NWN2: Discussion

[Fionavar]

Thanks aVENGER - I knew about the gold issue. If I recall, restocking was also an issue in NWN that they corrected with a patch - am I remembering that correctly?

[Gromnir]

am not sure what game people is recalling when they talk of bg1 difficulty. yeah, the first 3-4 levels could be tough 'cause you not necessary get max hps and 'cause is SSSSSOOOOOOO easy to die at levels 1-3 in d&d. most d&d games following bg1 has done away with low levels... effectively start you out at 3 or 4. level 1-3 o' d&d is terrible... just as levels over 12 is equally poor balanced.

 

in bg1 from the moment you can summons critters ('round level 5) the game is over.

 

1) summon a horde o' defenders (undead prefered as they stick 'round for a long time and 'cause they is immune to much stuff.)

2) cast web or entangle or grease or some combo when enemy is sighted.

3) if you gots zero patience or is having to fight sarevok or drizz't, cast haste...

4) destroy enemies with ranged weapons

 

every single battle could be defeated using same basic strategy... as enemies gots tougher, your number o' summons increased and your ranged weapons skills more than compensated... and it not matter what difficulty level you got game set to, 'cause to kills a lowly skeleton still is requiring at least 1 attack... and you could always summon more skeletons or other critters.

 

totsc, iwd and bg2 were slightly tougher 'cause developers took into account the over-power o' ranged weapons and summons... at least to some degree.

 

as for nwn2 difficulty... have been down this road with spider a few times, so we won't revisit yet again.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps... would really kills balance to lets you be able to use joinable npcs for social skills. in d&d pnp you control 1 character, not a party. sure, we knows some folks who willful tank their character's int... 'specially fighters, but rare is you seeing such a thing with a vet dm at the helm. skills shoulds be useful, and the party dynamic o' a game likes nwn2, where you controls a party and not just a character makes it so that with 4+ party members you coulds easily max out all useful skills even if every non-wizard npc had an int of 8 or less... which is bad balance.

 

one of the things obsidian did right were to make sure that all social skill dc were based 'pon the pc's skills.

 

'corse crafting is still busted...

Edited January 5, 2007 by Gromnir

[aVENGER]

Thanks aVENGER - I knew about the gold issue. If I recall, restocking was also an issue in NWN that they corrected with a patch - am I remembering that correctly?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Heh, to tell you the truth I never cared enough for the NWN1 OC to replay it, so I'm not really sure what effects the patches had on it. IIRC, in SoU and HotU the merchants didn't restock either.

[Pop]

I played BG2 before I played BG1, and I saw the summoning spells and thought "awesome!", but as soon as I was summoned my first ogre berserkers they were cruelly cut down. I largely abandoned summoning after that (aside from the occasional demon-spawning, especially in the unpatched game, where you could summon a pit fiend and gain thousands of xp when you killed his docile ass) and thus it was with BG.

 

But one thing I always hated was the BG2 entangle spell. The BG entangle was much more broken / useful / less of a pain in the ass. With BGtutu, I don't use entangle anymore.

[Tigranes]

Gromnir, I never said BG was hard. Hell, I've played it so many times I instinctively know where all the encounters are, etc, etc. But it's still *fun*. That's the whole point. And it's certainly more challenging than NWN2 with the right mods, way more challenging (though still not uber-difficult). BG battles are nearly always a lot more fun.

 

What's wrong with BG2 entangle pop? I still use it in Tutu usefully.

[Spider]

as for nwn2 difficulty... have been down this road with spider a few times, so we won't revisit yet again.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Indeed we have. Just thought I'd tell you that I am currently playing on max difficulty (you may not have noticed, but since you pointed out that not doing so removes the right to complain, I actually stopped complaining seeing as you were right). So far it's still very easy, and I haven't done any crafting. Although admittedly I haven't gotten extremely far (Old Owl Well completed), but still no reloading due to combat. But I'll keep quiet on the difficulty until I've gotten further.

 

Edit: Oh, I forgot what I had written in this thread, thought Gromnir was replying to what I said in Sammael's thread. Grom, I wanted a tactics style mod because I like the variety it brings. And that it brings challenges not based solely on ramping up how much damage the enemy deals (the pre-buffing and spellcaster AI of it for example). That was not so much a complaint about NWN2 difficulty, more a wish for more extreme fights to make subsequent playthroughs more interesting (and crafting more or less mandatory).

