Sea of Dragons - A Persistent World for NWN2

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Sea of Dragons is announcing that it will be accepting closed beta applications soon. However, before going into that, an overview of the PW is probably necessary.


The Sea of Dragons is a heavy-RP persistent world that has been in development for the past few months. It is set in the Forgotten Realms and located on the southern shore of the Moonsea, with Mulmaster being the prominent city.

The team's goal is to create a PW that is geared toward parties and adventuring. It will feature many quests that will provide possibilities for the use of a wide variety of skills. We intend to provide opportunities to use every class and skill not just in quests, but also in the gameplay itself. This includes rogue abilities.

With the aid of quests and some other interesting ideas which will not be divulged here, we are reducing grinding as much as possible without players feel that there is no reward for playing. With our system, grinding will be possible, but it will not provide a noticeable benefit over choosing not to. Also, Our PW content will be focused heavily on levels 7-12 even though players will technically be able to have a character from levels 2-30 (epics will be very rare, but rewarding). This allows players to adventure throughout the entire server in a free and natural manner. There will be no readily apparent CR distinctions from one area to the next. One will not feel the need to grind out levels in order to "unlock" new areas.

To encourage proper use of classes and teamwork, we are using a resting system that requires an inn, or carrying firewood. This will make spells and HP precious commodities as casters will not be able to cast a flurry of spells and then rest every two minutes. On our PW, melee warriors have a job to do that wizards cannot accomplish, though they still pale in comparison to the power of spellcasters. Anyone remember DnD 2.5? Wizards were either woefully weak or enormously overpowering depending on how well they manage their abilities. That is the mark we are trying to hit with Sea of Dragons.

The death penalty has not been decided upon yet with the exception that it will not be perma-death. We do not expect it to be trivial however. If we implement a banking system in the future, we will have further options for a penalty such as loss of gold and items. This is all in the speculative stage just now. The only thing that is certain is that perma-death will not be enforced.

The magic level is going to be middle of the road. We expect +3 gear will be fairly standard and up to +5 may make it in game as very rare and unique items. However, there are some types of items that we are not allowing in at all. Immunity and regeneration items for example, are taboo.

PvP in terms of gameplay will be full. In other words, don't cast AoE spells on party members unless they are properly protected from damage. Actual player vs. player combat will be allowed for the purpose of RP'ing but random killings and such are not acceptable. We all have prior PW experience and know how to put an end to the actions of PK'ers and griefers.

In short, what we have is a world in which we try to remain true to Forgotten Realms lore, provide a heavy RP world without making the PW impossibly difficult or requiring the constant presence of DMs (though we will have some), and give a good deal of quests and other content for the players to enjoy.

We have a very active and dedicated team that has been working diligently to create a fun game world for the NWN2 multiplayer community.

More information on content that we have available can be seen on our forums. Just click the link in my signature.

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Now for the closed beta testers announcement:

Sea of Dragons, a new persistent world in development is in need of closed beta testers. It may still be a little more than a week before we have the server actually up (at times) for this, but we are allowing players to sign up for testing. Closed beta testers will have access to a special forum for discussing the PW, making general comments, posting bugs, and whatever else that is necessary.

Beta testing, especially closed beta, means that we are still trying to tweak the gameplay system, the spawns, work on quests, and areas. So yes, XP will probably be drastically low to begin, spawns may have the wrong CR, equipment may be lacking in some areas, and there may not be many quests to complete. These are all things that we cannot make a proper decision on without having active testers.

Closed beta testers are welcome to enjoy playing on the server, RP, and in general just have fun, but we do expect that they take the time to actually TEST and provide helpful feedback regarding anything on the server. This is an essential part in our forward progress before we actually go into open beta stage. Testers are VERY important to us.

Bear in mind that we do not intend to grandfather characters and equipment from the closed beta period. Upon arriving at open beta, everyone will start fresh. This by no means implies that your time will have been wasted. On the contrary, you will have helped make Sea of Dragons a better server in the long run, and you will enjoy it more later on because of that.

Testing periods generally would be on weekends and/or weekday evenings CST (GMT -6), starting sometime around the beginning of January.


Anyone who wishes to sign up for testing, please register for the boards and then apply for beta testing in THIS thread. Thank you!

 

Sounds interesting. Good luck with that, man. Look forward to hearing how you guys go

 

Sea of Dragons is going to be starting its closed beta testing very shortly, possibly tomorrow evening. New testers are always welcome and can register at the boards by clicking my signature.

We are always adding new content to the PW and are pleased that it is coming along so rapidly. Those interested in knowing what new developments there are can get more details at our forums. I just post teasers here.

 

Open Beta Launched!

Sea of Dragons is now hosted 24/7 and is open to the public for open beta.

For those who have not been keeping up with our progress, we are building a quest-heavy gameworld intended primarily for role-played adventuring by characters from levels 7-12. Though we have yet to implement many quests, we do have a fully functional PW with nearly 40 areas and many interactive opportunities with NPC's and the environment itself. Because of our focus upon a specific level range, we have the freedom to build dozens of areas that are suitable for lengthy adventures. Low levels will not be contained withing just a few areas and mid level characters will still be able to find a challenge in more than just a half a dozen areas.

Sea of Dragons makes extensive use of skills both in conversations and as part of the scripted game systems themselves. We have implemented useful activities for many skills throughout the PW and are constantly adding more. There are also many types of supplies and equipment available that provide additional tactical options.

Our server can be found under the role-play category at Gamespy. Currently the PW can support 10 players but that will grow as the playerbase does.


