Cantousent

EDIT: Oh, I'm confused. No suprise there. Yeah, it's tough on someone who keeps their craving pegged. You have to manage trips very carefully and once you get past a certain craving, you're going to be stuck doing some tricky stuff to try to make sure your craving goes down. Bestow Life Force is the easiest way IF you've got enough to work with. Suppression is the best method over time. Satiate is your only recourse if you've gone down the spirit/soul eating path without picking up other feats. Suppression IS the best way for a good aligned character to control craving. While some folks suggest round trips, I don't. If you read my suggestion, I use resting as an example. In fact, more resting equals better spirit energy control. If you'd like, in the spoiler area, I will go through a step by step instruction on how to play without using Devour Spirit (or Soul) . I know this can be done because I've done it. In fact, unless my duties required otherwise, that's how I ALWAYS did it. EDIT as regards the whole restoration thing: I bugged that. Too bad they left it in the game. Frankly, one level is not an excessive penalty in many areas. They used to have a timer on Satiate, though. At least if I remember correctly. As it should be, playing strictly good or strictly evil both require more effort on the part of the player. Also, since editing, Okku really does help Suppression, but the plan I posted in the spoiler area works without him. Just more slowly. If you want to mix and match, you can devour and suppress. It's not even hard unless you devour more than once a day. Hell, suppress your craviing to zero and you can devour a spirit a day to keep the hunger away.

There's a really simple way to handle suppression. It's very easy. You need never feed on anything if you don't desire. You need not even use eternal rest, although I don't see why you'd want to avoid using eternal rest unless you'd take a hit for good alignment boosts. This isn't even a spoiler. It's just common sense. If you rely on suppression rather than feeding, you aren't restricted from resting. You need to rest right away. The second you have the full afliction, you need to go into Mulsantir and find an area with a spirit. Say, a frisky little badger. Then you need to make sure Okku is with you. You may even summon a couple of elementals, one from Gann and one from you. Suppress. Rest. Repeat. Very soon, you'll net more from resting than the cost in Spirit Energy. After that, you not only CAN rest, you MUST rest regularly to keep your Spirit Eater bar high. Remember, suppression is a supreme act of will. It is inherently lawful. Taken to its furthest extreme, suppression requires the character to follow a strict regimen of self denial. That's why it is, indeed, harder to be evil in the long run. However, there are a lot of great perks that make up for the difficulty of being evil, just as there are great perks for being good. The easiest short term road is a mix. That's as it should be. I will say this. Whether I had anything to do with this decision or not, I certainly advocated this most strenuously. I had heated discussions regarding this very issue. I wrote probably one of the longest bug reports in the data base that amounted to extended commentary on this very issue. I was reprimanded regarding that report. I'm going to leave it at that, but I believed then, and I believe now, that the spirt eater mechanic is better the way it is now, which is by and large the way I wanted it. Whether I had even the smallest influence on the decision is debatable. However, I'm glad they did it the way they did. I was just a tester. I don't have a particularly grand view of my input into the process. ...But I will say that I stood my ground on the issue and I stand by that report. I think that the spirit eater mechanic could have made the game more work than fun.

Suppression is even more effective than Pop describes. I've included my remarks in the spoiler thread. I had running arguments regarding the Spirit Eater affliction from fairly early in my time on the project until I left.

The last time I fought that battle, I DID take Okku with me. I've taken everyone into that battle except Kaelyn. At one time, it think they let you take everyone, but I'm not sure. Of course, at one point you could invite all four NPCs at the same time. Made the game really easy, also. Unless they've changed it, the game gives you the highest influence person except that love trumps all.

They let you take more than one NPC with you? Hmmm Interesting. No comment.

Okku combined with Bestow Life Force is easily the best person to aid you in the final battle. Safiya and Gann just don't come close. Safiya is especially extraneous for my builds. Remember, he's talking a bard.

Suppression works quite well for folks who think ahead. Unless they changed it between my exit and shipping, it is easily quite powerful. You just have to think ahead, plan, and stick to your routine. Sorry, Xard, that's lawful behavior.

Make good friends and keep them close. I'd suggest making sure Okku is your closest and dearest ally going into the final battle and not having a romance with anyone. Personally, I think you could do it, but making it a little less hair ripping might help. Safiya can live through the battle, but it's a bruiser.

Well, Xard, imagine playing a barbarian. :Cant's smiling with one eye-brow raised but telling no stories icon:

Yeah, I found my runs pretty much didn't leave me a lot of time to do the quests unless I fixated on creating a plan. I did that for a while, but then I just didn't care if I had a few missions "fail." There were side quest missions that were important and I just put them up on a higher priority. At the time I played, some of the missions were broken where, even after I'd fulfilled every requirement, the mission never completed and thus timed out.

