The Tale of Fur and Frost

Congratulations on releasing your module!

FP!

The screenshots look promising (and they show Author's dedication to their work), so when I get some free time I'll definitely play it.

I often try to play ranged-oriented characters (read: using ranged weapons, not rangers) and I see few bows here - this can be quite pleasant.

This looks great but as it is I don't think anyone can progress past the first area. It looks to me that you may have inadvertantly replaced the scripts for the adversary in the first area. I don't want to spoil anything for myself or run the risk of messing something else up by trying to change scripts.

I'm looking forward to your go ahead that things have been corrected.

Wow, you've made it

Congratulations, QuenGalad.

Completed it with a Druid/Fighter multi-class character, starting at level 5 and ended at level 9. Took Elhain for his Rogue abilities. All I can say is... this is awesome! Considering this is what I assume to be your first published module, it is even more impressive!

Pros:

• Fully functional quests, scripts and cutscenes.
• Quality area design, writing and difficulty balancing. 
• Simple yet intriguing story that makes me want to uncover the mystery behind it.
• Side quest are fairly interesting and paced well on the main quest path.
• Companions have fleshed out backstories and character.
• Alignment changes for actions and dialogue options.
• Animal empathy dialogue with most animals
• Fits the ranger/druid theme as advertised.

Issues / Bugs (SPOILERS):

• Elhain cannot be dismissed via diagloue.
• No animal empathy dialogue for cats and oxen.
• Loot in some containers seem out of place. I found two regular barrels (one behind the woodcutter lodge) containing Boots of Striding +4. Graves have really good loot too, but since gives Evil alignment I don't mind.
• Missing interaction between saved Half-Orc Hunter and Half-Orc Lumberjack? The latter asks the PC if he/she has seen her husband. The former says he will return to his wife after you save him from spectres. However, there is no follow-up.
• Damage reduction on companions' outfits can be a bit overpowered at times. 

Damn, everything is a 10/10, balance, level design, decoration, quest, companions and story.

Nice wilderness module, the Orc Chieftains armor is tagged as stolen tho.

This is a really fun mod, with a great, faced-paced mystery story and short but rewarding side-quests. The NPCS have distinct personalities, and the companions have interesting and well-fleshed-out backstories. Really impressive piece of work, I was able to complete it in about 4 hours, give or take. If importing with a fresh character I would really recommend pre-equipping them, I had a difficult time w/o level five appropriate equipment. Also definitely going to want a magical weapon.

Couple things of Note (Contains spoilers)

• I agree with Bowshatter, there was some really powerful loot in really odd places, and I think some of it should have been tagged as stolen or received and alignment shift (Sylvan cave, behind the woodsman's shed, the frost giant chieftess' belongings)
• In addition, some of the loot received was very powerful, the boots for completing the missing ranger quest stood out to me
• Despite having hit the max level for the module and being well-equipped, my ranger struggled during the final boss battle w/o cheating and using the enemy AI against it by positioning herself up on the ridge

Some things I might have liked to see 

• Healing potions. The healing ointment and food was very useful, but the ability to pick up some moderate and critical wound healing potions at the druid encampment would have been extremely helpful. 
• More utilization of some of the neat items and utilities in the mod, like the tinderbox
• Some finalized interactions. I felt like for many of the side quests, a bit more interaction with the quest giver or main npc of the quest would have added a whole other layer of depth too it

Possible Bugs/Oversights 

• In the Journal it's mentioned that the woodcutters were complaining about the wood elven companion's ghost mother, but I never saw and dialogue for this at the woodcutter's shack.

Finally, some of my favourite things

• Realistic animal behaviour
• The built-in crafting systems. Oh dear goodness did I use the arrow crafting a lot
• Just. All of the elven companion's snark. All of it. 

Anyways, this is a really fun romp and I highly recommend it. 

I hadn't really considered playing as a Ranger before, but this module really brings the class to life.

The overall feeling of a winter woodland is great - it looks good, and it's well-written, too.

The crafting and cooking systems are very nicely done, and make sense.

There are a few quirks - backtracking (as advertised) and merchants you can't afford if you arrive empty-handed (also as advertised), but eminently playable. In fact, probably more satisfying to use a new character, just for the challenge.

Great effort - more please!

Time to vote after re-playing. Great job on this one. Keep going!

