The End of Neverwinter Nights Week

Hello Campers,
Things came to a halt for me recently from a nasty bout of the flu. To continue and finish off Neverwinter Nights Week I will discuss a number of the better known or more used Hackpacks for the game made by the community members. I know some of the community is divided on the use of hackpacks. I for one enjoy the different aspects of  add-ons they bring to the game.


The CEP

For Starters, we have the CEP or the Community Expansion Pack is a series of hackpacks containing a large amount of community created content. It holds a large collection of appearances for creatures, items, tilesets, and a couple of systems all set up in this series of hacks.

The CEP is still expanding with the recent update of a 2.61 series after a long hiatus from the original group. Thankfully the project was revived by one of the community's longest standing members The Amethyst Dragon.

I currently use the 2.4 version of the CEP as I use other haks that currently conflict with the CEP 2.61, I am working on some merger haks for this and will hopefully soon be able to release them.

Project Q

The series of Haks known as Project Q were assembled together with the intention of releasing new art content for NWN. This adds a wide variety of appearances to the game including creature appearances, item appearances, tilesets, and some other fixes and tweaks to the game.

Honestly, I have never used Project Q but from what I have seen I would like to find a way to incorporate it into my mod.

Pstemarie is who I believe runs the Project Q

PRC

The PRC or the Players Resource Consortium is a series of Hackpacks that add Spells, Classes, Races, Feats, Skills, Epic Spells, Psionics, Modified Spells, and more.

The PRC started out from a players desire to play the HOU with new classes and developed into the massive series of hacks it currently is.

I know a large number of community members believe the PRC is bug ridden and laggy, but the last update honestly fixed a lot of the issues the past update contained. And while some of the content is intended for those who prefer a stronger challenge to the game, it can be set up to only use the content you want. I have heard mention of game balance but that subject is subjective to the creator and I will

Currently, the PRC team is led by Clansunstar and is working on an update to the PRC.

And there you go just a few of the wonderful hackpacks made by the community members for the community. touch on it in another post another day.

The Neverwinter Nights Original Campaigns and Expansions

(Disclaimer: the following reviews or descriptions are intended to be spoiler-free, I intend on only giving some intro info for each of the official mods. Names may not have been remembered so in place of just randomly naming NPC's what I felt like they deserved to be named.)

Howdy Ho campers,

today's installment of NWN WEEK brings us to a description of the official campaigns for NWN 1.

Neverwinter Nights

The original campaign for NWN starts right after the events of the prelude, which is, for the most part, a tutorial and a means to introduce one to the story. Granted after you have played the prelude as the majority of classes, you have no real reason to play it other than to get a couple possible levels and some extra stuff to sell for gold.

Once you do get into chapter one you find yourself standing behind the guy you met in the prologue and some douchebag priest of Helm. Trust me I spent time trying to figure out if I could attack that guy, don't waste your time just yet, you get a shot at him later. Anyway after talking to these two you discover you need to speak to Lady Airibeth to get the ball rolling and your quest starts shortly after, I would recommend going to the peninsula district first.

The Shadows of Undrentide
You start out in a home where you have been training for some time. After your home is attacked you venture out to the nearby town to see what was going on. This mod seemed a bit short for me but then again I might have not explored as many of the side quests as I realized existed after I beat the mod. I still prefer starting out characters on this mod more than the original.

The Hordes of the Underdark

The beginning of this mod sees you in waterdeep, in one of the more famous inns there... some well place. Anyway after some shakeups inside the inn you explore a small section of waterdeep. Shortly after returning to the inn you are thrust into the namesake of this mod the Underdark the biggest, baddest, nastiest dungeon known to many gamers alike. And yes you are going right through the front door. The only advice I can give is stock up on gear in town before going down and hope like hell you can find a henchman.

That's all I have in store for today, tomorrow I will cover some of the hak packs used by the community.   

Neverwinter Nights Week

(Disclosure: many of the different terms I use in this post can be found and defined at the NWN wiki located Here. … in addition this post was originally intended for 10/27/15 but due to a lack of sleep on my part I ended up taking a much needed nap, sometimes I get cranky and my wife sends me to bed for nap time. What a bully! )

As I continue my journey into the Neverwinter nights game I find myself needing to explain the different aspects of actually playing the game. Neverwinter is a game you need to play with a number of things to consider. Firstly your character advancement is something some plan out like a map while others rely on the randomness of a button. Secondly what kind of player am I Single player or multiplayer or both also am I a hack and slasher, a PVP player or a role player or a mix of those. Granted you could like any mode of the game as I do but please don't tell anyone I was bending your arm.

