timski

If in doubt, focus on Persuade (since only your character can do it and it opens up a lot of dialogue) and Repair (great for breaking down items, which again only you can do). After that it is "swings and roundabouts". Demolitions and Security will open up some more options at the very start of the game, but nothing you can't live without. And in the long term, other skills may prove more useful.

I guess it depends how you play. Personally I find most combat is pretty easy, even with non-combat characters. Ultimately weapon upgrades and items can turn the weakest characters into killing machines. And as noted above, prestige classes will give you a second throw of the dice part way through the game - allowing you to refocus after you've built up the basics. Certainly, you can over-do skills. But only later in the game when really high skills aren't needed by more than one character. I find that early on, good basic skills are more useful than combat ability.

Hit the space bar a few times before you get the green light.

There's a funny moment on Telos when you take the Ithorians' new droid back to Czerka, and it tries to enter the computer-room. The door opens and it clutters forwards, but then the door shuts and it is left outside. There's one line during a conversation in the Iziz cantena where Mandalore seems to revert to the original Canderous voice. In the following line he goes back to the filtered voice he normally uses. Suddenly it all falls into place... But blink and you miss it. Get into the Ebon Hawk's medical room while fighting the slavers at Nar Shaddaa, and you'll discover there is a Lab station set up in there. It isn't there before or after.

It's worth putting lots of points into INT at startup and then never developing that attribute. Try 16. Reason is simple. INT determines how many skill points you get to spend at each level-up. So if you start INT low, you won't be able to take many skills at the first few levels. Even if you subsequently enhance INT, you'll never be able to get the skill points you could have spent at earlier levels. Other attributes are more forgiving. That assumes skills are important. It is possible to have a lead character with no skills of note, but it restricts gameplay somewhat. You can miss quite a lot of opportunities if your main character lacks skills. While some degree of specialisation in things like Repair and Persuade is very good, it is worth throwing at least some points into more marginal skills like Security. Throughout the game there are moments when you can't draw on the support skills of other characters, but you can equip items that will turn a modest skill into a reasonable one. Security isn't absolutely needed, but you'll get loot and experience with it. On a related note, the difficulty of mines and locks varies with the difficulty setting of the game. I'd originally underestimated constitution as an attribute. Don't start it too high (maybe 14), but do try and get it up to 18. Some of the implants are great - not only can they make up for deficiencies in certain other attributes, but they can be quickly swapped about depending on what bonus you need right now. Of course levelling isn't the only way to improve attributes.

Good thread. The game is an expansion pack. It does almost everything an expansion pack should do: Creative reuse of old game assets, tweaking game mechanics, and so on. Except console titles don't have expansions, so we've got a "new" game. It might just work as a trilogy. Right now the game may as well finish at Dantooine. I would have been happier if it had, since up till then the game felt excellent. Everything after that almost ceases to be a roleplaying game. May as well be playing a shooter with a few cut-scenes between the carnage. My gripe is with the way the game feels in its closing stages. It's as if the budget for voice acting ran out, and the designers were forced to script no dialogue. What I don't understand is how the game's producers could allow such an approach - it would so obviously destroy any game in this genre. Weird.

If you can't see the links, you can use FTP directly: ftp://ftp.lucasarts.com/patches/pc/ - they all start File: KotOR2 Patch... Anyway: 2.01.420 English. If I'm not mistaken (which is possible) the patch also adds an extra "Known issue" to the readme.

Meanwhile back at the topic... I briefly read the support forum on Thursday and almost didn't buy as a result. Does create a rather negative impression. But it is difficult to judge the extent of problems because the satisfied punters are too busy playing to post on forums. Based on about 12 hours of play, I'd rate it about as buggy as the first game was upon release. I'd rate that as almost, but not quite, unplayable buggy: Inherently unstable with a few issues that make you wonder if it couldn't have used another month of QA. But nothing that a few work-arounds (like saving very regularly) can't solve. My main point is that the game itself is very good: There is enough gameplay to counter my annoyance at poor technical implementation. Obviously those that can't install it or get it to start may disagree here . (P4-1.7, 768 RAM, GF3 64MB, W2K SP4 - in case you were wondering.)

Read this if you haven't already.

Contention:* There are (at least) two release versions - 2.00.420 and 2.00.424 - since I have the first, and you have the second. The update server only knows about 424 - hence there is no patch from 420 to 424, the updater is merely getting confused trying to find one. What the difference between 420 and 424 is I guess we'll never know. (* Yeah; I've been playing too long already .)

Earlier today the updater didn't: It couldn't find http://swpatch.obsidianent.com/swkotor2/sw_pc_english.txt or something to that effect. Now that file is there and says latestgameversion=2.00.424 . Except that when it tries to patch it reports: Can not find patch file: /swkotor2/sw_pc_english_from200420_to200424.md5 , and points at http://support.lucasarts.com/patches/Kotor2.htm which doesn't have anything. Is there actually a patch out there somewhere?

Couple of observations that might help with the "one frame every two seconds leading to complete loss of movement" bug while initially in the Peragus fuel tank area: If you spin the camera around to point just to the left of the entry door, your frame rate will return to normal until you change the view again. It is really hard to move and fight at such an angle, but this might be useful to momentarily take the strain off whatever hardware struggling. After the combat has finished, the frame rate may return to normal - no idea precisely what triggers this. If the frame rate doesn't return to normal, the droid gets stuck - no movement is possible. Having got stuck, reloading doesn't always solve the issue, even when reloading a save prior to entering the level; but restarting the game should. So my advice would be to reload a save made just prior to entering this area, and replay the sequence a few times until you get lucky and complete it without getting stuck. Unfortunately I don't understand what causes the frame rate to return to normal after the battle - perhaps you have to fight the battle very quickly, or kill the enemy droids in a certain order, or just get lucky with the way they die, or something. Edit: Few more experiments. The odds of even seeing the initial framerate slowdown seem to be reduced considerably if you restart the entire game immediately before first entering the level. The level is still a little shakey, but playable. (This isn't entirely unexpected; the whole game seems to be littered with resource (eg memory) leaks, most of which will be cleared by a restart.)