I liked the writing and the story. I'll give that a ten. I only noticed one typo in a dialogue and that was all.

I will however deduct a point and give an overall rating of 9 because I don't think the area design was worth a 10, nor did I find the encounters as balanced as some of the others here said. Early on I encountered Ice Mephits or something like that which I couldn't damage at all, but later when I went through the cave with the frost giants it was a walk in the park and I barely even needed healing while yet later the three ice cold monks (no idea what they were called) were a real challenge even though I got to fight them one after the other. Bloody monks are seriously overpowered in NWN anyway, so that isn't all your fault, but maybe you should have noticed that even at a rather low level they each get three attacks (that almost always hit) for every attack the PC gets who can only hit them about 50% of the time with an AB of +13. I have no idea how anybody can manage to kill all three at once even if the henchmen is still alive and doesn't die from the cold all the time.

The use of sounds and music was nice.

Nicely done, QuenGalad! Overall the look and feel of everything was artistic and polished. I would have liked to switch between the two henchment to get to know them and their stories. I missed out on one storyline because I could not pick up the ranger. Another suggestion is to make the intent or feeling behind conversation choices a little more obvious to those of us who struggle with picking up on emotion in the written word. I was unable to start the romance I was hoping for because of this. 

The observations of increased item powers is understandable, but totally justified in the final few areas. I would definitely recommend this module to any players and am looking forward to playing your future modules.

Thank you for the hard work!

I played an half-elf ranger, and here is my account. Spilers follows.

* pros :
- i love adventures involving winter, snow and Auril
- there was a real feeling of being on the border of civilization
- the cutscenes were well done
- a few original magic items
- the foodstuff thing is neat : not tedious (like in some games in which your characters must be fed regularly) and interesting

* cons :
- some fights are not very well balanced (in particular : there is a group of elementals popping up when you reach the hills. It's apparently random, because the first three times, i was killed when four elementals - one for each element - attacked. Because each time, the water elemental sacrificed itself and drowned both me and my companion (DC save vs 20...). Then, the fourth time, i fought 4 air elementals and it was a breeze (pun intended). I had no particular difficulty with the ice monks, but the giant chieftain was tougher than her companions (which is strange considering one of them shows up are more powerful when i mouseover her). This might be a Bioware design problem, because it's not the first time i have encounters full of surprises, good or bad, in some mods i've played. Also, like for the pen and papers D&D games, the whole challenge ratings of monsters is far from perfect and some special powers are definitely over/underpowered, depending on a single random result. The water elemental drowning power is a good example : if you make your save, the elemental sacrifices itself for nothing and is killed. If you fail, you're dead. So, it's a con, but not that much related to your mod, and more to the game specifications themselves.
- lots of overpowered magic items. +4 weapons, damage reduction... granted, some monsters are though, especially near the end, but there is a huge gap between fighting orcs/ice mephits/ogres and then suddenly Frost giants and then a dragon. So, depending on your equipement a start and what you can buy, the first two-thirds of the game might be too easy until the last fights (the giants, monks and dragon) when everything becomes more difficult, or on the contrary, everything might look balanced until you fight the giants and then, the difficulty gap is too wide..
- too few healing items usable in combat.
- for some reason, the orc chieftain armour is labelled as stolen, while the stuff i can take from tombs near the outpost are not...
- until i bought the boots of speed, there was a bit too much backtracking. Especially after being killed and raised back in the druid camp.

* side notes
- i never found Florian, and found out using the toolset i apparently missed the whole path leading up to him, which i probably overlooked.
- some journal entries are mismatched (for example, one sentence tells me what the elder sylvan believes about the winter *before* i actually met him).
- haven't tried to make weapons or stuff, except for some food
- a bit more dialogues would have been nice.
- there is no explanation why the outpost boss prevents the residents from having a look at the whole thing (one of them explicitely says so).


All in all, there are some basic design issues common to many beginning modders (fights balance, magic items...) which did not prevent me from enjoying the mod. And it makes good use of the CEP, without overplaying it like it happens so many times. It's a neat job, and i hope we'll see more creations from you :)

I certainly recognize a Discworld fan when i see one...or am i wrong? :D

Most things to say are already mentioned by others. Imo. there should be some starting equipment for fresh builds, which could be given together with the 10k XP.