I will recommend the original campaign mainly for how easy it is to learn the game. While I enjoyed playing the OC as it is called by the community I enjoyed the expansions and community created modules more.

One thing I will say about the OC is that it has a prelude that practically teaches you the basics on how to play the game. My advice is that you play the prelude and search every box, chest, barrel, or body. Collect everything you find and as long as you can deal with a slow moving character for those with low strengths. You can gather up a nice amount of stuff that can be sold to one of the merchants in the first chapter. It just may get you some better gear to start out with. Personally I sell to Lady Aribeth.

Back to character creation the thing you select is sex male or female, after that you get to choose your race. You get to choose between Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Half-Elf, and Half-Orc. Each race has a description and an explanation of its ability's and flaws.

After race, you get to choose your character portrait. One of the cool things about NWN is you can find loads of portraits on the vault, and a bonus they are very easy to install and use. I have noticed over the years different servers tend to have a good selection of portraits for the players.

From portrait you jump straight into, class. Class is basically what path in life you choose or what job you perform. The standard classes are Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard. The game offers what is called Prestige Classes you can select them as long as you meet the requirements for the class. The standard Prestige classes are as follows Shadowdancer, Harper Scout, Arcane Archer, Assassin, Blackguard, Champion of Torm, Weaponmaster, Palemaster, Shifter, Dwarven Defender, Red Dragon Disciple, And Purple Dragon Knight. Each class and Prestige class is described when you select it in game.

We have gotten to the alignment section. Alignment is described as each characters relation to the concepts of Good, and Evil. Law, and Chaos. The alignments are as follows Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Good, True Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, and Finally Chaotic Evil. The alignments come into play for some classes as requirements and some mods will change your alignment based on your actions.

We move into the ability's next. The ability's are described as basic statistics that define the character. As far as the numbers go the higher the number the better the statistic. You start with 8 points in each stat and you get 30 points to distribute among your statistics. The higher the number the more points it costs. The ability's are as follows Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma. And go figure the only one I misspelled was intelligence, thank god for spell checker!

The packages button is where you configure your Skills and Feats. Use the configure packages button located at the bottom of the screen or you can choose a default one from the list provided based on class.

I should explain with skills you will notice some are labeled class skills, these only cost one point to increase, nonclass skills cost two points to increase your skill number.

We finally end up at the customize button, this is where you can select one of the many heads the game and community provide. You can also select if you want to have tattoos, if you want to be athletic or overweight, and you can select some starting clothes. You also get to choose your skin color and hair color and you can select two tattoo colors. You get to name your character and choose their voice set or the different noises they make when attacking and doing other stuff like dying.

Now you are ready to embark on the greatest adventure ever using this game and your imagination. We will cover some information about the OC and expansions on the next edition of Mikey's World!  

A return and a review

Well hello folks, It has been quite a while since my last rant. Today is more of a rave than a rant in store for you today. Anyone that has read some of my earlier posts knows I play and have been building a persistent world for Neverwinter Nights or NWN or NWN1 as those in the community call it.

One of the first sites you should visit is the unofficial community site created by one of the foremost hands down best creators of material for NWN none other than the Amethyst Dragon here is a link NWN community web site (unofficial).

Anyway, I am the creator and one of the Admin of the NWN Facebook Community Group found at NWN Facebook Community Group . We recently celebrated our 1000th member and have remained active for a couple of years now. Personally I enjoy working with the toolset that comes with the game. I have been building  for a few years now with this tool set and I must say I love the flexibility it has.  The other awesome quality it has is that it is easier to learn to use, as of this post the community is still very active over at the Bioware forums located Bioware NWN forums. I have found the community very helpful and active in helping others not only play but learn to build, script, and custom create for the game.

The games original content should be played to learn the game and I would recommend playing the Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark expansions and then either begin your search for a persistent world or if you enjoy single player you can find a large selection on the community vault found The Neverwinter Vault.

If you are a gamer who likes the 3.0/3.5 Dungeons and Dragons editions of the game you will love NWN. The game is a good translation of the tabletop game into a video game with the addition of the Dungeon Master client which allows one player to assume the role of dungeon master and with the included tools you can host a game and others with the game can log on and you can run the group through a module.

