(XP: 455,574)
When Safiya’s Mom saw baby Kaji, it was get married or go to Cania, so it’s not like I had much of a choice. Just kidding, Safiya… it must have been a backfire on that Touch of Idiocy spell that made me say it. Though I have to say that with my half-elven blood and my WildChild ways, Kaji does look like we could be related. Read the rest of this post »
General. I brought Sharwyn along to see the dragons and Morag. Otherwise, no sidekicks were consumed in the battles of this quest (Tommy was used for occasional trap removal). Lando was able to deliver up to 54 damage points (using Keen and Greater Magic Weapon) with the halberd, and about half that using a shield and the Drone +4 or the Astral Blade +2. With a charisma of up to 30, other characters were lining up to give Lando the scoop.
The reason to add the Shadowdancer class to Lando was to gain the Hide in Plain Sight feat and the 6 additional skill points needed to achieve Hide 25/Move Silently 25. With that level of stealth, the character can walk right up to Morag without her aides ever seeing him, he can disengage from combat at will, and–remaining invisible to enemies– use healing kits rather than potions.
Stealth as an asymmetric advantage. Stealth is more of a convenience than a necessity, but what a convenience! One wants, of course, to scout out enemies before committing to battle. But consider also that some of the dungeons are easier to do backwards, starting from the most difficult opponent and working back toward the easiest ones. Sometimes, the capital equipment needed to easily defeat a class of enemies is in the hands of the strongest opponent of that class. Defeat him, seize his widget, and the rest of the bunch are quickly done away with.
Stealth is also great if one hits a trap, especially Slow, Gas, or Paralysis. Opponents do not detect one, as they might if one were using an invisibility potion that wears off in the middle of a paralysis spell.
Plus, the option of disengaging from combat at will, walking over to the other side of the room and healing oneself or performing any necessary spells is wonderful. With most opponents, one can hit them, hide in plain sight, walk behind them, and hit them again, without them ever getting a stroke in.
The Bard as a class. Bard powers are very difficult to fathom, making battles difficult to plan. The Perform skill can be augmented with charisma, delivering through the Curse Song up to 16 damage points to all opponents within range. Spells/day also very dependent on charisma. What this means in a practical sense is that a character would like to wear capital equipment that adds to charisma, but this prevents the use of protective equipment.
The solution is to use spells and protective equipment as substitutes, gradually removing capital equipment granting charisma and replacing it with capital equipment granting protection. The tradeoffs might be:
So, one can put on the capital items supplying charisma, walk to the end of the dungeon using stealth, throw the high-level spells such as Ethereal Visage to defeat the prime villain, then gradually remove bits of charisma-supplying equipment as one walks the dungeon backward, replacing them with protective equipment.
Bardsong is most effective if there are many opponents gathered close to the player. One Curse Song hits every opponent in range, even if they have magical protection. If the Curse Song delivers more damage points than the opponents have hit points, they die in droves.
The problem, of course, is that if the opponents have more hit points than the Curse Song has damage points, the player will find him/herself surrounded and under attack. There are three possibilities: fight and defeat them all, hide, or flee. To fight and defeat them all implies having an immunity to the damage they are able to deal either through armor or damage-absorbing belts/rings or an extremely high dexterity level. To hide implies high stealth or invisibility potions or spells. And to flee implies having a doorway nearby.
Delayering the defense. A fundamental concept developed in previous posts is to remove layers of defense, often by killing the wizard, sorceror, or shaman first, and facing the warriors separately. A typical battle involves sneaking into a room to kill any sorcerors, wizards, or shamans, running for the door and fighting from the doorway. Alternatively, one can attack and then dodge around a corner or out a door. Opponents who rely on magic for defense generally don’t follow. Warriors do. They can be defeated and then the wizards dealth with separately.
Summary. The bard tends to be a weak character, susceptible to mind-affecting spells and poisons. S/he tends to lack skills to detect and remove traps, and also tends to have low hit points, making the bard susceptible to accidental death. His/her fighting skills (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution) tend to be weak, making the bard prone to being rendered flatfooted.
The best aspect of the bard is that other characters supply information, due to the high Persuade skill that elevated Charisma produces.
