The Aielund Saga Act III - Return of the Ironlord

 the elven city tileset link gives me a 404 error but can be found here http://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/tileset/elven-city-tileset

the module(s) one of the best i ever played

Best mod ever written - rating reflects entire series

This series in in my personal top 10 favorties for NWN mods. I enjoyed it all:  Story line, custom item/ content,  replayability, can RP either gender and feel eqaually part of the story. As well as all clasess being playable to the end.

Finally finished the entire saga after weeks of playing. One of the best mod I ever played!

Gahh, a cry for help, please!

Spoilers Below

.

.

.

.

.

.

... Ok, hopefully someone will know how I can proceed from this point...

I'm at the very end of Act 3, and Terinus comes to the rescue with the Scepter....however...he does not transfer it to me, but rather kills the Ironlord with it himself! I go to talk with the King, but he asks for Terinus. I go to talk with Terinus and he says "I need to catch my breath." So, I'm stuck now and can't figure out how to get over this impasse!

What do I need to do in order to continue?? I'd really love to get started on Act 4!

I think I'm stuck in a frozen script.  I'm in the battle with the Iron Lord but I can't seem to beat him.  Terinus says he has deactivated his shield but the lowest I can hurt him is barely injured.  Beyond that, the fight just seems to go on forever.  Often people will score a hit on the IL and cause a chaos shield explosion, but his health really doesn't go down.  His shield still looks like it's working to me.

**Update**  The script was frozen.  I had to try a few times in order to get it to work right.  When it finally did, I still had to look for the King.  He had been left at the same spot Terinus appeared, which was North of the keep where I went to rest.  I think he was supposed to be in the final battle but that part of the script broke and he and the 2 knights stayed and didn't follow us.  At least I was able to finish.

An epic series! Truly recommended to every NWN player!

(rating is for the entire Aielund series)

This is an outstanding epic series that will leave you wanting more when complete. The module author clearly put tons of hard work and effort into building one of the 3 best series on the vault. This series is one of the reasons Neverwinter Nights still exists 15 years later.

The story, the battles, the music, the visuals all are top notch. I solo'd a Human Wizard from 1st to 34th level. I highly recommend this module to everyone.

Voting 10!

I already wrote what I like generally about the outstanding series.  While Act II is my favorite module of the series, Act III is my least favorite.

What I least like about this module in the series is the verbose click-through dialog.  It may seem like a trivial thing to have several different choices for the player character's dialog, even if each choice ultimately leads to the same place in the dialog tree.  It does make a difference for roleplaying immersion.  The dialog in this module gives me the feel of reading someone else's novel, rather than choosing my own character and adventure.  The previous two modules were much better about the diversity in the player character's dialog options.

The final battle is becomes very confusing.  Even though I have played the Aielund series several times, I still have not figured out the progression of the final battle in Act III.  It is never clear to me what action I am supposed to take to trigger the next sequence in the battle.  I always end up spending a lot of time either waiting for something to happen, running around hoping to set off a trigger, asking NPCs for advice (they have none).  The NPC commander shouts orders periodically, but they are very easy to miss in the text spam of everything happening in the battle.

Those disappointments aside, it is still an overall good module in a great series.  Everything else great about the series carries over here.

Great Epic saga that covers all the bases. While the finall battle IS confusing, the Author(s) do a nice job of covering the most likely story-line choices without bogging down.

The Aielund Saga is one of my favourite RPG of all time! The module excels in every aspect, especially in terms of the story telling and companion character development. You can find my review here. Highly recommended to every RPG fans :)

The Aielund Saga part III was too hard for my rogue in the end. I tried to make it into a shadow dancer, and ultimately ran out of money. Shayan's Subrace System kicked off, even after I reinstalled the modules. I'd reinstall NWN1 + Expansions, but last time I did that my imported backup saves didn't even work where I reset all values to their previous stuff using LETO. It seems LETO caused something in the game that ruined that subsystem.

It was cool though that in the first module Shayan's Subsystem was working.