Edited January 6, 2007 by Spider

[Pop]

My hardest NWN2 fight was probably the devil fight at the farm. I wasn't playing with a very powerful party, so I couldn't kill the devils/demons fast enough. They only stop respawning once all the currently summoned enemies are dead. I had to retry it 4 or 5 times.

[jaguars4ever]

My hardest NWN2 fight was probably the devil fight at the farm. I wasn't playing with a very powerful party, so I couldn't kill the devils/demons fast enough. They only stop respawning once all the currently summoned enemies are dead. I had to retry it 4 or 5 times.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was a little taken aback as well, but not so much because it was that difficult, but because I wasn't expecting it. As far as I was concerned I was just waltzing in to good 'ol Shandra's place with couple of slack jawed jokers like the Grobster. Imagine my surprise when a mini-horde of Baatezu showed up at the doorstep.

 

But all things considered, the Double Dragon fight was hands down the toughest fight in the game in terms of sheer opposition power. Of course, if you had absolutely no clue as to what was going on in terms of strategy, then the final fight would probably be a contender as well.

[Deraldin]

But all things considered, the Double Dragon fight was hands down the toughest fight in the game in terms of sheer opposition power.  Of course, if you had absolutely no clue as to what was going on in terms of strategy, then the final fight would probably be a contender as well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I didn't really find double dragon too hard. Stoneskin + Energy Immunity on my Fighter/Rogue worked wonders. I managed to tank both dragons at once with only my main.

Edited January 6, 2007 by Deraldin

[Pop]

What's wrong with BG2 entangle pop? I still use it in Tutu usefully.

The original BG entangle was more like a Fireball than a Web spell, it was an instantaneous effect, so you could cast it while holding your party back and immobilize your enemies, and just walk in and cut them down. It was even better with effective ranged fighters. The BG2 version was a save-by-round continual thing that I didn't dig as much. Plus, like Web, it couldn't be dispelled as an AoE, so if you needed to heal or recharge your spells post-fight you had to wait around for it to end. As far as I understand it, that's the way the spell is supposed to work, but I preffered the earlier incarnation. It's still pretty useful, but with the increased BG2 movement speed and the increased hassle, I usually just use the spell slot for a healing or doom spell.

[Tigranes]

Ah, I remember it now. It amde it pretty damn useful. You can still pepper entangled people with arrows - of course, they can, as well. Ctrl+T is useful at killing Entangle once the fight is done.

[metadigital]

Ahhh, metagaming the incomplete implementation of a spell. :D

[Lilandra]

Nope, and they never restock their gold either (unless you buy expensive items from them) so it's possible to "bleed a shop dry" if you continuously sell items to a single merchant (i.e. Sand).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I wish they could fix it so they restocked their goods. You can run out of perishable items like arrows pretty quick.

[karka]

Guys, I'm in need of help.

 

I'm trying to find a NWN2 save game which Newerwinter City is accesible via the World Map just see my computers performance. As far as I know, Neverwinter is the most crowded place in the game, so it's a good choice for performence measurements. If it's too bad, I won't start to play the OC until the next upgrade.

[Wistrik]

Start a new game, walk to the part of the path near the fighting contest (past Georg), stay on the path, zoom the camera all the way out, drop to near horizon level, rotate the camera around the party until you find the point where your performance is the worst, then tweak your settings to get a compromise between performance and quality. That should get you similar or better performance for the rest of the game. It did for me anyway, and it's a good place to start. If you get good performance in West Harbor, you'll get the same or better in Neverwinter City. The only places that might be worse are certain indoor areas, but you can avoid that by keeping the camera 45 degrees or more above the horizon.

 

For me the worst point in West Harbor was when the camera was between two buildings and facing north/northeast toward the fight arena. I could see the corners of the two buildings, a nearby tree branch, and everything beyond. This seemed to drag my computer down more than any other viewpoint I tried, and proved very useful for a tweak reference. Note that some changes require game restart, and you should probably restart your computer as well. I found that if I didn't do that, my performance would degrade considerably, as if the game wasn't properly cleaning up its mess while changing settings. Also this occured in version 1.03 (the final release).

 

I hope this info is helpful in some measure.

[Tigranes]

West Harbor is usually a good point of reference, yes, now that lights and shadows indoors don't cause a disproportionate amount of lag as they did in pre-1.03. Just about the only area that will cause you to lag more is Neverwinter Castle, but nothing can fix the lag in that horrible place.

 

Going to get 1.04 beta now and see if this can improve performance, I still can't believe upgrading from Radeon 9600 pro to x800 XT did nothing.

[karka]

Thank you guys. :D