Sometimes I had to crawl into every corner to find the secret passage ...

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

I played as a level 1 male human ranger / rogue and here are my critical remarks. Apologies if they sound too harsh.

1. Taking rogue classes was a mistake thanks to certain ring (well, woe is me); pure ranger is perfectly fine, but... I couldn't tell any differences vs the vanilla ranger?
2. The story is fine, but unremarkable ("a wizard did it" + "fight dragon at the end"); I liked however how the goddess' avatar had not much friendlier personality than that guy.
3. There isn't much druid or ranger specific stuff to do (but the readme says so); the author managed to add some nice theme-fitting descriptions, though, especially to animals and some custom items.
4. Its not easy to compromise between level 1 and imported characters, but it works here - it'd probably worked even better if you focused on one of these groups; item balance is not an issue, though.
5. Combat is balanced but player needs to use tactics - that one brown bear is a great meat shield (and you can give him food to keep him alive); to beat the dragon, buy Greater Brawler's Belt and give it to your companion, then snipe the enemy from the ledge.
6. I had the female companion and the romance was... fast, especially when we went to that attic - kind of the opposite what readme states; it also wasn't reflected in the dialogue (?)
7. The very first conversation has some nodes which lead to abrupt end of dialogue - I couldn't talk about everything, which is important when setting up the whole story.
8. I couldn't speak with the priestess at the camp - no information why she's not responding.
9. You can use the workbench to generate infinite amount of money: make a holy water arrow for ~30GP and sell it back for ~2500GP; limiting shop GP or marking crafted items as stolen or plot could be one way to balance the economy.
10. Workbench / cooking pot scripts need to revised: bug 1) can't add modifiers to normal arrows - this can be done only when arrows are "disassembled", bug 2) workbench consumes whole stacks of modfiers (i.e. takes 2 holy waters for one arrow stack); bug 3) you can make only one item at the time, and the cooking stops working if you have 3+ items inside.
11. I couldn't find the missing ranger - DebugMode'd to him eventually, because I couldn't find the transition trigger even in the toolset.
12. The ranger's dog refused to follow me, but could be forced to do so via animal empathy.
13. The witches didn't react to stag being dead (got killed in combat) and acted as it was right there.
14. It would be easier for player understand what must be done if there was a visual clue that the dragon is immortal (suggestion: make it mortal, but play a VFX when it is hit and heal it to 100%, maybe with some taunting oneliners).
15. Typo in journal: ".Varsinya" (leading dot).
16. I wished there were more custom ranged weapons (helpful resource).

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

Although the story itself was average, the style and look of the module was exceptional.  

Great little module, good writing and story-telling, nice area design, several interesting side quests, well designed for a ranger, highly polished (I don't remember any typos).

I did notice one minor issue - that you can't remove your companions via dialogue, and if you use the function on the radial, things might get a little messy. Maybe you're meant to stick with whatever companion joins you first, but it would be a bit of a pity if you couldn't get to know both companions without having to replay the whole module. Anyway, *SPOILER* if you tell Elhain of the ghost while he's not in your party, then let him join and lead him there so the ghost's conversation is triggered, the quest remains forever unfinished in your log, even after the ghost has vanished ("I told Elhain of the ghost and he said he'd consider talking to it" or something like that). /SPOILER

But the real downside to the module was the difficulty spike at the end and particularly the last boss fight, which I found tedious and frustrating, as it entailed lots of saving and reloading hoping for better luck next time and constantly running in circles. I probably could have prepared better by *SPOILER* investing in more items with cold resistance and fear immunity (fear must be the worst mechanic in the game, so not fun), but I only really remember one fear immunity item for sale and it was very expensive. In any case, it was not obvious enough what I needed until it was too late, as I think there is no return once you've started the last battle and learn what it is about. The item given to me shortly before the combat also wasn't as much of a help as you'd expect, but I guess it would have been too easy otherwise. /SPOILER Even so, I didn't enjoy that last part at all. I also disliked that the two most difficult battles were directly preceded by unskippable cutscenes, which made the "try and try again" approach even more exhausting. I don't mind dramatic cutscenes per se, but gameplay wise it was a bit of a problem. If it weren't for these causes of frustration at the end, I'd rate the module even higher, as it's clearly a labor of love. 