Features:

• Ammunition Retrieval
• Climbing system
• NPCs that react to race and how you treat them
• Randomized Spawns
• Ambush System
• Pack Horses
• Foraging, Hunting, and Fishing
• Randomized Loot Container System
• Quests

And much, much more. We have a custom appearance changer in the works and will also include crafting and many, many more quests.

Please visit our website at http://www.seaofdragons.com and check the forums at http://www.seaofdragons.com/forum for more information.

 

We're happy to say that Sea of Dragons is growing rapidly in players and in content. In the past month we've added or tweaked a lot of content and here's an incomplete list of what has been added, changed, or fixed:

NPCs:

• Nine NPCs
• Six Updated NPCs
• Jesadale now spawns at night

Quests:

• Four quests. Two have custom scripts.

Areas:

• Two new areas.
• The Trolling Gnoll now has a store with commonly needed adventuring supplies.
• The temple in Elmwood now has a nearly complete stock of potions.
• Map notes are now in place for Elmwood, Mulmaster, and several other areas. Be aware that not all items of interest have map notes, just the basic stores and major outdoor transition points.
• Fixed a walkmesh error in the bandit caves.
• The issue with water in the Lis Path Ruins map has been fixed.

(NEW!) Custom Appearance Changer:

• Allows swapping of item properties between any two items of the same type (such as two long swords). However, it will only work with items that were custom made for Sea of Dragons.
• A merchant sells non-magical gear with custom appearances that can be used with the property swapper to give current gear a new look.
• The same merchant has models available that will display the gear appearances for the benefit of players before they make a purchase.
• With the property swapper, players can now submit a custom appearance to a DM so they can receive it ingame. Once the player has the item, the appearance can be transferred to new items at will any number of times.
• We now have armor templates that will be made available to those players who wish to design a custom suit of armor for their character.
• The +1 armors in the stores are now compatible with the appearance changer.

Gameplay:

• The random loot spawns are now fully implemented. It will be possible to find crates, chests, household items and corpses with loot on them.
• XP has been upped slightly.
• Catching fish is now easier.
• The timer for creatures that can be field dressed has been doubled. That allows players a full minute to harvest pelts and meat before the creature disappears.

Character Creation:

• Drow now have expanded color options in the character creation menu.
• Players can now have longer first and last names along with character descriptions that are twice as long as the default.
• New characters will now start out with 250 gold and 1000 XP along with 10 light healing potions. This should help players survive better at the start.

Bug Fixes and Tweaks:

• Drow, duergar, deep gnomes and gray orcs should now go back to their starting location after death.
• The issue that caused players to port to an off-limits area is now resolved.
• Doors now have auto close scripts.
• Issue with areas not de-spawning after all players had left has been fixed.
• Doors that should have been locked but weren't should now be locked.
• The first portion of a fix for a bug with player skins has been implemented. The second half of the fix is not so urgent but will be addressed in due time.
• Subdued weapon vfx files are now in the haks. This will reduce the size and intensity of the special effects attached to weapons that deal out some kind of elemental or magical damge by approximately one third.

Miscellaneous:

• A special hidden trigger was placed somewhere within the PW as a result of a DM event that took place a couple days ago. If it gets activated, the player will know.
• With the loot system working pretty well, we went ahead and removed vigor potions as players should be able to afford the other potions now. Lesser vigor is still available.

 

Sea of Dragons has had the good fortune to obtain some extra help and consequently has been given a jump start in the scripting department. We have started to implement a system that will have NPC's move about according to the time of the day.

 

Update!

The previous information posted is at least two months old, so the following is some of what we have accomplished in March, April, and the beginning of May. I actually removed maybe 66% of the updates here because they would only be relevant to those who are already familiar with the server. Instead, I am, for the most part, only posting new content here.

Anyway, here's what's new or changed:

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NEW CONTENT:

Character creation:

• 3 new heads for halfling females and 4 for the males.
• 4 new female human heads and 3 males.
• 2 new heads for male and female Aasimars.
• 1 new female tiefling head.
• 1 new female half-elf head and 1 new male.
• 1 new female head for all the elves.
• 2 new dwarven heads from the Dwarven Long Beards Pack.
• Male half elves can use the tiefling heads not, minus the horns.
• Female halflings will now have most of the hair options available to the big races plus additional options.
• Kaycei's Hair and Tribal Hair have been added.

Tilesets:

• Deep Halls Anniversary Edition.

Armor:

• One new chain armor is available for females of all races.
• Some altered textures for armor.

Stores:

• Tanner.
• Meat merchant.
• Potion merchant.
• Arcane merchant.

Items:

• Over 2000 new items are on the server now. This includes basic weaponry, armor, wands, magic staffs, and much more.

Other:

• 36 New NPCs.
• 7 New quests.
• 6 New areas
• Many new monster spawns.
• The new NWN1 style familiars are now on the server. The catch is that they are not available during character creation. Since NWN2 would not allow me to code proper alignment restrictions I have decided to disable them for the creation menu. Instead, the new familiars will likely be obtainable during the course of gameplay. The exact manner of their implementation is not set in stone but will be announced in the future.

TWEAKED CONTENT:

• Perform is available as a cross-class skill for all the base classes.
• The database has been switched to SQLite. Save locations are now persistent. Simply tapping the rest key will save the location so long as an ambush doesn't occur.
• The appearance changer has been updated with many items.
• The entire pricing system has been overhauled.
• Many of the spawns have been tweaked.

SCRIPTS:

• A script to improve AI reaction towards player actions is mostly functional now. Players can expect to encounter it in various places in the future.
• An armor and racial speed modifier scripts have been added. Players will start to notice a small decrease in speed as they increase the weight of their armor. Scale and hide armor now have uses as they do not weigh as much as other, more protective types.
• Some spawns have been given special scripts to improve their AI.