The spells that the bard has are generally less useful than those of wizards and sorcerors. I primarily used these: Ghostly Visage, Invisibility, Mage Armor, Greater Magical Weapon, Keen, Greater Invisibility, Bull’s Strength, Eagle’s Splendor, and Ethereal Visage. Mind Fog is a dangerous spell to use, since the bard may daze him/herself.
Because casting in combat requires speed, only a few scrolls are valuable. The most valuable are the two Stoneskins, the various elemental protections, the various spell mantles, Horrid Willing, and Time Stop.
Bardsong is tremendously powerful. Most enemies are remedied impotent by the Curse Song about level 10. And the Bard’s Song makes the player much, much more powerful. In combination, the Bard’s Song and the Curse Song greatly level the odds. A good strategy is to use invisibility, start the Bard’s Song, then march into the room and strike the first blow with the Curse Song. This will give several rounds in which the effects of the Bard’s Song and of the Curse Song overlap.
The only weapons that I found to be indispensable are the Ravager Halberd +4 and the Drone +4. The Ravager Halberd requires martial weapon skills ; the drone does not. These deliver large amounts of physical damage as slashing/bludgeoning or bludgeoning/piercing damage plus elemental damage plus mind-affecting spells (Daze and Slow). The bard, however, tends to be low on strength, so building that strength with capital equipment or spells or potions is essential.
Abstract.. Take a treasure trove of D&D lore accumulated over decades of human creativity, marry it to well-evolved software, and produce a mediocre, commercial bit of time-wasting: that’s a suquel. In other words, Neverwinter Nights 2 is not inspiring, nor enlightening, nor challenging, nor even really entertaining, but buying it is a significant improvement over picking leeches off your legs. If those are your choices, definitely buy it. The graphics of the game are a great improvement over earlier members of this series, and the command interface is more transparent, which helps with stacking commands. But these are the only real improvements. Inventory management is messier than ever. New skills, Diplomacy, Taunt, Bluff, and Intimidate have replaced generic Persuade skill, making verbal interactions even more opaque.
The real weakness of the game, however, is in the theme, which is fragmented and overshadowed by trivialities of character interaction. The core theme probably began as a look at the dangers of patriotism taken to extremes. The game’s villain, the King of Shadows began as a good man who sacrificed his identity for the defense of his country. Ultimately, though, power became his only end. Had this theme been built around, this could have been a great game. Just so, the game sacrificed thematic integrity for flash and glitz, and ended up a mere shadow of what it might have been.
Recap of the Neverwinter Nights Trilogy. The Neverwinter Nights trilogy (Neverwinter Nights, Shadows of Undrentide, and Hordes of the Underdark, covered in depth here) is largely a simple action game based on developing capabilities such as strength, dexterity, and intelligence. These translate into skills for inflicting damage, bartering, disabling traps, and healing. For those of a mathematical bent, it is grand puzzle in constrained optimization.
Like most games based on the general Dungeons and Dragons genre, the NWN trilogy has dark, brooding themes. The game begins above ground, goes into tombs, caves, an underground world, and eventually Hell itself.
The last chapter of the trilogy is to a greater extent a genuine role-playing game. Although no part of the trilogy is in any manner explicitly Christian, the last chapter is governed by Christian themes, most notably the redemption of an assassin and a betrayer and the liberation of souls suffering in Hell. There are significant deficiencies with the game, notably the fact that advancement in capabilities mostly results from killing enemies. This leads to an ironic exchange between the lovers on the morality of doing good through violence. But the Christian themes are delicately presented, other religious and agnostic viewpoints are respectfully presented, and the religious themes unify and energize this chapter in a way that the other chapters lack.
Note added 6/27/07. The idea of the release of suffering souls from Hell dates back to the early Church. While Protestants generally side with Calvin in opposing this notion, it is widely held among Christians.
Overview of the Suquel. Neverwinter Nights 2 represents a giant leap forward in graphics technology, with beautiful 3D and color, visual feedback on stacking commands is helpful, crafting allows the creation of more effective weapons and armor, and the option of having detailed control over characters is great. All of these are vast improvements over Neverwinter Nights. Unfortunately, the quality of story development is lower than in Hordes of the Underdark (though higher than in NWN or Shadows of Undrentide). Role-playing devolves to planned flattery confused by ambiguous wording, and there are a number of technical deficiencies and bugs. The Christian themes that were delicately and beautifully developed in Hordes of the Underdark are here wooden and forced—and probably done for commercial reasons. Naming a warrior and recruiting sergeant The Light of Heaven was particularly graceless.
