A Hunt Through the Dark - XP Edition

Awesome! Not finished yet but really love what I've seen so far!

Only just got around to playing this, and have more-or-less finished part 2, and enjoying it as a fighter-rogue.

Is there a walkthrough anywhere?

If there isn't, could someone PLEASE tell me how to find the "Secret Study" mentioned by the Drider - I've found it using the toolset but can't find a way in (or was the Drider winding me up all along?)

A series of Mods' that started very well with the first installment, went down a bit to okay with the next 2-3, and then got really good with the later installments.

Difficult in places, but not Swordflight difficult, thus more enjoyable at times than that series.

Thoroughly enjoyed.

I read somewhere there is a walkthrough available for all modules of AHTDD except the last one. Can anyone post a link? I cannot find it.

Walkthrough added. Thanks goes to the user Greg for contacting the author an dobtaining the file.

Just finished the whole thing. This series is a masterpiece that deserves 10/10, in spite of a few bugs I would put it in line with Aielund Saga in terms of fun factor. Well made, well written, well designed fast paced (it is a hunt after all:)) and enjoyable. Suitable especially for female cleric/fighter or male wizard/fighter builds, as these are (due to the plot, no forced choices though) common in drow society. It has some gear designed for fighting casters such as chainmails with no arcane failure, dexterity items or cool longswords --- unfortunately next to no bows and arrows so you may take some with you to the module. One should also mention beliveable, interesting characters, Faerun related details, cool graphics (especially module 6 featuring the ruined Myth Drannor partially consumed by nature, which is almost a  standalone game in a game!) and a walkthrough I fetched from the autor (part 6 missing). Must play, you won't regret. At the end the hero can side with 3 gods, two evil and one good. The quality makes you ask for more. 

Of interest is that this module has also NWN2 version - which in comparison to NWN 1 version  has its plot changed after the drow reach the surface. Also, there is a sequel Lolthanchwi, if you consider installing NWN2 :)  

Playing advice: in the first module there is a divination pool, which allows you to teleport to a dragon's cave. If you have a wizard level or UMDevice (rogue skill) you can grab a super-cool Longsword +2 with 1d8 sonic damage and Amulet of Natural Armor +4 that will be unmatched until module 6...  The author of the module discourages players from doing so in teh walkthrough and warns of imminent death, but hey, we are greedy drows. Here's how to do it: buy Rod of Fire from the mage at the beggining. After you enter the lair of the mage who is disguised as a dragon, be inquisitive about his biography:), then fight him, cast invisibility if you can and enter the pool. You have a few seconds before the dragon detects you and stands up so immediately throw a fireball onto the dragon's treasure. The chests are shut tight, so it is only way to access their content. Then run! grab the content from the rightmost and central chests and flee to the portal. Second advice: if you want to have 2 Arcane Archer levels for fireball 10d6 arrow 3x/day, then take a bow to the module, as crossbows are available at the beggining. It's not cheating, if you specialize in bows then it is logical you should have one during hunt :)

Is this normal that plot-related dialogues can be started over and over again for exp exploits? Character animation sometimes working with double speed, drow subrace feels very raw - they didnt even have darkvision!

All of this are compatibilty issues (yes, i have CEP 1.5 Complete) or just bugs?

pretty good module 

If I could rate this series higher than 10, I would. This is my absolute favorite mod series for NWN. This mod series came out before the HotU expantion and in my honest opinion, this is a 1000 times better. Not that the HotU expantion was bad, but this mod is just THAT DARN GOOD!! 

The visuals, the storyline are all top notch. There is no voice acting but that is ok. Any fan of the drow elves should definately give this mod a go.

Mr. Markus 'Wayne' Schlegel, I have been following your work for years. 

my review

https://darksideofrpgs.blogspot.com/2018/12/infernal-crown-and-hunt-thro...

This was a great series! Some issues though, I did get stuck trying to start Part 4, with the Llolth area not able to fully load. So I had to skip this mod for the next Part 5, with a different PC. I was able to get all the way to the end of Part 6, but some necessary items (parts) were not where they were supposed to be, and I could not get all the way to the Demi Lich. Too bad, but I enjoyed the story, the henchman interface in the later mods, and the enemies so much I felt that this deserved the highest honor of 10 stars! Have fun with it and maybe you will not have my problems. 

