Part 3. It’s just starting. I’m in Lord Nasher’s court and all the vampires and wraiths have jumped into the room before the chamber room and they kick the shit out of me. I’m a sorcerer. That’s not so good for being the soggy biscuit in an undead circle jerk.
I even tried turning the difficulty way down to see if I could finagle my way out of it, but I can’t. If I go hand to hand, that’s cool for a little bit, until the other monsters start killing the court guards. I cast a spell, hit all of them, then they all want a piece of me. Oh, of course, I’m not here with my party…I’m here all by myself. If I were a fighter, I’m sure I could kick everyone’s ass pretty easily, but alas. (Talk about silly, the knight that comes to get you from your keep talks like you’re in trouble and that you, and only you can come along. Then when you get to the castle, he’s congenial and nice. Bipolar much?)
This game is about 15 minutes from not being played again. (I’ve tried it about 10 times.)
It’s been awhile, and I was never a sorcerer, but I’ll try to help. It helps that I was a ranger / thief and didn’t take undead, so I had a similarly likewise hard time through that and the next section. My NPCs hit hard - I just scouted, set traps, and plunked with arrows.
First, I think you can avoid them at that point, but I’m not 100% sure. Discretion may be the better part of valor…in other words, run and hide.
If you can’t, then use my tried and true methods - summons to occupy them, followed by taking them down one at a time, preferably from a corner in the room. The trick is to get as few chasing you as possible. Now, as a sorcerer, you may be stuck in not having summoning spells, or good single target spells, so if you post your useful spells, maybe I or someone else can give better advice.
That’s one of the reasons I’ll never play a sorcerer. You can never predict what spells you might need in the future. If one was merely a wizard, then a load from a previous save point, changing the memorized spells around, would result in a better chance of living.
But, a little late for that option now. I haven’t played more than about on hour into NWN2, but do you have an earlier saved game you can load and perhaps go buy a shitload of healing potions and wands/staves/scrolls with?
I do not. I’ve also got no party members to rely on, just that one dude from the Neverwinter Nine. When the other townsfolk die, they turn into wraiths. What pricks.
Amusing anecdote: a friend of mine once decided to math up the actual time for wraiths or firebirds to end all life in an average DnD world. While inividual heroes could defeat the, their general lack of weaknesses and silence & intangibility made them nearly-unstoppable. Starting from just one wraith attacking one village should result in total annihilation of the world in less than two weeks. And most of that is actually spent in transit as this massive wave of negative energy beings floods the world.
If I can’t figure out a more…proper way to beat it, I’ll cheat to get past it and chalk it up to stupid programming and a retarded cliche they’re trying to pass me through.
NWN 1 didn’t have an awesome story, but it had its moments, and it was at least a fairly solid game. NWN 2 has an even dumber story and has rather poor technical performance to boot. I was quite disappointed. Also the ending sucked ass. Obsidian might be made partly of Black Isle geniuses, but they are way off their game.
I have to say I disagree. I never could get through NWN 1 the farthest I got was the end of Chapter 2 where a bug prevented me from continuing on. The story of NWN 2 was far more engaging for me and much better told in NWN 1 I didn’t get far but I never cared to. Whereas 2 while cliche beginning wasn’t the best at least I felt my character had an actual past and was doing something he would have cared about. I also don’t understand the performance complaints I have less then top of the line computer and though I couldn’t play on the highest settings as long as I turned off shadows (which I do in 99% of the games I buy unless I just upgraded my computer) it played just fine. There have also been some serious engine upgrades in the last few patches that made it even smoother.
But yeah the ending sucked ass. At least the evil ending was a proper one but the good one. :rolleyes:
I was so excited for NWN2- I preordered it, and installed it immediately when it came in. I started up a Warlock, simply because it was so different from all the other classes I’d played in NWN1.
I pretty much steamrollered everything- some fights were a challenge, but I don’t recall ever having to reload due to death. I don’t think I even had much trouble with the area you’re in. I just used all the NPCs as fodder, and relied on my Warlock spells to nuke 'em.
[SPOILER]
Until that damn Red Dragon, that is. What really sucked about the encounter is that, once you’re on the mountain, you can’t get off until you resolve the problem. At first, I said, “kill 'em all” and tried to get the giants and the dragon to kill each other, leaving me the shinies. No go- party wipe. Okay… let’s try siding with the giants, then turning against them. Nope- the dragon killed us all. Hmm… how about playing it straight, let the dragon kill them, then let him take the hoard… what? He STILL wants to kill me?
What sucked about that encounter is that he’s insanely difficult, even on the “easy” setting, and once you’re on that mountain, you’re just going to have to fight him. After a bit of research, I found that the fight’s a lot easier if you have certain NPCs with you… but, of course, you can’t go back and get them.
I ended up finding a cheat to make myself unkillable, killed the damn dragon, and then quit the game. It pissed me off so much that I’ve never played it since.[/SPOILER]
I feel sorry for the devs. You just can’t please everyone. If they make sure all encounters can be completed without too much fuss people will complain that it’s too easy. Make it challenging, and some will say it’s too hard. Personally, I think it could have been a lot more challenging, YMMV.
Taken down the dragon is a matter of tactics and of having a balanced party when you get to it. Assay resistance, spell breaches, these go first, then an all out magical assault. Oh, and the tanks need to be warded enough so that they won’t die in the first round of combat.
Now to the OP:
Invisibility and improved invisibility are your friends. Thrown in mirror image, mage armor/Spider skin and shield and you’re almost untouchable except to other magic users. Use summons to keep the baddies busy, move to a better tactical position, preferably while invisible, and blast away with area of effect spells. You SHOULD be dealing out more damage than any melee class in any single round of combat, and as a sorcerer you should be able to continue that damage output for a long while.
Don’t forget to turn Combat casting on in case enemies get close to you, no reason to be handing out AOO’s. And undead are resistant to electricity IIRC, use fire spells instead. Don’t forget your ritual abilities either, they are specially good against outsiders and undead.
I had a great deal of fun with NWN2… until I got to Mount Galardrym. Apparently, there’s some stupid bug which keeps crashing the game, making it impossible for me to continue without going back and never dealing with that stage.
Well I do have a pretty high end computer, and I expect to be able to turn the settings up pretty high. Perhaps if I get the new patches I can do that, but at launch time I had to run the game at about half power. For comparison, I can run Company of Heroes at nearly full settings, and it looks incredible. With NWN 2 at full settings it merely looks good, and my framerate drops to unplayable levels.
Well… Why not just straight out kill the giants? You don’t have to do anything with the dragon if you don’t want to. When the king offers you a deal just tell him no deal and he attacks you simple as that.
Well the last few patches did do some serious tweaking to the engine no doubt it’ll up your framerate a little but I thought the game looked fine myself and it looks better now. NWN 1 the graphics sucked for their time which strangely people seem to have forgotten (not saying you talking about in general) I thought NWN 2’s graphics are much more on the level then the first one was when it was released. I didn’t start playing until patch 3 though so it’s possible I have a higher opinion of the game then those that started unpatched and ran into more bugs then me.
I hope I’m not coming off as a fanboy in this thread. I just really enjoyed the sequel and think the first was way over-hyped.
I think the trouble poeple had with the dragon was that they simply weren’t used to it. You go through the whole game without needing to use much int he way of special tactics or magic strategies, and then BAM.
Yep, I agree 100%. I would have liked to seen fewer, more challenging encounters, coupled with more limited resting. Here’s hoping the expansion will be more uniformly challenging.
