For post - HOTU PCs (automatic or manual level-up at start to 25th level also available
Tricks & Traps
Medium
Roleplay
Medium
Hack & Slash
Heavy
Scope
Part of Series
DMNeeded
No DM Required
Single or Multiplayer
Single Player or Multiplayer
Max Character Level
30
Max # Players
04
Min # Players
01
Min Character Level
25
Content Rating
Teen
Alignments
Good or evil paths
Gameplay Hours
08
Description
CEP2 v1.91
'Having defeated the hordes of the Underdark, your victory was feted throughout Faerun. As time passed, spent secure in your new fortress among your riches and followers, the thrill of adventure became but a distant memory, a tale to be told by the fireside. For your reputation had become such that none in the wide world dared challenge your might.
'But other worlds exist upon which men - and monsters - tread, and Powers there are, beyond time and space, who rule the shadowy corridors between these worlds. And perhaps it was inevitable that eventually, as you dreamt one night of past conquests and victories, the Powers drew you into their presence. For they have a task for you, a mission to quicken your pulse and send a tingle of danger running along your spine. Adventure, like a long-forgotten friend, beckons you forth once more!'
"Shadows over Heliopolis" is an adventure in an alien land of baking deserts and strange foes designed to challenge post-HOTU PCs.
This is the first module in the Sands of Fate trilogy, which continues with "Gem Tower" and concludes with "Pyramid of the Ancients".
IMHO, this module should not be on the vault or at the very least it should be labelled properly as follow: * Multiplier Highly Recommended. Can be completed solo but only by POWERGAMERS. This module is NOT for Roleplayers as some of the combats will be over the top for non min-max characters and/or characters not equipped with a "full set" of "uber" items. * Also, note that HOTU can be completed with pretty much any character. This is clearly not the case here. Don't get me wrong, John has proven that he can make good modules (Moria for instance) but playing a module for 7+ hours only to find that there is one boss (let's call him GM) that you cannot kill (even though he is just a pawn) and therefor cannot complete the module (regardless of the fact that you can take down "the lady" and everything in the "other World") is just lame (and possibly show insufficient testing or perhaps a module made with a niche of characters in mind and not your generic post HOTU hero). I tested that one fight with no less than three characters. With the character I was playing the module I had a stalemate. My second character did lose (critical hit) but he would win otherwise. My last one (my best character ever) just smashed both bosses in 5 rounds or so. I also tried SoF or SoF with my lvl 40 but without magic items. He got killed in the first fight. This would show that the module is not about how high level your character is or how well you play but more about what (uber) equipment you have. So my comments from 2008 are still valid. I found comments by powergamers like JP2U or sometimes ericdoman rather amusing. JP2U made a couple of long posts below explaining that he completed the campaign with three "powerful builds". Sorry, but this is a RPG, I play characters, I don't do "builds". In one of his following post he went on and on guessing what my character was about and how wrong I was to play with him. Sorry to say that JP2U got it all wrong and certainly does not know how to take full advantage of that bard or the druid class. In view of all this, my short review of SoF (chapter one) would not be complete without telling more about my characters so here they are. The first two completed SoF I, I only used the last two to test the fight versus GM. 1. Komodo. Completed SoF I in 2008. Started chapter II but gave up out of frustration. I picked his name for a reason (one my google that if necessary). The idea behind this character is simple. What is better than a half-dragon? A dragon perhaps. What is better than a Dragon? Answer: One and a half dragon. Komodo is exactly or rather would eventually would be that. At level 29 he is Druid 18/Bard 1/RDD 10 with both high Strength (38) and Wisdom (32). AB 42/37/32 DMG d8+21+7 (19-20/x3). With KD, Dev Crit (spear), Elemental Shape x2 and a few nasty spells (e.g. stonehold, creeping doom, heal/harm) there is nothing he should be ashamed of. As I mentioned before, he only had trouble dealing with GM (early on) because at one point in the module dev crit was disabled by a script/bug. 2. Berek the leper (a tribute to Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever"). Berek the leper in Heliopolis, a.k.a. Kaarl the leper in Neverwinter is a knight. At a young age he was affected by an acute form of leprosy that could not be cured by any known means (a bit like the plague in Neverwinter). Torm decided that the young knight should be saved so Kaarl recovered partially. Near the end of SoF he is Bard 3/PM 10/CoT 17 with Strength (25) and Charisma (25). AB 37/32/27 DMG d8+7+6 (15-20x2) with a keen vorpal longsword. Not as impressive as Komodo for sure but he is a very good RP character (AL: CG) IMHO. For the entire module he relied on KD or IPA. With his high AC (61) he was safe enough. Before entering the module he equipped his greater swordman belt. May be that was not necessary and I should have kept his strength belt instead. Ramana did not help at all during the fight with GM. If she had any useful spell I did not see that. She just rushed into melee and died quickly. I reloaded numerous times just to keep up her safe someplace. And BTW, reloading the same area for over two hours is not my idea of fun. Combats in nwn can sometimes be described as paper-rock-scissors. Now imagine a fight between two guys of the same "type" (e.g. paper vs paper) you end up with a draw except that the module is not designed to let succeed without winning that very fight (according to the walkthrough). Eventually (3 to 4 hours later) I got very lucky. The scene could be described as follow: "the two fencers were obviously equally dangerous, it was clear that no victory would come from either side and the fight could go on for hours. What happened next was highly unexpected, Berek dropped his sword and shield. with only a robe he looked rather vulnerable. His opponent tried to take advantage of this apparent vulnerability but before he could do so, Berek stroke him with his "undead" arm killing him instantly. There was no time to waste, he equipped his sword and shield and went to confront the Mistress. Whatever she tried did not work and Berek simply cut off her head." In other words the former failed a fortitude save (with a roll of "1" - probability 5%) after a Melee Touch Attack (13+28: 41)and the later failed a reflex save (with a roll of "1" - probability 5%) as Berek scored two easy critical hits (20 and 19). 