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.