A Tangled Web - Part 1 & 2

Wow, what a great mod! I had played Part 1 many years ago (I guess when it first came out?) but I never finished for some reason. This had me going for quite some time, and I *never* would have been able to complete it without the extraordinarlily detailed Walkthrough and DM's Guide.

Now I have to catch my breath, get something to eat, and it's time for Part 2! :-)

Top 10 recommended!!   Very well made & entertaining/ challenging.

This series is absolutely one of the best on the vault. There is so much detail for vanilla, no haks mods, it's unbelieveable! The sheer amount of storyline, plot and writing that went into this mod makes it a very satisfying experience. The areas were cleverly designed and scripted, and it felt like a real adventure. Even though part three never came out, it still feels like there is some amount of module completition to it. Combat wise, nothing is too difficult, except for maybe the first few levels. There is still a challenge in multiplayer as well. I would recommend this mod to anyone looking for a good, story-driven action mod.

Part 1 is a truly gripping adventure. Potential clichés are given a novel and surprising twist, so there's rarely a dull moment. Areas are very well made from the original Bioware assets - the absence of custom content is in no way a drawback.

My first level solo rogue found plenty of opportunities to devise cunning solutions to encounters intended to challenge larger parties, but it was all do-able.

As always, save often, especially at key decision points.

There is some backtracking, with ample treasure but few high level items to spend it on (EDIT : until the start of Part 2). Defeating the final boss with a +1 rapier was a little tricky! Puzzles are fairly intuitive, but one is an audio puzzle without floaty text. These are very minor gripes, however.

SPOILER : as reported by another player on the old Vault, I found a bug in the Void quest. If you don't block the mine after releasing the Ice Witches, the Council won't speak to you, so it's impossible to complete the module. Fortunately I could revert to a much earlier save. Rocks are absurdly difficult to destroy but it can be done. The only weak point in the story - my chaotic good PC wouldn't voluntarily unleash ancient evil on the hapless miners if there were any other option.

Onwards to Part 2.

Part 2 is sustained entertainment throughout. Essentially an elaborate side quest, whose denouement remains tantalisingly out of reach (in a good way) until the very end.

My rogue was so well equipped after Part 1 that combat was rarely challenging (though interesting). For no obvious reason, there was an abundance of treasure, hence many trips to the merchants, but an arbitrary limit on using jump pointers instead of backtracking. 

MINOR SPOILER - Grimlock gridlock. Not sure if this was a bug, but grimlock followers were very reluctant to get out of the way of the player in tight corners. I decided to leave them behind, as I didn't really need their help.

I really enjoyed this module.

Indeed a good adventure

Another module that without the walk through you would never figure out what you had to do. Don't like this aspect and had to end it prematurely. Too bad. Some of the quests in the first part did not end properly, like the Amulet in the Sundial, and I had to go back in the mine for the moss after sealing it off, not a good feeling. Okay I suppose, but I like mods with henchpersons, stones of recall (this did have carts in certain areas that you could take back to town) and a better story. Too bad.

When I started this, I wasn't aware it's an unfinished trilogy, but maybe that's for the better, because I might not have played it otherwise, and that would have been a bit of a pity.

I am somewhat torn on the main plot, not so much because it's unfinished but because I didn't find it all that interesting and convincing. When you already advertise a story as a tale of intrigue and deception, it's pretty hard to actually follow up and deceive the players in surprising ways. In that regard I thought the module did not succeed; there weren't any real twists to speak of, everything was a bit predictable, although who knows, maybe it was intentional and the big twists were planned for the third module. I can't really imagine what they could be though. Whenever there was something with the likeness of a small twist in these two modules, I also thought it rather unlikely, not very believable, with regard to the characters' motivations. There were some apparent plot holes as well (but again, unfinished trilogy). And I thought sometimes the author went a bit overboard with all the lore dumps in custom books; I always feel compelled to read them sooner or later because they might contain interesting information, but some of them were walls of texts with hardly any relevance to the plot.

That being said, whenever it was not about the big main plot but about smaller adventures, for which the main plot was just the frame, the campaign was very enjoyable. And that was really the main part, the plot didn't actually matter all that much. Dialogues and flavor text were well-written, area design and lighting was very atmospheric, the places felt alive and exploration rewarding. I never really thought about the module not using CEP or any other haks because it made such creative use of the default content, and also featured lots of unique custom items and scripted systems, including interesting fast travel and resting systems that were at the same time limited and very open, encouraging the player to use them strategically.

Since it's designed to be played with a group (although it's not necessary), there weren't any companions in the first module, and just 3 minor ones in the sequel, and traveling with them felt a bit more like an escort mission, since they felt rather vulnerable compared to my own cleric PC and her summons, but that was alright. I found a couple of bugs, but nothing major, I think, and nothing related to the EE (fully compatible!). At least two quests from the first module could not be completed because I suppose they were planned to be resolved in part 3 only (but it wasn't that clear). And there were one or two instances when you had to do or go along with something bad without the game clearly telling you that it's meant to be part of the plot, so there's a risk that players just reload and try to find ways around it that don't exist.

All in all, even though this series probably won't make it into my all time favorites list, it was competently and impressively done and contained some grand adventures. What the overall main plot lacked in creativity, the area design, the systems, and all the little stories more than made up for.