That was great Jags. haha I love it. Emental, Yentl!

I went to Ocean of Virginia Beach this morning for the first time since I was stationed at Dam Neck. It was like returning to the scene of a crime. haha I went down to the beach, where I used to run virtually every day. I would put on my boots and run five miles back then along the water line. Let me tell you, salt water is a real bitch on clothing. Anyhow, I walked down to the beach with my brother in law and walked into it a bit. My pants were wet up to my knees. If I hadn't had my cell phone and wallet and all sorts of other items on my, I would have got swimming, clothes and all. The urge was almost overpowering. As it was, folks obviously thought I was a little crazy. That's good for them because it gives them a story. It's good for me because, by and large, I really don't care if folks think I'm crazy, emo, or <insert any other label here>. I'm going to return tomorrow with a bathing suit. We're only a few miles out from the beach at this location, although we're going to be about five miles after this weekend. I hope to return home by the first.

I didn't think the orc caves were a significant problem. Mostly, as Mus? says, they were a slow, plodding march through a bunch of enemies. In fact, the only areas of NWN2 that were tough were the areas that lingered just a little too long. I thought NWN2 was a good game, but it had a lot of areas for improvement. MotB went a long way towards improving the NWN2 experience, but I think there's more that Obsidz could do with the engine. It would be nice to see another expansion, but who knows?

However, in a bizarre turn of events, I might end up with two more gigs. The OCZ memory for Shell's computer died about a week into use (yes, I manually set the voltage, so that wasn't the problem) and I put Patriot memory in her system. She doesn't really need high performance memory, so the ones I chose for her run at a lower voltage. Anyhow, the upshot is that she doesn't want me to put the new memory in her system when I RMA her OCZs, so I'm going to put the two new sticks in my system. Nice, huh?

Hehe I was asleep at the switch.

I've already got 4 gigs.

This is a funny line. I will be honest, I don't remember much of it, but I'll take your word for it. :Cant's tongue in cheek grin icon:

There are three different folks to feed to the ape-folks. You can trick the Shou merchants, you can trick two of the berzerkers, and you can trick Anya. I've done all three to test, however, I'm boring. I play these games multiple times and have virtually never played an evil path and have never finished a game as an evil person. I think One of Many's evil assed lines are the funiest in the game.

Tigranes, look in the spoiler area for some hints.

Well, if you want a harder fight, take on that battle with no-one except Okku in your party. Unless they went completely brain dead, there is no one else to turn against you and you have to do all the heavy lifting by yourself. Of course, unless you've got mind blank or some other similar effect going, you'll end up doing all the heavy lifting anyhow. Some of the DCs in the game are literally impossible without a roll of a natural 20. At least some were when I last played. I also thought that was a great idea. I think making it through the game without a single devouring of spiirt (until the very end) is fairly tough. I thought it should be tougher, but I wrote a long and contentious report saying is should be possible to do so. I think it should have been harder, as I said, but I would rather it be possible and easier than it should be than impossible.

Nope. It's Okku and One of Many. One of Many has some of the most hysterical lines in the game. However, Okku is a better choice for all of my builds. Hell, Okku is just plain better altogether. He's an absolute brute, if you'll pardon the pun. One of the things that should have and would have made the game much better is a certain spot where Okku would turn against you during another fight. Some misguided soul wrote up a bug report that the fight was impossible (not true, since I finished that fight before they "fixed" it). It's really too bad, because that made for an interesting battle. Since I'd left a whole stack of healing potions on him, I literally had to do a HUUUUUGE amount of damage to him. ...And THEN I had to finish the damned hag I was fighting at the time. It was a great surprise.

Haha. This is great quotable material. :Cant's chuckling icon:

No. I don't remember that quest, which is really odd, since we had to make sure all the quests were completable before the game shipped. On the other hand, they were still working on stuff when I left. I always tried to do cold runs as if I hadn't played any of the game, so I didn't console in weapons or use the bonus scrolls unless directed. We could use them, but I took what the game gave to a player starting a fresh install without bringing characters or items from the NWN2 campaign and without the preorder bennies.

The books were supposed to be in a stack of scrolls next to a burnt out campfire very early in the lower barrow. In fact, that's where you fight the first barrow guardian also if I remember correctly. At one point, all three scrolls were there when we first tested, which meant we could make a pretty awesome weapon right away.

After putting Vista 64 on my sister's computer, I'm sold on it. It runs very well on 2 gigs, and I'll be running Vista 64 on my computer when I get home. The laptop, however, will remain xp. My raptor is ATA. I like it and it's working just fine. I agree on the size of the drive, though. I just don't need that kind of space just yet and will likely just build another system if I do.