This module is designed for single player as the best choice, but for multiplayer I would recommend playing this module with a small party, and only having one party. Having a bigger party and/or more than one party could very well decrease the fun factor.
Language
English
Level Range
This module is designed for players to create 1st level characters, by the end of the module players can get to the higher levels.
Races
Be any race you would like, all are accepted in the land of Damara. Make the best choice based on attributes and the way you would like to roleplay your character.
Tricks & Traps
Light
Roleplay
Medium
Hack & Slash
Medium
Classes
This module is balanced for all classes. While it may be harder for some, you can always come back when you are more experienced as there are lots of things you can do to make your character stronger.
Scope
Epic
DMNeeded
No DM Required
Single or Multiplayer
Single Player or Multiplayer
Max Character Level
14
Max # Players
04
Min # Players
01
Min Character Level
01
Content Rating
Teen
Alignments
Any alignment is fine, however there are more quests written for good players than ones for bad players. So if you are looking to be very bad there are definitely opportunities, and there is always the promise of riches to intice bad characters to do good things.
Description
You spent your youth on a small farm in the northern country of Damara. Between the time spent planting and harvesting, you dreamt of the world outside your quaint home, of the life of an adventurer. Lately, However, the weather has been changing, changing for the worse. The folk have been talking about the times of old, when the great glacier of the north covered the entire area. If the temperature continues to drop at this rate, the glacier might yet again claim the entire region. When you receive a mysterious summons from the mayor of Wellsfar, a nearby town, your desire for travel and excitement is renewed. Even if this is just a social call, it will give you an opportunity to quell the worries weighing on your mind, worries over the ever threatening cold... -Over 140 unique magical items. -Over 50 subquests to complement the deep main quest. -100's of NPCs -8 ready to join party members, including a famous drow ranger. -Over 300 pages of written dialogue.
Posted by ericdoman at 2012-02-08 05:54:39 Voted 10.00 on 02/08/12
I believe I had voted this before but seeing some of the comments below had to revote.
A serious pet peeve of mine is giving ridiculously low ratings to a mod that has been done free of charge. I wouldn't want to guess how long this took to make.
Even so I really enjoyed it and yes combats were very tough especially early on.
Played a bard/ftr/AA first time so again early on was astruggle with no "mighty" bow and elemental arrows. Used Serus the monk. However once you start having money well it got a ot easier.
I replayed it completely solo (except when I ahd to use the gold dragon, or did I)with a cleric and found it a lot easier.
Finished as a bard 3/ ftr 4/ AA 7 and Clr 10/ COT 4. So even though I went solo for most of my clerical outing still finished on the same level (will play the 2nd part sol with clr).
Again so many little things to find and do. Haven't noticed anything about collecting berries for the Quasit. Use of the trees helped considerably with back tracking. Managed to complete all of the quests for henchies except Archibald. This was the second time around.
Played hardcore throughout
There are quite a lot of various sub quests
Posted by edosan at 2010-09-06 22:04:27 Voted 7.00 on 09/06/10
Just finished playing this one multiplayer. I'm going to say it's decent but not really outstanding. It was a good enough "collect the artifacts to save the world" questline with a fair amount of balance issues (a bodak in a crypt that takes out the party) nonintuitive quests, and spelling errors all make a module that could have used a great deal more polish.
Not going to play the sequel because it goes against two of my major NWN pet peeves -- an item strip and an unfinished trilogy.
Posted by dachrisma at 2010-02-19 10:00:09 Voted 7.25 on 02/19/10
Nice try, but the end is impossible, in fact there are too many monsters. More history would be better than more monsters.
Posted by Guru Bob at 2009-12-13 20:34:02 Voted 8.00 on 12/13/09
I enjoyed much of this module, but I had to search through the comments on more than one occasion to find the answer what to do next. I searched the destroyed town three times for the broken Rune Sword, after having sold off several valuable items to buy back the intact sword I got off the same big guy. Finally found the sword just as I was about to bag it all.
Posted by Robel at 2009-09-14 09:39:54 Voted 9.50 on 09/14/09
Cute but I got a bit disappointed and didn't finish it. I just got killed too much and the whole respawning thing (and that of my henchmen) was getting on my nerves. I don`t like the fact that all dialog options use Persuade, I started a character with Intimidate, I think it`s very unfair that I can`t use it... skill points lost for nothing. I`m not judging you for not using it, maybe you had a good reason, but you should`ve said there is no use for Intimidate in the readme. Anyway the module is clearly very well rounded and made with taste and research, I have to give it a high score. I`ll try to play it again sometime, with a stronger starting class. Thanks for the mod and good luck! _________________________ Needles in the eyes!