Well, I definitely loved it, I didn't want to level up so I played it starting from level one: very tough but satisfying.

Anyway I got stuck, maybe some scripts didn't work properly. I was back from dealing with the Gobling Scouts and every drow I met, once getting back by the river, was warning me that the Tet'Ness Matron wanted my report but no dialogue was triggered once I tried to talk with her.

EDITED

we got attacked in the meanwhile, I hope some dialogue will be triggered later. New enemies and plenty of fun, so far

Yo folks, anyone know if this stuff works with EE properly?

Thanks.

Modules generally work with EE.

I haven't seen any complaints about this one.

The movie files was still in bik, i converted them to wbm (EE compatybile), if it is any use for anyone. It doesn't seems they are scripted to play during the game anyway tho. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XO4h7KP9WgrctEFEkaNZ5bbWAF3wBQDg

Nice mod, but i'm stuck at Chapter Two because i can't get through the second mine shaft area (can't enter the zone, the blue area on the ground seems broken).

Unfortunately, I am unable to continue onto Chapter 6. I get a missing hak file error, even though I have the haks that the log file lists. Here is the log file:

All in all it was a very satisfying playthrough as a drow, but... I suppose author thought that no one will ever make such choice, and maybe i'm the chosen one or something with impossible taste, but never in my life would i betray such person(I'll call them XXX for spoilers), since i like how XXX is so natural, i'll say even love them. Author could've made XXX just change, could've made something kill XXX in such way that i would've been unable to choose... but you know what author decided to do? He made it so that we do have a "choice", but not outright betraying XXX will lead to a battle against two plot-armored people and one immortal.

As i said, i will never betray such character, and i never did. I was unable to continue further, and now, not lying, i remember this disappointment every day. Will not give any rating too, since i never finished it.

Great and great series.

Great module, which gets better the further you get into it.  In one chapter, sometimes the poison gas area doesn't work, and have to use DebugMode to get to the next area.  

Chapter 6 is the best of the series, but again had to use DebugMode to get past some allied creatures blocking the only exit.

Only ever found 5 of the 7 Swords.  I suspect they are in the Northern section of the city as there are two doors I was unable to open.  Also a 'locked' helm was found there, which may hold the means of openning them?  Maybe I missed a teleportation word, although I came across one that did not seem to work?

At some point with one attempt, the cows became enemies?  Broke the module.

The series felt unfinished, especially with its sudden end.

Walkthrough of chapter 6 would raise the score to 8 or 9.

I was having fun up until I hit chapter 4 where upon the first area I entered, the game wouldn't load. After a quick investigation, this was because Lolth's model wasn't loading.

I'm not quite sure if that's a bug related to the fact that I didn't overwrite my CEP 2.6 files with the CEP 1.X files or if it's a different bug entirely, but the bug was caused by Lolth not having a model for the game to load in (seriously? How does a bug this simple make it through? This has got to be on my end). I've thus created a hotfix replacing her model with an Aranea model. If I find any more similar bugs, I'll look into fixing those too: https://mega.nz/file/a49ShL6K#iiAbW_ERzUuVwxNmJgXgw4Nzbcy4uhTQaTwIRjrxl4o

Hotfix Update:

Gave Lolth a model

Gave priestess a model

Gave drow milita and assassins a model

Gave driders a model

This will not look pretty but it should in theory make everything work again. I reinstalled Cep 1.X so I know it wasn't from a missing file there. My guess is the hakpacks aren't proper but I'm too lazy to fix that. Dropped from six to four stars for making me waste an hour just to make it functional.

I think I finally completed part 6.  Although I didn't quite use the following strategy, I think you have to follow either the good or evil options, although I did a bit of both, which meant sometimes the good guys were allies and sometimes they weren't, eg Elminster.

Finally found all 7 swords.

At what I assume was the end credit scene the immortal Sage attacked me, impossible to kill, so simply exported my character.

I played this seriesup until the next to the last one, wasn't gonna download the massive files to play Myth Drannor...