The storyline has a small-town boy, attacked by dark creatures, being sent to the big city to meet his uncle and get a magical silver shard. The male player meets a love interest, Shandra, who ultimately decides to train under him. In the city, the player meets and defeats the githyanki, who are also searching for silver shards. These shards, it develops, are part of a githyanki sword—and one is lodged next to the player’s heart. The player survived only because his mother sacrificed her life by shielding him with her body. Defeating a second group of githyanki, the player discovers that the entire planet Toril is now on its own to face the King of Shadows. He manages to disrupt a ritual at the Crossroads Keep castle intended to cause the King of Shadows to emerge, but even killing the mages involved in the ritual, including their leader Garius, only delays that.
The player is awarded a castle in total disrepair, which he has to refurbish largely out of pocket. Guided by a githzerai, he searches the ruins of the lost empire of Illefarn and partially completes a ritual used to defend against the King of Shadows. Then the party goes to the secret haven of the grandfather of his love interest, who holds the last key to the ritual. Here the love interest is killed by her own grandfather.
In an unconsciously telling comment about the quality of game development, one of the associates in the game, Grobnar, asks why the love interest had to die. No answer emerges. It was just a senseless self-sacrifice. In yet another oddly disconnected story bit, the male player is offered the chance to sleep with the elven earth mother figure, Elanee. As romantic as the 30-second cut scene might be, no further intimacy or camaraderie develops.
Facing a series of confrontations with sidekicks of the King of Shadows, the player ultimately confronts the King of Shadows, Garius, and one or more associates who betray him. As good as the graphics are, they aren’t good enough to make this anything except confused mayhem. And at the end, what was it all about? It’s not clear. The King of Shadows has been stuffed back into the closet.
Thematic analysis. Most players ignore the literary themes of games, and are the weaker as players for it. The solutions to many puzzles and quests are found by considering the theme. But in the case of NWN 2, ignorance is bliss. The theme of the game, like the silver sword that plays such a major role in it, is fragmented into unrelated themelets.
One theme is of an orphan discovering one’s own identity and thereby healing himself. The player literally puts together the pieces of the broken silver sword, including one lodged by the player’s heart as part of a process of self-discovery. We never learn who fathered or trained the player, though, and so we learn essentially nothing about the player.
A second themelet is of will, of single-minded focus on defeating the miasma of evil that is enveloping the land. This is well-formulated in the scene in the Palace of the King of Shadows. Surrounded by death and on his way to probable death, does the player collect loot or proceed directly to the goal? However, in no other place does will play a significant role. We are told that it is important for the rock gnome, Grobnar, but why is unclear.
A third themelet is of light overcoming shadow. There is almost no development of this theme. Indeed, in a scene with Elanee, the entanglement of light and shadow becomes a romantic metaphor, which has an almost necrophilic feel given the circumstances. The one place light and shadow is in issue is in battle. Players need high Spot skills and/or good light to defeat shadows. But only intense light damages shadows.
The fourth themelet is the most interesting and the one which could have made this a great game. The ultimate source of the shadowy forces is The King of Shadows, possibly a metaphor for the national security state. The King of Shadows began as an ordinary but good man, a patriot who was willing to forego his own identity to defend his nation against the evildoers whose empire we wandered through in Shadows of Undrentide, Netheril.
Unfortunately, due to an interruption in the magical force that powered him (the Cold War?), the King of Shadows resorted to the dark side. For reasons that are not entirely clear, he began destroying his own kingdom. The ones he was supposed to be protecting attacked him, and he destroyed them…but not before they weakened him to the point he could be confined by others. Indeed, he is now the primary threat to not merely Faerûn and the rest of Toril, but (for reasons that aren’t at all clear) also to the githzerai and the githyanki.
These shattered themelets, of discovering one’s identity, of will, of light overcoming shadow, and of the rise of the national security state, cannot be joined, by any force of will. NWN2 is the weaker for it.
The general rules for victory are similar to those outlined below in the review of the Neverwinter Nights trilogy. One needs to create an asymmetric advantage in battle, such as the physical power of a fighter against the time-consuming armoring of a mage. Crafting is critical for two reasons: earning money and creating powerful cloaks, bracers, and amulets. The author achieved level 20, with 205,000 experience points and several hundred thousand gold in reserve.
