. It's also a good idea to kill all unnecessary tasks while the game is running, so nothing competes with it for CPU resources. Since I don't play the game online, I also put my cablemodem on standby to cut the internet connection; this can help because it keeps the firewall from logging intrusion attempts and so on.
Overall my experience with game and toolset stability has been slightly better than average.
Spell battles don't affect my computer, but some areas (or perhaps their scripts) do cause regular pauses now and then.
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I do. Unfortunately, though I plan to include her in modules I want to make, I don't have access to the actress who provided her wonderful voice.
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In my last game,
my lovely wood elf became a wild elf for a night.
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I like the screenshots, but have to ask how does this perform on your computer? I can see mine chugging a bit with all that architecture, especially once the fluff is added.
My only module-creating limitation is giving voice to characters, so my modules will be silent in this regard. I'll still use cinematic dialog so long as the characters' lips aren't moving to the silent text; that'd be too distracting. (Even worse than the odd way
Neeshka's
lips move... yikes.) On that note, it's too bad Obsidian couldn't get some help from the guy who animated the faces for Half Life 2; when they speak it looks downright real, if you can ignore the fact that their virtual larynx doesn't move.
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Haven't read a review that expresses how I feel exactly. The one Obsidian proudly displays on their front page (Gamer's Choice) thinks NWN2 is using the Aurora engine. Err... I ignore people who say they didn't encounter bugs, because obviously they aren't very observant. On the other hand, those who complain about bugs can get so wrapped up in doing so that they overlook the game's many good qualities.
What follows is my opinion of the game. Some views may change as the game is patched and my computer is upgraded, but I will always and forever despise forced parties.
(I have nothing against tag-along NPCs, like Shandra, Slaan or Commander Tann
, because they don't affect my preferred party makeup, and I'm not referring to these when I talk of forced parties.)
Performance: 6/10
Good: can play the game on a machine that meets the recommended stats
Bad: have to play at low resolution with Low shadows; water hurts performance noticeably even with refraction and reflection disabled, can't find a way to enable FSAA no matter what I do with my driver settings (6800GT supports up to 6x FSAA in other games)
Stability: 9/10
Good: can play for hours without a hitch
Bad: rare, random crashes to desktop while reloading; can freeze permanently in fire giant mountain
Graphics: 9/10
Good: beautiful and immersive areas, lots of screenshot goodness, NPCs and companions look great if high quality textures are used
Bad: limited variety in tree models and textures, ugly 'bottle-brush' trees
Sound: 10/10
Good: music is excellent, not annoying; sounds are clear; vocals are well done
Bad: no soundtrack CD (I can make my own though)
Fun Factor: 8/10
Good: can't stop playing, feel like I'm making the world a better place
Bad: forced parties and resulting contrived dialogs are very annoying
Story: 8/10
Good: main character has a more personal history, the enemy is well developed, lots of tie-in with the opening movie, greatly expands on a minor quest feature of Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, the distraction caused by a certain character was a nice suprise
Bad: forced party lends to contrived story elements which in turn reduce immersiveness; can make player feel like someone is playing the game for them
Adherence to Rules - no comment as I'm not overly familiar with non 2E rulesets.
Companions: 7/10
Good: generally well written, including the
romance and friendships
; they can be influenced by your actions and words; lots of humor; quests can be lengthy and typically don't revolve around the usual item fetching of other games
Bad: forced party sticks you with annoying/evil companions; some companions will
betray you
merely for not adventuring with them (or trying not to anyway); companions don't care who's currently in the party when making comments about so-and-so, even if so-and-so has never been in the party; one character's sexist comments will be offensive to some people, but he's forced into the party anyway
Combat: 6/10
Good: not overly difficult as in some games; can actually succeed with average characters; can sometimes be avoided with decent dialog skills
Bad: pathing, slippery target selection (too-small hot zones) when using mouse, incomplete attack animations due to slow animation playback, idiotic companion AI, main character stops attacking when current targets are dead unless something specifically attacks him, creatures float along the ground/warp due to internal engine lag (in singleplayer mode no less)
Multiplayer: no comment as I will never use this feature
Toolset: 9/10
Good: easy to use, mostly self-explanatory (for me), can quickly create and test new modules, can edit 2DA global rule files, more powerful dialog editing, more powerful scripting, can easily edit OC modules, many files stored in ZIP archives for easy access without requiring special archive management tool, override folder functions as expected, seems to be stable so far
Bad: as slow as the game is on my 'recommended' system
Bias: 8/10
Good: I enjoy the D&D ruleset, love fantasy CRPGs, am a sucker for classic good vs. evil plots, enjoy inter-character relationships (even romances)
Bad: I've preferred Bioware's methods and games to former Black Isle's in most cases; I'm not too pleased with the apparently KotoR-derived forced party feature, and I will purchase no further products that have this aggravation in them.
