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Swordflight Chapter One
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Submitted by rogueknight333 on 2013-07-19 18:47.
Last modified:
2022-12-22 19:14
Old Vault Category:
modules
Old Vault ID:
5705
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The beginning of an epic series, you begin this tale as a novice adventurer looking for work in the bustling city of Calimport. A chance meeting in a tavern may provide more than you bargained for, leading to a dangerous journey through desert and dungeon. This module provides a combination of challenging combat, numerous opportunities for the use of non-combat skills, and frequent occasions for role-playing and character interaction.
If you liked this module, be sure to check out Swordflight Chapter Two as well.
Files:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Swordflight module, with Readme and Walkthrough (24609) | 2.1 MB |
 Readme for more information | 16.1 KB |
~Small spoiler alert~
Hello! Thank you for uploading this module, I am currently playing it and enjoying it!
I have given it a 9 because it flows well, and any pickings I have with it are personal ones. For instance, I don't like stories that start in inns and I HATE rat-killing quests lol
I am also using the high resolution font, so a lot of the conversations look very long and daunting.
I like the fact that it is considered 'evil' in this module to steal, whereas in the original campaign it was considered 'chaotic'. I will end up with a very evil character indeed lol
I like the respawn system.
I like searching around in garbage for useful things.
I think the design and mechanics of this module are fantastic. Good work! I will comment again once I have finished
Thanks for commenting. I am glad you mostly like what you have found so far. I certainly cannot blame you for finding tavern meetings and rat-hunting quests hopelessly cliched since, well, they are. I suppose I am unable to resist including the occasional homage to some of the classic RPG tropes, usually with some sort of twist or joke, but doubtless not everyone shares my nostalgic tastes. I look forward to any further critique you care to offer.
Well I did notice one thing - the rat quest is designed for a warrior in mind. Playing on hardcore rules my rogue is having a hard time surviving because you've put the rats in one big room and they all attack at once. Even using a trap and stealth I'm getting my butt handed to me hahaha I would suggest that next time you make a level 1 single player quest consider every class. In the original campaign the goblins were set up to appear at a maximum of 4 at a time.
But I do like this module, thank you so much for sharing :)
I definitely did consider every class, and playtested with an enormous variety of different character types. That is how I made the module ridiculously difficult for all of them. :)
Well you definitely succeeded in making it hard lol I guess it was just poor planning on my part, should have bought more traps, but got cocky hahaha
a very simple and cheap solution is to buy at least one cantrip or two before heading to the basement. They take care of all the rats very quickly excepting the one dire rat.
If you bear with the slow grind from the start and look at how the creator actually does his best to get your level one character a comfortable beginning, this module will delight many players.
When playing Sword flight, your words and actions has a instant alignment reaction which encourages players to be either gratified or mindful on how they interact in rogueknight's world.
There are some exciting set pieces that would not look out of place in the official campaigns.
Thanks for the positive comments, Sir Wyvern.
Note that while starting as a 1st level character is recommended for getting the full challenge and experience, players who find surviving at that level excessively difficult could reasonably start with a character of up to 3rd level (encounters will scale to some extent, but they will tend to be a bit less brutal above 1st level).
Have never tried this, but as a Swordflight addict having played Chapter One at least 30 times (maybe more) I have have always managed to get through. I do tend to use a lot of saves and reloads at times though and that useless ring truly is useless.. a minor aggravation.
Thank you for uploading this to the new vault! I'm glad to see that you're still around and active in the community. I played through this module awhile back, and I've rated it again here. It's an excellent module (solid 9 stars from me), and well worthy of the AME award you received for it. I think I will play through it again some time in the future, if only to get myself ready for chapter 2, which I have not yet played.
Thank you for commenting, Aspirinsmurf. I am glad I left you with a good opinion of the module.