Spellcasting. Because NWN2 is a game about light and shadow, spells involving light, such as Sunburst, are very helpful. That spell blinds Nightwalkers, rendering them more vulnerable. Otherwise, light helps to make shadows evident to players with poor spot skills. Unfortunately and irrationally, one can’t cast light on an enemy. Another useful asymmetry is that some shadow creatures have very poor detection capacities. Against skills in Hide and Move Silently near 40, Dread Wraiths are baffled—though skeletal archers, not. The terrible Animus elemental that dogs Qara is defeated entirely by one of the simplest spells of all: Darkness.
The Artificial Intelligence of the game appears is not very inspiring when it comes to spellcasting. The spellcasters spend so much time protecting themselves—often duplicating spells already cast on them, that they endanger the team. One needs to control their actions early in an engagement, calibrating the level of spells to ensure some backup firepower.
Spellcasting by rogues is quirky. A 16th level rogue, 20th level character produced the following reproducible but completely anomalous results:
Virtue (Level 0 or 1), at 60 seconds/level, Player > 20 levels
Grease (Level 1), at 12 seconds + 6 sec/3 levels, Player = 0 levels
Prayer (Level 3), at 6 sec/level, Player > 20 levels
Evard’s tentacles (Level 4), at 6 sec/level Player 6-7 levels
Cloudkill (Level 5), at 6 sec/2 levels Player 8 levels
Wondrous items. Crafting seems to be essential for a good game, though some items can be bought or found. The key items that can be purchased or found are the Amulet of Health and Greater Amulet of Health, Staffs of Remembrance, the Ring of Positive Thinking, Elemental Rings, and Rings of Power. The Rod of Resurrection should be preserved for the final battle. The Scabbard of Blessing and the Brooch of Shielding are highly recommended.
For Qara, a crafting +6 Nymph cloak is important, while Zhaere and Elanee need Amulets of Wisdom +6, and Sand needs a Headband of Intellect +6. A Cloak of Resistance +5 is essential, especially for rogues, who run low on Will and Fortitude saving throws.
Armor. The choices of armor tend to be poor, and crafting is required to obtain the best fits between characters and their armor. Elanee, Sand, and Qara require light or no armor for spellcasting. Ammon Jerro is limited to Medium or Light Armor. Neeshka and Grobnar do best with Light Armor due to strength considerations, and Grobnar has an additional limitation due to the constraints of the Armored Caster feat. Khelgar flips from a heavily armored fighter to an unarmored monk if one chooses that route. The Armor of Comfort seems to be perfect for Zhaeve, whose strength is low, but can be used as an auxiliary fighter.
The author found that crafting Mithral +3 light armor with spell protection and Deflect Arrows, was extremely helpful. Rogue Links was probably the best commercial light armor, although Shadowdancer armor was useful for Dexterity-related tasks, and the Armor of Loyalty worked well for Elanee, since she was able to up-armor relatively easily.
Weapons. There are some excellent pre-fab weapons. The Sword of Quickness and the Icy Blade are great weapons—indeed, the Sword of Quickness is an essential weapon—but they rate relatively low on damage bonus. The same is true of the Astral Blade and Stonefire Axe. The Stonefire Axe has the additional limitation that it can’t be used with a shield. The best weapons are crafted, and can be equipped with up to +5 magical damage, elemental damage, and alignment damage.
An example of an armoring scheme. The author’s choice for Light Armor is mithral enhanced with +3 spell (Base level 4, AC deflection 3), Bracers +5, and the Holy Shield (base +2, AC Deflection +4). This armor allows a dexterity bonus of 6, and is even potentially useful for spellcasters if paired with a spell failure-diminishing mithral shield. It can be enhanced with protection against spells and against arrows or made resistant to critical attacks. The following levels of protection were achieved at dexterity 23:
Base Protection AC 18
With bracers AC 23
With shield AC 24
With armor AC 25
With armor and bracers AC 27
With braces and shield AC 29
With armor and shield AC 31
With armor, bracers, and shield AC 33
With armor, bracers, shield, and barkskin AC 36
Notice that with armor, bracers, and shield, the simple sum of armor plus base protection is 36. So, of 18 potential units of added armor, only three are wasted. Notice also that this is a low-weight solution. It is versatile, accommodating two-weapon fighting. If coupled with Ghostly Visage or Ethereal Visage, is equivalent to an armor of 40 or higher.