Improvement over NWN OC: 9/10
Overall: generally a big improvement, though I miss being able to dress characters in rags, tunics, and other non-armor clothing. AI remains mostly the same: weak. Weapon animations (Cleave, etc) worked properly in NWN.
Overall: 8/10
I'll recommend it to friends, with warnings about the issues mentioned above. I may play the OC once more (for a total of three times) but then I'm going to make a module with the toolset. (Perhaps "The further adventures of the Main Character and Elanee"
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Others have used characters from other games. Some liked it, some didn't, but it was done nonetheless.
I wish you well Jorian.
Nice to see NWN2 content is starting to appear at the vault. I'm not going to enter any contests, but I am interested in writing a module once I'm burned out from playing the OC.
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My brother had a PS2 for a long, long time. Had some fun times dualing up with him on games.
When I was 9 there weren't any personal computers or game machines, not even coin-op. That was in 1976. We had board games, card games, and color TV. (w00t)
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There are no wild elves in NWN2, AFAIK....
Perhaps she meant wood elf. Only two letters different. :D
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Yeah he was a henchman in the OC but they made him a bad guy in HotU. He started out as a monk though, of the Long Death variety. Nasty fellow when developed properly.
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I've been finding decent monk gear on my way through act 1 so I've been buying it and giving it to Khelgor for later. Some of it comes from merchants who disappear during act 2.
I also found that you can get additional special hats, including a magical version of the swashbuckler hat, from one of the merchants in the Merchant Quarter. (Deekin or the craft guy.)
Been having Elanee use an Elven Court bow, and it looks good on her. I also think she looks better in light/med armor. Robes don't look that great on Elanee; they're too big at the bottom and make her look like she's going to a ball (in earth tones no less). Also found out that defending Elanee while talking to the dancer (I'm terrible with names) in the Moonstone Mask gets me additional influence.
Missed that the first time.I don't know if anyone else has tried this, but if you have Elanee in your group, go back to West Harbor (before it falls) and talk to Georg. His interaction with Elanee is funny. (It'll mean more to you if you asked Georg to tell you a story during the tutorial phase of the game, and let him finish the story. I always turn off pop-ups and play the tutorial because I think it's fun.)
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OT: Don't have references in front of me but it was used back in the days of the Hebrews (Jacob 'hated' Leah, or loved her less than Rachel). Greece had four words for varying degrees of love, and likely also for hate though I don't know them off the top of my head. That is, Koine Greek (pardon lack of diacritic), or common Greek did. I've little knowledge of the upper class, Epsilon (Classic) greek. Back then it was more powerful to say someone was 'despicable' or that you 'despised' them. Hate didn't carry as much weight as it does in modern times, where it is used in the absolute sense.
Bugs...
Last night I noticed another AI glitch (imagine that). When I tell my characters to Stand Ground, they will stand still and ignore any creatures attacking them, even in melee. They shouldn't follow me around, but they should stay in the area I selected and defend themselves. As it was, they behaved as if I'd enabled Puppet Mode, which I hadn't.
Normally I put them in a safe place, but since this game employs the ages-old spawn crutch (rather than populating the map realistically to begin with), it's not unusual to have creatures spawn right on top of you, out of thin air.
As well, spawning causes a bit of lag as the creatures are loading in. I don't mind ambush spawns if they come from out of the ground or from behind a door, but popping out of thin air (unless they're shadows) is unrealistic.I see occasional flickering polygons in the horizon, but I attribute that to drivers. It's not too big a deal, though I did catch one artifact in a screenshot. I'm planning a hardware upgrade which should take care of the performance issues. And not just for this game; Half-Life Episode 2 is going to take some processor power as well what with dynamic physics, larger outdoor areas, and HDR. Also Dragon Age is on the horizon.
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I really had no idea and didn't give it much thought, though my general feeling was that it would be shorter than NWN's OC. There is certainly less running around, but more dialog, so it tends to balance out. I didn't click through dialogs unless I was replaying due to reload.
