Oh, and rangers and druids should ALWAYS complete SoU before going onto HoTU. In SoU there is a very powerful little item that allows you to bestow +1d6 fire damage and +1d6 cold damage to your animal companion once per day.
That item is actually in HotU by default as well. Look for it in the vines by the Fairy Queen in Undermountain. Also it adds 1d10 fire/cold damage (not 1d6), grants 10/- Fire/Cold damage resistance, 1 HP/round regeneration, and Haste. The duration is 1 turn/level.
I should note that, in regards to the Branch of Giving (the animal companion boosting item) the fire/cold damage it adds functions basically like physical damage for some reason. It does not bypass damage reduction but is unaffected by fire/cold damage resistance. Also note that it gives either 1d10 fire damage and 10/- fire resist OR 1d10 cold damage and 10/- cold resist but not both of those at the same time.
If you are looking for it in SoU it is in a shrub container just outside the Temple of the Winds area in Undrentide central, next to a group of beetles.
There is a good place where you can grind in the OC. In Charwood's haunted forest there is a pillar that spawns skeleton warriors every time you use the wrong combination of answers in its dialog. Even when not worth many points, lots of skeleton warriors are probably fairly easy to kill by that point and they add up. If you have access to crowd control spells it goes pretty quick.
@Tresset You can also grind for EXP in the first chapter, in Gulnan's Crypt. Behind the first locked door you encounter in the area that you need a Key for, there is a armor of loyalty in the sarcophagus. Taking it out causes the Mummy to spawn. However, it doesn't check if it should continue running the script whenever anything is taken out, so repeatedly putting in and taking out any item from the sarcophagus will cause a mummy to spawn. Beware if you aren't immune to fear/have a low Will save or are too low level to fight them easily, but I found myself progressing at a decent pace even just one at a time due to their high EXP yield at lower levels.
You can farm XP in the OC prologue by running past all the enemies, getting the 2 levels up by talking to the old man and Fenthick, and then going back into the Academy and killing everything.
You can farm XP in the OC prologue by running past all the enemies, getting the 2 levels up by talking to the old man and Fenthick, and then going back into the Academy and killing everything.
Using this method, a single-class wizard or sorcerer can usually hit level 4 (6000xp) by the end of the prologue. Other classes earn less xp, but it's still a nice little bonus.
Certain encounters in the original campaign scale with level far more than others. Undead encounters in particular scale a lot. I often used to play the original campaign starting at level 10 (by importing a character from the Contest of Champions). The result is that the zombies in the Beggar's Nest are ALL replaced by Zombie Warriors, and the undead in Helm's Hold are replaced by worse things like Mohrgs. It was actually harder to get through the Beggar's Nest at level 10 than at level 3.
In addition, if you go into Karlat's chambers at a really high level, almost all of the enemies get replaced by Huge Fire Elementals (identical to the one you normally fight as a boss in the area).
In addition, if you go into Karlat's chambers at a really high level, almost all of the enemies get replaced by Huge Fire Elementals (identical to the one you normally fight as a boss in the area).
May as well kill Karlat himself while you are there too, as he is worth a hefty chunk of XP. Since he keeps respawning, though, they made all respawns worth almost no XP.
And if you decide not to use Belial's testimony in the case you can kill him too. It is really hard to do, but I have done it before...
In chapter 2 of the OC in the Neverwinter Wood the animals are all hostile because of the madness caused by the poisoning of the Spirit of the Wood. I assume most people just kill all of them because they are hostile and worth XP, but did you know that if you avoid them with invisibility or similar and cure the Spirit of the Wood, almost all of the animals in the Neverwinter Wood will become friendly?
The "Invincible Golems" in the OC Chapter 3's Creater Ruins are not actually 100% invincible before you go back in time and introduce a weakness in them. They are vulnerable to anything that is not a spell that can damage them with Divine, Positive, Negative, or Magical damage. Here are several ways in which I have killed them in the past (not intended to be all inclusive):
Death Armor spell can hurt them when they hit you. Divine Favor and Battletide can give magical damage bonus to your weapons, which can hurt them. Aura vs. Alignment (either one) can hurt them when they hit you. Animal Companion empowered with Magic Fang can hurt them. Eyeball Familiar's Inflict Wounds ray can hurt them.
Note that if you kill the invincible golems first and then go back in time to introduce a weakness, another golem will appear and you can kill this one as well for even more XP!
As far as I know, I was the first person to leave graffiti on a PW. It was on the old LOTR pw that used to allow local characters. I made a note(item) in my toolset and named it ‘I was here’ and duplicated a bunch of them then picked them all up and saved my character then logged in. When I dropped these in the PW and someone moused over the loot bag, it would say ‘I was here’. The note itself said Notice If you notice this notice you will notice that this notice isn’t worth noticing.