I ran into quite a few bugs, a few completely unbelievable action scenes (Mega hard), I died A LOT in one module, and had to flat cheat in multiple modules to even get to the end, it was crazy (The 3rd from the last module is still poorly done and has issues)

3 of the modules had some overflow issues, so if you are in debug mode they stream and stress the game engine a lot, and so you will need to turn off debug mode.

The gear is exceptionally low, some the challenges are far too high, and you will need rogue to get past a few doors.

Overall I thought the role play and storyline were cool, but I'm not much of a fan of sand boxed adventures, or cutscenes, and this one was a bit bad because it kept kicking me back into top down camera, so I had to quite frequently go back and turn on Driver Camera Mode (Annoying!).

I'd say, overall, it's about a 7 rating for the whole series, you can tell the designer was having some issues with scripting, but the cutscenes were quite frequent, and so I was surprised he was having some of the issues I ran into.

I didn't really enjoy the 3rd and 4th module much, but the first 2 were very well done indeed.

Hi, I'm playing the 3rd chapter, downloaded as community content using EE build v8193.32, and [SPOILER ALERT] I find impossible to dispel the poison cloud using the "gust of wind" magic wand. The spell simply has no effect.

Is it something related to the Enhanced Edition?

I have started chp 5 (EE curated) but at the begining of the mod in the opening battle my wizard gets killed almost every time in the opening round or two before I can defend myself.  Once I reload often enough last a few rounds I get covered by some sort of invincibility that never wears off for the rest of the mod.  To get around that problem I do two things in the NWSscript UI :

1) as soon as the mod begins I run a script chunk that sets my PCs plot flag  SetPlotFlag(GetFirstPC(), TRUE); so I dont get killed then I runn tothe area exit,

2) once in the next area I just reset it SetPlotFlag(GetFirstPC(), FALSE);

The Storyline with all the twists is a clear 10, Imo. The series gives really the feeling of playing a drow. It's very generous with XP and loot.

Too bad that there are Issues, the worst is that the subrace engine doesn't work properly. The PC should receive some drow feats and attributes, but it doesn't work, because the PC isn't initialized properly. Using a third party mod (i. e. pgp) to set the subrace of your character to "DROW" (all upper case) will do the trick.

Merchants are very rare in the first chapters, so use any opportunity to shop and drop stuff.

Unfortunately i cannot recommend this series. Not this version anyway. It still has game breaking bugs. This time, on the second module, after disabling the gnome city magical door and the drow start killing everyone, Thirandir turns hostile at some point and gets killed by fellow drows. So i got stuck.

My recommendation is, if you really want to try this one out, use 2 or 3 save slots.

I just played through the 1st part. I loved the mod, but would like to report 2 major (IMO) bugs:

First, when I wanted to sell a lot of the loot I had taken from my fallen enemies, the merchant wouldn't buy them as they were "stolen". They weren't stolen, and IMO this level of morality is a little strange for a Drow, no?

Second, after having killed the Svirf cleric I came to speak with the boss Drow (can't spell her name...) The dialogue finished and faded, and then I found myself at the very beginning of the mod, instead of the beginning of the next chapter.

FYI!

Uri

This is a great series, and one of two great drow mods that I know about: Librarian's Tale would be the other. 

The first five parts are well made, balanced if one wants to drink as many potions as one is supposed to drink (or cheats) and has a great flair. 
I especially love how the drow leaders simply refuse to acknowledge that no human has any idea what they are looking for. Very human, these drow. 

The walkthrough is a great help since it helps with sequencing where one might otherwise miss out on parts or disrupt the story flow. 

What I REALLY do not like is the 6th part because: 
- everyone is treating my poor drow in a way that makes ME want to burn their bloody tomb raiding town.
Mean, arrogant, hateful. Full racist shit. Yes, most every drow is evil. Still this is ...a little much, maybe. 
- some pecularities that may be caused by the game, not the mod: 
my companion tags along, but he does not engage when I till him to per menu. he watches while I get hacked to pieces. 
I cannot keep running: the games changes my movement to walk ...most of the time, not always. 
if I DO get to move, my character slides sideways instead of turning and walking/running straight. 
my character stops fighting while four enemies attack her. all the time. 
if I use a spell the game routinely ignores that. or does something else. I cast a spell on a group of enemies, and the game simply ignores the spell. I recast the spell, and the enemies have spread out so that I cannot get more than a quarter of the enemies that were stanging together before. 
enemies teleport onto the map: I have run into a map (wasp helps, otherwise you walk) and left my henchman behind to safe him. the game teleported a horde of enemies into the map; two attacked me, the others hacked my henchman to bloody pieces. 

