This list of important buff spells is ranked in the order that you're likely to acquire them in. Most well-balanced parties, though, will have at least one divine and one arcane spellcaster in them, so it shouldn't be too difficult to cover all the bases. Some of them can be cast by divine spellcasters, as well, so bringing along a priest or druid may be helpful. Most of the spells listed below are arcane spells, which means that you'll need to have a sorcerer or wizard in your party to cast them. While you can probably beat the game without ever casting Stoneskin or Bull's Strength, knowing what spells to cast and on which characters is a big, big help.
While the bevy of defensive buffs will make most fights in this game fairly easy, even on Hardcore difficulty, the hardest encounters will at least be more challenging to you than they would be on normal difficulty.īuffing - the act of casting spells that enhance your character's abilities or offensive or defensive capabilities - is a long-standing tradition in RPGs, and in D&D games especially.
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On normal difficulty, you can feel free to throw down area of effect spells willy-nilly, since they won’t hit your teammates, but you’ll have to be a lot more cautious on Hardcore.Īll in all, in our opinion, Hardcore difficulty is the way Neverwinter Nights 2 was meant to be played, and we suggest that you at least give it a try. This is going to change the way you play quite a bit.
Lastly, your area-of-effect spells, like Fireball, will hit your teammates when they’re caught in the radius of effect. You’ll take more damage, and thus will have to be more on the ball with things like healing spells and defensive buffs. Secondly, enemies are allowed to score critical hits on you they can’t do so on normal difficulty. (Your own characters can always use attacks of opportunity on your enemies, even on normal difficulty.) This makes it much more important to protect your spellcasters by keeping them away from enemies. That means that your enemies will get free attacks on you if they’re within melee range when a character casts a spell or attempts to use a scroll or drink a potion. First off, your characters will be vulnerable to attacks of opportunity. Hardcore difficulty initiates three major changes to combat. This is probably a good difficulty setting if you just want to experience the storyline without too many problems, but if you want to reap the fruit of the game’s combat system, or if you’re used to the traditional D&D pen and paper rules, then bumping the difficulty up to Hardcore is a good idea. Neverwinter Nights 2 defaults to a "normal" difficulty setting. All in all, the package is a devilishly compelling one for fans of in-depth computer RPGs. (At times, you may find yourself with as many as seven or eight characters or creatures in your party!) The game’s storyline has been given the standard Obsidian touch, as well, with character romances, the ability to shift alignment from good to evil (or back), and the ability to influence your followers as you advance through the plot. In Neverwinter Nights 2, though, these limitations have been eased, and your nominal party cap is now four players, all of which are individually controllable in battle. While the story of Neverwinter 1 was serviceable, the game was built around the multiplayer arena, and thus, even in the single-player game, you could only control one character, and your party’s maximum size was all of two characters, which was a far cry from the five or six-person parties of the older Infinity Engine games. The game is superficially the same as Neverwinter Nights, but is improved in almost every way, especially for fans of in-depth single-player role-playing games. Now, over four years later, Obsidian picks up the mantle with Neverwinter Nights 2. The game was an immediate hit, and while it was a big departure from the previous Dungeons & Dragons games from BioWare, like the esteemed Baldur’s Gate II, the game and its expansion packs went on to sell over a million copies. The game shipped with a robust suite of world-building tools, giving wannabe dungeon masters the ability to create their own scenarios and modules to share online.
By: Matthew Rorie Design: Randall Montanariįor fans of online role-playing games, the release of Neverwinter Nights in 2002 was a revelation.