A Half Heart of Fury Chronicle

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It's in Editors, Hacks Tweaks section of our NWN2 page

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/dl.php?s=NWN2&f=NWN2/NWN2HalfHoF.zip

Original Campaign Chapter

Install this mod halfway into Neverwinter, during the exploring Old Owl Well. Average level: 10-

And I quote

"This mode gives monsters 2*HP+25 instead of their original hitpoints (keeping as well Tony K's and Reeron's
enhancements and Loudent's AC bugfix). New XP reward is calculated by the formula : 3*XP for first 25 experience
points, 2*XP for experience points between 25 and 100, and 1.5*XP for experience points above 100."

Initial impression:
- The HPup on those normal enemies mean we can no longer swat them like flies with a properly buffed up warrior, or a triple casting of AoE spell. Spells are spent like free money (oh wait~) to cut them down to manageable level. And my chars got knocked out quite a few times.

- I think there's some bugged up between normal procedure and this mod. Sometimes Khelgar just cant cause damage, like with a Blade Spider. His greatsword+2 missed even with high rolls. It's rare but it's there.

- A good mod to use with a full party of 6, properly BG/IWD style. Goodbye to that trio system~

- Normally, a Great Cleaver would just charge in and cut them down. But with this mod, it's necessary to barrage them with AoE spells to soften them up to Badly Injured or Near Death before getting near, a Great Cleaver with heavy damage weapon can cut them down, but it's not certain. The HP left even in Near Death status, plus additional buffs come from the mod, make it a rare chance to cutting down two in one moment.

- Even if you dont like it for the whole campaign, install it for the major battles like Tholapsyx and King of Shadow.

 

Ingame XP progress

Start the mod at halfway into arc 1. End of arc 1 at 81000 mark.
Currently at Jerro Haven, level 18. Possibly can get higher. With this mod, the high ECL race can get to limit 20 with no problem.

 

On another note: Shopping and Crafting

The best vendor of pre-Keep is Sand before he use the Merchant Elemental. Sand give the best price with a purse of 70k-80k. So save your loot to sell to him. Judge Oleff (at discount) give a 100% pricelist but he buy less than other.

After he use Merchant ELemental in his shop, we have the second best merchant Nya. Nya got about 12k but her inventory has a few things worth buying, so her capacity raise up a bit.

Pap, Repko/werth, Dayne, Fibba got lower, but if you must. You can buy all from Oleff to sell to those above for a small profit.

After we got the Keep, build the smith and the shop, we got three merchant: Edario, Jacoby, and Deekin. Keep Deekin and the smiths, at best rate, give us a 100% price, meaning same price in buy and sell. They got huge purse, so unload on them all.

The benefit of selling to those trio is that later on we can buy back stuffs with no loss if we need them for something. e.g an additional enchantment to get to the 20k limit.

Crafting to sell: best is pure Zalantar Towershield, which could get to 15k apiece. Second best is Adamantine BANDED mail, 10k+. the best price ratio you could get for an additional enchantment is +2 for 5k (but not on Zal TS). Any more than that it's less effective, less buck for your bang, so to speak. For weapon, it would be Duskwood Longbow which is the most numerous, 50+ logs, but not worth as much.

Pre-Keep, the infinite money trick is to buy raw materials from Sand to make Perfected Choke Powder then sell back. Unlimited raw materials, unlike the limited molds.
Also, Deadly gas trap can be made from 7 normal choke powder, not greater or perfected.

===Way to burn money===

Building up Crossroad Keep take maximum 750k~ It's a huge chunk of change but you can get repaid in millions later on (chapter 3)

There's shopping of course. Lots of item that once bought mean we dont have to spend precious materials to craft, after all.

The major activity to burn cash is to make scrolls and wands. There's some that simply make sense for wandify, like wand of Endure Element, Keen Edge, Bless Weapon. But there's a lot of high level wand that can give your melee combatants some ranged option.

 

Link to said mod?

