The Secret of the Founder

That was fun!

The story got me right away and the sidequests and the compagnon are very nicely done!

A bit of a challenge for low level academics, i cheated and spawned some ressurection scrolls.Used a sorceror.

I found three little problems:

-i killed the Warchief after the mines and nobody ever wanted the head even though the journal directed me to the captain.

-i never got Samyi's quest, but it still updated after i met the premises in the traderoute cave

-the svirfneblin smith never upgraded anything for me, i tried two melee weapons and some ammo but his conversation just stopped and nothing happened.

Still a great mod to spend about 7 hours and get to level 8.

I loved this module, from the quest to the puzzle, the encounters, the overall story and characters. If I could point out somethig is maybe add skyboxes, from inside the academy you can see the landscape but outside you can't see the sky and it felt a bit off to me. Also maybe change the music and add some decoration to the levels. 

Great work, can't wait what you come up with next!

A lot of excitement for this mod, I see!  Mayhaps when I DL NwN again, I shall give this one a spin!  Regardless, friend Rarosu, thank you for creating this and sharing it with the community!

Nice mod with a reasonable re-playability with different builds

Nice mod, interesting story and quite callenge for a level 3 sorcerer. One thing to complain: after a break of a couple of days, the Pc should be fully rested.

And: the script ap_hasweapon is missing, so the weapon- upgrade doesn't work.

Damn! I thought the module's title was "Secret of the Flounder". I was looking forward to a nice underwater adventure! ;-)

This was an alright short romp. Congratulations to the author for successful publication.

I played as a female elf monk (yes, weird) and here are my critical remarks. Apologies if they sound too harsh.

1. Its very nice for the author to provide a walkthrough - impossible to get stuck because of plot.
2. Some quests can be resolved in multiple, sometimes mutually exclusive ways (with a bit of double crossing - great).
3. Some interesting puzzles, especially the lever one (found alternative solution: 1214531).
4. The plot is simple ("evil wizard wants to gain power" + "find 4 macguffin in the land of monsters to the right of you") but works; sadly, all you can do after the final battle is to go to narrator - what happens to the characters?
5. The initial telepathy dialogue seemed a bit... too fast; perhaps letting PC to know Eleanora better before that could help (like a one casual day in school, take some classes to gain those 3 starting levels, etc).
6. How Eleanora knew about "secret tunnel" in the office wing? (after you get the journal); that was the time I believed she's straight manipulating me (no big twists though).
7. The combat balance is a bit on the hard side - some enemies have 15+ or so to hit (like that damned water elemental); perhaps this is where spells come to play, but I went for unarmed combat instead of casting - more summon items could help (found only 1).
8. I liked the sneaking parts in the academy, but a lot of quests outside of it required combat to finish (or sneaking but that wasn't feasible for me); it made progress sligthly difficult when I had to fight someone to level up to beat the others (while everyone is overpowering us).
9. I found there is too little useful weapons for the companion (obviously I took the weaponsmith's reward for my gloves); she couldn't break the damage resistance of several enemies and since she's not a tank - died a lot.
10. It would really help if PC or companion would raise automatically when the combat is over (so that game over happens when everyone is dead).
11. What happens when Eleanora dies before you reach the manor in the village? I found the rod of resurrection after that (and used it a lot).
12. You can rest in the bath :-)
13. The "return to dorm after getting each runestone" felt a bit forced; I understand it's purpose, but shouldn't the characters be afraid of returning there after stealing the journal?
14. Social skills have little use and may have fake tests (?); the village is quite large and could easily accomodate a few more quests - same with the academy; this could help the PC to gain at least one level outside of combat.
15. I wished there were more custom items (helpful resource).

Anyway, the author shows potential and dedication to his work, so I'm looking forward to future releases.

The overall impression is quite positive.

* The dialogue is very well written, for the most part believable and relatable, and it allows you to actually roleplay your character a bit in how they feel and behave (beyond the usual extremes of good or evil / polite or rude choices). It's also highly polished, I don't think I've spotted a single typo (just a small repetition in the villain's speech at the end: "the challenges ... must have been challenging", and Eluldur at the party praising the renown of the academy by saying: "I do not believe you will not find your studies disappointing" - I believe that's one negation too many. ;) But those would actually be the only two sentences in the module I found in need of improvement, and that's really rather nitpicky).

* I liked the companion a lot. Not that she has an extraordinary or outstanding personality, in fact she's rather "normal" and down to earth, but she feels like a real person, someone you'd actually meet at such an academy, and she's really sweet and supportive. The romance with her (when playing a male character; no idea if playing a female makes a difference) evolves quite quickly and easily without the player having to work for it a lot, but in the case of this module it didn't feel that unnatural, given how young the characters are and under what circumstances they meet. Unless I missed anything, it was also a very cute and innocent romance, more about intimacy and connecting than eroticism and explicit sex. It fit the story and tone of the module well.

* The puzzles were cool, neither too hard nor too easy, they also played a big part in what made the module fun.

* There was a good variety in opponents, and not just the usual suspects. The choice of monsters kept things interesting, and hardly any group of monsters overstayed their welcome.

