NwN - The Forge of Fury Mod Review

Remove all ads!

3rd Edition Adventure Series - The Forge of Fury
Creator: Jeff "Dueeliz" Weaver
Scope: Part of a series
Prequel: "The Sunless Citadel"
Sequel: "The Speaker in Dreams" (not yet out!)
Requires: NWN v1.62
Players: 1-4, single and multiplayer available
Review first posted on: 29/01-06
Last updated on:
Download location: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=modules.Detail&id=3349

Index

• Game Rules Information
• Content
• Gameplay
• Difficulty
• Bugs and Oddities
• Summary

Game Rules Information

The creator of the unofficial Neverwinter Nights module "The Forge of Fury", Jeff "Dueeliz" Weaver, has tweaked the game rules some. The most important changes are as follows:

Death
If a player reaches 0 (zero) hit-points he/she will begin bleeding to death. Each round there's a 10% chance that the player will stabilize and regain 1 hit-point; otherwise he/she'll loose one Hit-Point. Allies can stabilize the player through either healing kits or spells. Should that not be enough to bring the player above 0 hit-points, the player will receive 1 hit-point per round until he/she reaches 0. If a player ever reaches -10 Hit-points or below, (s)he will die.

Respawning will, as always, cost you gold and experience points. Furthermore you will be transported to the nearest healer, and there's no easy path back to your comrades... you will have to walk.

Resting
Resting is allowed once every fourth game hour (8 minutes of real time). This can be disabled through a device called an "Orb of Configuration" that can be found in your personal chest, located in an upstairs room in the Griffon's Nest Inn.

Note that if you cancel your rest or are interrupted while resting you will have to wait four hours of game time before you can rest again.

Experience
Experience in "The Forge of Fury" is calculated using the charts from the official Dungeon Master's Guide. This results in the displaying of two experience awards each time a creature is slain; the first one will always be 0 as that is the one using the original NwN experience award system, the second one will display the real experience award that you get.

Stealing
Looting items from containers within the view of NPC's will result in them turning hostile.

The Orb of Configuration can set the amount of time that corpses will remain in the world. Through it you can also alter resting limitations, disable graphical effects and more. Choose to 'use' the orb as you would otherwise use items special effects, and select the setting(s) that you wish to use:

1. Corpses will remain in the world after they are looted. They will only disappear if they are destroyed by bashing them.
2. Corpses will fade after 5 minutes of real-time once the corpse is looted. They can also be destroyed during this time.
3. Corpses will fade immediately after they are looted.
4. Disable the lootable corpse system.
5. Enable resting limitations.
6. Disable resting limitations.
7. Enable rain effects.
8. Disable rain effects.


Content

Two hundred years ago, the great dwarf smith Durgeddin the Black built Khundrukar, a hidden stronghold for his war of vengeance against all orckind. For years Durgeddin laboured until the orcs discovered Khundrukar, and stormed the citadel, slaying all within. Legends say that Durgeddin's masterful blades and glittering treasures were never found.

"The Forge of Fury" takes its beginning at the gates to the village of Blasingdell. Upon exploring the small community you learn that words of your deeds in the Sunless Citadel has travelled ahead of you, and that you're already a hero of some renown. Your main reason for being in Blasingdell, however, is the ancient dwarven dungeon "Khundrukar", wherein you hope that treasure and glory awaits you.

As its prequel, "The Forge of Fury" is a dungeon crawl, and again I must admit that "Dueeliz" has made an excellent work out of making each area unique. The module has an almost drawing atmosphere that threatens to consume you! In the end the atmosphere is really what's most appealing about "The Forge of Fury", as the plot itself is a little weak. Most of the quests are tied together, and the solution to each tends to come quite naturally as your travel down. They're all optional though, and the only quest you really have to focus on, only involves travelling to the end of the dungeon.
The module is aimed at level 3 characters, and by the end you won't have got yourself more than a couple of levels (though this is, of course, very dependant on whether you play with other players or solo; how many players you play with, or if playing alone, how many henchmen you've taken along for the ride); and as such, your main stock of enemies will consist of Orcs, Duergar, and their ilk. This also reflects in the treasure that you find. I was barely halfway through the module when I found myself no longer caring about opening the barrels and boxes I came across, as most of those held either water or other worthless items. Don't get me wrong here, I think that that's a major plus as it fits much better with my own idea of what's inside a barrel or a box.