I beat the game in a week. Got it the Saturday after it was released and spent most of the day adjusting settings, after finding out the game had performance issues while running at modern resolutions. Finally had to settle on the low resolution of 1024x768 with high quality textures (looks better than low or mid textures at higher res) to get a playable framerate. Even then it tends to bog down in object-heavy areas. Bloom has little to no effect on FPS on my computer and makes some places easier to see, so I turned it back on.
Anyway, managed to get a day off during the week and played evenings on the other days. Beat the game the very next weekend. I'd estimate it took me 40-50 hours. I did every quest I could find, though I didn't bring along some NPCs to experience whatever quests they might have had.
The stronghold went fast because I had lots of resources built up, and because the game updates everything as you enter and leave the keep, so I was able to do 80% of the preparation by yoyo-ing through a doorway. I was able to complete preparation while still having 50% of my allotted time available. This is a bit unrealistic, especially since construction takes time, but with this OC I've resigned myself to the fact that realism was limited to graphic appearance, weapon animations notwithstanding. Tip: I don't know what happens when your time is up, but until then nothing will advance to the next stage (war) until you tell Sir Nevalle that you're ready. So take your time and have fun.
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Thanks for the tips. I built for her not being in the party this time, so I'll give her another try next time. That'll free me from having to spend points on thief levels for my own character.
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Alright,
Captain Brelaina said Lord Gentry was the first noble victim. No wonder I got confuzzled. They show some other noble getting dusted in a cutscene, then Duncan and Sand start talking about this guy, and all of a sudden they switch to Gentry without specifying that they're talking about the first victim.
Playing the game on the weekend only, when I'm not exhausted, would probably help me with these things.
And yes, hate is a powerful word these days. My usage is rather ancient and I'm used to discussing it with my friends, so I sometimes forget not everyone has that background.
There is an intermittent bug with the character's portrait not showing up in the Character screen, but very intermittent. I just had it happen tonight for the first time in maybe 50 gaming hours. Closing the window and re-opening fixed it.
Brought
Grobnar
along for the first time and
his bard song wave effect
bugs my eyes out. Plus with Bloom enabled
he's
like a 200 watt bulb on my flat panel display. I need to either turn off Bloom or get out the sunglasses. :cool:
An update to the traps visible when entering a level: only seems to happen if one of my party has search active when we first enter the map. Hasn't been happening all this evening because I've been leaving search off most of the time. (Meta knowlege allows me to know what areas are trapped. Saves a lot of time.)
I can vaguely understand
Neeshka's viewpoint, but I simply can't keep her around while I'm roleplaying LG. Maybe next time I play I'll make a neutral or evil character and see how she does. Might also fire up the toolset and see if her Tail flag is turned off. (I suspect it is.) She'd look more in-character with a tail.
I doubt she has it tucked into her skin-tight outfit.Deekin
had some rags for sail sale and I had flashbacks to putting rags on my NWN characters for fun. Alas, can't wear these rags.
Heh, smilies show through spoiler tags. Dang, I ruined someone's fun. :joy:
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What's to explain? I read federal regulations (CFR 49 Parts 100-185) and proofread paperwork. Mind-numbing, but it pays the bills. I don't think it's reading 'too hard' to see someone's name change in mid-stream, but I guess I'm alone in that regard.
My memory isn't perfect and I make mistakes. However, I noticed this on my first play-through and paid greater attention the second time through, and I'm quite positive it's there. Otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it.
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I helped Khelgar become a monk. It was interesting because he became level 1 and then the game let me level him up to match the party. Talk about rolling back history.
After THAT, he finds he can wield Torim's hammer.
Ah well, it was fun seeing him pass his tests, and getting back into good graces with his clan.
I'd forgotten about the dwarf in the Inn, and I never got the cloak (was in a hurry).
(I have nothing against tag-along NPCs, like 
)
Missed that the first time.
I doubt she has it tucked into her skin-tight outfit.
Ah well, it was fun seeing him pass his tests, and getting back into good graces with his clan.
NWN2: Forumite Impressions
in Computer and Console
Posted
I got what Darque had with my LG character.
I'm not surprised about the evil part.
The KoS was to guard Illefarne so his influence wouldn't really go beyond those ancient borders.
Nothing too world-threatening like the story of NWN's OC.