Posted by Steve_Savicki at 2009-06-01 04:50:43 Voted 10.00
Any word on chapter 3? _________________________ Steve's Characters - please don't forget to vote on them if you play them.
i really loved this mod until i got to the part with the siege on whatever town it is. there are just WAY TOO MANY ENEMIES to deal with. towards the end of the siege when im supposed to kill the fire giant chieftan i encounter a massive problem. either i wait next to the guy who you cant let die and more and more and more and more giants come at me with no sign of the leader. OR i run around barely surviving, eventually kill the king, but alas by the time i get back to the town gate everyone has been slaughtered. i had a simply horrendous experience with this i must have reloaded that save 25 times to no avail. somthing like this should be expected from a crappy mod, but up to that point i was having a wonderful experience. im not rating this mod, if i had before this "giant fiasco" it would have been a 9. after what i went through i wouldnt give this mod more than a 2. it just goes to show that one huge problem can take a glorous mod and flush it down the crapper.
Posted by Eva Galana at 2009-03-08 15:26:36 Voted 7.00 on 03/08/09
Well, WeAreAllKosh sums up my critique of this mod beautifully. I thought that the writing was amaturish (I know, an amature wrote this, but, still...) and there were so many other issues that at times it was thoroughly unenjoyable to play. However, I always like role playing, and this did offer some of that. I am going to play the second part as it can only be better than this. Another thing that would have been good would have been a thorough walk through as some of the quests were very obscure (I never found another priest of Tempus for Archibald). _________________________ Well...who would have thought THAT would happen?
Well , i'd just like to ask if there is a less dishonorable way to complete the subquest "brains to eat" since killing an Honorable half-orc might not fit my character 100% but i would very much like to complete all quests , also what purpose does the dead body OUTSIDE the spider cave have? is it just extra inventory or is someone possibly searching for
it? Also the man on the second floor on the tavern in Bloodstone that reapeatedly sais he is
praying , does he have any quests or point else then being a normal one line NPC? :)
Also: finding this module very enjoyable , it's nice to see a module that actually is in Damara , i've always wanted that (or possibly Vaasa) although a slight con is that some encounters are slightly hard but , but except that i'd have to say a very nice module :)
Posted by SirynCelestine at 2007-12-20 02:29:16 Voted 7.00 on 12/20/07
Previous two comments cover most of my issues with this mod as well. The mod was enjoyable, but honestly I got rather bored and frustrated toward the end. I had a hard time keeping henchmen alive (including the large one you get at the end), and found things too difficult in some areas without the extra help. Mostly in the numbers of enemies you get swarmed with--my druid could handle a few, but if she got surrounded it was all over. Mod seems to have been made for a more hardcore player than me, I suppose.
I did find some of the details enjoyable. I liked seeing NPCs and monsters with lots of different things to say, and enjoyed the extra flavor the whisper texts added. I also liked the variety of henchmen. Too bad the henchman XP system penalized you for swapping around.
Overall, it was OK. Probably not something I will replay though.
Posted by WeAreAllKosh at 2007-08-30 13:11:33 Voted 4.50 on 08/30/07
Wow, looking at some of these comments, I find myself wondering if I have a tainted copy of the module...
The writing in the Ancient Heart module that I have is mediocre at best and the storytelling is poorly handled. It borders on atrocious. 300 pages? I would have preferred 100 pages that were more carefully constructed and better inspired.
The main quest is boring and one-dimensional. 'Go retrieve an item so we can stop the bad weather.' Every single phase of the journey is outlined (in a rather disorganized manner) by the mayor at the very beginning of the module. Why not let the phases of the quest unravel as I adventure? The 'it keeps getting colder' theme is abandoned after the first town. Everyone in Wellsfar rightly bemoans it, but few of the NPC's after that even mention it. I was wandering around Bloodstone Gate at times asking myself 'uh, what am I doing again?' The PC is given no attachment to the quest after the initial onslaught.
Most of the subquests seem thrown together on the spur of the moment, the author not having much of an idea of what he wants to write beforehand. The pocketwatch quest in the opening village is the first example. The fisherman wants you to find his missing watch. He instructs you to ask Old Man Webber about it. Old Man Webber tells you to ask the stablemaster about it. The stablemaster tells you he saw the thief speaking to one of his stablehands and directs you to him. Wait ... how did Old Man Webber know that the stablemaster saw this? And how did the fisherman know that Old Man Webber knew? None of this is explained. It amounts to a poor chain of 'speak to this person' then 'this person' then 'that person.' Few of the quests are any better. They're mostly of the 'go retrieve this,' 'go kill that' variety with little development and shallow characters. Very much like the OC quests, only not as well written.