An example of weaponry. On crafting weapons, the game gives a hint about alchemical silver being especially good against shape changers and cold iron against demons. This, it turns out, is a bit of a red herring. This hint, false though it was, led the author to craft two short swords, each capable of routinely delivering up to ca. 50 units of damage at a blow. The upper limit was obtained by the electrical sword in sneak attacks on Fire Giants.
The silver sword was enhanced with electrical damage, while the cold iron was enhanced with fire. Both were blessed against evil. As an experiment, two short swords were crafted, producing the following statistics, where damage is listed as total (physical, magical, elemental) +/- standard deviation). The base attack is 15. The first configuration has the cold iron sword on-hand and the silver sword off-hand, while the second configuration, the silver sword is on-hand and the cold iron is off-hand. The results show that the skeletal archers resist 5 points of piercing, as expected. No damage against evil is recorded.
1a. Skeletal archer 18 (8.3, 6.3, 3.3 fire) )+/- 2.6
1b. Dread wraith 22.7 (11, 6, 5 fire ) +/- 1.5
2a. Skeletal archer 17 (8, 5.5, 3.5 electrical ) +/- 2.1
2b. Dread wraith 23.2 (13.8, 6, 3.5 mixed) +/- 3.1
Fortifying the castle. One can delay the onset of missions by the choice of door to the Keep one uses. They are stacked, and the difficult Leeves mission (requires half of 100 well-trained men with basic armor and weapons) actually moves back in queue. The first priority has to be armoring and training the men (requires Qana), to prevent losses. Recruiting is also critical, which requires getting Light of Heaven. Immigration of farmers is also essential to build numbers. Their taxes should be low. The player can craft enough Duskbows to fund most of the basics. Presumably the castle walls should also be given some priority.
The cut scene The most irritating feature of NWN2 is the cut-scene, several of which have pretensions toward grandiosity. The point is that a cut-scene should not begin before the player arrives within the detection range possessed by the opponent. A logical strategy is to send scouts to determine enemy strength and disposition before committing the bulk of the forces. In NWN 2, in certain encounters, the mere presence of the scout in an area moves all members of the party into the area, setting off the clash. This happens even if the members are invisible, and invisibility spells are even stripped off in at least some cases.
Unintelligent spellcasting AI. The artificial intelligence has not yet figured out to check whether a character has had a certain protective spell cast on it before proceeding to cast it again. So, even though Qara is hasted, she will cast haste again, wasting precious time. The player should be able to give the AI basic instructions on how to handle a battle, e.g., “beware of physical and elemental damage.” In the battle in the King of Shadows’s Palace, an experiment was done with Ammon. He was led into the first chamber and instructed to attack the enemy in overkill spellcasting mode. He repeatedly used Devour Magic, learning nothing from the fact that it had no effect. He cycled back and forth between Retributive Invisibility, Devour Magic and Eldritch Blast to destroy the Skeletal Archers and Dread Wraiths. He did refrain from using other spells available to him that might have healed rather than harmed injured shadow creatures.
Overkill in number of rooms. It gets so booooring! In the NWN trilogy, one could skip certain rooms if they seemed to be unimportant to the main quest, then return when the player was more experienced to reap the treasure. In most parts of NWN2, however, it’s necessary to eliminate all opponents in an area to guard against a surprise attack by countless opponents. This requirement may arise because some companions, especially Khelgar, have such poor Hide skills that any combat draws everyone in the area, but the result is the same. In fact, only Bishop and Neeshka have adequate Hide skills for simple movement, and neither is a strong enough fighter to get one through a serious attack.
Overkill in surprise attacks. There are two places in the game in which surprise attacks are a serious nuisance. The first is in trying to exit the orc tunnels and the second is in the palace of the King of Shadows. In the former, orcs appear from nowhere, and for no apparent reason. In the latter, even after one has cleared a room, if one tries to rest, one may be attacked at least as many as five times. This just gets tedious. Indeed, the final scene is a gluttony of overkill, as the player is forced to kill some companions, some blade golems, Garius, and the King of Shadows—three times.
Spell stripping. Granted, spells have lifetimes. But the number of spells that are stripped at a cut scene is alarming. Haste cast from the short Sword of Quickness, which seems to have an anomalously long lifetime, seems to survive, as do other long-acting spells. But often medium term spells are stripped upon walking through a door. The cut scene should count for two or three rounds, but not four hours.