Gameplay

Again Jeff "Dueeliz" has taken use of Pausanias's Inventory and AI Mod (it is included in the "The Forge of Fury" module; no need to download it). It adds various tweaks to henchmen behaviour, and I suggest that you read the text file that comes along with "The Forge of Fury" to get a better look at all the changes that it implements. There are four henchmen available to players. They are as follows: Lidda, a Halfling rogue, Tordek, a Dwarven warrior, Mialee, an Elven wizard, and finally Jozan, a cleric of Pelor. They're all located within the Griffon's Nest Inn, and will gladly follow you... so I suggest that you make use of them if you plan on soloing the module. You're allowed a maximum of four henchmen at any time. Whenever one of those henchmen dies (s)he will respawn immediately (which can trigger some annoying problems; check Bugs and Oddities section for more info on this), and you'll have to talk with the given henchman in order to get them to re-join; you will have to give them 200gp otherwise they won't re-join!

Overall the gameplay ran smoothly, though I did run into what I will call a severe case of bad scripting. This was associated with a creature called "Roper", and I suggest that you read the Bugs and Oddities section for an example of the aforementioned issue. Otherwise just remember to configure your game using the Orb of configuration to avoid the glitches that improper setting may trigger (mainly lag).


Difficulty

In my opinion "The Forge of Fury" was a pretty easy module, and there was only one fight I had to re-do a couple of times before I managed to avoid getting my arse kicked. My suggestion would be not to take more than a couple of henchmen with you, otherwise it may be a walk in the park. I was very disappointed with the end-game fight (the boss, if you will), and found it way to easy for my liking; especially considering that the whole plot evolves around getting to that one fight.


Bugs and Oddities

• I'm not sure of this can be categorized as a "bug", but it sure was odd nevertheless. Within the depths of ancient Khundrukar I stumbled upon a creature named Roper. It threatened to eat me, but we made a bargain: I was to fetch it some fresh meat, and it would let me pass by safely. Now that all sounded just fine, but after I clicked through the last dialogue, weird things started to happen: 1st of all, I couldn't get rid of the bugger! It kept following me, and initiated a dialogue now and then, saying something along the lines of "have you returned with the meat yet". Suffice to say, I got tired of it, reloaded and chose to fight it instead. This spawned the 2nd "bug"; the thing threw some sort of entangle looking spell which now and then gave damage to everyone within the area of effect - including itself - I withdrew and as I did that the creature didn't follow... so I could just stand there and watch it die by its own spell. This spell had another side-effect too: it quickly tore apart my henchmen, and as they died they resurrected at the same spot as they're supposed too. Now the only problem was that as they respawned they began once again to take damage from the spells, and as they died the second time, they were gone for good.
• If you try to level up while bleeding to death (below zero hit-points) this will result in your character getting stuck in the unconscious animation. Obviously you do not want that. This is a know issue, and is described in the text file that comes along with the module, which is located in your NWN/Modules folder. There is no known solution to this problem.
• You should make sure that you configure the corpse decaying function properly by using the Orb of Configuration. If the Corpse Decay function is improperly set (you will have to fiddle a wee around with it seeing as this problem is associated with the resources available to your computer) it may result in objects not appearing on corpses, scripts running incorrectly or dead creatures suddenly speaking. Alternatively you can also simply destroy the corpses by bashing them, in order to free up system resources. Again, this is a known issue, and is described in the text file that comes along with the module, which is located in your NWN/Modules folder.

Summary

Again Jeff "Dueeliz" has made a pretty decent module, I must admit. Though personally I think that this mod may be a little weaker in regards of depth, it is certainly a good time-killer, and definitely one that I would suggest people to have a look at should they find the time. It is 2-3 hours of gameplay, maybe not at its best, but at least at the higher end. It further raises the overall grade that the mod can be played as a stand-alone module, and you do not have to have played the prequel in order to fully enjoy "The Forge of Fury". As for the replayability factor, it fails somewhat. I cannot imagine myself playing this module again any time soon.

I'm eagerly awaiting the next instalment, "The Speaker in Dreams", though!