Some musings and Questions from a Newbie

[The Flying Rodent]

Hey all , old time nwn 1 player turned EE noob here. I recently stumbled upon this server in a similar fashion to Cometchaser [recommended on NWN EE Steam and Reddit forums], and am enjoying the experience so far! I thought it nice to share my initial impressions as a lead in to some questions about the server.

Judging by the posts on the forums here, it seems like the culture is to keep server specific information about crafting/items/areas/etc. not public as to maintain some mystery and encourage people to explore. Respecting that, I’ll keep my musings/questions as non-specific as I can, and can edit things if they are deemed inappropriate.

The questions come after the story, so if you don’t feel like reading then just skip to the second set of dotted lines.

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After picking a Deity and not a Subrace, Joshua [a budding Cleric/Monk/Shadowdancer minimum-equipment character] hopped off the boat and arrived at Blackstone. The dock keeper seemed friendly enough, and pointed me in the direction of several merchants around town to get me some starting equipment. It was a little confusing as to why the Dwarven Smith didn’t want to buy Joshua's old Small Shield but hey, he found someone else willing to pawnbroke, so no biggie.

Joshua was pointed in the direction of the Farmer north of town and a mission to remove some pesky wolves terrorizing the local Beef industry. With his Crossbow, Mace, and trusty Badger, he seemed to handle the job quite well. After wandering back to town he collected his reward, which included a White Socket Gem!

Intrigued as to what this gem did, I figured I’d do some research and found this forum. Craft Armour and Weapon seem to be the flavour of crafting system here, which by extension means that the ‘best’ crafter builds are ones that can fortify said skills to ridiculous levels, ergo Bard 30/RDD 10 with Epic Skill Focuses. I’m familiar with the concept of ‘Crafter Characters’ from NWN PW’s, though not ones that specifically used Craft Armour and Weapon [moreso ones that used crafting systems like ATS or CNR], so this was kinda new. I pretty much know what my 2nd character on the server was going to be now...

With the above in mind, I figured that I’d best find some items for my theoretical Harmonious Blacksmith during Joshua’s adventurers. Given that Crafter Characters appeared to be a thing, then surely it would be possible to transfer items between characters, right?

Up until this point, I hadn’t really tried to transfer items between characters, so I made a test character to see if I could at least do this [being aware that some NWN1 servers prevented item transfer]. Within the main town at least, my dropped items seemed to disappear if I placed them on the ground and left. I also tried to see if I could transfer items between characters using the Storage Chest, to no avail. A little huffed, I figured I’d tackle this problem another time, and return to adventuring with Joshua.

Given that the Dock Keeper had first pointed Josh in the direction of the Farmer, I figured that he would have some more useful information. So I walked over to him …. Only to find him in mortal combat with a hostile Summoned Skeleton Chieftain.

It appeared that neither the Dock Keeper nor the Chieftain were making much of a dent in each other [Skeletons have Damage Reduction, and I assume that the Dock Keeper was an Invulnerable NPC]. This never ending brawl , whilst comical, also prevented Joshua from talking to the Dock Keeper about further quests.

I checked the player list to see if there were any Players that had set me to dislike [to see if this was the work of some cross-faction dude punking the noobies], but I couldn’t see any directly on the list that had me set to frowny face. Not that this disproved the hypothesis [the frowny face may not appear if someone is under invisibility? ], but it at least didn't seem obvious.

On past NWN servers that I’ve played, usually there’s local guards patrolling the large towns to deal with these sorts of annoyances that happen around key NPC’s, but there didn’t appear to be any guards hanging around in this instance. Anyway. With the Dock man occupied and nothing that I could do about it, I figured that I’d make my own adventure.

I looked through Joshua’s inventory and spotted a note about a Shrine. I remember seeing a Shrine earlier in my travels, and after speaking the magic word, Joshua found himself in a Dungeon. Neat!

The hostiles in this area seemed a little tougher than the pesky wolves, and whilst Joshua and his badger fought valiantly and wore one opponent down to near death, the badger was killed and a blow left the level 2 Joshua to bleed out and die.