I dropped a few of these on my journeys then all of a sudden the rest were all gone from my inventory lol. The DM’s must of had a laugh and just confiscated them. I didn’t get booted or anything like that lol. Kudos and hi if by some miracle anybody reading this saw/ remembers this. It was MEEEE!
This is definitely a bug, but I just learned that Gnomish Rangers can forego any of their Favored Enemies in order to take Greater Spell Focus: Illusion. I find it really amusing that this slipped testing. Guess no one wanted to play a gnomish ranger.
Did you know...
This is not exclusive to gnomes.
If you have any Spell Focus Feat and take first level ranger you will have access to Greater Spell Focus of the chosen school.
This also can be done any time you get to select a favourite enemy (every 5 levels of ranger). You can choose GSF instead.
If you do this while reaching epic levels, the favourite enemy bonus feat can be an epic feats like Epic Prowess, Epic Weapon Focus, Epic Spell Focus or Epic Toughness.
I just recently learned how creatures bypass their target's damage reduction. It is very different from how PCs need magical weapons for doing the same.
Creatures using creature weapons can bypass a damage reduction if it is equal to or less than their own damage reduction. To explain this, lets look at some creatures:
Ancient Gold Dragon with DR of 15/+2 Shadow Dragon: DR 15/+1 Vampire with DR 15/+1 and a normal Bastard Sword. A summoned Dire Badger without DR.
If the Shadow Dragon attacked the Gold Dragon then it could not bypass the gold dragon's DR because its own DR is lower. The Gold Dragon could bypass the DR of both the vampire and the shadow dragon because it has a higher DR. The Shadow Dragon could bypass the DR of the vampire because they have the same DR value. The vampire, however, is wielding an ordinary bastard sword and not its creature weapon so it cannot bypass the DR of the Shadow Dragon. The Dire Badger has no DR so it cannot bypass the DR of any of the other creatures.
Now, lets say that the mage who summoned the badger casts a spell of Stoneskin on it. This would give the Dire Badger a DR of 10/+5. The Dire Badger now becomes able to bypass the DR of all the other creatures, while at the same time none of the other creatures can bypass the DR of the Dire Badger!
This factor becomes very important if you have a Shifter or Druid as your PC. If you can give your Shifter a DR value then the creature weapons of their various forms can bypass enemy DR equal to, or less than their own. So cast Stoneskin on your Shifter before they polymorph to give them a good DR bypassing attack. Better yet, find an item that will merge with all their forms that gives them a good DR value, such as the Crown of Thorns helmet.
Something in a similar vein to what Tresset said, if you cast Magic Fang on your badger, it gets 1/+1 damage reduction. Greater Magic Fang works similarly, giving your creature from 2/+2 damage reduction up to 5/+5 damage reduction, equal to the damage and attack bonus it grants. I don't actually know if its the spell itself that does this or something related to how creature weapons work, but it's pretty neat.
@DerpCity The Magic Fang spells also give the damage reduction bonus because of what I stated above. This is stated in the script that runs the magic fang spells:
"+1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls. Also applys damage reduction +1; this allows the creature to strike creatures with +1 damage reduction."
In Hordes of the Underdark, there are certain ammunition that are worth a LOT of gold. In Shaori's Fell, you can get 99 Poison Bolts from a weapon rack in the drow camp at the beginning of the level. If you sell these bolts to the duergar merchant on the Island of the Maker (who has the best prices of any store I'm aware of in the chapter), you can get a total of almost 110000 gold.
Of course, Hordes of the Underdark has a sell price cap that prevents you from selling items for too much money. However, if you split the bolts up into groups of 9 bolts and sell each group, you can get the full price.
You can get more Poison Bolts that are equally valuable by quickly killing the archers in the fight with Eldath Raisin (the drow assassin who fights you in the area before the beholder level).
But that's not all. There is another ammunition that is even more valuable. If you kill the Drider Assassin in the palace in Shaori's Fell, it drops up to 99 Poison Arrows (depending on how many it fired before you killed it). Each Poison Arrow can be sold for over 4000 gold!
That's over 500000 gold just by selling ammunition from a single level! With all this money, you can fully upgrade your weapon really early.
@OlvynChuru The Duergar merchant "Ragpicker" in Drearings Deep also has an insanely good rate. I tend to use her instead since she doesn't go away once you finish the quest in the area.
By the way, both these merchants, as well as a few in chapter 3 of HotU, will buy stuff from you at a higher price than it costs to buy the same item back from them. Thus you can get infinite gold by simply buying and selling the same items repeatedly to them, so long as they are paying full price for said items.
OMG! I just found a secret area in Chapter 1 of HotU that I never knew about (even after playing the module to death for all these years)!