I really enjoyed your module. The story might not sound original on the surface, and employs a lot of fantasy tropes, but it's well-told. As you mentioned below, it's clear that you try to put a twist on all of the fantasy tropes that you wield. The result is a fresh and engaging tale that got my youthful adventurer off the ground and on his feet in tales fit for bards. The entire module is meticulously polished, and was a blast to play through.
Combat is most definitely very challenging. Heeding your warnings about combat difficulty, I brought a level 2 fighter/rogue that I had from another module into this game. The module seemed very well-balanced for him. In fact, in a lot of ways, the module seemed custom-made for my character. I've never made so much use of usable items like choking powder, potions, etc. And because he had good use magical item ability, he was also able to make heavy use of magic wands against foes. The result was a really dynamic combat experience that I found really enjoyable. My character would probably do better if he had a henchman to tank for him, but he held his own.
Thanks for the fun module! I'm eager to see what the next chapter will bring for my character and his companion!
Thanks for your comments, Berliad. I am happy you enjoyed my module.
I am also pleased that it seemed to you as if the module were designed for your character, since in my modules I specifically try to create the illusion that they are designed for whatever type of character happens to be playing, by means of a lot of stuff, some of it under the hood, that is specific to the class or other attributes of the PC. That is certainly not to say that every class is in fact equally good or that I am perfectly successful at this, but it is gratifying that it does seem to work some of the time.
My emphasis on encouraging consumable use does seem to make me stand out a bit among NWN authors. Some discussion of it even cropped up on the Bioware forums here (so I will just link rather than repeating everything I said in that thread).
I hope you enjoy the next chapter as well and I look forward to any commentary you might have on it as well.
Thanks for the link. Yeah, it is a bit of a different way of playing. I will admit to going back to reloading and going back to camp after the door closed me into the tomb because I was almost out of healing potions. I might have survived it anyway, but it would have been close and I didn't want to have to re-do everything or risk accidentally saving over top of my last "safe" saved game and having to replay the entire module. Still, I found the general encouragement to use buffs and consumable weapons to be really fun!
I must say i also enjoyed this module, i liked the story, and the way you though of the chalenges, but i will also point out the extreme CR of the combat, to the point of making it frustating.
"spoilers inc"
Like the quest for the stolen book, both the thief npc and the npc with the book one shoted my hero in a single strike, this comes has a shock since it throw's away any player input on the matter and makes the battle feel binary ( i folowed your recomendation to play it at level 1). Another example i would like to point out was the spider's encounter before the ruins, being 2 shoted left a bad taste in the mouth( at this moment i felt some confidence since i had some high AC), the spider's seem to hit too well and very hard. And this trend continues pointing out that the level requirement for this module is much higher than stated.I would also like to state that i hate those damn ruins ghost that cause level drain on hit, i would advise changing for str drain since it looks more apropiate and captures the feeling. Overall the feeling i get in combat is " I want to kill your hero and you have no say on it" .
Also i agree with you, there should be some limitations to resting and potions and scrolls should matter, but considering a wizard or a sorc need to rest to be able to cast ofensive spells you have to be mindfull that your enforcing scrolls and wands on these classes, and at level 1 your not exacly overflowing with gold, but giving these classes something like the ray frost wand from the original campaing would be a boon for them.
One last point, although i liked the gargoyle puzzle, the complexity involved and the fact there were no hints or description of the rules to the puzzle forced me to read the the walkthrough in order to understand its workings, i am sorry but this is a red flag for me, if you want to make a puzzle like this there should be some hints in order to explain the rules in order to solve it, if there are no description or hints the puzzle should be simple, i REALY dislike having to read a walkthrough to understand how to solve a puzzle...
Overall, i liked the module, i am in the process of going through the 2 chapter, this time i am going to try with a more leveled hero.
Thx for the good work.
Thanks for your comments, Fred.