* The balance was mostly good, too. I played as a newly created wizard leveled up to 3 on Normal difficulty, and it worked quite nicely. Some encounters were challenging but none of them were impossible, and there were some nice items for wizards in the game. Lots of scrolls, wands and potions, too, which offered a variety of tactics, and while I usually just hoard stuff, in this module I felt encouraged to actually make use of the ressources.

Where I'm a bit torn and what keeps me from declaring it as perfect and a future classic (a few minor *SPOILERS* in here, especially in the second part of the comments!):

* The area design. It definitely shows some creativity in this field, and I get that it's probably meant to feel realistic, like there's this huge academy, for example, that serves its own purpose and is not just there for the player alone who's only one of many students there. And the existence of longer roads to travel justifies the cool travel portal system in order to avoid them in the future. But personally, I think I still prefer modules to be more focused and condensed. After playing NWN for a long time, I know most of the tilesets in and out, and while I appreciate how, within the limited frame, every author does their own thing with them, after a while it still doesn't justify all the time wasted on "just passing through here" anymore. I don't like running through too many areas that have no direct relevance to the plot and feel comparatively empty because there's not much to do there for the player apart from demonstrating how realistically big everything is. So I would have cut down on a few hallways, wilderness roads and area transitions and made the remaining area transitions / stairs line up in a way that you can pass more quickly through them, e.g. when you need to reach your dorm starting from first floor etc. Less winding hallways and roads, more straight lines. Or more interactivity in all these rooms, more encounters etc. Less interactive things that just tell you they're not really interesting to interact with ("nothing behind this door" etc).. ;) Now, I do acknowledge what encounters and interactivity there were, and some of the technically irrelevant rooms did look very nice, but it was all spread a bit thin, compared to the area sizes.

* Some outside areas looked open at the edge of the map but had neither transitions nor comments there. That felt a bit inconsequential. Why does the PC walk through this mountain pass at the edge of the screen but not that one, despite it looking very much the same? Why is there an invisible wall that's arbitrarily restring exploration all of a sudden?

* Most NPCs in the game had something to say, which was very nice, but some didn't, which made clicking on them (after being conditioned to click on everyone) a bit disappointing. It's not a big deal, just the small difference to a module feeling perfect in every regard.

* It felt a bit weird that you can loot other people's belongings from right under their nose and they don't even comment on it. Mind you, the solution to that doesn't necessarily have to be repercussions, it could also just be to refrain from putting loot containers in places where it wouldn't usually be normal behavior for the PC to open them (sadly NWN has contributed heavily to the trope of the saintly hero pilfering common folks' stuff without anyone questioning it). 

* I was a bit disappointed that there were no alternative ways to earn the quest rewards for the subquests involving the mayor and the farmer's daughter. Of course, seeing that they're optional, one could just choose to not do these quests if that doesn't seem appropriate for the PC, but then there's no xp and you miss out on some minor areas and story bits. A matter of preference, I guess, but my favorite (of course more work-intensive) approach is if every character can solve every quest in their own way (good, evil, or anything in between) and get the same reward for it.

* It can easily happen that a player visits the Earth rune areas to soon in the game. The part where you're shut in with all the powerful undead and separated from your companion can be overwhelming for a lvl 3 wizard. But when you realize that you might not get out of there alive, it's too late to turn back already and you have to revert to an earlier savegame. I assume the svirfneblin party was put in the cave above the dungeon to warn players, because that party is challenging for lvl 3 already. But you can just sneak or run past it, and then the zombies are still manageable for a caster, due to their slow speed. But the skeleton warrior, for example, seemed immune to a lot of my magic and making short work of my summons. Luckily I am already wary of such traps and I do save often, so I decided to reload and do the other quests first. At lvl 5 or after you've got the wands from that other runestone's puzzle chamber, a single wizard fares much better alone against the undead (although the skeleton warrior is still very resistant against casting).  

* I liked most of the dungeon designs, but the four elemental dungeons at the end felt a bit lacklustre; just straight forward combat with recurring/similar groups of opponents and nothing else. The water dungeon had an additional (though not very enjoyable) idea, but I still found these hack and slash dungeons a bit boring compared to the creative rest of the game. Then again, that's pretty common in RPGs; I often get a bit weary of the combat at the end when it feels like the game is just artificially delaying the showdown by throwing trash mobs at you. I will say one thing though - the actual showdown was pretty cool. :)

* The ending was a bit abrupt, or rather non-existant. I would have liked some final scene or at the very least conversation with the companion to wrap things up.

And a few potential bugs:

* I also ran into the issue with the description of the bugbear head telling me the dwarf captain might be interested in it and then the dwarf captain not giving me the chance to tell him about it. From the walkthrough I learned that it's for an alternative path that I didn't choose, but it was still confusing.

* And I also experienced the svirfneblin smith's dialogue getting stuck on "continue" once the item is forged. You can just check out the anvil, take the new item and walk away, thereby aborting the smith's 'crashed' dialogue, but it doesn't feel very smooth.

* You can bash in the door of the farmer's daughter and trigger the events even if you don't have the quest and don't know what you're doing and why. No idea if that's intentional or not.

That being said, all in all I think it is a very nice debut and I hope the will be more Rarosu modules to come!