You must get into and out of Firestorm Peak in 24 hours.
Number Players
Play-tested with 5 PC's and 4 DM's without problems or latency.
Language
English
Level Range
10-16
Races
Any
Tricks & Traps
Medium
Roleplay
Light
Hack & Slash
Heavy
Classes
The adventure is built for a balanced party with a wide range of skills. Some single players may have difficulty.
Scope
Epic
DMNeeded
No DM Required
Single or Multiplayer
Multiplayer
Max Character Level
16
Max # Players
06
Min # Players
02
Min Character Level
10
Content Rating
Teen
Alignments
Any and supports all.
Gameplay Hours
10
Description
Local stories recall the rare but recurring storms of flame which ignite the highest reaches of the overshadowing and aptly named Firestorm Peak every twenty-seven years. This awe inspiring phenomena seems to be somehow linked with the celestial phenomena known as the Dragon's Tear, a red scar in the sky which only appears during the times of the Firestorm. Since the last firestorm, however, there has been a subtle, yet noticeable change in the lands surrounding Firestorm Peak. And recently things have taken a severe turn for the worse. Your father's friend, Nigel, was preparing to study the magical nature of Firestorm Peak. He had set up in Longbridge, and was studying the peak twenty-seven years ago. He was never heard from since. The Dragon's Tear has appeared in the sky, and the Gates of Firestorm Peak have opened. Providing a brief time to investigate what happened to your family friend...
PLEASE NOTE: CEP2 v. 1.0 is REQUIRED to play this module. There is also a small hak in the module .rar, and as a separate DL for those playing MP.
I have also included a .tlk folder with the CEP2 tlk inside for those of you having problems. If you do NOT have a .tlk folder already in your NWN directory, you will NOT be able to play the module.
You need to CREATE a folder named 'tlk' in your NWN directory, and place the CEP2 tlk file inside it. If you don't do this, the module does not know where to read the tlk file from, and thus, you will always get the error that you do not have the tlk installed.
For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, just put the tlk folder included in the module's rar, into your NWN directory.
Posted by micon at 2009-03-07 04:57:55 Voted 9.25 on 03/07/09
Ghool
Ok, I finished this mod 2nd attempt and a reading of the DM guide (I never found the player WT if there is one).
Single player was successful as a monk /rogue/ druid.
First time thru I had not substituted your talk file so that may have caused the glitch with the master duergar not recognizing that I had his sword.
1st time I never had any trouble with the Living wall or the continually regenerating mutant trolls but the 2nd try these both caused me heaps of grief .They ere dead but they would not die for ages and I nearly gave up on the Living Wall as maybe I thought that I may have had to kill some sustaining creature before the Wall could be taken out! I made a coffee and let my fungi hench Myconoid wipe them out.
Still never figured out if the malfunctioning blue light machined could be made to work again and I tried all kinds of light spells even went back and used the wand of light. No joy.
Still, all in all a very enjoyable module. I really do not know anything about multi player so I have not tried and I have never played online in a persistent world. NWN 1 plays fine for my amd 2.4 but I am a shade under the specs for NWN 2 and definitely do not like the map. It's like looking around in the dark with torch light with flat batteries. I do have NWN2 but I doubt that I will ever revisit it.
I have rambled on off the subject, so thanks for the game I will play your others. Great story.
Regards
Micon _________________________ micon
The adventure was expressly built for a party of no less than 4, and was play-tested extensively with 5 or more PC's. Those chickens were wrong...but since they got infused with a healthy dose of pure Chaos, I figured it was all right to make them frighteningly strong...but they were still chickens after all. ;)
That said, I'm glad you gave it a whirl single player, but I believe it's nearly impossible as you surmise without at least 3 classes, one of them being a high level or very skilled rogue with Disarm, Pick Locks, and Search skills. Nearly all the doors you speak of require either a specific key, or the above-mentioned rogue-ish type.