You are certainly not alone in finding the difficulty of this module to be somewhat excessive. It is possible I overdid it a bit, though to some extent the problem of being easing one-shotted is inherent in the D&D rules, in which it is typical that low-level characters can be instantly killed by a single unlucky hit. It is possible for a sufficiently tactically savvy player to avoid this (e.g., when in a conversation that seems to be about to end violently, you can back up a bit so the other party does not get an instant automatic attack when it ends), but it is also true that the difficulty can be quite brutal, especially if playing as a 1st level PC. It is also true that playing as a wizard or sorcerer tends to be particularly hard at low level (again, this is partly inherent in D&D rules, which are designed to make these particular classes late bloomers who eventually become extremely powerful, but start out quite weak). I believe I provided enough wands and such to get them through, but one cannot be too hesitant about actually making use of the available resources in spite of fears of running out.
As for puzzles, it is unfortunately very hard to adequately judge the difficulty of a puzzle to which one knows the answer. Though some liked it, some people did indeed find that particular puzzle rather hard, as you did (though there are a few small clues to be found, if for example one examines and reads the item description of the statues). I have also received input suggesting that some of my other puzzles are a bit easy, so, again, it is hard to know. I sympathize with your desire to avoid resorting to walkthroughs, but inevitably a puzzle of any difficulty at all is bound to end up frustrating at least some players and requiring such a recourse. I will note that with many of my puzzles it is often possible to ultimately solve them by a process of elimination even if one completely fails to grasp the puzzle's logic.
Thank you for the reply, i caught something while playing the second module that might interest you, while using my animal/good domain lv8 cleric i noted something interesting, when i summoned a dire bear(animal domain alows for the increase on sumon to 1 level above), the encounters dificulty increased, but when i changed to my animate dead spell the dificulty deacreases, and i mean visualy, less monsters versus more and more powerful. I tested this in some quest and noted that the game was adapting itself to my ?bear? and not me? This points that your using a logic that choses the highest level in the vicinity? If so the dire bear being 10 and i 8, with the game picking the bear makes sense. I dunno if it was like this on this module, but it made a world diference ignoring that spell. Being true i completed this module in hardcore and monsters set 2 levels above( o0 )so i am gona desagree with everyone here in the dificulty since i gimped myself.
thx for the time i will keep it in mind what you said,take my post has feedback, anyway i will be doing my thing on the second module.
Waiting for part 3, please more stuff ;)
If you have more party members/higher level party members that can indeed cause encounters to scale up in difficulty. I am working away on Chapter 3.
Hi, just a quick note to say that I enjoyed replaying this great mod! (I played it a few years ago but never got to finish for some unforgotten reason.)
I am now slightly into Chapter Two, and it will probably take me months to finish! :-)
I took your advice and used a level 3 character (Paladin/Fighter) which helped considerably!
My only pet peeve is the restriction on Resting, but that just makes Potion rationing/finding more fun I guess...
Anyway, Big Thanks and back to the Adventure!
Thanks for commenting, Neilyum. I am glad you liked it.
Can this be played multiplayer?
No, the cutscenes and probably various other scripts will not work correctly with multiple players present. Nor would multiple players fit the storyline at all.
Very good & long lasting Mod. money not an issue
recommended!!
Thank you for putting this adventure together! I'm really enjoying the solid writing, memorable NPCs, and the refreshing variety of encounters. I usually have a hard time with difficult combat, but the challenging fights in this module were a lot of fun to tackle. With proper planning and the willingness to spend that hard-earned gold, an adventurer can turn certain death into a rewarding victory. :)
I am playing as a LG elven wizard/sorcerer with a pixie familiar. I am discovering all sorts of fun tactics to be employed against the various beasties and villains that haunt Calimshan. I definitely enjoy the use of skills and class abilities within conversation, a feature that is not unique to Swordflight, but adds great depth to the game. I felt like a professional wizard more than once by being able to solve problems in dialogue that only a magician could solve. I imagine similar opportunities abound for all sorts of characters!
I give this first installment a solid ten.