One of the greatest aspects of NWN is the fact that once you pay for the game you can play online as much as you want and never have to pay for anything related to the game again. The amount of community created content gives players thousands of hours just in single player or multiplayer modules, not to mention the persistent worlds offer quite a few hours of game time.

some of the community created content includes new appearances for characters, new classes, spells, races, fixes for bugs, new creature appearances, new tilesets, textures, sounds, item appearances, and more.  Most can be found on the above-mentioned vault in the form of "hack packs" as the community calls them. I can assure you the word hack should not dissuade you from utilising the many different features they offer. For the purist folk, there is a large number of the community that do not use hack packs. That's the beauty of NWN, it has a flavor for everyone.

Common Sense!, A Lost Art? And its Effects on Driving.

It has been a long time since I posted anything on here. To be honest I forgot it existed. I am glad I can still access it. Well just for starters, a great many things have changed with me, I went to school for a year, found new enjoyable gainful employment. In addition, I now have become a wellspring of ideas in the area of game development. In fact, I will probably announce the different games I have started creating for tabletop RPGing on here.

The first point of this blog will always remain to dealing with my vast interest with the Computer role-playing game Neverwinter Nights. Moreover, for those interested here is a link to the forum for my server in the works.

Beyond The Mists

The second point of my blog will be to use as my soapbox for pointing out things I think needed pointing out. Whether it be things such as today’s topic Common Sense!, A Lost Art? And its effects on driving.

On the other hand, if it is different things I have found over the vastness of the Web that I would like to share and comment on with everyone.
One thing can be assured I will make the best effort to make the experience entertaining.

Welcome to Mikeys Adventures.

Today’s topic: Common Sense!, A Lost Art? And its Effects on Driving.

common sense

The above is a link to the Wikipedia Definition of Common sense which most of us now known as good sense. Unbelievably at one time in this country, it was believed that everyone possessed this rare gift or trait. Now days it is not very common to find a person with good sense let alone any common sense.

I know some of you are asking right now, “But Mikey , How did everyone loose there common sense?”

And I reply “well little Fella, we forgot we all have one thing in common. We are all human, each unique and special. But we are only special to those we truly touch and affect through our own actions of kindness, compassion, and humility. We have allowed ourselves to become greedy, selfish, and self-important. Our importance now depends on how many people are below us even if that includes members of our own families.”
Things were different in the old days, very much different.

Now with all this self-important mumbo jumbo floating around. We have seemingly forgot simple things that at one point and time mattered in this country. In the Pre Cell-Text, How much money do I have? Days. When someone got behind the wheel of a car, the intention was to try and not break any laws to avoid a ticket. And everything can be explained as we are easily distracted as a race…Humans, Before they put GPS, DVD, OnStar, Self-Parking, Texting, Cell phone, reading lights , CD, WI Fi, Bullshit in cars people had a Radio, and we listened to them at levels that won’t wake the Dead Or cause Heart Stoppage .

Ok so maybe we did listen to Metallica a bit loud, We didn’t know about base till about six years later.

Needless to say people are so focused on how important they are and what they are doing that they forget a few simple things called laws we all are supposed to follow.

One of the First is Speeding, And one of the biggest group of speeders I have ever seen are Guys in Brand New trucks. It almost seems like they are Daring someone to slam into them. Lucky for me I am gathering a small fleet of semi drivers just for that occasion. However, seriously, slow the hell down people. First off you won’t get to where you are going any faster if you slam into me, because after I get off the phone with the cops I am probably going to pass out to ensure I can’t figure out how to unbuckle my seat belt, and use it to strangle you into unconsciousness so I can tie you to one of those car dollies and pull you behind a dragster. I figure a couple of miles ought to break a few people of this speeding bullshit. And you telecast it just for the entertainment value.

Now for this next part of my rant I will be semi touching on the topic of illiteracy in this country, though I think a dash of color blindness has some fault. See Here in the states we use the color red to indicate when it necessary for a motorist to bring their vehicle to a complete rest. We as Americans must have taken to an old joke of STOP means Step Toe On Pedal, HA HA HA , yea real funny till you blow a stop sign and hit someone. Then how funny is it? Maybe part of the penalty for running a stop sign should be writing 1000 times on a black board in front of city hall. I will learn what STOP means. As far as running red lights. We need to either change the color of the lights to something color blinded people will notice or maybe just maybe someone finally came up with a good idea of those red light cameras. In fact you know who complains about invasion of privacy when dealing with those red light cameras?, well I’ll bet if you sat off the road with a camera of your own quite a large number of those Privacy Crusaders would be caught blowing red lights. Privacy only counts when you are not taken away someone else’s.