In the very first area of Undermountain (Undermountain Level 1 - Central) there is a room very near where you enter and find Sharwyn's body. This room is the site of a small battle with a pair of drow and several deurgar.
There is also a rat that wanders around in this room and the hall leading up to it. Talking to the rat (if you are a ranger or druid) will reveal that it has a treasure hoard of its own, but it won't tell you where.
I always thought that this part of the dialog with the rat was just there for flavor and had no real meaning, BUT if you follow the rat as it wanders into the corner of this room (provided your search skill is high enough AND the rat is nearby) a secret door will appear!!!
Going through the door reveals a hidden room with lots of pretty lights and several chests containing a variety of treasures, some minor, others fairly sizable!
I did some digging into the module with the toolset and I found this appears to be a remnant of a minor cut quest to get the rat to show you its hoard. There is data for an item in the module called "Seeds" and if you have this seeds item then a new dialog option will be opened up with the rat where you can feed the seeds to the rat and it asks you to follow it to show you its hoard. If you use cheats to create the seeds (q2bratseeds is the item code) the dialog option will still appear with the rat. Besides the fact that the seeds do not seem to be obtainable in the module, I suspect this quest was cut because feeding the seeds to the rat does not remove the item from your inventory and the rat does not seem to lead you to the hoard immediately (it just keeps wandering its usual path).
As far as I know, I was the first person to leave graffiti on a PW. It was on the old LOTR pw that used to allow local characters. I made a note(item) in my toolset and named it ‘I was here’ and duplicated a bunch of them then picked them all up and saved my character then logged in. When I dropped these in the PW and someone moused over the loot bag, it would say ‘I was here’. The note itself said
Notice
If you notice this notice you will notice that this notice isn’t worth noticing.
I dropped a few of these on my journeys then all of a sudden the rest were all gone from my inventory lol. The DM’s must of had a laugh and just confiscated them. I didn’t get booted or anything like that lol. Kudos and hi if by some miracle anybody reading this saw/ remembers this.
It was MEEEE!
Speaking of HOTU I was interested in Enserric the Grey trapped in the Longsword.
You can get him in Chapter 1 and in Chapter 2 you can talk to him about getting him out of the sword.
He guesses that a "well made golem" could serve to house his soul, an optional area called "Isle of the Maker" which just so happens to have some very well made golems on hand and if your a Sorcerer or Wizard you can collect parts and make a golem..hmm.
Unfortunately there didn't seem to be a way to put him in the golem and I was incredibly disappointed about that, I wanted a Golem\Wizard companion.
I wanted an epilogue where Enserric the Golem traveled with you for a time but he felt the need to seek out what remains of his family and try to reclaim his memories he lost while in the blade.
There is a clear bug in HotU with the Romances when Aribeth comments on the Mimic. Her Romance is suppsosed to be set to 1, (and will have the option to be increased to 2 when leaving Hell.). If you fix this, there is an extra final dialogue at the end to resolve the conflict between Aribeth and Nathyrra,, which includes a 3-way route for charismatic PC.
Now that NWN:EE had a Development folder, it's possible to install a fix for this script without having to patch the actual modules. Unzip these files into your Documents\Neverwinter Nights\development folder:
Comments
If you are looking for it in SoU it is in a shrub container just outside the Temple of the Winds area in Undrentide central, next to a group of beetles.
In addition, if you go into Karlat's chambers at a really high level, almost all of the enemies get replaced by Huge Fire Elementals (identical to the one you normally fight as a boss in the area).
And if you decide not to use Belial's testimony in the case you can kill him too. It is really hard to do, but I have done it before...
Death Armor spell can hurt them when they hit you.
Divine Favor and Battletide can give magical damage bonus to your weapons, which can hurt them.
Aura vs. Alignment (either one) can hurt them when they hit you.
Animal Companion empowered with Magic Fang can hurt them.
Eyeball Familiar's Inflict Wounds ray can hurt them.
Note that if you kill the invincible golems first and then go back in time to introduce a weakness, another golem will appear and you can kill this one as well for even more XP!
Notice
If you notice this notice you will notice that this notice isn’t worth noticing.
I dropped a few of these on my journeys then all of a sudden the rest were all gone from my inventory lol. The DM’s must of had a laugh and just confiscated them. I didn’t get booted or anything like that lol. Kudos and hi if by some miracle anybody reading this saw/ remembers this.
It was MEEEE!
This is not exclusive to gnomes.
If you have any Spell Focus Feat and take first level ranger you will have access to Greater Spell Focus of the chosen school.
This also can be done any time you get to select a favourite enemy (every 5 levels of ranger). You can choose GSF instead.
If you do this while reaching epic levels, the favourite enemy bonus feat can be an epic feats like Epic Prowess, Epic Weapon Focus, Epic Spell Focus or Epic Toughness.