After respawning in the local temple, I noticed a ‘recall portal’ and decided to see what it did. Apparently, nothing! My recollection of party portals from previous nwn 1 servers is that they are used to port to party leaders, and this portal could be a similar thing. The local temple lady offered to heal Joshua for a small fee, but didn’t seem to offer a store with healing equipment, so I saved my pennies and strolled out of the temple.

Figuring that the Shrine Dungeon was a little beyond me at this point, I walked past the Mexican standoff happening at the docks and found the Sewers. Here I was immediately mobbed by a pack of bandits, and whilst I was able to take down 1 of them, once again a blow left Joshua to bleed out and die.

Another trip to the temple, and I decided to call it a day with Joshua. At the very least, I’d learnt some new things and had some fun!


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So, with all the above in mind, some questions:

1. Is it possible to transfer items between characters by placing them on the ground or in a container? Is it even possible to transfer items between characters at all? [I assume it is, otherwise crafters would be useless and clerics/mages would have even more of an advantage than they normally do in Vanilla NWN]

2. What’s the Recall portal in the temple do? I assume it allows you to port to Party Members?

3. [perhaps a bit specific] Is there an opportunity to find Perform and/or Craft Armour/Weapon skill enhancing gear on this server? Or is one’s best bet at Mastering Crafting and reaching the magical ‘Craft X 80’ threshold to pump themselves with Botox and Modafinil at the expense of being good at fighting things?

[Cornflower]

1. Possible, yes. I'm a bit vague on the whole "is it legal", though.... We'd better hear what driller says. Don't place them on the ground, there's a script that cleans up clutter that lies around. If it's legal, I can tell you how I was instructed to do it. If it's not, of course I have never apptemted something like that....

2. When you've adventured some more, you might stumble over an item that allows you to teleport back to the keep to sell, buy and in general rest. After that, you may want to go back to where you came from. That's what it does. (Spoiler: If you want to teleport to your party, you use something else, which will take you some time to find.)

3. There are one or two such items (which I haven't found after five months, but I know other people have them). But still, you need quite a lot of botox. (I have a crafter that's actually good at fighting, but I'm bound by a promise not to tell how you do that. Sorry.) Another alternative is to become friends with a crafter and trade some items for services. (My crafter toon is Alannah McCaffrey, so find her in game. She can also tell you how to get a good weapon at level 6ish. She's extremely newbie friendly.)

[driller]

1.While I don't officially support item transfers, I do not take any action to stop it.
The cleanup script is what eats items left on the ground, they are triggered by item unacquired/area exit scripts.
I do this because items left on the ground can cause severe lag. If you want to attempt an item transfer, I suggest finding a secluded spot with no player traffic along with a quick relog. I would experiment with worthless items first.

2.This will be revealed after finishing a certain quest.

3.There are minor crafting enhancing items. It is best to build a specific character or hire someone who has.

Other notes:

Socket gems are not part of the forging system. Check Gruther's Gear.
Be sure and talk to every NPC in the Keep. You might find some of the their quests easier.
I will look into the summoning abuse in the Keep.

[The Flying Rodent]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies!

I figured that the cleanup scripts were for lag prevention, I just wasn’t sure on item transfer etiquette in general. I was curious more than anything.

Again, ‘not’ having at least some item transfer between ones own characters seems a bit silly to me, especially with a crafting system. As it stands, the system can be totally circumvented anyway by just using duel accounts, with one containing item mules and a pretty master crafter who serves to supply the other account.

But! That’s besides the point it seems. I suppose I’ll have to get crafty (pardon the pun) if I want to palm things off. Adds to the fun I guess.

I’ll be sure to explore the Keep more throughly next time I’m about and check to see what other quests I can find. I like figuring out things for myself, so I’ll hold off asking for things like crafting advice or where to find items unless I feel that I’m totally stumped.

And as for the surprise Skellie, well, that could’ve been a few different things. Maybe it would be a good idea to station an invulnerable guard or similar near key NPC’s like the Dock Keeper. As a future project that is. =)

Edit: I suppose one more question, would a Throwing Weapon character (e.g. Darts , Throwing Axes) be viable on this server ? I assume not, given the lack of Throwing Weapons for sale at the standard merchants in town.

[driller]

You should be able to forge a throwing weapon that same as any other.

[Kane0]

Man, returning thrown weapons would be nice.

[The Flying Rodent]

Hey guys, thanks again for the feedback.