I AM using an overpowered character, but the enemies are utterly beyond the pale. after getting sliced and diced too much I got myself AC 60. 
I still loose 200-400 HP in every fight with the GREATER GARGOYLES. Nice idea, variant monsters, but in the end they are -sorry- boring: too bloody hard, and one cannot really influence the fight. 

All in all: 1-5 are a great, well made game with some technical pecularities that are bearable because of the great story and athmosphere. 
6 is -for me- a colossal waste of time. 

I played this series as curated content and I had a lot of fun with it.  I had a lot of fun playing a drow, and I really enjoyed the various scenarios that my character encountered.  I liked the amount of options.  I played a mostly-evil Vhaeraun worshipper and was pretty satisfied with my options, but I think someone playing a good Drizzt-type protagonist would also find a lot to enjoy.

The first five parts were pretty linear.  I enjoyed the group dynamics, and while I felt a bit railroaded at time, it fit with the plot and overall experience.  Some of the individual parts were a bit emptier or less satisfying than others, but overall it was a cohesive and fun experience.

Myth Drannor was a very different kettle of fish!  It was very fun too, but in a completely different way.  The freedom of having basically the entire city to wander around in, with all the side quests and nifty little easter eggs, was an experience.  I'm sure there's stuff I missed along the way!

I also liked the good vs. evil options, so to speak.  To my surprise, my guy ended up siding with the Dawnspire rather than the Zhents.  (It made sense to me, though.  He was trying to "make friends" as ordered, and while the Dawnspire folks could be pretty bigoted, it was generally based on fear that he'd murder them...and considering why he came to the surface, that's not unreasonable.  The Zhents, on the other hand, were just jerks!)  Though I did blow up a marketplace before then.  Oops.

I did encounter bugs here and there.  The biggest was the ending.  After I ended up taking the good option (not entirely on purpose, but it worked for me anyway), I was praised by my deity and then nothing else happened.  Just a repeated conversation for exp.  I was expecting to be transported back to the Seer, or see some kind of epilogue.  But it's not the end of the world.  I kind of like it as an ending to my character.  If nothing else, getting to openly follow a god who understands why you took a sensible option rather than punishes you on a whim is a great novelty for my character.

I also enjoyed that I accidently crashed Shandril's Saga toward the end there.  It almost made me wish I chose the Zhents instead, for the opportunity to kill some heroes.  (I like the characters!  It's just that this is one of the best parts of playing evil!).

So anyway, it was a lot of fun to play!

I'm stuck on chapter 5. I've put the heart, the skull, and the eye in the offering pool but nothing happens. I'm on Android so can't console my way through the locked door to continue https://i.imgur.com/dGNM2qx.jpg

EDIT: solved, lol looks like the wrong Beholder's eye. I had another one in my inventory, probably from a different module. 

Huge bug in chapter 6 I'm able to just walk through the gate at Dawnspire and complete the missions just by talking with the mission giving guy there, without actually completing the missions (investigate the Panthers, investigate the undead etc ..).. (Using version downloaded directly through EE)

Ok there is a scripting problem at the end of chapter 1. 

If I choose the line [Remain silent as you stare after her before going ahead] then I am kicked NOT to chapter 2 but to the begining of chapter 1, with the sage discribing I should be an elf and around 4-5 lvl...etc. 

BUT IF I choose the line "I need to collect my gear, but I will be along in a moment."  and then talk to Piwiewien and Choose [Remain silent as you stare after her before going ahead] I am correctly started in chapter 2.

So, the words for the teleportation aren't working. It just says "CPP Command word received." And I don't think I can continue the main story without being able to use the teleportation. Thoughts?

One of my favorite campaigns.