3. General Gran Notteel, Torm Templar, King of Arboril. Torm Templars are warrior priests going on crusades holding their holy great swords. Gran had a strange destiny. Around lvl 30 he is Fighter 2/Cleric 8/CoT 20. With good Strength and Charisma he can handle a fight or two. Gran can easily handle GM providing he can keep his head on his shoulders, literally. The Mistress did require some strategy and to overcome her it was a matter of using IPA and Great Smite with the proper timing. 4. Mogul (I could call Him "Bane of the powergamers"). One I told myself although I despise powergamers I can certainly beat them at their own game and so was born Mogul. Talk about paper-rock-scissors, Mogul is all that and more. Mogul is my secret weapon so I will not say too much about him except that to this day he remains undefeated. Let me just say that he smashed everything in HOTU, Dark Water Edge, The Gods Themselves Trilogy and the Penumbra with ease. OK, he may have broke a nail in the last one. He is now lvl 30, I started SoF II (skipped SoF I) with him and he just crushed a couple of armies just for fun - what you have to do to get some vote you know. Anyway send him to fight GM and his lady friend. The fight was over before I knew it. Smashed GM with a dev crit in one or two rounds and smashed the lady in 4, 5 rounds top. Again Mogul is legit but not really a RPG character in the noble sense of the term. I could not really explain his weird class mix if asked. One last key point perhaps is that John could have balanced the module exactly the way we do it in PnP by simply putting enough offensive and/or defensive equipment along the way to help against the three or four bosses in the module. Sadly the items found in the adventure were next to useless or not usable by most characters (e.g. heavy armor, exotic sword, cleric's heavy flail) or the hammer that cannot be identified. Add the useless henchmen to this (Ramana) and you get a potentially very frustrating module. My conclusion is that these pit fights against the most difficult opponent in the module are showing that the module was probably designed for powergamers and that only a few types of RPG characters (those we role-players are going to use) will have difficulty to complete the module without reloading multiple times or cheating at one point or another. Really a shame because the story is good and the module quite strong otherwise. 1-2: The module author did not take the time to fully test or check the module.
Posted by elleelle at 2010-03-2703:58:24
OK, entered DebugMode and pressed . then used it to jump to Deep Desert 2 and played from there. Seems to be OK, wandered around and found Cursed Scout, feel into tunnels and away we go...hopefully.
Posted by elleelle at 2010-03-2406:38:20
Hi. Got Cursed Ones quest from Cpt and gone to desert. Found rapier, can't exit West - but two areas show up on East of map, but both result in being teleported back to deep desert start. tried speaking to everyone in town and telling them about all the completed quests, no joy. I have the quest and the rapier, been inside a worm and down a worm tunnel. How can I trigger this next stage?
Posted by fisher123 at 2009-10-1520:13:16
Why has Full Plate got no base armour class? Although you can rationalize that because of the extreme heat you have to strip down the armour to be able to wear it. You still suffer extreme heat-stroke while wearing full plate that gives a base armour class of 0.
Posted by Juhnimus at 2009-09-2109:28:50
after buting files where they belong game gives me this "Missing Custom talk table needed". Help someone.
Posted by edosan at on09/14/09
Nice atmosphere, but the final battles were so hard I gave up in frustration. Maybe if I play the OC again with a better character...
Posted by Celtic209 at on04/01/09
Ok so dont need help anymore :-P As for the now completed module - I enjoyed it once i knew where to go and what needed doing however one or two things bugged me 1) The hordes of enemies who yielded almost no XP. I mean i was around a level 30 wizard wasting a lot of spells just to get a measly 20 XP on average. No fun. 2) The last 3 fights (DQ, GM, BoW) were hard until i figured out an effective strategy but I wouldn't have wanted to be a melee class character. Still overall a good module. Thanks :-)
Posted by Celtic209 at on04/01/09
I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to win the final battle when playing a level 31 human wizard? i use all my spells and barely scratch the queen and GM because of their heal spell and anything i summon gets de-summoned... Help!
Posted by uberhiker at on03/17/09
This is one of my favorite mods on the vault. Thanks for the donation to the community.
Posted by josch at 2009-03-1615:35:46
I'm stuck in this Modul. So it would be really kind if someone could help me out. I've got the quest to go in the desert and find some infomations about the cursed ones. The walkthough says once i have the scouting mission i will ne be teleported back when i trie to enter the second deep desert area. I have the mission, but the game insists in porting me back. :( josch
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