Thanks for your comments & vote, Lord Frostie. There are indeed many class-specific features available throughout the series.
I'm pretty sure I voted already, but I just want to make sure and also link to my review praising what is already a masterful series, here and here. Cheers, rogueknight333!
I found the first part of swordflight to be enjoyable. It's a pretty solid mod with, as other people have said, good writing and a well established setting. I did not find the combat to be too difficult, although I did play as a fully armored paladin. Running around the dungeons was a lot of fun. I was afraid that the xp being given for kills was going to be a bit low, but you balanced the fights well enough that I found myself scraping by most of the time. The dying penalty was, thankfully, not too major.
I'm giving it 8/10 for a few reasons. Firstly, and I know it's not your fault for the shitty AI, but the AI is really shitty. It is particularly infuriating in Swordflight where tactics are necessary and those few extra bolts that our bard companion could fire off would be a great help, were she not standing still for no reason (it also happened in part 2 with the ilmater paladin). Secondly, the reliance on consummables. I enjoyed the resting penalty since it made the dungeons more intimidating in that you couldn't run around like an idiot and rest wherever you want. However, the first time I played Swordflight I had rolled an elven wizard and I had the choice between running all the way back to camp and resting or using all of those wands I had hoarded. I chose the latter, but it made for dull gameplay since I couldn't count on my bardic companion to survive in melee. A lot of running in circles and area transition abuse was had, which wasn't particularly interesting or challenging. I ended up restarting as a rogue, where I would just lay down a long trail of traps and lure pretty much everything into my path of death. Not particularly interesting either. I finally rerolled as a paladin and finished part I and II. Much fun was had.
All in all, though, I thoroughly enjoyed Swordflight Part I even when I was swearing at my companion for being stupid (which is somewhat in character I suppose, she isn't the brightest girl around).
Many thanks for creating a wonderful Mod - really enjoyed playing it.
The battles were hard and almost everyone of them needed some thinking, but having to work out the right tactics for my Rogue was all part of the enjoyment.
My Rogue, who is Good, did suffer somewhat at going Evil when stealing - I reloaded and stopped stealing to play in character - don't mind going chaotic :)
The difficulty and tactical character of the battles do require some getting used to, as does my rigorous and perhaps eccentric approach to alignment. Gald you liked the module anyway.
Great module, the ruins dungeon was brutal. Your series is one of the best RPGs to have come out in the last decade. The skills checks were frequent, awesome and rewarding. I gave this chapter a 9 out of 10 because the Bandit Caves and Lizard-folk Caves were samey and not as good as the ruins. It also gives you far too much gold, but I read that that was intentional. Still, could've been even more brutal with fewer gold. I particularly liked the slow leveling, it gives you the opportunity to manually balance the module to the tiniest detail. I'm not criticizing the bard's AI because it's not your fault, but she really does need to be babysat half the time.
SPOILERS!!!!!
I also disliked the deus ex machina at the end. Not really a spoiler, but still.
The "point of no return" in the ruins was a great touch to ramp up the tension.
END OF SPOILERS!!!!!
I can't stress how good the ruins was as a dungeon crawl. It was difficult and that difficulty rewarded exploration. The dungeon layout was smart and the encounters fine-tuned. A lot of secrets to be found. A perfect example of how different aspects of a game interact to supplement and enhance each other. Good job all around, keep going. If you need some custom music composed for the other chapters, hit me up.
Thanks for your commentary and praise of Swordflight Ch. 1, Lacrymas.
I certainly could have made the module even more brutal than I did, but if I had I am not certain how many people would ever play it - I have gotten lots of complaints of excessive difficulty even as it is.
As for the ending it is partly a way to solve the issue that the boss of such an extensive dungeon would logically be more powerful than such low level adventurers could be expected to defeat, partly to set the stage for Ch. 2, and partly a joke. You are not the only one to be somewhat unhappy with it for various reasons, however, so perhaps there was a better way to do some of that. Hopefully you will find the ending of Ch. 2 more satisfying. Certainly it will be quite different from what happened here.