So, I just gave up and decided to start playing Ps:T again. Oh, well...

Not to mention you can buy infiinte keys at the inn, something that wasn't in the first two installments.. Princess Criosa is stuck in a room at the beginning in the game down the hall from you, and yet she's also found in the war room. It never detracts from the experience, but it is a lack some small polish that the first two installments had!

But, as it is, I'm trying to talk to to Chamberlain from the castle in Fairloch to try to requistion some gold so that I can buy more spells! But nope! I'm too poor!

Also, at first I didn't want that companion in the dungeon, but then in the undercity it just felt like enemies were constantly respawning. Well, I've beaten all the infinity isle D&D games on core and stuff, so there's always that. It just runs better now too since of the Beamdog re-releases.

But PLEASE don't get me wrong! This is one of the BEST modules you can play right now for NWN!. It beats the everlasting CRAP out of anything in the vanilla NWN1 campaigns + expansions. GET THIS MODULE.

Edit: I spent most my money on potions and healing packs. Healing packs were letting me through the game! I just didn't have enough money!

I'd post a picture if I could. My rogue is the best most excellent rogue I've made so far. I'm definintely going to import him into probably HotU. He deserves to slowly fall into madness for once!

Edit: The boss is probably going to go down, though, tonight guys. It's dead. So I'm moving on. If I complete this, I'll see you all on part IV.I

Best module series ever

So I completed act II. I want to start act 3, saw a cutscene about them thanking me as they should but now I am in a room with a sign that says "this is a placeholder moduel." How do I fix this?

What an epic journey. This astoundishing campaign is way better than many offiicial games created by professional companies/writers and it's good to such an extent that it totally annihilates the OC.

So, the difficulty goes up a cliff in this one? I was breezing throught Act II and then this one starts, the first group of mobs kills my entire group. I am playing with a paladin tank, my AC 37 made sure I escaped nearly every hit before, but then the trash duergars hit me most often than not in this one.

The quest for finding and rescuing Sebastian doesn't update,  the druid comments that you bought him back safely but the quest remains open and cannot be completed. Even when he leaves for Highmarch Sebastian stays behind and doesn't follow him.

Love the series, but am stuck in Act III right after the Iron Lord arrives in Trinity.  I headed north and spoke to the King.  Headed north from there and came the to natural bridge.  Immediately after crossing it and approaching the commander, the screen slows as if heading into a cutscene and then just hangs.  Nothing I've tried (changing audio/video settings, etc.) prevents it other than using a stone to return north of the Fort and working my way down.  Problem there is when I work my way back south, nothing happens when I get to the natural bridge so it seems to me I've bypassed some sort of trigger.

I checked my version and as it turns out I was using 3.01.  Readme for the current version (3.07) shows a fix in 3.05 to remove a cutscene for Commander Lane on the Southern Slopes (which I assume is the one that's causing me problems).  I've installed 3.07 (and v3.01 of the hak), but when I load my save it says version 3.01 (and looking through the save file, it does reference 3.01).  So I guess my question is, "does the save game have the old mod embedded in it and is there any way to recover or am I reduced to starting Act III over?

I'm having a general problem with cats.Sebastian never showed, even after my journal said i had found him on a slope.I'm playing the last part now and the Shadow Tigers are invisible.I'll try to reinstall the CEP now.

EDIT:

updating to CEP 2.65 did the trick 

I really liked the modules, but was perhaps a bit disapointed (especially in act I), due to all the praise. I have played other modules I liked better (Swordflight, Almraiven, The porphet series, A dance with rogues). I think it takes the series into act three before I really felt invested in the story. But it is definitely a very epic tale, and one of the longest series out there. I rate the series as a whole 8/10, but act 4 is more like 9/10, while act I is 7/10.

Even though Ch4 had some glitches, I can't give lower scores as the long journey made me euphoric. The only regret is that I did play it alone, not with friends.

I can agree that there are better works in a certain way, but this saga is the absolute core for everyone who starts playing this game.

It is too late, but I want to thank the creator.