Spell contagion. Some spells jump from the player to other players. Haste cast from the Sword of Quickness, for example, is actually Mass Haste. Unfortunately, the contagion is unpredictable. Especially in scenes where there are ca. 10 associates, getting full coverage is difficult.
Using traps. It’s predictable where in the game trap handling skills will be necessary. Therefore, it makes sense to have Neeshka develop high skills on handling traps (e.g., robbing a home, e.g., entering the lair of Ammon Jerro). If the player has some additional points to spare, he can use them for Search, the talent that identifies traps, while leaving the Disable Traps and Open Locks points to Neeshka. Unfortunately, high trap handling skills do not translate straightforwardly into skills for setting traps. While the player was able to recover most kinds of traps without incidence, Neeshka was unable to set even average traps with similar skill points. It ought to be easier to set a trap than to disable it. Figuring out crafting. Crafting is one of the great new features about this game. Unfortunately, it’s unbelievably complicated. It’s hard to grant crafting feats appropriately, since they require predicting what crafting recipes will be discovered. The instructions “any armor” don’t mean “any armor.” Name brand armors, like Rogue Links or Enkidu’s, are apparently immune to improvement by crafting. It appears to be necessary to remove a weapon from the hand before poisoning it. A mace (or at least the Bone Phoenix) cannot be poisoned, even though it is both a bludgeoning and piercing weapon. Building the bridge in West Harbor is a crafting skill. All of these points are obtuse, not at all obvious to the gamer.
Update, 6/28/07, suggested in part by Archonsg. Experience points. All players gain experience points whether they participate in the travels or not and independent of whether they get killed or not. This provides a disincentive to including all the companions in the journeys and especially to preventing companions from getting killed. Similarly, why are companions excluded from participating in defense of Crossroad Keep? This would be a logical activity for them while the player is traveling.
Chapter One
· In the Docks, the player confronts thugs trying to pick a lock. If the player tries to arrest them, they walk off, shifting the player toward chaotic. The player does not have the choice of attacking them to recover lawful status.
· On the way to Bonegnasher’s lair, orcs pop out of nowhere. Even if one lures the orc privates out of the area to deal with them, the orc captains pop out of nowhere again.
· In the same scene, if one has not examined the barrier and the battle rages down toward that area, one is suddenly plucked out of battle and into a conversation about having to go around the barrier!
· The Bonegnasher orcs skate! It’s very disconcerting to see orcs approaching one without the movement of their legs, especially since they seem to arrive much faster than typical orcs.
· At Ember, it’s impossible to save the game in the lull between the first battle and the arrival of the reinforcements. If one does save the game and re-starts, all the players are gathered together. This means that lightly-armored characters such as wizards, carefully placed safely away from the battle, are suddenly in the midst of it.
· In the Illefarn Ruins, after the battle with the succubus, the player is vaulted into the Blade Golem chamber.
Chapter Two
· One of the worst-written battles is in Lord Tavorick’s house. There are three major outcomes. In the worst outcome, Tavorick dies in his chamber, and the player fights his way out the front door. In the best outcome, Tavorick survives a battle in the crypt. But there is a third outcome, in which Tavorick expires in the crypt before the battle. In that outcome, he expires without any real explanation. One can heal his hit points, but it makes no difference. A fourth outcome is even more absurd. In that one, a succubus casts Confusion on the soldiers, who attack the player. They don’t attack the player’s allies. Invisibility, even with a very high Hide/Move Silently score doesn’t keep them from badly wounding the player. Only when the player dies does the game proceed. There is another other poorly written aspect in this battle. A barrel of highly unstable blast globes, which cannot be moved by the player without exploding, somehow survives the barricade next to it being destroyed.
· Another badly written segment is the confrontation between the Animus Elemental and Qara. We are given a trail of clues about the nature of the elemental, but they are not helpful. The first clue is in Part One, where Sand informs the player that Qara cannot burn down the shop because it is protected by a Vanlear Siphon. This trail leads nowhere. Next, we are told in a cut-scene by Sydney Natale, the Luskan envoy, that the elemental is not created by necromancy and that it taps Qara’s power. Zhaeve describes the elemental as a curse; this would suggest that the elemental is of the Transmutation school, for which Conjuration is prohibited. But the elemental has a broad range of magical skills, making it clear that it is from a general school of magic. One might also expect a curse to be evil, but the elemental is not, as proven by using a blessed weapon on it. There is a weapon that is specific to elementals available from a merchant, Fibba, but the price is high enough that one would hesitate to gamble on it functioning.