Once again, thanks for the detailed comments. :)
Posted by JP2U at 2008-12-02 20:10:07 Voted 9.50 on 12/02/08
Well, first of all this rating is based on my experience with the mod around a year ago and it's all from memory so I might be wrong on a point or two of detail but it's basically on target.
And, second of all, I've still never actually finished the mod!
I've tried to play through it three times with solo characters I think in the 17th level range but it's essentially impossible to do that for a wide variety of PC builds at least without custom items ... it really is meant to be multiplayer just like the description says. I think that the best option would maybe be a very-high-strength and carefully built fighter/rogue of some sort with plenty of points in disable device, maybe UMD, etc.
I think the first PC I tried was a wisdom-based cleric10/CoT3 ... too hard! Ok, go back and take a cleric10/CoT7, same build. Better, but each battle just took too much out of her in the way of spells so she'd have to rest repeatedly which means she'd never make it within the time limit. Even chickens and dogs were scary unbuffed ... if a chicken takes multiple blows to take down then something is seriously wrong.
>> Abort & retry.
Next one was I think a rogue2/wizard15/SD1. Selective use of spells when and where he wanted let him do quite well ... as far as the front gate. I'm pretty sure that this could only be got past with very high physical damage ranged attacks to bash a control mechanism ... maybe the gate itself could have been bashed too but that would only have been worse.
Could my 15th level rogue pixie fly through the bars and open it?
No, sorry ... that's just not allowed.
What about my composite shortbow? No, sorry, your buffs and it's damage just won't cut it.
Missle swarms?
The lever is immune to magic or otherwise nontargetable with spells.
Fireball?
What part of "immune to magic" did you not understand?
Ummm... acid flasks? alchemists' fire?
Nope and nope.
Ok, so initiate search mode with 15th level pixie with clairaudience and fox and owl buffs cast on her to find the secret door that obviously must be here and let's me past.
No secret door.
Teleport? Dimension door?
No such things.
>> Abort & retry.
At last! Maximum strength half-orc barbarian2/fighter5/CoT10! Greatsword and warhammer dual-specialist, blindfighting, improved power attack, AB, dmg, saves, regen, the works! Booyah! Now that I'm past the gate I start having some real fun ... tearin' sheet up! Some tough scraps but nothing that I can't overcome with good tactical choices ... and you know how clever those 6 int half-orcs can be! But then ... the red door. Alas! Yes, a door such as NWN has never before seen ... one that is not only trapped, but which can not even be opened until the trap is removed, which trap seems to be impervious to magical means of removal. It went something like this ...
The door is closed and when you try to open it you get blasted with acid.
BASH IT OPIN!
You get blasted with more acid but it's still closed.
Yooz magik stik to make trap go away and opin door. [find traps 3x/day]
It doesn't work.
**blink-blink**
Shake stik and yooz agin.
Still no.
uuhhh ... wander aroun n look at walls ... find nuther door ware i alreddy been i missed mebbe.
You find no other door.
uhhh ... go bak to door n BASH IT AGIN!
You get blasted with more acid and the door remains closed.
BASH IT KUPPEL MORE TIMES!
More acid, still closed.
uhhh... wate and heel up ... drink sum magik poshuns make me stronger n tuffer n hit harder n not git hert by acid n stuff then ... GET REELY MAD N BASH IT A WHOLE LOTTA TIME REELY FAST N HARD!
You get blasted with acid until you fall unconscious. The door is still closed.
>> Abort, don't retry, great game though.
I'm pretty sure that I was very near the end at that point and that I must have been around 4/5th of the way through. That's based on memory from the pnp module which I had many years ago. Sad to have come that far only to be turned back.
The dungeon was beautiful, challenging, some horrifying encounters truly are horrifying, some clever scripts I hadn't seen, the merchant area was wonderful. All in all a fantastic work but definitely for multiplayer. I was going to rate it only a 9 because I was miffed about not being able to finish it solo but I was warned and it deserves higher.
It may be possible to finish it single-player but you'd either have to check the cheat sheets and find something very odd that I missed or have to have a character pretty much expressly designed to do it all ... again, I'm thinking a strength based fighter/rogue of some sort with careful skill selection and either UMD and access to some nice items or plenty of regen or both. A battle-cleric with trickery domain and good items might work too, not sure.
I did play Ghool's tomb of horrors (epic) which was also excellent. It's hard to compare this to that but I think maybe have this is even better. Again, that's coming from someone who's never even finished the mod!
Thanks for the observations BePower. ;)
The door system was an old pre-fab I found here on the vault, and had quite a number of glitches, as well as being*bleep*bersome and tedious to use.
In my last attmept at module making; Temple, Tower, and Tomb, I discarded that particular door system in favor of the standard Bioware doors with a few of my own tricks added. ;)
Hindsight's always 20/20, and if it weren't such a chore (and my PC still worked) I'd go back and remove that clunky door system.
At any rate, thanks for the votes both on this one and S1 (and if you enjoyed these two, then give Temple, Tower, and Tomb a try, since I consider it some of my best work.)
Cheers!
-Ghool
Posted by BePower at 2008-09-08 22:21:08 Voted 9.00 on 09/08/08
Hey man, great work here. Visuals and sounds are superb, great mood. I think your mods have great puzzles, too bad I'm not a greater fan of it :p
Your doors, however, seem to be broken... The dialog recognizes that I've unlocked (giving the option to lock) but doesn't allow to open! Heh. Doesn't matter if unlocked through the knock spell or by the dialog itself. Having the same problem with S1.
I played til the big black door, which I think needs the 3 crystals to open. And I didn't find it too difficult, I was just worried about places to rest so I could recover spells (solo sorc lvl 16). Enemies aren't too tough, it's just numbers and summoning a tank or blocking their way they are good as dead.
Thanks for the feedback!
Since this was a pre-written adventure, and my first real attempt at making a module, I'd say there's a very long list of things I could have done better. ;)
As far as the ancient tome goes, it's not game-breaking, but provides some background and history to the adventure is all. Sometimes the placeables I put on the shelves didn't always work because of the pathing, and if you moved around the object without a mouse, and then clicked said object (instead of what most folks do, which is just click the object itself, and then the character can't path to it, since it's in an unusual spot for the pathing engine to figure out), you'll find that all the placeable objects should be interactive. I know it's a pain, but not to worry, all things plot-related, and necessary to the completion of the adventure are not placed in such a way.
Once again, thanks for the feedback, and despite the few mis-givings you have about it, I hope you enjoy it well enough. I do have two other modules, which were crafted after this one, and I'm sure you'll enjoy a lot more, since things are less restricting in the role-playing sense.
Just began your mod, with a 2-player party, (wizard, L15 & rogue-ranger, L16 to make up for a low hit point average in the group, so moderately well-rounded,) can't really say much about it yet, although we've run into items on bookshelves which were plain enough to see, and yet couldn't be interacted with...? Most notably, an "ancient tome". Hope this doesn't turn out to be game-breaking for us.
My only other note would be, (and I believe I'm not alone in this,) declaring outright at the very beginning that a character is the son/daughter of an npc is annoying enough when that character is 1'st level. When you get above tenth, and have your character's background all worked out already, forcing the player to accept such a relationship is very frustrating. (We just agreed at the outset that all instances of "father" would be mentally replaced with "old family friend".) _________________________ "There's no religion but time & motion-
No religion, just tribal scars."
Posted by stubbytroll at 2007-11-02 15:33:53 Voted 9.00 on 11/02/07
Fun hack n slash dungeon crawl. Soloed with a lvl 15 wiz / bar /ass, gained 2 levels.
Combat for a arcane caster was ok, tending towards being somewhat easy. The respawning creatures, which weren't tough anyways, were easily avoided with invisibility or traveling through other areas.
Areas were reasonably well designed, though somewhat blocky and square. Decent test of a character's rogue skills, with secret doors, traps, locked doors etc. One thing I didn't like was the custom door scripts that really slowed door opening to a crawl, and would drop you out of stealth.
Aside from the rogue skills, not much skill use.
I found the promenade of merchants a really nice touch. I liked the fact that it "broke" the atmosphere. A short break from the dungeon crawling was nice.
Lots of custom scripting. The Duergar polymorphed into giants was a nice touch. Many, custom items. Some prety powerful custom items with custom scripts. The idea of custom scripting the powers of items so they wouldn't imbalance an exported character was interesting.
Didn't find the time limit a problem. _________________________ My shoes are too tight and I have forgotten how to dance.
Posted by WeAreAllKosh at 2007-08-13 12:46:27 Voted 7.00 on 08/13/07
While there were elements of the module I enjoyed, the amount of Hack and Slash reached overkill levels. Huge groups of creatures combined with respawn rules made travel through the complex very tedious at times.
The gibberling cave was the worst example. I spent about 15 minutes hacking through wave after wave of the things only to turn around and find out they'd already respawned. It was too much.
The long walks were also tedious. A teleport item would have made lootselling/resupplying more convenient. Same went for the Crypt Things with their teleport ability. Sure, it adheres to PnP rules, but in a PnP game long walks aren't played out.
So a mostly enjoyable module that was dragged down at times.
Thanks for the feedback and vote, Astero!
I'm glad you enjoyed the adventure, despite the few bugs that managed to creep in past my extensive play-testing.
The henchman appearing in the cutscenes is an easy fix. I took note of that before, but it must of somehow slipped through the cracks. As for the Myconid Ranger giving you a bugged journal update...again a simple fix, but I think I may have tried to rectify this earlier....not sure how that one got past me as well.
I've abandoned the door system, and Temple, Tower, and Tomb doesn't use it. There are some parts requiring some lock-picking and trap-finding skills, so perhaps a rouge-ish-type might suit that one a little better solo.
As for the Grand Promenade being friendly....in the original, it was supposed to be the scene of a massive battle, and at the same time, resourceful PC's could hoodwink the merchants into selling to them. The reason for me turning it into a friendly market was two-fold;
1. Being a mainly H&S adventure (and a difficult one at that), I found in my play-tests that often parties would need to re-supply, and heading back out to town, then back in was time-consuming, and a little lacklustre.
2. There were so many NPC's, and hostiles that it became far too difficult to actually fight in such an environment (and keep in mind, I had originally built this pre-SOU, so stability was a major issue back then, and remains so with lower-end machines), and latency even just with the PC's and placeables alone was horrendous. It took me many weeks to strike a good balance of NPC's and placeables in that area, and managing a huge fight would have been impossible there.
What one also has to recall, is that Firestorm Peak connects to the Underdark, and hence the Promenade merchants were used to seeing all kinds of strange faces, and races.
Despite some finding that one part breaking a bit of the atmosphere, I do believe I did the best I could with the material provided, and the limitations of the NWN engine.
At any rate, I hope that explains that decision some. Again, thanks for the vote, and in-depth feedback!
Cheers!
-Ghool
Posted by Astero at 2007-07-06 14:00:12 Voted 10.00 on 07/06/07
Fantastic! :). I soloed it so I can only imagine what it would had been like if I had played this multiplayer. I will definitely replay this with some friends. Visually it was wonderful. My English aren't rich enough to describe exactly how I was feeling every time I saw something that caught my eye. I have played many modules and I have seen what builders can do but I got to say that your module stands out. How can a module that it's more hack and slash than roleplaying could make me feel more into my role than many roleplaying modules out there? Great atmosphere, challenging battles, attention to details, many cutscenes, an intriguing main plot, few side quests but fun nevertheless :).
*Spoilers*
I liked having some items in my inventory which could boost my char. Thankfully, I discovered early on the treatment for this horrible and annoying Gibberslug but I got to admit that it was a nice touch :).
Now some problems and oddities that I've encountered. When I lost a henchman (the myconoid one), I saw a blank error entry in my journal. When I obtained the third crystal component which was supposed to be the first really but my search skill was low (my char was a fighter) so I missed the secret area in the Grand Promenade, my journal didn't recognize that I recovered it so it didn't update.
In some cutscenes, I could see my henchman, standing and watching as the events were taking place. I also agree with Steve who said that having doors that you could open with your strength, or listen to etc and some that you couldn't get past them without being a rogue or having one in your party was a little odd as it was having dwarfs attacking you only to find yourself in a friendly market.
*End Spoilers*
But nothing could really spoil the fun for me. Well done for an exceptional module. I played Tomb of Horrors which was just amazing and I can't wait to try Temple, Tower, and Tomb. Keep up the good work :).
Thye .tlk file is the same. I included it because many folks were having problems installing the .tlk properly, so I included it for convenience.
The firestorm peak.rar file is the small, custom hak needed to play the module. I put it as a separate file, so those playing MP, wouldn't have to DL the entire module file for a 800 KB hak. :)
Might want to clarify the following in your Readme:
(1) Is the "cep2_v1.tlk" file included in "The_Gates_of_Firestorm_Peak_Revisited.rar" identical to the one found in CEP2 v. 1.0, or is it a "tweaked" version?
(2) Is "firestorm_peak.rar" the "separate DL for those playing MP" you refer to?
Thanks again, captaincrisis. It's good to know some folks out there are still enjoying my adventures. :)
-Ghool
Posted by captaincrisis at 2007-01-23 05:40:24 Voted 10.00 on 01/23/07
No problem. THANK YOU. I have no idea how these mods are made so I can only imagine how complex and time consuming producing something of this quality must be. I am currently in the Duergar mine and when I entered it the effect of the sounds and the lighting (and the anticipation of fighting more Driders) made a shiver run down my spine. Literally.
Driders, oh why did it have to be Driders?
Maybe this is old hat for lots of people, but for someone like me who is just (re)discovering NWN it is truly amazing that so much quality content is still available.
I really believe that for anybody with half an imagination NWN is still a truly great game (and maybe even a better game than NWN2) especially while people like you Ghool continue to support it.
Thanks for the praise and the vote. It's very much appreciated.
-Ghool
Posted by captaincrisis at 2007-01-22 07:40:44 Voted 10.00 on 01/23/07
"playing solo as a Lvl 15 Cleric". D'oh, I should have heeded your advice. I restarted with a character with a more rounded set of skills! :) Great Mod
Posted by captaincrisis at 2007-01-21 13:00:32 Voted 10.00 on 01/23/07
Ghool, I just started playing solo as a Lvl 15 Cleric and I am finding the mod beautifully made, bug free and totally engrossing. I will report back later but in the meantime I just wanted to stop by and say thanks for sharing updating this.
Any other feedback, bug reports or comments? I find it difficult to believe that this module is so polished that no one's found a bug? The last update fixed a couple of gripes Steve had (namely those twitchy statues), but if there's no comments, then I don't know what's good and what's not.
I did read the readme file, and didn't notice much change from the file provided with the prior version of this module. However, on this page, you indicate it is multiplayer only and set the minimum number of players at 2, thus my confusion!
aw.. i can't get it to load without the tlk either. and i waited for CEPv2 to come out, and lo i need the beta as well? alas will there truely be no update for v1? wah! >_
The .tlk file shoudl be in the CEP, if you can't find it anywhere, just send me an email at the address listed above, and I can email it to you.
What you might need to do is create a folder in your NWN directory, and name it 'tlk'. Then put the CEP beta2 tlk file in there. It might be that the module is trying to read the file from that location, which might not exist.
In any case, if you can't locate the tlk, I'll gladly send it to you.
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