Amazing work. One of the best RPG's I've ever played. I love the constant attribute/skill checks to unlock/hide dialogue options, the item density/variety, content that actually makes me want/need to use most limited use items, the dungeon design (especially the "ruins" that hold the majority of this chapters content), the quests and the amount of ways you can solve them. Simply spectacular.
Making my way through Chapter 2 now, which is blowing me away even more, with its BG2-Athkatla like city (in regards to quest amount, variety and non-linearity) with the bonus of having frequent attribute/skill/alignment-checks and plenty of quests with multiple solutions and success/failure states.
I really wish I was some kind of social-media-master, would love to help get word of this mod out to as many people as possible.
Absolutely can not wait to see more from this modder. Thanks so much for this.
Thank you very much for these comments, JinglesJester. I am glad you are enjoying my modules so much.
Awesome work. 9/10 because NWN-1 while I really2 want to have this kind of game design on more party based system. Keep up the good work! And you should consider working as a game designer, the RPG world needs more reactivity from player choices unlike modern RPGs of today.
Thanks for your comments and praise, zigma9114. I also wish NWN had a better party control system, but every other easily moddable game I am aware of has either the same problem or serious deficiencies of other kinds, so I have found NWN1 to be on balance the best tool for what I am doing here, despite that flaw.
I played rogueknight333's Snow Hunt first and I was swept away by the Module considering it was done in so little time so I tried Swordflight and what can I say, it didn't disappoint! Actually I was blown away this time! The storyline, the battles, skill checks and how careful planning are needed to make the most of your playtime. Totally immersive... I didn't expect anything less from this great modder. (The Bard sometimes can be a pain in the arse but that's Bioware) Kudos to rogueknight333 for such an amazing Module!
(I vote 10 because I appreciate people who put their hearts in creating such impressive modules. Truly, NWN shall endure because of these people)
Now on to chapter 2...
Thanks for the vote and praise Balisong29. Glad you liked it.
Hello rogueknight333, I've stumbled upon your module through Lilura's blog.
Copypasting my thoughts on it from someplace else.
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I just finished Swordflight Chapter one a few days ago. It was definitely like Lilura said, a lot of cool resource management. Went with a human rogue, might multi-class into shadowdancer if chapter2 isn't filled with undead. Used quite a lot of traps. Took dual-wield feats early on, but they were basically wasted as hitting anything at low levels with two weapons equipped is a dream...especially with rogue's BAB.
I think the experience is similar to how you play BG2 w/ tactics(at least early game), that is, you use everything available to you to progress. Resting is penalized by monster spawns, but at some point you get strong enough to not give a damn. I had to kite early game till like level 3, then just used consumables to clear everything.
Another interesting thing in the module is that the dungeons have relatively high amounts of loot, depending on how much you can carry it can get troublesome. I had to leave quite a few weapons/armors behind, because I just didn't want to deal with encumbrance in fights. You have to strike a balance between greed&dealing with encumbrance.
There's a few things I didn't like all that much, though. Dialogue is generally pretty good, but some parts read like DNDwiki text. I think items should be more pricey, I had 4-5k gold all the time and I bought every item/consumable I wanted to have. I didn't even use crafting much, but I noticed it's possibly to make a profit if you just look out for every crafting item and have enough crafting skill. No real boss-fights either(i liked the twist at the end though, buffed myself up then ..no fight), I guess this is due to chapter one being a low-level module..but still. I know it's probably hard to make an engaging boss fight early on without making it silly, but the best fights I remember from NWN1 were maker/valsharess/draco-lich, etc.
Overall, I really enjoyed the module and I hope chapter two follows the first one's example. I might even replay chapter 1, if there's any change to the story. I really, really wanted to murder that Galhadr girl...