Since I asked this question I have found an item that could help with Crafting some thrown weapons. Haven’t tried it yet, but seems promising!

Regarding ‘returning’ thrown weapons: The solution that I’ve seen on other NWN servers to help out Throwing Weapon Characters was an ‘ammunition spawner’.

Basically it cost quite a bit of gold to obtain the item, but once you had it, you could spawn unlimited batches of 50 throwing weapons of choice (I.e. Dart, Shuriken or Throwing Axe) at an Enhancement/Damage caliber on par with high end bows. To prevent people from using this to generate obscene amounts of money, the Thrown weapons and the Spawner were also marked as non-drop.

Not sure whether or not this sort of system would be vialble here what with the crafting system, or whether or not such a system exists already. If this is not the case, maybe an expensive ammo spawner of some description could be a nice incentive for people to create Throwing Weapon characters here.

[Kane0]

Well, there is the item you get that allows you to apply socket gems to ammo, I suppose it could be a function of that?

Though an actual forged throwing axe you could keep using would be pretty fun

[Jinn174]

I found a an item with unlimited ammo, so I assume you have to get lucky and find one.

[Cornflower]

I googled a bit and found a possible solution to the "Returning Throwing Axe". I'm sure driller is better at scripting than I am, so maybe it's not feasible. Also, you don't want it to run on OnHeartBeat (every six seconds), which is a major lag-causer for a Persistant World. It's also exploitable to some extent (or you get stuck with the axe and can't ever get rid of it)

Still, it's a start. I don't know drillers interest and priorities around this, but just in case, I might save him some legwork.

http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/sho ... hp?t=37339
http://aenea.aforumfree.com/t3109-custo ... ning#21228

I think the last is best.
Another way to do it without scripting is simply create an object that OnUse will spawn a new stack of axes, but you'll have to fit an exploit-checker to it. Also, this kinda removes the "magic".

[Douglas Thurman]

Welcome to the server!!

I've seen bows that allow you to spawn batches of arrows in your inventory that can't be sold. Arcane archers love these bows because they go through them like a crack addict goes through...well...crack. Just a note too, if a bow has unlimited ammo, you can still equip arrows of a different type. They'll get used up and when done they'll revert to the unlimited type.

[Cornflower]

Just a note too, if a bow has unlimited ammo, you can still equip arrows of a different type. They'll get used up and when done they'll revert to the unlimited type.

You quite sure about that? That kinda puts the bows you can Forge into the "interesting" category.

[Douglas Thurman]

Just a note too, if a bow has unlimited ammo, you can still equip arrows of a different type. They'll get used up and when done they'll revert to the unlimited type.

You quite sure about that? That kinda puts the bows you can Forge into the "interesting" category.

i'M 92.768% sure. But don't quo...oh nevermind.

Also too, an AA's arrow enhancement stacks with whatever the unlimited arrows are on an item.

Fun fact, the enhancement bonus for an AA goes towards the damage reduction of a creature. A level 30AA with a normal longbow can damage iron golems.

[driller]

I have written preliminary Throwing Axe of Return script. It doesn't use heartbeat. You should be able to forge it the same as any other item, just don't use an Amber. Putting an Amber on it will remove the replenishment ability.

I will have to do more testing before releasing it though.

I googled a bit and found a possible solution to the "Returning Throwing Axe". I'm sure driller is better at scripting than I am, so maybe it's not feasible. Also, you don't want it to run on OnHeartBeat (every six seconds), which is a major lag-causer for a Persistant World. It's also exploitable to some extent (or you get stuck with the axe and can't ever get rid of it)

Still, it's a start. I don't know drillers interest and priorities around this, but just in case, I might save him some legwork.

http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/sho ... hp?t=37339
http://aenea.aforumfree.com/t3109-custo ... ning#21228

I think the last is best.
Another way to do it without scripting is simply create an object that OnUse will spawn a new stack of axes, but you'll have to fit an exploit-checker to it. Also, this kinda removes the "magic".

[Cornflower]

I have written preliminary Throwing Axe of Return script. It doesn't use heartbeat. You should be able to forge it the same as any other item, just don't use an Amber. Putting an Amber on it will remove the replenishment ability.

I will have to do more testing before releasing it though.

You're sooo good.