More evidence of the poor construction of the quests was the -continual- (emphasis strong) lack of consistency between the journal entries, dialogues, quest items, and story developments. The bounty hunter and journal entry tell me that no one knows where the criminal is. Yet the contract says he's in the Bloodstone Pass. I get a journal entry when I kill Boddynock. It tells me what's written in the letter in his pocket even though I haven't even touched the corpse yet. Why not attach the journal entry to the letter? Or not even mention the letter in the entry? I speak to some NPC's and before I say 'hi, how's your father' I get a journal entry reporting that I killed them and telling me what was on their corpses (good clue that there's no chance of a diplomatic solution, I guess?). The author strives to include as much information in the journal entries as he can, but it's entirely excessive and poorly timed, so that it all comes across as terribly clumsy.
I found the NPC's in Tyrants of the Moonsea nicer than the people in this one. The frikkin -Moonsea-! For some reason, 80% of the NPC's here are moody and bitter and snap at you for daring to even talk to them. Many of the ones who don't give you an attitude talk like loonies or children. I guess mature = nasty? Your own dialogue options don't give you much of a chance to behave better. You can't accept a quest reward, for instance, without sounding like a total jerk. And while nasty responses tend to be rather wordy, the polite ones are woefully short.
Some of the encounters are ridiculously unbalanced. I was amazed to run into a Bodak in the Bloodstone Gate crypt ... as a 6th level character. One death gaze wiped both my henchman, my animal companion, -and- my summoned wolf out. A second one took care of my PC. There are good reasons that monsters with special abilities like that should not be placed in front of characters that aren't up to its CR.
The endless long walks were a romp of tedium. The tree gates provided much appreciated relief from this, but only to the extent that they still required journey to and from them. Bioware placed recall items in their campaigns for a reason. They avoid the annoyance of long pointless walks which does -not- exist in tabletop D&D because the DM is there to move the party around quickly. Yes kids, recall item = portable DM = true to PnP!
There are a few bright points. It was nice to see custom items with descriptions that provided setting backstory and abilities that were true to those descriptions (thankfully, none of it is uber). Some of the henchmen had interesting bits of dialogue to offer. I especially enjoyed the story of the minotaur's childhood tragedy and his falling in with Belpus. The pixie's hyperactive personality was rather amusing -- this is one style that the author seemed to find a nice writing niche with.
Really, I have to stretch to find the good points. Basically, the module boils down to an often poorly balanced hack 'n' slash with some hollow dialogue sewn over it. If you think the writing in this module is among the best the Vault has to offer, you ought to try A Tangled Web or the AL series -- you're really missing out!
Posted by optimus at 2007-08-05 12:05:14 Voted 8.00 on 08/05/07
I didn't care for this module and ended up not finishing it. Three significant flaws in my view:
* Non-standard henchmen leveling, where each henchman has to acquire their own XP instead of tracking the PC's level. This makes it impractical, even ill-advised to swap henchmen in & out of your party as needs require, as doing so will cause henchmen to start dropping levels behind you, rendering them almost useless. This is particularly the case with the sorceror, as of course he doesn't acquire second level spells until level 4 - hauling him around until he gets there will be an exercise in frustration.
* Large areas that require significant back-tracking when you need to resurrect henchmen or even yourself, with no means of short-circuiting this through teleportation. I finally spawned myself in a pair of Boots of Speed to deal with this.
* Too many "Challenging" combat encounters during the low levels. Low-level combat, even against "Moderate" monsters can still often enough lead to PC death since it's so die-roll related, but encountering a group of 4 "Challenging" monsters is all but a death sentence when you haven't even hit level 5. Even with two clerics in the party, myself and a hench, the monk, and a level II summon - couldn't get through the forest without at least 4 deaths.
I also found one journal error - I persuaded myself out of a combat in the marsh, with the minotaur and his partner, but the journal still recorded that I killed them.
Part two of this series might be better, but I doubt I'll check it out.
Posted by fire&ice at 2007-06-23 10:47:09 Voted 8.50 on 06/23/07
A really enjoyable 'straight NWN' module. Large scope and always something to do. Doesn't break ground in any way but shows you can make an entertaining adventure without custom content. Played it about 2 years ago and thought I ought to get round to voting now I have a vault account! _________________________ NWN2: Big Font/High Res GUI // Extra Spell Swapping // NWN1: Colourised Scrolls // Both: Reviews and more
Posted by StealthWinsBattles at 2007-05-30 17:45:58 Voted 9.75 on 05/30/07
A very enjoyable module. The only thing that slightly irritated me was the fact that, although I played almost the entire module without a henchman, a lot of the conversations addressed me as if they were talking to more than one person.
I played thsi module about a year ago and enjoyed it so much I'm going to start it again and then do PartII.
About the commander Rodek dying bit..if that glitch hasn't been fixed , I solved the problem by simply making him a member of my party (be damned if I can remeber the debug command now though) so could heal him , oder him to stand his ground etc. etc.
Posted by Alex Lalas at 2006-12-16 03:58:11 Voted 9.50 on 12/16/06
Really good, I enjoyed very much. But final confrontation is too easy.