 

It's in Editors, Hacks Tweaks section of our NWN2 page

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/dl.php?s=NWN2&f=NWN2/NWN2HalfHoF.zip

 

Thanx. Will give it a try. Found NWN2'S default a bit easy.

 

I am in the biggest pinch in the campaign: Red Dragon Tholapsyx

According to what I can find, he's level 34, so he got plenty of saving throws and feats. Half Heart of Fury allow her truly ginormous HP. A most fearsome visage of death and destruction.

His data in toolset

Spoiler

Class: Dragon 20/Magical Being 14

Stre 37
Dex 10
Con 27
Inte 22
Wis 23
Cha 22

Natural AC 31

DMG reduction 15/magical weapon+1
Feat: Cleave, Great Fortitude, knockdown, impr knock, power attack, impro pow att, Iron Will, Lighn Refl, Toughness, Weapon Prof
*Fortitude save bonus-3* levelup and class 21 and modifier (+8) guessing 26
*Refl save -4* 21 (0) guessing 17
* Will save +2* 16 (+8) guessing 26
MaxHP is 686, but HHOF might change it to 1397. 1237 in this run actually~ Might different in other circumstances.
Chaotic Evil
7 hit per round.

Guessing that his Reflex is the weakest, then Fort, but that's just guessing since I dont know what effects happen in actual combat at two valleys.

I am trying various configuration of 5man against her. But really, this calls for 6man, though I want to hold off on that for a bit.

I am thinking a series of disable area spell like Grease, Web, Entangle, Mindfog, Stone Hold
After that would be a series of non-fire damage spell.
The elemental summon from two items are frankly dead after one round, so spells of 7-9 is better bet. Elemental Swarm should last at least 4 round. A properly raised Bard should be able to use the scroll ES.
The single solo warrior should be fighter or at least paladin, buffed to eyeballs, with Regenerate spell. Heal potions should be onhand since 7 hits from a 37 strength dragon is no joke. Also, key is the Shield Other to transfer damage to your cleric. With that, two Stone Skin on two people will reduce actual damage to very low amount (comparatively speaking)

Key tactics for Tholapsyx

Spoiler

First is his being pretty vulnerable to cold damage. Polar Ray should work and I imagine Ice Storm can. burst of glacial for Druid.
Second is Assay.
Third is Drown (-90% if Fail). If not work, do it again. Drown is the major damage dealer here.
Fourth is that series of area disabling spells that hamper his movement: grease, entangle, Vine, Spike Growth. Cloudkill also chancy but what the hell~ You dont want it move around freely.
Fifth is warrior get buffed to the max. As it is, Khelgar get hit at the first stage of each round, but not later. Same deal as his damage dealing, since Tholapsyx avoid later stage attack of each round as well. Khelgar's custom made Adamantine Warhammer "Holy Hammer of Justice" (vsEvil/Chao, +5)deal 28~ normal damage and 3 magical damage each hit. enough to focus attention on him. the one time he fail at that task, Tholapsyx hit Zjeave down in a flash. More important, he bought Elanee time for her druidic spells. Another help is two characters casting elemental swarm, in this case Elanee and Grobnar. With three distractions in place, the dragon can be said to not move around and mess up our plan.
Sixth is level drain. Energy Drain and Enervation work to reduce his level, hence his saves.

Phewwww~ It's a major battle. We need half an hour to choose spells. Another hour for actual battle. Pretty epic~

------------------
The next dragon subjugation is not as hard, but different: Two ancient black dragon protecting Crystal Heart.

The basic strategy is to keep one occupied with warrior and area-disabling spells, and pound on the other with magic spell.

Most of the spells used previously still work, though I dont get lucky with Drown. Methodically pound on one with spell is fine, but two target, so must preserve some spells for the other.

 

Battle over River Neverwinter

This is the running fight to delay the army of Shadow. We got one choice of trio (fighter, archer, level6, chaotic evil (wth?)). We can take two companions. Our fast response squad (six in total) will reinforce the river defense and try to delay the undead there. Preferably with bridges destroyed.