Thanks for your comments BarrelNut. I was definitely trying to make a module that called for BG2-style tactical play. Availability of gold & consumables is a tricky matter: as you noticed they are actually fairly plentiful compared to a true old-school module, but are still less than what many more recent games/modules provide. Since many players complained even about the relatively modest restrictions I would be hesitatnt to make them signficantly more severe (and note limited resources can be more of a problem for some classes than others). As you suggest, it is hard to make a proper boss that could have been beaten by such low-level characters (at least not without plenty of cheese), but there are plenty of boss fights in the next chapter.
Great job and thank you for making the module! I can't wait for part 3.
Rated 7/10.
Overall, a very solid dungeon crawl. How difficult you will find it is depend on class, however. I have played it (with no previous knowledge) with an evil druid and would rate the difficulty as medium; a cleric wouild probably be even easier to play. This was in part due to the fact that you can buy unlimited amounts of healing kits and summoning scrolls, which was a bit surprising. Even with the limited resting system the druid could out-heal and out-summon whatever the game threw at her; only a few notable battles were an exception.
That said, the ugly: henchman AI. Even when told to stay at long distance and given a crossbow, she would still randomly decide to switch to melee and join the fray; often with the forseeable result.
Thanks for commenting on the module, chimaera. Healing Kits do indeed provide very economical healing, though they and other resources are not so unlimited as they are in a typical NWN module. It might be interesting to know that the initial comments for this module on the original vault consisted of pages and pages of people complaining about how impossibly hard it was, so, though you are certainly correct that I could have made the resource management and general difficulty even harder than I did, I am not convinced it would have been a good idea.
The Henchman AI is indeed terrible. That is because it is the standard Bioware AI one finds in most every module, where it produces the same issues it does here, typically without anyone noticing or caring. I realize that the greater difficulty of the Swordflight modules makes the AI's stupidity more of a problem than it is elsewhere, but completely revamping all of Bioware's default systems would be a bit too much extra work for me to handle. In the specific case of Zarala, in any case, she is actually supposed to act somewhat stupidly in combat, part of the point of the character.
I can see why some players might found it very hard, because for the longest part of the game you are fighting a one particular type of enemy, which shifts the combat balance in favor of divine classes. Rogues I'd expect to have a difficult time, by comparison.
The reason why the henchman AI is so annoying is because the module is very combat heavy and her bahaviour takes out the strategic element out of it. Sometimes it felt like a watching a slapstick comedy, which overall spoils (the otherwise well done) dark atmosphere of the ruins.
That said, my other issue was with backtracking towards the end: missed the door (that you are supposed to take notes from) and reached the camp without the notes. Fair enough, I wouldn't have minded going back, if there was a shortcut possibility upon area transition, but for some reason those dialogue options only appeared after clicking on said door.
Can this be played MP?
No, cutscenes and other scripts have not been set up to work with multiple players.
I would have given this module a 10, except the 2nd installment is even better.
Played with a ranger, with undead as its first favoured enemy. Turned out to be a good call, as were some of the weapons that could be used offhand by rangers against particular foes.
Overall, I would state it was difficult, but doable. Wouldn't play this module with an arcane spellcaster, as having to continually back track to find a safe resting spot, would dull the enjoyment of the game - and you will be casting the majority of your spells each encounter.
AI for the henchperson was horrible enough that I would simply tell the relevant individual to stand out of sight of the baddies.
Overall a great solid module, that keeps you on your toes.
Thanks for the vote and comments, Nick. You are right that playing as an Arcane caster would be difficult, probably the hardest class for the first chapter, since D&D rules are not that kind to low level casters. It is doable, however, I got through multiple playtests with mages, and there is a little class specific loot that would make playing such classes a little easier (though probably not much) than might appear to be the case for someone playing something else.
The beginning of an awesome saga, now arrived at chapter 3!
Thanks Rogueknight for keeping the dream alive
Thanks for the vote and encouragement, Aquarius, it is appreciated.
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