Posted by RDS at 2006-11-27 16:00:34 Voted 9.50 on 11/27/06
I really enjoyed this module. No monkey business, just a good story and well-executed quests that work and make sense. I found the ending a bit abrupt, but otherwise a very good module.
Great mod so far, but I can't finish because I can't find the'Broken Runed Sword'. I assume the item spawns after speaking to the gold dragon in the ruins of Bloodstone Gate City. I went there and searched in detect mode and could not find it. I would use the toolset, but for some reason the pallet refuses to load 95% of the time. No clue as to why, but it makes it hard to pinpoint items *WG*. Can someone help me?
OK, never mind, I misread slightly.
*** Spoilers ***
I just thought the logical course of action would be to unmask the informant as soon as possible, to minimise further leaking of information, especially with an important battle coming up. IMHO he should be in a place you can get to *before* the battle, or you should be able to alert the general of his presence.
I can't find the informant for Sembaron's quest. I read ACEMaster's reply to someone having the same problem a few pages back, but I've talked to every guard in the place and they all just say their one-liner comments.
Posted by ThAnswr at 2006-09-03 10:10:06 Voted 9.50 on 09/03/06
Let's try this again as, for some reason, my post got cut off at this point.
Possible spoiler
Like others, I also had the problem of Commander Rodek dying at the battle. I was never able to get the DM solution to work. However, I solved the problem by staying with the commander through the entire battle and, basically, protected him. Nervewracking, but he stayed alive and I was able to move on. It worked for me.
End of spoiler
Again, a good mod and one I would recommend.
Posted by ThAnswr at 2006-09-03 10:05:46 Voted 9.50 on 09/03/06
I played the mod a while back and I really enjoyed. In my opinion, it isn't one of those mods that hits you over the head with special effects, but it is one that grows on you.
is this another of those mods where you show all the places on the map but you can only go to like 5 of them or can you actually go to all those places you listed on the map screen? _________________________ "Noobs are people to"
NoobsRus
Posted by Equanimity at 2006-08-05 18:52:55 Voted 9.75 on 08/05/06
Excellent module, one of the best I've downloaded. Hope to see more of your work.
Posted by Suicide Minion at 2006-07-14 12:03:28 Voted 9.25 on 07/14/06
This was a very interesting and engaging mod, with a good story and particularly interesting NPC's. And I always love a nice presentation of FR setting, I much prefer it to custom worlds.
And I was absolutely delighted about the chance to kill Drizzt! After the giants had beaten him down to a sliver of his miserable life, my Arcane Archer gave him an undignifying one-shot kill. Whoopee! The mod was worth playing, for that alone! :D
I recently started this campaign and am already wondering whether I missed something. I've made it all the way through the marsh and cleared out all the lizardfolk. However, I never found the chieftain's crossbow - requested by the dwarf in the inn. The only actual lizardfolk that I found of any rank were the scout (MW scimitar) and the priestess. Where's the chieftain, so I can retrieve his bow? _________________________ OGRE-SLAYING KNIFE (+9 Adamantine Ogre-bane Dagger): Against all creatures other than ogres, it functions as a +1 adamantine weapon. As a +1 adamantine weapon, it has a +1 enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls and the attributes of an adamantine weapon. Against ogres, it offers a +9 enhancement to attacks and damage rolls (along with an additional +2d6 damage) and the attributes of an adamantine weapon. No one knows the history of this simple seeming-ly non-descript dark steel-colored blade, but it is likely safe to assume that the knife�s creator had a thing against ogres. When activated, i.e., automatically against ogres, the blade is sheathed in a harmless flicker of reddish light (20 ft. radius) and runes burn red down the dagger�s length - one side of the blade mirroring the other. (Infernal - it reads - �Bathe in Blood - Slake the Thirst.�) Hardness 20. Hit points 3. Strong evocation; CL 27th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, summon monster I; Price 104,002; Cost 52,001 gp + 2080 XP.
Posted by jeffabes at 2006-07-02 09:37:23 Voted 9.75 on 07/02/06
Very enjoyable! Well-paced - I always felt involved. One question, though - why would a gold dragon make a comment about a human's body? Wouldn't the dragon be looking for another gold dragon to spend time with?
Posted by gruedragon at 2006-06-19 04:49:44 Voted 10.00
Gwiston:
The dragon isn't looking for that sword. Maybe the giant dropped a weapon during the attack on Bloodstone Pass...
Posted by Gwiston ( 88.110.xxx.xxx ) at 2006-06-19 02:15:09
I am having a problem with a sword that i need to give to the resident of dierdak peak....i have killed the giant leader and taken his sword but i am unable to give it to the Dragon....am i missing something....is there another sword?
Noone else seems to have had this problem...any help would be appreciated as i want to finish this excellent module
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