sorophx

the sorcerer had managed to cast Fireball before Kaftan closed the distance between them, that was the best the lizard could do, very soon it was begging for mercy. and there you have it. the lizard attacked Kaftan with those last words and had to be put down. looting the place produced two ancient tomes. this Morag sounds like a very nasty bitch. somehow Volo had the feeling they'd be meeting her soon. must be the book Jax was looking for. the pressure plate in the room teleported both drow and their companions to the surface. they went straight to Jax with their findings. and Volo took the Troll Chieftain's head to Lenton to get the reward. he also picked Revat's money on the way back. and that was that for the East Road. next stop - the Neverwinter Wood.

the third Guardian wasn't so nice. as soon as Kaftan approached it, the golem went hostile. this game has a rather strange bug. whenever a creature turns hostile towards one of the characters, it stays friendly to any other player character. and you can't hurt friendlies with spells. you already saw it in Helm's Hold. and this time Kaftan had to kill the golem on his own. good thing NWN is a game for pussies, and golems here have their resistance to slashing weapons toned down. didn't take long to destroy the giant. but! the gate was closed! now they had to find the key... what's that? a new type of enemy? I don't remember the name of that gray thing, but it was just as susceptible to Fireballs as any other monster we've encountered so far, so who cares. the other room had a group of Minogons, after disposing of them Kaftan looted the chests and found two interesting scrolls. so these scrolls suggest the Creator race is still around? that can't be good... Volo found a note on a dead body, along with a key. heh, poor fellow. at least he was able to help us after he had died. the key opened the gates to the inner sanctum. three sorcerers were waiting for Kaftan and Volo. this is one of the toughest battles, right up there with the animated swords from Neverwinter tombs. the lizards start the fight by casting invisibility on themselves, then they summon Dire Boars and begin tossing Fireballs at the party. I wasn't prepared for that kind of power. as you can see, Daelan is already down, Volo is near death and the only thing keeping Kaftan alive is his Stoneskin. we had to retreat and revise our strategy, so I teleported back to Port Llast. after healing and buffing up we came back... only to find the place empty. due to a bug the sorcerers disappeared. well, good for us, now we can loot the place and finally get out of this... oh, hello?

that's right! Revat did give Kaftan some ring. here you go, Janis. oh, I'm sorry, I certainly do not wish the wrath of such a powerful mage upon me. in the other part of that cave Kaftan found another survivor. it was Darius, mentioned in the note they had found earlier. what could it possibly be? they were about to find out soon enough. level two doesn't have anything of interest, except for Ghasts, Ghouls and Troll Berserkers. the undead have this nasty aura, a stench that lowers Constitution temporarily, good thing there's not a lot of them. level 3 is even more trivial. there's a pretty epic battle waiting as soon as the party enters this new area, but Stoneskin, Haste and Fireballs make any battle a walk in the park, at this point. after clearing the caves Kaftan and Volo finally found the stairs that led into the ancient ruins. they found a locked gate and a golem guarding it. seemed like the only way past it was to find some way to persuade the golem to let the party through or destroy it. it looked pretty tough though, so Volo proposed to check out the accessible parts of that area first. see the statues? those are gargoyles, they come to life as soon as you approach them. not a big threat, more of a nuisance. this area also houses Minogons and Horrors. both creatures are constructs. and Minogons have this nasty Area of Effect stun attack which they use constantly while not engaged. thank goodness we have Volo and his Fireballs or else this could've gotten ugly. one of the chests contained a weird looking ring, after clearing the area Volo took the ring back to the Guardian, and what do you know, it worked. the next level had a similar layout, but this time the Guardian wanted a password. it was time for more exploring. this is an interesting encounter, that chest in front contains the scroll with the password, but once you open it, three Flesh Golems come out of hiding and attack. I suppose this fight could become hard for a single character, but for our party it was a piece of cake. and here's our prize:

