Storm of Zehir adds a lot to the original formula of Neverwinter Nights 2 and I shall start with the overland map. The map allows the player to interactively travel through the gameworld, as opposed to the original campaign, where you just clicked the destination you wanted to travel to when you left a location. The map is filled with various locations such as towns, dungeons, caves, crypts etc, that you can uncover during your travels (although some locations are ‘unlocked’ only through quests). It also holds a lot of hidden goodies that will be discovered only by characters with enough ranks in certain skills (for example: if the character you’re controlling on the overland map has enough ranks in ‘craft armor’, you may find a tree with a unique breastplate, enough ‘heal’ will let you find discarded baskets of clothes from which you can scavenge some bandages etc). However, it mustn’t be ignored that the Forgotten Realms are not a safe place,and there are numerous bands of various monsters roaming the roads and wilderness, which makes certain abilities absolutely vital to avoid the random encounters. Encounter related skills are: 'hide' and 'move silently' (to avoid detection on the overland map), 'spot' (to detect monsters from afar) and 'survival' (which increases your party’s speed. Useful for a quick getaway but its main function is just making the trips faster). Each random encounter has an encounter level (EL) assigned to it, which indicates how tough will it be for your party to make it through.