The chapters are short but it is rather fun to get to play a Drow. There is a lot of promise. There are a lot of issues I have with the module. The first is that why bother giving me an option that results in two enemies that take 0 damage and one that is immortal. Just kill my PC in a cutscene or don't give me the option in the first place. There are a number of grammatical errors or just words used incorrectly repeatedly. Another option I was given resulted in nothing happening and my PC being frozen in place unable to do anything and that is where I ended up giving up.

Seems like the author has uploaded an EE version with some bugfixes on Steam - it would be great to see it on the Vault as well, for the benefit of GOG players. Steam won't even let me ping him without owning the game there...

It's also a shame the load screens and intro films aren't included by default, since file size has pretty much stopped being an issue today...

EDIT: Not like you'd want to play the EE version anyway. It has the same old, known broken area transitions bug many modules have with the EE, which is especially ironic given that it's advertised as EE curated content. Do yourself a favour and stick to NWN Diamond with older modules.

"Truth is a hydra with many heads." -Llomir Ilphukir

REVIEW

After breezing through Chapters I-IV back in September, I have now finally completed this campaign. It had turned into a bit of a slump during the long dungeon crawl into the aptly named Tomb of Horrors of Chapter V, whose riddles unfortunately were less of the cerebral and more of the mindlessly-backtrack-until-you-find-the-right-secret-door variety. I still think that the narrative strengths of this series are heavily frontloaded, but I'm glad I carried on to the end. The area design of Myth Drannor, the more reactive henchmen, and the expanded Realmslore make Chapter VI well worth it. Mind you, I never played in the Forgotten Realms in P&P and only really know the setting through the Infinity Engine games, but I appreciate some careful worldbuilding and canon-conscious tie-ins when I see them. Chapter VI essentially serves as a sequel to the classic Goldbox games as well as a tribute to the novel Spellfire, as far as I understand. I'm sure fans of either will be able to appreciate it more than I did. I shan't complain - I enjoyed my little Ultima reference in the form of the sword Enilno too, after all.

Personally, though, after the initial excitement of first reaching the surface whilst the narrative picked up pace in Chapter IV, I found myself missing the Underdark, which I had always thought was one of the few truly unique aspects of the FR setting and to experience which I had, after all, picked up this module series. I suppose this is either very ironic, considering its horrors, or precisely what my Drow character would have felt. She held to Vhaeraun, which certainly seemed the best fit considering where the story took her, so she at least had some reason to stick around on the surface. Otherwise I might have felt even more lost in the sudden open world of Chapters V and VI, which felt disappointingly disconnected from the story and characters I had come to enjoy over the course of the Hunt. SPOILER: I kept expecting Thriandir and his Vhaeraunites to show up again since his "backup options" had been explicitly foreshadowed and was quite disappointed that instead of getting to know surface Drow society and their cause, I had to make do with the good old Zhentarim as allies. Again, though, there was a moment in the game (meeting your former companion Llomir who had quite clearly succumbed to depression) when I found myself questioning whether that was a design flaw at all or instead rather a success at making me empathise with my Drow character, so take it with a grain of salt. In a sense, the jarring genre shifts from stealth to dungeon crawl and then to open world also make the whole campaign feel more real, as the gameplay follows the narrative rather than the other way around.

Part of it may also have been that I generally enjoy low-level play better - the limited itemisation in the first chapters really enhanced my immersion and made for some very creative tactical challenges. While I understand that Myth Drannor by definition is a treasure-hunt setting and the direct involvement of the gods somewhat justifies the rapid rise of your character, I still feel that it wasn't quite necessary to go all the way to epic levels (I reached lvl 25, which in my book would be more appropriate for an actual demigod than the experienced, divinely favoured, but still ultimately constrained mercenary the writing portrayed my character as). The progression simply felt too rapid to be truly earned, and the overly generous rewards of previous chapters really came home to roost now that there were merchants available aplenty in Chapter VI. The literal millions of ducats I was supposed to be shlepping around by the end not only felt completely unrealistic, but also trivialised every possible quest reward, which was all the more of a pity because the author does quite a good job at making evil options actually more rewarding in material terms in order to create some reasonable incentive for them.