Lenton had some very interesting things to say to Volo. don't you just love people with a grudge, they'll do anything to get revenge. suits our team nicely, they were going to clear out the caves anyway, might as well get payed. on the second floor of that building Volo found a rather aggressive halfling. meet Delilah. she's one of the bounties Kaftan has been given in the beginning of the chapter, all we need to do is cut off her ear and present it to the authorities in Port Llast. when Delilah was bleeding like a pig she begged Volo to stop the fight and let her get away with her life, but Kaftan would have none of that and slit her throat swiftly. "It'll make a nice addition to my ear-necklace", he said cutting off Delilah's ears. it was time to enter the troll caves. there are three possible ways to take, the main entrance leads straight to level two. while two others serve as back doors leading to different parts of level one of the caves. as per usual, the party went for the storage areas first. this level isn't very fun. it's swarming with trolls, ogres. there are a lot of dead bodies lying around. one of them even had a note on it. so Kaftan and Volo were on the right track. what's more, in the next big area they found the Troll Chieftain! it was Lenton's lucky day. he was surrounded by a bunch of smaller trolls, but nothing Volo's magic couldn't handle. after the fight Kaftan claimed his prize: the neighboring cave held another interesting encounter. they found an old woman inside a magical prison. oh, you mean this ring right here?

and welcome back. I've decided to listen to Will's suggestion and will no longer post full-sized images (unless the majority votes otherwise), I will also be cutting them to pieces where possible. as a result most screenshots now look like crap, because JPEG doesn't like bright colors for some reason. but it does make the game look grim, dare I say "dark fantasy"? let's roll. well, after some rest and recreation at the Inn in Port Llast Kaftan and Volo presented Lady Aribeth with the new evidence. so, it was either the Neverwinter Woods or Charwood next. after three rounds of stone-paper-scissors the fate had decided to send our heroes to the East, where the East Road led deeper into the Neverwinter Woods. the East Road area is completely overrun by trolls. fortunately, they're not nearly as tough as the ones in ToEE. you don't need any kind of magic to kill them, the usual stabbing and slashing does a good job. there's also series of troll caves and a fort. Kaftan and Volo decided to check out the encampment first. on their way they were ambushed by a young werewolf, but a single blow to the head was enough to tranquilize the beast. it was Geth, one of Neurik's poor lads. Volo tossed a silver charm his way, and the wolf turned into a human. will do. the fort turned out to be a camp for an archeological expedition from Waterdeep. it looked ravaged, the people around the camp seemed agitated and scared. Kaftan tried asking around to find out what had happened. so, Jax was the leader of the expedition, Lenton was the head of the guards. Volo went to look for Lenton, while Kaftan took it upon himself to speak to Jax. with that taken care of Kaftan entered the barracks to check on Volo's progress with Lenton, but was stopped by some stupid looking guy. he said his name was Revat. that's a very sad story, boy. Kaftan promised to look for his "momma" when he went to the troll caves.

P.S.: I love how ghosts look in this game, for some reason.

Wynne's concept is pretty cool

any pics of it available online?

I only remember spell icons staying highlighted for auras in mage's quickbar.

I believe in you, Tig

afaik there are 6 locations in total + a bunch of plot dungeons

my elemental mage got his ass kicked the companions are just too stupid to take the ogre down on their own and fireball wasn't helping afaik it doesn't autosave and there's no way of saving/loading manually.

wait, what? unless I'm missing something, no, no it can't. nothing happens when I "press a button", just like in DAO the character engages the selected enemy and proceeds to do his routine "attack 3 times and make a special attack that doesn't do any extra damage on fourth, repeat"

that's a great pic it is, very much so. virtually unlimited mana and a million devastating spells, I'm not sure what they were trying to achieve

does it mean there's gonna be button-mashing on consoles?! this isn't fair

gah! probably some bug connected to my hardware

I meant icons in the skill bar on the main screen. I had to guess what they do, I hate non-intuitive interface

my mind can't compute

the redesigned icons are actually very bad, because I can't understand what they stand for without looking it up in the skills window, it would help immensely if it said what the icon stands for when you held the cursor over it. and health regen is out of this world, jeez, it instantly fills up the second you exit combat. I see potential for exploit. bad move. and Bio wants to talk tactics after that. pfft this annoyed the hell out of me, I hope it's just a bug, for god's sake, BioWare...

what changes are you talking about? combat hasn't changed one bit since DAO. sure, the limited choice of weapons will influence it somewhat, but if you look past it, it;s the same thing as playing with a similar party setup in DAO, only you can't pull the camera all the way up

as I understand it, only rogues can use bows or crossbows. warriors are restricted to two-handed weapons or sword/board combo

ahaha too bad there's no more room in my sig for another quote

and you liked it? what's wrong with you?! that was my biggest issue with it, what was the point of putting that part in the demo if there's really no difference... stupid BioWare

I'm willing to bet no matter how many downloads Bio gets they will claim they've reached their goal and release the items anyway. cheap PR tricks, bleh

ahaha here's hoping for an epic thread already