And another thing, Since when did we have such a High number of Inter country Military operations going on? And when I say this I mean Why do I see people driving in conditions that require the vehicle lights to be operating while driving. When I say conditions that lights should be on let me give some examples. Rain and I am not talking a light sprinkling or mild showers. I am talking damn near monsoon level rain. And some jagoff got his lights off driving around. I mean it is PA state law after all… or are You Special. Maybe that is it, still doesn’t explain this next shmuck. I’m running to the store at 2:30 AM to grab smokes. And coming at me is a large shape. I get closer and it’s a truck flying down the road with no lights on. Black truck, dark night. I just wanted to smash head on into him and when the cops got there say I didn’t see him coming. We need to let these special people know that it is ok to turn there lights on and be like everyone else.

People need to wake up and find some good sense.

some news

So I finally got every item I was trying to find that existed in the original mists. Granted none have been altered to be the way they were in the original mists. I decided to personally go through each item and adjust it to suit my ideals for the servers needs.

In addition I planned out the first 15 new areas for the Port Turner ( formerly known as Freeport) for questing and exploration. One thing that will be different about the new mists is minus shop keepers, every non guard npc inside a town will have a quest attached to them. Most if not all of the town guard that have names will have quests.

As far as encounters go I do intend on using some of the old creatures but I intend on using more of the newer appearances that came out with the cep2.3. In fact I really want to shy away from using most of the standard nwn creature appearances. I hate to say it but I feel like they have been over used. I cant count how many servers or mods that at first level you fight either rats,bats,bugs,goblins,kobolds, or wolves . Well sorry I have other ideas in store for players.

As far as max enchantment bonus on weapons goes I was thinking of going with +7 being the max any player can get out of crafting or a shop. I do plan on having some artifacts that could be found if a series of quests are done. And the artifacts would hold a slightly higher level of power ( +8), they would be very hard to find and finding out about them would be a large undertaking in and of itself. In addition I would not be using what is called perma haste or perma true seeing. I can understand that some people may be upset with this decision, and my reasons behind it are as follows. 1. I wanted the casting of spells to matter. 2. IMO spells that have permanent effects on items make things a bit too easy and unbalanced. 3. perma anything on a item is something now everyone should own. If anything it would be a unique quality a item may have . 4. perma haste lets someone move fast all the time and they get a +4 to ac, monks with perma haste can almost (?) move as fast as dm's . I remember a time in gaming when a pair of boots of speed meant something, not just 20,000gp in a shop. 5. perma true seeing allows the sight of people using hide automatically . I have altered the original spell to not do this so allowing perma true seeing would unbalance the spell adjustment I made.


As far as immunity's go I will not be using immune to critical hits or immune to sneak attack. Both make the game's PVP aspect pointless. I know a number of people are thinking great that means most pvp builds will be palemaster. That's fine as any palemaster that becomes undead will gain all the vulnerability's that undead have as well. i.e. turning and the positive and divine vulnerability. So that gives divine caster pvp builds a advantage. Not to mention holy avengers will only work for paladins on the new mists.

wazza happ a ning

Sorry for the gap again, I found a large number of scripts I needed to remove from the mod . I got involved with the building of a friends persistent world as well so I must split the time I rebuild mists with his mod. The good part with his mod is all I am doing is scripting and some tech work for him. He is building his server for the most part,which I must say is a awesome concept I will blog about sometime in the future.

I had the thought of starting mists forum early with the intent of posting screen-shots of the areas and some creatures. In addition I would welcome the opinion of any of the old players or staff to post opinions about the different systems and settings of the mod. And the old staff and players would get first run at play-testing. If I get enough feedback about a forum I will see that it gets up and a link posted here.

In closing all I can say is that it has been a long time since mists was a active server and I think what I am doing will bring it back to its glory. I do want to stress that this mists is very different story wise than the first. I did say I was going to start posting more of the story on here but I may save that for the forum.

Till next time
DM Adam Warlock