I realise that this review sounds awfully critical for the near-full score I am still awarding the series as a whole. The truth is that the weaker ending simply looms larger in my mind right now, but I was so drawn in by the concise, carefully crafted exploration missions of the earlier modules that less than nine stars would feel simply ungrateful. They may technically be linear dungeon crawls, but stealth is a very satisfying, viable option, and every new map is designed with immersive consistency rather than gimmicky monster next to monster layouts. The achievement is all the more impressive considering those Underdark portions were made even before the official HotU expansion and yet really defined to me what it means to be a Drow. Some earlier review complained about the lack of Drow-specific vocabulary, but to me that made perfect sense considering we were experiencing the culture from within: I hate nothing more in Hollywood films (Kingdom of Heaven comes to mind) than when two Arabs speak to each other in Arabic-accented English. The grammar also wasn't nearly as much of an issue as I had come to expect (in his NWN Podcast interview, the author sounds so much like Arnie!) - I have seen far worse spelling in modules authored by native speakers (looking at you, Claw Chronicles...). I also have to credit the author for the detailed walkthrough, which also contains some additional flavour text and design commentary. Nevertheless, the series could obviously profit a lot from some proper proofreading - it's a shame this wasn't implemented as part of the EE curated content programme. 

All in all, this series remains an impressive success and stands pretty much alone as a CRPG in what it offers: a proper inside view of Drow society. Vielen Dank, Herr Schlegel!

NON-SPOILER ADVICE

-These are pre-1.69 modules, so make sure to run the Cloak Hakker utility on their hak packs before you play (another reason to download them regularly instead of the inaccessible curated content format). I always get so sad seeing how many players think NWN looks far worse than it needs to with those drab, beige cloaks or having keyholing graphic effects on by default in the EE.

-UMD is *incredibly* strong in this series (due to the Monty Haul loot and lack of store access).

-There are many choices to be made in how to resolve quests, but few conversation options. I found that the latter are actually defined by your alignment, rather than defining it in turn as is often the case in other modules. So make sure your alignment actually matches the personality you want to (be) portray(ed as).

-Cutscenes sometimes don't adjust your camera, so keep it close to the standard or you might not be able to see what's actually going on,

-Thanks to Eusebius, there's now a walkthrough available for Chapter VI too, where it is most needed.

-The henchmen are inconvenient in best Baldur's Gate tradition. They may betray you, refuse to work with certain others, etc. I quite enjoy that; simply apply some caution with regard to what you entrust them with.

-In Chapter VI, your mythallar's ability to teleport can screw up some plot triggers (after finding Baerant, e.g.). Use it sparingly.

-You can try and play both sides (Seekers and Zhentarim), but will eventually be forced to choose. I found that even for an evil character, the Seekers offer the more satisfying story resolution.

BUGS (EE version)

Ch I: Visual glitch - the boats in the starting area are underwater; journal entry "Strange Digging Sounds" should point to the *northern* tunnel.

Ch II: There's a broken area transition in the mine shaft (s.a.).

Ch III:

-You can simply walk through the poison cloud since it only dazes you (at least with Assassin immunities) even though it's meant to be fatal, but the exit still won't be enabled even if you find and remove the source until you follow the intended proper plot progression.

-Llomir's whisper “Yes. It Was weird” seems out of place. c) I haven't generally bothered to record typos, but "deicide" does not mean what the author seems to thinkt it means. "Divine ordeal" would be a more appropriate choice of term. 

Ch IV:

-The (plot-driven) sunrise doesn't set the time of the day appropriately, so you may well be looking at a starry sky instead. Might be a compatibility issue with the module predating skyboxes? 

-The special, hidden reward (dancing sword) is rather pointless since its power won't carry over into future modules.

Ch VI:

-Lauril loops Zhentarim warning

-Sharantyr has an elf male voice, Nalbir Fiddlewind a female one.

-Llomir's joining dialogue misses some links, Sememmon's "playing both sides" dialogue misses a variable check

-library tower set as an outdoors area

-Mata has to be fought anew to rejoin every time she leaves the party (intentional?)

-Skeleton Shield is restricted to humans even though its description specifically mentions its Drow origin