I think I encountered a bug or something.



****************************SPOILERS****************************


On the cave where I fight the white dragon, Valennia's Corpse is there. After I revive her and the conversation ends with her saying she'll go back to the camp and she'll see you soon. When I arrive at the camp and inside the Chief's hut, Valennia isn't there and in turn, doesn't complete the quest with the barbarians even after giving all 4 Horns. Is there a script or something I can use to make Valennia appear next to the chief?

What a wonderful adventure ... the music, the script, the characters, the atmosphere, the dialogues ... all were amazing. It is worth starting with a low-level character and seeing it go up gradually. This was especially my favorite part of this adventure. My ratings concern the whole series. Thanks to the author for this wonderful trip ... You should all try it!

Module Testing Tournement 2020

Just finished replaying this mod series. One of the greatest of all time, and Act III is the best of the series. Absolutely amazing. 

Solid module so far, but the difficulty tuning is starting to feel pretty rough starting in part 3. Some fairly random spikes in difficulty at the beginning, then a long period of smooth sailing for me, until a fight near the end with a certain enemy who's name begins with "Seige". My monk/cleric punch build literally gets deleted by this fight, had to god mode it. I found in combat encounters like this it feels better to make it chaotic, but not overly challenging (Like the Hordes of the Underdark battle that the end of this chapter takes inspiration from! 

If I encounter another odd difficutly spike like the Seige monster (trying to avoid spoilers) In Module 4 I'll probably drop the module, which is a shame. 

After loving Acts I and II, I must say I was disappointed by Act III. The primary reason for this is that Act III falls far too heavily into stereotypes, and really limits role-playing to an extreme degree. Much of this campaign has just you and your party going around soloing dragons and devils including Pit Fiends while everyone else is helpless to solve their own problems, and there's a real excess of deus ex machina. Obviously the usual RPG tropes but too much of it here and too blatant.

And so many conversations have only a single character defining dialogue option in pivotal moments, so there's very little role-playing within this module's story. You are always playing as someone who believes in Aielund and fights for it. I'm forced to be more noble than I want to be in dialogue, even when going against this as much as possible.

The good things about Act III are the combat balance I think, and the world building remains interesting. I find the combat balance to be on the harder side, but not so much so that it's absolutely absurd. I'm playing as a Wizard necromancer for what it's worth. Also, this series goes the furthest I've seen with improving henchman AI and capabilities.

[deleted]

I don't know why, but Nellise (The cleric in first part) is not appearing in the church in part 3 where she's supposed to, according to the walkthrough. What should I do about this?

Game-stopping glitch at "Count's Lost Love." 

Can't enter her house.  This stops the story.

Too bad, as it was enjoyble up to that point.

I love this entire series, although the final battle of act 3 with all the constructs spamming IGMS is in my opinion out of proportion to the difficulty of everything else, only one build (Bard/Blackguard/RDD - which is equally OP) has survived it for me. I also think the final part of Act 4 on the Saqqarin base feels like an afterthought somehow. Thanks Savant!

Personally i got so annoyed that i didn't even finish this chapter. But It wouldn't be a bad adventure if wasn't for:

-1 enemy encounters, as previous chapters are quite annoying. Aside the spawning points, but if you're lucky you have to face 5-6, if not even 9-10 each time.

-1 the enemy scaling also, is terrible, especially in THIS chapter. Aside the area where you have to kill something like a dozen of dragons, but funny thing, i had more trouble fighting HILL GIANTS instead of adult/old black dragons. Tell me about it!

-2 our friend had his "revision" of rules and he even thought to advise. Like removing the best feat of fighter becouse....?

And i discovered that when i needed to increase my level or hill giants would have torn me to pieces.

-1 in the first module your character's behavior was more generic, so you could play more like Mr. Black or be more 'paladin' like, and that was pretty nice. At some point you get knighted and then most of the time you act more or less as knight of the realm. That forces the rest of the adventure in only one avenue. I understand that, but i still don't like it.

What was updated last week?