Creatures using creature weapons can bypass a damage reduction if it is equal to or less than their own damage reduction. To explain this, lets look at some creatures:
Ancient Gold Dragon with DR of 15/+2
Shadow Dragon: DR 15/+1
Vampire with DR 15/+1 and a normal Bastard Sword.
A summoned Dire Badger without DR.
If the Shadow Dragon attacked the Gold Dragon then it could not bypass the gold dragon's DR because its own DR is lower. The Gold Dragon could bypass the DR of both the vampire and the shadow dragon because it has a higher DR. The Shadow Dragon could bypass the DR of the vampire because they have the same DR value. The vampire, however, is wielding an ordinary bastard sword and not its creature weapon so it cannot bypass the DR of the Shadow Dragon. The Dire Badger has no DR so it cannot bypass the DR of any of the other creatures.
Now, lets say that the mage who summoned the badger casts a spell of Stoneskin on it. This would give the Dire Badger a DR of 10/+5. The Dire Badger now becomes able to bypass the DR of all the other creatures, while at the same time none of the other creatures can bypass the DR of the Dire Badger!
This factor becomes very important if you have a Shifter or Druid as your PC. If you can give your Shifter a DR value then the creature weapons of their various forms can bypass enemy DR equal to, or less than their own. So cast Stoneskin on your Shifter before they polymorph to give them a good DR bypassing attack. Better yet, find an item that will merge with all their forms that gives them a good DR value, such as the Crown of Thorns helmet.
"+1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls.
Also applys damage reduction +1; this allows the creature
to strike creatures with +1 damage reduction."
Of course, Hordes of the Underdark has a sell price cap that prevents you from selling items for too much money. However, if you split the bolts up into groups of 9 bolts and sell each group, you can get the full price.
You can get more Poison Bolts that are equally valuable by quickly killing the archers in the fight with Eldath Raisin (the drow assassin who fights you in the area before the beholder level).
But that's not all. There is another ammunition that is even more valuable. If you kill the Drider Assassin in the palace in Shaori's Fell, it drops up to 99 Poison Arrows (depending on how many it fired before you killed it). Each Poison Arrow can be sold for over 4000 gold!
That's over 500000 gold just by selling ammunition from a single level! With all this money, you can fully upgrade your weapon really early.
By the way, both these merchants, as well as a few in chapter 3 of HotU, will buy stuff from you at a higher price than it costs to buy the same item back from them. Thus you can get infinite gold by simply buying and selling the same items repeatedly to them, so long as they are paying full price for said items.
In the very first area of Undermountain (Undermountain Level 1 - Central) there is a room very near where you enter and find Sharwyn's body. This room is the site of a small battle with a pair of drow and several deurgar.
There is also a rat that wanders around in this room and the hall leading up to it. Talking to the rat (if you are a ranger or druid) will reveal that it has a treasure hoard of its own, but it won't tell you where.
I always thought that this part of the dialog with the rat was just there for flavor and had no real meaning, BUT if you follow the rat as it wanders into the corner of this room (provided your search skill is high enough AND the rat is nearby) a secret door will appear!!!
Going through the door reveals a hidden room with lots of pretty lights and several chests containing a variety of treasures, some minor, others fairly sizable!
I did some digging into the module with the toolset and I found this appears to be a remnant of a minor cut quest to get the rat to show you its hoard. There is data for an item in the module called "Seeds" and if you have this seeds item then a new dialog option will be opened up with the rat where you can feed the seeds to the rat and it asks you to follow it to show you its hoard. If you use cheats to create the seeds (q2bratseeds is the item code) the dialog option will still appear with the rat. Besides the fact that the seeds do not seem to be obtainable in the module, I suspect this quest was cut because feeding the seeds to the rat does not remove the item from your inventory and the rat does not seem to lead you to the hoard immediately (it just keeps wandering its usual path).
Very droll, sire...
Hahahaha you crafty devil.
You can get him in Chapter 1 and in Chapter 2 you can talk to him about getting him out of the sword.
He guesses that a "well made golem" could serve to house his soul, an optional area called "Isle of the Maker" which just so happens to have some very well made golems on hand and if your a Sorcerer or Wizard you can collect parts and make a golem..hmm.
Unfortunately there didn't seem to be a way to put him in the golem and I was incredibly disappointed about that, I wanted a Golem\Wizard companion.
I wanted an epilogue where Enserric the Golem traveled with you for a time but he felt the need to seek out what remains of his family and try to reclaim his memories he lost while in the blade.
Now that NWN:EE had a Development folder, it's possible to install a fix for this script without having to patch the actual modules. Unzip these files into your Documents\Neverwinter Nights\development folder: