After your adventures in the Calim Desert, you have returned to Calimport, ready to assume your new duties as one of a noble's personal guards. Your new employer has assured you that he expects more from you than routine guard duty, and will be assigning tasks appropriate for someone with your varied talents and experience. What's more, there is no knowing what may happen if you find yourself even peripherally involved in all the courtly intrigues of Calimshan. There is little doubt that your time in Calimport will be full of adventure.
Swordflight Chapter Two is an epic adventure in which you will explore the city of Calimport and a few nearby regions in non-linear fashion. It features challenging tactical combat, old school dungeon crawling, interaction with many colorful NPCS, extensive class-specific sidequests, numerous role-playing opportunities, and more.
The following four hakpaks are required to play this module:
ctp_common.hak and ctp_loadscreens.hak (found on the CTP Release(s) page linked to below)
ctp_babylon.hak (found on the CTP Babylon page linked to below)
SwordflightA.hak (found on this page)
Version History (see readme for more complete details on changes made):
7/2/12: Version 1.02 released. Some bugfixes and tweaks to combat balance.
7/31/12: Version 1.03 released. Fixes to a couple of minor bugs.
9/25/12: Version 1.04 released. Some adjustments to systems for resting and henchman management, and fixes to a few minor issues.
Thanks for the extensive commentary, Darpaek. To sum up, I guess your point is that the module is too hard and the magic items insufficiently over-powered? I fear that is a common reaction. I was trying to create something relatively similar to older games like Baldur's Gate, where combat is often extremely hard and powerful magical items rare, but it is true that more recent games have set different standards about such things, so this approach may be somewhat disconcerting. Though I am a little confused in that you praise me for providing a low magic environment at certain points and then in the next sentence (as far as I can make out) criticize me for the exact same thing.
It is true that it would be logical for a place like Calimport to be more high-magic than a lot of others. Relatively speaking, compared to what the typical old-fashioned PnP module would have done, it actually is (though still somewhat more low-magic than the typical NWN module I suppose), but that does not mean every random bruiser on its streets is going to have +5 gear or something. As one might expect, the best stuff is still largely confined to the rich and connected. I can say in relation to this matter that given the nature of your complaints the moment you chose to quit was a bit unfortunate. After completing the quest in the desert you talk about, you would have gained access to Gadaran's store (probably, depending on the order in which you did certain quests), where you would have found enough powerful (by my standards) items to possibly spend all of that 300K gold on them, if you wished to.
I agree that the nature of the NWN engine makes things like numerous Bags of Holding more appropriate than they would be in PnP. However, though full-fledged Bags of Holding are rare and hard to acquire in my modules, there are plenty of 80% Weight Reduction bags, which I would have thought could have served much the same purpose. Is there some reason why you were not using them, or found them inadequate?
Posted by Darpaek at 2013-04-10 12:15:02 Voted 7.00 on 04/10/13
Ugh. I give up.
If your idea of a good time is getting your 12th level butt handed to you by +30 to hit goblins and orcs, flame-striking fire beetles, and invulnerable trolls, while walking around practically naked power-chugging potions of cure serious wounds: This Mod Is For You!
The final straw for me was wandering in the middle of the desert I came upon a coven of vampires the main plot wanted me to kill and ranger boy looked at me and said, "Let's get some sticks."
No. How about we go back to Calimport and buy a few Periapts of Life Protection instead? The Temples of Tyr and Shar don't have any? Let's try one of the other 25 or so temples in Calimport! Or one of the city wards entirely devoted to and populated by mages who do absolutely nothing else other than crank out magic items to pay their rent?
What this mod suffers from is that the author's ambitions conflict with his execution. I've said before in other works of his that I really like his desire to go for a realistic, low-magic, PnP feel. But then the author dumps the player in the middle of one of the largest and arguably most magical cities in the Realms - where genies walk the streets - and the player has to sit with 300k burning a hole in his pocket and nothing worthwhile to buy. All the while, everyone you meet including your henchmen, are dripping with magic like +3 or +4 weapons and armor with regeneration and damage reduction and haste. And I got my leathers +2. And 300k. And 10 stacks of cure potions.
I can understand a builder not wanting to provide the player with necklaces of everything immunity, belts of freedom, helmets of mind shielding and boots of haste; but I've gotten to the level that if I was playing a mage I could craft this stuff myself. It's ridiculous that I can't find a mage in Calimport to commission a ring of regeneration.
And it's not like there's no magic, either: just none of it's useful. You have Bracers of Dex that also buff all your thief skills, Rings of Protection that also boost your Will, Cloaks of Protection and Wisdom, etc.
It almost seems that a lot of the design decisions in this module were placed there with the intention of deliberately frustrating the player. I love the PnP-style rest restrictions, but in PnP the party can say, "Hey we're going back to camp to rest" and 30 seconds later they're back in the adventure. For some of these dungeons, you'll be back tracking across 5 or 6 REALLY LARGE empty areas without Haste. The author wants you to lug around a few hundred potions, but he doesn't provide his potions in stacks of 10 and there's no Bags of Holding. Sure, I played D&D for years as a kid and I don't remember ever having ONE Bag of Holding, much less 15. In PnP, you keep all the loot in a sack and drag it along and drop the sack once battle starts. NWN Bags of Holding are cheesy, but they compensate for deficiencies in the game engine. At the very least, if the author wants to change the game mechanics to force the player to carry hundreds of potions, make them not weigh anything. Unless there's someone out there that finds enjoyment in constantly dragging pixelated icons over a transparent grid?
There's lots of little things that will add up and annoy the player over time. You run into chests and doors all the time that can't be picked or bashed and can only be unlocked by mages. While an interesting use of placed colors and scripting, if magical locks were actually rogue-proof - why would anyone pay a high-level rogue to lock and trap a chest for them when they could instead pay an apprentice mage to come out and make their chest rogue-proof? Skills like Disable Device and Open Locks are more than cutting a tripwire or jamming a pick in a tumbler. These akills, like hitpoints, are an abstract and magical locks are represented by having a higher DC when using these skills. This would be a fun, slightly game-y, puzzle if it only happened once, but the player encounters these locks repeatedly. Several sidequests put the player into a position where they have to use a skill (which is a very good thing) like searching for gloves in a warehouse or items in a trashcan, or tossing a rope to cross the sewers. The player rolls and if they fail it's over (and quite possibly the sidequest as well) and the player has to reload and try again when the player should have been given the option to Take 20. The player isn't being chased by wererats while they swing across the rope and the player doesn't throw the rope and let go, right?
This is a pet peeve, but the dialogues also constantly refer to the player character by class. "I am Fighter Darpaek, an adventurer." "How are you doing today, Fighter Darpaek?" It makes me wonder if the characters refer to each other by level, too. Every conversation is a Wall of Text, too. It's cool if this is coming from your character's boss or his daughter when they're giving you instructions, but it seems like the author forgets that these conversations are actually supposed to represent conversations.
The area design, particularly for the city is really cool, particularly with the dialogue-based area transitions that open new areas as the plot progresses and random battles mid-transition because they create the feeling that this is a big city and the zones you are seeing are only hotspots, but there's lots more out there. Again, like the dungeons, a lot of the city areas are really big and tedious to navigate, particularly without Haste. I think the "feel" of being in a big city would have been better served by having lots of smaller areas connected by dialogue-based transitions - like an area with JUST the Temple of Tyr, an area with JUST the boss's estate, etc. This big city "feel" is immediately destroyed when the player goes to the "Grand Bazaar of Calimport" and finds four merchants next to stalls selling a bunch of non-magical crap that the player doesn't need while 300k burns a hole in his pocket.
And, of course, it's unreasonable to expect that a mod builder would design 20 temples, etc. So long as the player feels their needs are being met by the two temples that are a provided, they're not going to look for the other 18 temples and have their immersion shattered.
This score is higher than I want to give, but I have to give recognition that this module is well-polished and epic in scope. I don't want my score to suggest that I'm giving any more than a VERY qualified recommendation. I didn't finish this. It wasn't fun. The NWN engine and poor henchman AI don't lend well to "tactical" gameplay. I would guess that most people playing this will turn it off the first time a goblin crits them for 80 damage, they wake up in the "Respawn Zone" and come back, kill the goblin, only to discover that they can't loot whatever awesome weapon just skewed them.
Posted by gamer_queen1983 at 2013-02-04 17:23:07 Voted 10.00 on 02/04/13
Just posted an updated version of the walkthrough with some typos corrected. The module file itself has not been altered since the update in September, so if you have the version put up at that time there is no need to re-download it.
Thanks for the kind words, TGJB. As far as your bug goes, it appears that a peculiar combination of circumstances somehow caused one of the sharks to disappear without technically being killed, which would indeed make it difficult to properly complete your quest of killing them all. I am not sure we will ever know exactly what happened to your hammerhead companion (which is unfortunate for me since it means I am not sure how I could prevent such a glitch from possibly recurring), but I like your suggestion that he returned to the sea and became a shark hero. Perhaps that is indeed what happened. While it is true that failing to complete that one small quest should not make much difference to anything, if you do not want to leave it undone I believe you could straighten out the problem by means of the following procedure:
Enter Debug Mode by pressing the tilda key ("~").
Type:
DebugMode 1
and press enter. Then type:
SetVarInt NW_JOURNAL_ENTRYj_shark 2
and then click the cursor that appears on your PC. Then enter:
DebugMode 0
and continue playing. This should update your journal and mark the shark-killing stage of this quest as completed. You should now be able to speak to the Innkeeper and get a reward for removing the sharks.
Not voting yet because I'm still very early on in my playthrough, but I just wanted to take time to say thank you for building this excellent module (as well as its predecessor). I just finished Chapter One and dived right in to Chapter Two. Amazing! If positive feedback is enough to encourage you to keep building, I can't give you enough. Please keep doing what you do, sir, because I dig it and will play more whenever you find time to publish. I've hauled NWN across three computers now and see no reason to ever stop, so long as talents like you continue to write for it.
I do have one bug (or at least moment of general weirdness) to report. While doing the quest involving the sharks in the dock tavern's cellar, My Ranger attempted to talk the sharks into leaving. The check failed and combat began. Getting overwhelmed, my Rgr used his Animal Empathy to get the hammerhead on his side (should have talked to him first, I guess). It wasn't enough, though, and my Rgr fell in the battle.
Resting and buffing in the Plane of Air, my Rgr returned, but the tamed hammerhead and maybe one or two of the other sharks were gone (though the missing hostiles may have died concurrently with me; too busy being eaten to notice). I finished off the remaining hostiles and returned to the tavern. The innkeep won't recognize the sharks as defeated so the quest remains unsolved. Perhaps he disapproved of my tactic of shark on shark violence. Anyway, not really a big deal, but worth noting, I thought.
Hmmm... I wonder where my tamed hammerhead ended up. Did he keep fighting (and die) while I was gone, wondering why I'd abandoned him? Did he come with, but flopped off the edge of my island in the Plane of Air? Perhaps he swam back out to sea, inspired by my noble efforts, and became a shark hero...
Unfortunately the size of this module made it difficult for me to playtest it as much as I would have liked, and it looks like you found a few more small bugs (you are a pretty good QA tester, it seems). I will look into correcting those and doing some additional testing as time permits. I am not really sure what is causing the various henchman issues you report or what, aside from an impractically massive reworking of the whole henchman AI, can be done about them, but I will particularly try to do some testing with henchmen in combat (again, time permitting) to see if I cannot get a better idea as to what the problem is. As I said before I did occasionally notice odd henchman behavior in my testing, but it seemed a rather sporadic thing, and I put it down to the usual quirks in Bioware's AI. From what you report though it does seem like something about this module is causing these issues to crop up more frequently than they should.
It took me several years to make this module, as one can see by comparing its release date to that of Chapter One, albeit I was not always working as efficiently as I could have. I wasted the better part of a year after the release of Chapter One experimenting with the NWN2 toolset before eventually concluding it would not serve my purposes.
Additional chapters are definitely planned (they should be shorter and thus hopefully will not take as long to make) and I have already done a small amount of work on Chapter Three. Whether anyone will be around to play the later chapters if and when I complete them is anyone's guess. You are no doubt correct that I need to do more work promoting the module, but I have never been very good at that sort of thing. Although at this stage in NWN's life-cycle I fear there are just not that many players around for any module, however well-promoted. A lot of people have moved on to other things and have no idea how much amazing stuff is still being made for this game. It would be nice if some of them could be enlightened in this regard, but, again, I am probably not the best person to ask as to how to go about doing so.
In any case, thanks for your kind words regarding the module. I enjoy desinging and building modules and it always additionally gratifying to know that there are people who enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Posted by Kamiryn at 2012-08-16 03:19:05 Voted 10.00 on 08/02/12
There're a few other minor things I've found...
- haunted house: journal talks about north west while the house is in the north east corner actually,
- putting the tiger to sleep: I didn't get any gold for this (I did get XP however),
- Zarala does not fight when (improved) invisble. Very similar to the problem I had with Kelem. Unfortunately unlike Kelem you can't force her to become visible again. All you can do ist waiting for the duration to run out.
I've finished part II a few days ago and I can only repeat that your module is one of the best modules I've played so far (and I've played quite a few). Really great! I wonder how many month (or should I say years?) did it take to write part II?
Since the ending is somewhat open I dare to ask if a third part is (or was) planned?
You should definitely make more advertising for your work. I'm very sure that a lot of people would like to play the modules but just don't know about them.
Posted by Kamiryn at 2012-08-08 02:53:08 Voted 10.00 on 08/02/12
So the swamp beetles are using the bioware stink beetle OnDeath effect now. I have a save from just before meeting the first swamp beetle and I think I will replace 'my' swamp beetles with the v3 versions (by taking the uti file from v3 mod file and putting it into the hak file, that should overwrite the original swamp beetle file - at least I hope so).
Thanks for the continuing QA feedback. I was already aware of the bug with the swamp beetle's Cloudkill-on-death effect, and it should be corrected as of version 1.02. Players who have already started a game using the originally released version of the module can eliminate the semi-permanent and*bleep*ulative slowing the bug causes with Freedom potions (or Freedom Spells if you have a PC able to cast them). The slowing effect can also be removed by resting, though trying to rest in the swamps is dangerous.
Posted by Kamiryn at 2012-08-07 14:50:40 Voted 10.00 on 08/02/12
Further tests seem to show that
a) there's no problem if they cast cloudkill as a spell.
b) it seems that the OnExit script 'nw_s0_cloudkillb' does not get executed if the cloudkill effect gets created by the OnDeath script.
Posted by Kamiryn at 2012-08-07 14:29:27 Voted 10.00 on 08/02/12
No idea why but it seems there's a problem with the swamp beetles and their OnDeath script. The movement speed decrease does not go away when leaving the area of effect. So with every killed beetle my party became slower and slower.
Posted by Kamiryn at 2012-08-02 05:59:54 Voted 10.00 on 08/02/12
> are you using TonyK's AI or anything similar?
No - afaik, have to double-check that once I'm at home again, but sure aren't any. My override folder just contains NWNCQ, my own CCOH and the five(?) official bioware files. Not sure about NWNCQ but the rest shouldn't cause any conflicts.
I know the usual NWN henchman AI problems but this seems to be different somehow. As if Kelem's AI script isn't running at all sometimes or as if sometimes he does not realise when a combat starts (at first I thought he got blinded in a previous fight but that wasn't true).
On your henchman issues: I occasionally noticed quirky behavior on the part of the henchmen during testing but it was not a regular thing. I have sometimes seen similar issues in other modules so I believe they are problems with Bioware's AI, rather than anything I did, though perhaps the greater difficulty of my modules makes the weakness of the Henchman AI more glaring. Just to confirm: are you using TonyK's AI or anything similar? I do not know how well that would work with some of my own script modifications.
If an incompatible override could not be to blame, then I know of at least a couple of things that could be going wrong. One problem that I find sometimes occurs (and this could particularly be a problem with Kelem) is that a stealthed henchman will not always go out of stealth and attack just because you do. In such situations you can hit your stealth button, to cause the whole party to abandon stealth (even if your own character is already out of stealth due to attacking): you will note that each time you use the stealth hotkey it can cause the henchmen to toggle in or out of stealth mode, and this can happen even if you cannot enter stealth yourself on account of being in combat (I don't know if your character has HIPS? That could complicate things too). I have also sometimes seen henchmen who are invisible (if that is a factor) behave oddly, perhaps for similar reasons. Another thing that sometimes happens with spellcasting henchmen is that they will stand still apparently doing nothing in combat, but if one waits for a few seconds or so without disturbing them they will recover and start casting a spell. Possibly after casting one spell they have to wait for the start of a new round (or something like that) before they can cast another.
I hope the above helps you figure out what is going on. Perhaps someday I will include a completely reworked custom AI for the henchman in a module, but that was just too much extra work to take on for this one on top of everything else it required, so I had to retain a lot of the issues with Bioware's problematic AI. Note that with the XP scaling system I did manage to implement, a henchman will still boost your experience just by being in the party even if he never does anything (and it can be nice to have Talu around just so you can ask him to cast Mass Haste on everyone, even if he never does anything else - though maybe he is not yet at a high enough level to have access to that spell).
Posted by Kamiryn at 2012-08-02 03:29:11 Voted 10.00 on 08/02/12
Haven't found any other bugs so far. But I'm still playing and will do for many hours more I guess :D.
One problem however has occured and it's a really annoying one - not quite sure if it's a bug or a problem on my side but it seems that both Talu and especially Kelem are actually spies (:D) working for the goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears or whoever, because when fighting the humanoids in the Forest of Mir very often they (especially Kelem) actually refuse to participate, regardless what commands I give them (attack nearest enemy, defend me) and repeating them during the fight doesn't help at all. Perhaps they think three level ~10 adventurers figting a whole armee is a stupid idea but I would say that just one level 10 adventurer fighting that same whole armee is even more stupid :D. After returning to calimport and when exploring the city gates sewers they are somewhat back to normal. Haven't tried any other henchmen outside of calimport (will try the dwarf and the lich soon), so I don't know if it's a general problem or specific to Kelem.
Still and without any doubt this is a great module and while I'm not finished yet I have seen enough to vote.
The script that should have been in the "OnSpellCastAt" slot is in the "OnUnlock" slot just below instead. Oops. I added that particular chest in after I had already done multiple testing runs on the basis of which I decided spellcasters could use a little more extra stuff, so that must be how such an obvious error could have gotten in. I will be correcting that, and also the bug with the slave merchant soon, so let me know if you find anything else that could be fixed in the next update (I do not know if I will have as good an excuse for any further mistakes you find, but I will just have to risk that).
Posted by Kamiryn at 2012-07-20 13:22:16 Voted 10.00 on 08/02/12
Trying to open the chest in the 'Sewers: Beneath the Slums'. The dialog says an acid spell like melf's acid arrow would do but casting the spell does nothing. Seems the chest has no 'OnSpellCastAt' script attached.
Posted by Kamiryn at 2012-07-20 06:30:59 Voted 10.00 on 08/02/12
Playing for a few hours now and I have to say this really looks like a masterpiece. Definitely deserves more players and votes!
I've found one minor bug (besides the already mentioned alignment shift problem) so far: if you decide to sell the slave you can that over and over again.
Thanks for still making modules for NWN. Will vote once I have finished.