· Then there’s the question of how quickly to enter Ammon Jerro’s Haven vs. conducting Special Missions. One gets a maximum financial return by waiting until most of the time has elapsed before entering the Haven, in part from events that take place while the player is completing quests. Kana’s reports on Crossroad Keep list elapsed time. At some point, however, Kana starts responding that Nasher will want to see the player. Is that a signal that Special Missions are over? Understanding the signals on when and what to do in terms of Special Missions is difficult to guess. For example, bandits are menacing a halfling village called Leeves. But the player is unable to ask how many bandits there are or how well they are armed to make a rational judgment. If the Leeves mission can be put off until there are 100 soldiers and the soldiers are well-armored and armed, then it’s successful. Otherwise, not.
· The bag of wyrmsage apparently ceases to have any use after setting the dead of Ember at peace.
Chapter Three.
· There is a bug, such that the player may arrive alone in Nasher’s palace stripped of his equipment. This is disastrous, because one of the most difficult battles commences immediately. Also, the player is at the last moment given heavy items (a cloak and a sword) that may render him overburdened if he is too close to the weight limit.
· A game bug turns Neeshka into Sand! On traveling from Crossroads Keep, the goods of Sand were replicated onto Neeshka.
· If one asks Grobnar the bard if the Wendersnaven exist and then agrees with him, you will lose influence with Bishop even if Bishop is not present.
· The boy, Danan, encountered in the battle at West Harbor is apparently genuinely alive, but the adventurers don’t search for and rescue him.
· Nasher simply vanishes from Crossroad Keep without a mention after the battle with Garius.
· The player never finds the remaining two items of Nasher’s adventuring clothing that would make the ensemble useful
Finale.
· The skeletal archers damage the player even though he has armor that deflects arrows. If he retreats through the door of the first chamber, their arrows come right through the door!
· In fighting the Shadow Reavers, Zhaeve and Ammon Jerro sometimes stop in mid-sentence of pronouncing the true name. There may be a reason, such as the Reaver falling below their Spot skill, but this happens with no explanation and no attempt at recovery by the AI. This deficiency forced the author to lure the Reavers individually near the tunnel from their chamber into the adjacent one. This places them close but unable to attack the associate pronouncing the true name.
· In the last scene, Neeshka is being held by Garius. But in the antechamber before entering the Hall of the King of Shadows, if you ask Grobnar about the Wendersnaven, Neeshka suddenly pops in the room.
· In the last scene, the Diplomacy reaches its nadir. Neeshka can betray the player despite initially rejecting Garius, despite having been cosseted by the player, despite reconciliation with the Khelgar, and in the face of extremely high Diplomacy skills and even a little Charisma. Sand and Qara fall out on opposite sides with no obvious reason. Sand’s claim that Qara is a greater danger than the King of Shadows is self-evidently ridiculous.
· In the last scene, it’s very difficult to see what is going on, even on a large screen. The existence of the barrier should have at least have been indicated with crackling lights or something.
· In the last scene, it’s not clear whether reading the True Name is important to defeat Garius. Since it hasn’t succeeded twice before, why should it now?
· Blade golems and the King of Shadows can see a player with an extremely high Hide/Move Silently score. This is not plausible.
· The last scene requires the player to control about 7 characters simultaneously. It gets frustrating and there are many defects, including: (a) it is less-than-obvious that touching the body of Garius is a trigger for releasing the King of Shadows, (b) it’s not obvious that the statues must be destroyed (although associates may mention the idea). Since the statues have no marking for hit points, it’s also impossible to tell whether a player getting 2 points of damage is doing well until Khelgar or Qara take on the task, (c) hitting the statues before the King of Shadows is released has no effect, confusing the player, (d) in the finale, the player and his companions vanish. The love interest that began with Elanee goes into thin air. The reports on secondary figures, such as Brelaina and Bevil, neither of which are developed past the level of stubs, are unimportant.
Game Analyst: Neverwinter Nights and beyond 
