Amazing

[Legacy_Dragon Studios]

               Wow. Hordes of the Underdark is by far the best campaign in the Neverwinter Nights package that I have played. Neverwinter Nights and Shadows of Undrentide had their flaws but I've yet to encounter any flaws in this campaign. The characters are amazing, the dialogue is amazing and the party banter is great too. I'm probably enjoying it more so than the two previous campaigns because it's for high level characters and thus the combat is more advanced straight away from the beginning but I find that the story is more immersive too.

I know that I'm 8 years late but I just thought I'd add this here.
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[Legacy_Lightfoot8]

               It is OK,  I still havve not played it yet.    Still I can point out one flaw.   It was not written for more then one player.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               It was designed as the sequel to SoU so hopefully you used a PC you built and played through that previous expansion.  The storyline and continuity is pretty much based on it not to mention the best challenge with a Level 12 or 13 toon. The plague campaign has few threads in HotU, if any.

Although it is still enjoyable to me mostly for the diversity aspects, it is w-a-a-a-a-y too liberal in the loot dispersal, to the point of making loot totally irrelevant.  Most well-balanced community modules use the loot seeding aspects much better IMO.  TBH, SoU's loot was done very well and yet for some reason they dropped the ball in HotU.  Go figure. Catering to the tastes of the loot-ravenous kids I expect. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Eternal Phoenix]

               To be honest, I enjoyed HotU WAY better than SoU. I disliked the encounters of SoU (near the end, I was encountering 5 mind flayers in every group) and the story didn't grip me either. HotU was a vast improvement in everything IMO.

@Lightfoot8

If you haven't played it, how can you say that it's "OK"?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               

Elton John is dead wrote...

To be honest, I enjoyed HotU WAY better than SoU. I disliked the encounters of SoU (near the end, I was encountering 5 mind flayers in every group) and the story didn't grip me either. HotU was a vast improvement in everything IMO.

Weren't mind flayers introduced to the game in HotU? Where were you encountering them in SoU?

BTW, I liked both campaigns, though they each had a different flavor. The scope of HotU was broader and it was a great expansion of the game (new classes, better scripting, etc.), but an overabundance of loot by the end really impacted the challenge.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               

MrZork wrote...
Weren't mind flayers introduced to the game in HotU? Where were you encountering them in SoU?

BTW, I liked both campaigns, though they each had a different flavor. The scope of HotU was broader and it was a great expansion of the game (new classes, better scripting, etc.), but an overabundance of loot by the end really impacted the challenge.

Methinks he means Skeletal Devourers, MrZ.

The thing is, if you start SoU with a new level 1 toon the way they recommend, the chances of getting many of those SDs is slim (the CR scales with the PC level). Usually each group has 1 (or 2, at most).  It's when you are trying to romp through SoU with the OC toon, usually starting at level 17 or so, that the encounters in the 2nd level of the tower become uncharacteristically overwhelming.    SoU is designed very well to finish a toon at almost exactly level 13 every time, a level or 2 higher for pure solo.

It's really hard to compare the 3 campaigns because each one in the series had increasingly-more sophisticated and enhanced resources available and incorporated.  Had the designers ever been afforded a chance to go back into the previous campaigns, rebalance and paint in the eye candy, I suspect that except for the stories themselves, they would all appear very similar.

One aspect of these campaigns that I really appreciate (and HotU had it working for 2 chapters at least), is a transport vehicle.  Granted, it can impact the combat challenge if left uncontrolled by inadequate scripting, but the tedium of moving a character back and forth through the same visual area repetively really tests my patience and bores me to tears.  But that is just my own preference and I like the way HotU allowed the player to manage the access to different areas very quickly.  (That shadow door thingy in SoU was handy, too.  Too bad it was available only near the end of the campaign.)

There are just so many community modules to sample, I wish more of them removed the tedium in a simlar manner.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par HipMaestro, 15 décembre 2011 - 01:53 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Eternal Phoenix]

               Yes. That's right. Skeletal Devourers. I got the two confused.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               Hah. Got it. I thought maybe I had missed a Temple of the Tentacled Wind quest!

HipMaestro, can't agree enough that avoiding tedious travel through already-explored areas can be a godsend during play. And, it's something that one quickly comes to appreciate in community modules that provide some mechanism for quick travel. Also, putting a handy merchant near the drop-off point so that it's possible to quickly unload loot without schlepping through five more areas.

Also, in HotU, the relic system allows one to more easily complete all of the chapter two quests without getting dragged into the big battle prematurely. '>