Thanks for the vote and praise. A module that captures some of the spirit of games like Baldur's Gate, while also taking advantage of the versatility of NWN's conversational system to expand role-playing beyond what a game of that era typically offered was exactly what I was trying to make. I too have had dreams about what this series could have been on a more modern engine, but so long as it is only myself, rather than a whole game company, working to make something on this scale, I do not see how it could be created with anything other than the NWN toolset.
@Lactruss
Sorry you seem to be having such poor luck with this module. If you completed the earlier quest involving Barazh, released him, and failed to find him later in the Desert Dragon Inn, I am not sure what is happening. You could double-check that you have not somehow missed him among all the other people in the inn (he should be found in the southwestern part of the main level of the inn, very close to the more westerly entrance), or go back to the Dark Calimport region where he was initially found to see if he was not somehow left there, but otherwise it seems you have run into some sort of bug that has removed him from play. I will try to look into what might possibly have caused such a thing when I find the time, but for now I do not know what you could do except restart from a save before the initial Barazh quest in Dark Calimport (if you have one) and try it again, or just play on without him. The latter option is possible though it would make the game more difficult. If you are finding it too hard, you could try reducing the game difficulty temporarily and saving before resting (making an ambush far less likely, and giving you the option to restart from a save if one occurs), allowing you to rest more often and expend spells far more freely than would otherwise be advisable. With resting restrictions effectively removed, a sorcerer should be able to handle the difficult combats even without full support.
Posted by Uncle Putte at 2012-06-25 14:51:40 Voted 9.50 on 06/25/12
... what can I say? I'm sold. If this series had been done on a modern game engine, on 3.5E, with a little more tweaking in terms of writing and a little bit of expanding, it would have been a game of the year candidate. What with it's scope, challenge, intimate knowledge of the Forgotten Realms, and very loyal attention to detail, the series succeeds in what the original Bioware NWN campaigns failed to do - to capture some of the adventuring spirit of the Baldur's Gate saga.
Ok i'll explain it.
1. I went to City Gate and entered the inn. (i had no idea about Barazh Foecleaver and his location in Dark Calimport.)
2. I talked to that "evil" party. They had nothing to say except traditional "leave me alone" or something like that.
3. in the meantime I recruited Zagash and the celestial rogue (couldn't remember the name)
4. I got stuck so i red a walkthrough and found that there is a dwarf henchaman (Barazh)
5. I went to Dark Calimport, rescued him and completed a mission with him.
6. Then i went to inn (city gates) to see if he is available as a henchman.
7. I couldn't find him so i went upstairs and talked to the party. The conversation triggered and i killed them.
8. The journal updated that i helped Barazh and he will help me.
But i can't find him.
I wanted him so desperately cause bigger party, bigger exp. And also I play as a sorc and i need a tank.
It might help to give a little more information about where you are in the game, what you have already done with regard to Barazh, etc., as I am still guessing what quest you are talking about. Anyway, I will explain how getting Barazh as a henchman works in some detail and hope you can figure things out from there. He can be found in the regions of Dark Calimport accessed from a trap door in the sewers beneath the Merchant District (explore the "Random Caves and Tunnels" until you find him), where you can rescue him from some difficulties. He will temporarily join you as a henchman in that region (if desired) and when released goes to the Desert Dragon Inn, where you can find him later (near the southwestern corner of the inn's lower level). Also at the inn, you will find some treacherous former partners of his, and you can trigger a fight by talking to them. This is only supposed to happen when you have Barazh in the party, but there is a bug that apparently allows the fight to be triggered anyway. I am assuming that this is the quest you are talking about. So at what point are you unable to locate him? If you went to the City Gates area before exploring the caves underneath the Merchant District sewers, you should not expect to find him. Are you saying that you met him in Dark Calimport, sent him on to the inn, and later did not find him there? Or that he was in the inn, but disappeared after you completed the quest involving his former partners without him?
If necessary you can complete the game without Barazh, as he is not a plot-critical character, though his absence could make the module more difficult since he is arguably the most competent and useful henchman.
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