I choose a squad of fighter, with two supporting companion Elanee and Zjieave. The anti-undead spells are no brainer, but I want to try playing a support role to see how it goes. Myself Ro1/Wiz10/ASoC9, evoker.

The mod allow us get to level 20 waaaaay before this, so we got total command of what spells we can throw out. Sunbeam, Sunburst, Undeath to Death, Eternal Undeath Foe, are the obvious choice.

Other than offensive spells, we also can invest in a lot of defensive spells to protect our level 6 troopers. (Why? Because.) Shield Other and Stoneskin are most notable.

The running fights happen smoothly. With our support, the trio of fighters, and later on a trio of archers, survive the full onslaught of skeletons, ghasts, shadow priests, and various summons.

 

Night Battlement

The battle on the curtain wall is taxing. Direct damage is one method, but the area disabling spells dont work so well.

Again, we got two trio of helpers, I keep one ironfist and one lizardmen. Still keep Elanee and Zheave. Though if we exchange one of them for Qara is fine PROVIDED that we choose the direct damage methodd. the other method let them die like flies.

We got around 5 rounds to cast buffs. But most notable is that we can keep the buffs cast on our party in the Keep. So personal protection cast first on the Keep, and party-wide on the wall.

Blade Barrier and Wall of Fire to block the two nearest section of battlement along the wall, mind, not across. Then we move to where the nearest tower is heading.

Sunburst, Sunbeam, and Undeath to Death are nice but they dont do enough damage to the Tower fast enough. Let them alone and the unlimited (I think) undeads will swarm us, one tower along another. So we need direct damage to deal with the tower (the BB and WoF just deal some damage to stationed undead who protect the entry point of the tower.

maximized Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, all work here. We seriously need to destroy the tower as fast as possible, so the swarming of undeads are limited.

I shudder to think the work that melee warriors have cut out for them if they are deployed here. Possible series of undead slaying weapons, and plow through the obstacle as fast as possible to reach the tower.

The WoF and BB do work overtime, but you have to pay attention to the helpers and your own positioning. They tend to follow us, so we need to stand a little apart from the two spells, say, on the far side of the wall. It's harrowing and I thought I lose one squad at least during this battle. My first run through here I lost none but cant replicate it, so suspect it a good RNG that time.

At the last tower, I save. The next battle allow us to use refreshed magicians, but it's a long drawn out two parts of grueling fight.

----------------------------

The Battles in Courtyard.
Which companion we choose will stay with us through to the next part. I change zheajve out for Qara, because that way when she and Ammon Jerro charge in to rescue us we got 5 combatants in play instead of 4. Of course, if we choose both, I dont know what happen.

Seal the opened gate with (blade barriers) and maximized wall of fire, and druidic spell spike growth (and qara's web) . They ensure whatever appear will struggle to get through the doorway. We just dont have enough time to buff, so we fight barenaked, buff-wise.

Antiundead magic spells in play here instead of save-or-die spell. I dont particular want to challenge RNG god.

We got around 30 high level spells thrown out, on average. They mostly die before they reach the line, though any that run slightly off can bypass us and reach the line. a few lightning storm or firestorm from Elanee take care of that. I think there's at least 30 creatures spawn in 6-8 waves, possibly 40. It can be pretty exciting.

The next part have us fight duo of nightwalker and garius in continued stage, no rest.

Since I have 5, Ammon play odd job, devourmagic, then mass heal (scroll) or resurrection. ANd it's needed because that huge bugger smash two of us to the ground.

That blackie occasionally throw out some AoE damaging spell, but we have to grin and take it, what with Nightwalker in front and all. Plus we are not able to kill him at this time or he's dead meat.

I choose to have all standing in original position and duke it out, so that mass heals can work best. it take time and some resurrections, but it's bearable, even with only Mass Death Watch throw in.