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Neverwinter Nights 2

dteowner

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Now that I've completed Dodd's Wiz8 mod, I'm ready to fire up NWN2 Gold. Any general recommendations before I get started, folks?
 
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Nothing out of the ordinary - plan your character, and so on. Untill you get to Neverwinter, the game is a bit slow, but after that it's very good.
 
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The biggest frustration for me when I started was the camera. Somewhere in here Prime J has a good recommendation for the settings to keep you from pulling your hair out by the roots. It's possible things may be a bit better now after all the patching, of course.
 
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I do?

I remember a bit of pulling my hair out by the roots, but I eventually figured out something that works for me, more or less. In Strategy Mode:

* Camera directly on controlled character
* Turn camera when mouse hits edge of screen
* Scroll camera when mouse hits edge of screen

Re character development: there's a point fairly late in the game that you're forced to go solo without warning, so be sure to develop a character that can survive that.

Spoiler: you'll be facing
Vampires, mostly.
 
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Yep that was it. ( or more correctly, those were them???) Anyway,those settings were the ones I ended up using and kept my grey hairs in place.
 
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Camera is horrible. Try to get used to it before you head to neverwinter. Some places, quests are extremely boring and battle orientated... and NPCs can be annoying but you have to satisfy them (some more than the other). Try to figure out who you are going to carry around... because some NPCs conflict a lot and you won't get influence with lot of NPCs then.
 
Obsidian decided that they didn't like the way Bioware did their camera so they rebuilt it. Now you have to go through a series of hoops if you want to try and get it back to the way you are used to.

I fired the game up the other day to test my 7.1 speakers and in a lark tried to see how well my machine handled full graphics. The opening screen is black and the cursor is constantly strobing. I've patched it since then but haven't tried it out yet.
 
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Boy, you folks aren't kidding about the camera. I hate the way it acts in strategy mode, but I don't feel like I've got any perspective playing in tactics mode. In their efforts to make it "pretty" and "modern" compared to NWN1, they've just made it annoying. Oh well, I've been wrestling with all the settings for a while now. We'll see if I can find something that I can get comfortable with.
 
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IIRC they made some improvements with the MoTB expansion. When I played the OC, I had MoTB installed, so I didn't have as hard a time as people just playing the original game. It was still a bit difficult to get used to, but by them time I hit Neverwinter, I could pretty easily make it do anything I wanted.

Of course, maybe it was an advantage that I played NWN all of about 4 hours so I wasn't comparing the two games' camera controls.
 
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One thing to remember is that your party will reset positions if you have a pending battle, it goes to a cut scene on you, and then flops you back in the heat of battle. Be ready to redo buffs, postions of your NPC's ect.
 
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The game would be so much easier to play if the camera would just lock to maximum distance and a compass point (NE/SE/SW/NW), and let you rotate the map in 90-degree increments if you want to. IOW, just like Baldur's Gate, only with 3D graphics.
 
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I've got MotB installed, so perhaps it could have been worse.

Haven't gotten to play much yet (just finished the fair tutorial). I'm sure there's a restart or two in my future. I don't suppose there's some way to trick the camera into a nice set isometric? While I much prefer 1st person "blob" ala Wiz8, you need a higher sight line to manage tactics in a D&D setting. I got used to NWN1, so I guess I've just got to quit whining and deal with it.

What happened to the turns in combat, BTW? Although NWN1 wasn't TB, it wasn't so difficult to keep tabs on the flow of initiative. 3-on-3 during the fair (and the first attack) was a total mash in this game. The caster seems to be throwing spells before I give order #1. Looks like I need to spend some quality time with the manual.
 
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I'm firing it up again tonight, now that school's over for the summer I can finish a bunch of games been collecting dust. It's still patching, been going for a while now, this is like an MMO style patch job I got going on here!

When it comes to dealing w/ the members of your party, the way I play the game is with the ai on all my characters on "puppet" mode, and just pause a lot. They dont do anything unless I tell them to. It takes longer, but i get the results that I want. Most of the time anyway! ='.'=
 
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Restarting an action game, or an RTS or FPS, or anything like that isnt that tough for me, but I just cannot restart an RPG like this.

It's been a year since Ive fired up NWN2, and tho I'm around 1/2 thru (after the trial and all that), I just cant continue it. Tho I have a journal and all that, I'm lost - on the story, on the way I was playing w/ my relation to the world around me, Ive lost my stride. All the spells of my party, mine, ugh.... This is horrible! I dont really consider the time lost, as I had fun when I was playing back then, but it's definitely not feeling very good to be in this position.

There's no two ways around it - I'm going to have to restart. And I need to make sure I always complete any rpg that I start, this happened w/ Baldur's Gate as well. ArGH!

My advice - dont throw it on the back burner, finish the game!
 
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Know how you feel Sammy. I think that was part of my prob with MotB--I'd forgotten completely who I was, what I was supposed to be doing, and how the @#$! I was supposed to do it. I'm beginning to think the only way I'll ever make it through MotB is to start over and go full tilt through the whole thing. As you say, there comes a point where you've just lost the rhythm you originally had going.
 
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What happened to the turns in combat, BTW? Although NWN1 wasn't TB, it wasn't so difficult to keep tabs on the flow of initiative. 3-on-3 during the fair (and the first attack) was a total mash in this game. The caster seems to be throwing spells before I give order #1. Looks like I need to spend some quality time with the manual.

The turns are still there, and the manual isn't very useful. I think that NWN2 adheres to the rules more strictly about initiative, free actions, and times taken to perform an action, though. To get a feel for how they work, set everybody to puppet mode, pause, and queue orders at them; you'll see the flow of the turns easily enough. You can turn their AI back on later.
 
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Just ordered NWN2 Gold. Won't be here for a week or so thanks to free shipping on Amazon, and maybe I'll have to time to finish The Witcher until then. I bought it mostly for MotB. I think to save time in real life for more productive pursuits as well as not get burned out on NWN2 gameplay, I may skip the OC completely. I've read the expansion is much better anyhow. Anyone else doing this? Will I be missing out on anything special?
 
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Don't skip the OC. It may not be as good as MotB, but it's still very good -- head and shoulders above the regular pap that passes for cRPG's these days. You'll also enjoy MotB more; while it is an independent story, there are plenty of references to people and events of the OC; you may even meet some of them.

(In fact, I started another play-through of both. This time I want to do something completely different -- instead of going my usual munchkin way of über-specializing in something, I'm building the ultimate generalist. I'm a Chaotic Neutral male Drow, aiming for rogue/wizard/arcane trickster/eldritch knight.)
 
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PJ are you sure that your character will be able to move once you add all those titles to him? ;)
 
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lol maybe I should do that too. I like eldrich knight a lot but kinda getting bored of it. Don't know what I really want to play though. Maybe I will try Bard/Red Dragon Disciple/Shadow dancer this time. MotB is still not here... *sigh*
 
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