I played through this yesterday night. It's a wonderful experience with a hot cup of tea and the rain outside the window. It's great to see that there are still new additions to the modding scene of this calibre. It would have been really nice to have more than one companion / henchman though.

This is a module of extremely high quality, there is no doubt about this. There is just one very disturbing detail I can't really make sense of...

*SPOILERS BELOW*

During the encounter with Elhain's mother's ghost, the following dialogue ensues:

Elhain: Wait. This makes no sense. If you didn't want a child, why even bear it?
PC: True. A pregnancy can be dealt with, after all.

This seems eerily out of place in a setting such as this, but I can't think of any other idea than these lines referring to abortion (perhaps via magical means, but still abortion). Okay, a controversial topic - such can be brought up in a story, obviously. Yet, the way it's handled here is suspicious. First of all, Elhain's surprise. It's made to sound as if decision not to have an abortion if you don't want a child "makes no sense". Fine, I guess Elhain can represent some radical pro-choice worldview... but even then, I'd expect I could *select a different response for my PC* than complete agreement with Elhain. I never really thought that my PC would need to have an opinion on abortion in a fantasy RPG, but if they need to, I'd appreciate being able to select it.

I know this is just a small snippet of dialogue, but I think it's an important oversight. In case this didn't actually refer to abortion, please let me know. Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't come up with another solution for dealing with unwanted pregnancies other than adoption (which is clearly not what Elhain meant, given that he was adopted).

Let me just say once again that the rest of the module is absolutely great and I hope you'll keep up the good work and release more adventures in the future.

This was such a cozy little module; I really enjoyed it! Short but a nice story with good use of tileses and environments. I also liked the little "romance" with my companion, Elhain (it was more of a "hook-up," but still cute and and a nice touch for the length of the module). Great fun being a ranger, and I also loved the cooking.

Nice module with a nice atmosphere. I still have cold feet ...

Is there only just one cooking pot or have I overseen something?

My only complaint is there doesn't seem to be a sequel:) 

I've been playing AD&D and D&D since about 1980 or so. This is, hands down, the best pure druidic adventure I have ever come across, be it for a computer game or a pencil-and-paper sceanrio. Absolutely enchanting.

For my first play-through, I am running a 7th level druid currently. I have a 6th level ranger in the wings for playthrough #2 and a Druid/thief (closest thing NWN will allow to one of the old skool druidic bards from 1E) for the run after that.

Thanks for all the hard work, attention to detail and imagination - it is really appreciated.

I played it on NWN Diamond 1.69. I wasn't able to finish it to my dismay and I was really enjoying it.

The atmosphere is awesome, especially for my Elf Ranger, one of the classes I enjoy the most. I enjoyed the areas a lot, they are well-designed, with secret passages and all. The theme is one of calm exploration, if I can put it like that, at the heart, which like the description states, is quite appropriate.  The amount of back-tracking can be annoying for some but I don't complain about it. I think the issues for me are at the combat encounter design.

The first really tough encounter that I wasn't able to beat was either against the lumber mill workers or against the fey dwelling in the cave. They just seem too imbalanced for me, even when having an henchman and a creature at my side. There was another encounter before going on to the high hills where a few elementals appear and this one took me a few turns to beat, which let me a bit disappointed, because at that point I felt I should be able to beat some elementals without too much trouble.

And then in the end I wasn't able to beat the three monks event. I liked the use of cold damage to force the PC throught the area faster, it's a great detail! But then having to watch the cutscene always and losing against the monks time after time prevented me from finishing the module. They are just too tough for my ranger, which was a shame.

Oh well, I can't win them all. I'll give it a try with another class in the future, maybe when winter arrives, so don't be discouraged by my feedback, 95% of the module is awesome and I suppose with a few tweaks the combat encounters can be more appropriate for the level and then it would easily be a 9 or 10 for me. I really enjoyed the rest of the adventure.

Keep up the good job!

Nice little module, too rarely do mods cater to the ranger class.

Detect Mode is your friend ;)

The end battle was pretty tough for my team, for one major reason.

It's too bad you won't be making any more but can't wait to see your poison/assassination type of mod you're working on.

I'm sure it is super simple and I'm going to feel quite silly, but I can only find Elhain, I can't find the female companion. I just finished the module (fantastic by the way) but never once saw her.