I'm currently playing part II. These modules are really good and enjoyable, probably among the best I've downloaded from this "vault". I wish the author will release also the final part.

Now I'm somehow stuck because, after having obtained the antidote to the poison from the druid, I don't know how to continue the quest. What I am supposed to do? In the walkthrough a northeast part of the wood is also present but I cannot find a way to reach it.
Thanks in advance for the answer.

Amazing adventure, had a blast playing the first part!! (I haven't had the time to start the second one yet)
The plot itself, even though it wasn't too spectacular, was really well supported, and the insane amount of attention that the author has put made up for it! Almost every single NPC had something to say (tons of lore, should you want to listen to everyone), the area design was pretty good, the adventure gave you real reasons to search and backtrack, gear was balanced to powerful for the levels and finally almost everything happening was scripted/written to be immersive, and it succeded for me at that. The immersion factor, overall balance plus the plentiful options for RP/skill rolls during dialogs, makes it a 10/10 adventure. Great work Bruce!!

Played with a friend 3 years ago. These modules perfectly fit the definition of oldies but goodies.

I can't talk about the multiplayer experience, but completed the 2 parts in solo, with a (start) first lvl  / 11 level endgame Sorcerer on Nwn 1.69. This campain is excellent work. Good and very creative custom scripted systems. Brilliant use of the standard assets placeables and tilesets. There is a lot of lore and books (maybe too much?) but the story, colorful NPCs and world flavor felt vivid and coherent. However, this is not a perfect work. Some typos and questionable creator choices exist. For example there is a quest you can only complete with alignement changes; and my character was cursed (nothing to do with poison) in the middle of the second part, with no in game option (i searched and searched) to remove the curse. This was a big pain ! I was finally able to get the "remove curse" spell, levelling at the very end of the game, but this (rare?) problem would be bad for a non MU. One lightly annoying fact: you will have to stock a gigornous number of keys...

Apparently, the creator invested a lot of time in creating an interactive and diverse world, and i liked that side: There is an impressive array of magical, mechanical placeables, custom monsters, special items... You can seat in hundreds of places, open myriads of chests and there is much loot to grab. Well done sir ! I would gladly play a third part if such a thing appears someday.

Edit: after some pondering, changed original 8 rating to 9.

I've finished chapter 1 and the first sliver of chapter 2. I'm playing the long game, willing the author to consider writing chapter 3 before I die.

After experiencing the series on my own, about 4 years ago, I've now replayed the first part in co-op mode with two friends, and I've got a few things to add to my initial review in that regard.

For one, we encountered at least two MP related bugs that I wouldn't have expected to find in a MP module this popular after all these years (unless us using the EE had something to do with it?). Especially seeing that the first one happened right at the beginning. When the players enter the module proper, right after the staging area, they are greeted by a tavern keeper NPC who comes running towards the first PC he spots in order to start a conversation. So far, so good. But when this conversation ended, that NPC approached the next PC and repeated the whole dialogue. At which point I thought, okay, I would have prefered this NPC to target only one PC, but let's just humor him and have every PC go through his diaolgue so he will get off our backs. For me this worked, but for our third player it didn't. The NPC would keep harassing him for as long as we were in the tavern and whenever we would enter it again later. He even followed our fleeing third player out the door into the village area. So this is definitely a bug: The NPC should stop trying to talk to PCs after the first conversation.

The second bug I remember was near the end, when an NPC in the tavern gives the PCs the option to go to their room and take a rest, in order to progress time and plot. The conversation text warned that this would teleport the whole party to the inn room, but when my fellow player (who was not party leader at the time) picked this option, only his PC and summons were teleported, and I (party leader) had to walk to the room. This was only a minor annoyance compared to the first bug, but still.

We also ran into the game-breaking bug mentioned by Proleric here: https://neverwintervault.org/comment/36449#comment-36449. It affects both SP and MP, but I guess in MP, when you're playing with others and don't have time to examine your environment meticulously, it's even easier to overlook what you have to do to avoid this bug. So I'd say unless you know about it, you're very likely to run into it, and that could end your playthrough if you don't have previous saves to go back to and the patience to research what went wrong and fix it. Fortunately, we had both, but it put a bit of a damper on the whole thing.

And sometimes, we wished the author had taken into consideration that having long story conversations in MP mode is exhausting enough without other NPCs in the area constantly adding to the dialogue window with their loud praying and shouting and whatever (e.g. in the temple). These conversations should have been held in a more private environment, or NPCs should have been less noisy and intrusive.  

Last but not least, a bit more personal, but if you go into this with friends, you should know that the stories can get rather dark. Apparently this wasn't much of a problem for me as single player, but my fellow players were a bit more sensitive to that which made me realize how often the module almost seems to revel in tragic stories. With me being the one who had suggested to play this popular MP module, it felt a bit awkward at times to experience or read about these cruel twists of fate in the company of others (although to an extent being able to talk about and roleplay around them seems to have made it more bearable for my fellow players, but they definitely would have prefered something less depressing and more uplifting). These stories included (spoilers, for the sake of trigger warnings): (1) a child being tortured and murdered by a demon, as recounted by one NPC, so the PCs could have done nothing to stop it, (2) the PCs being able to kill a hostile cougar which then turns out to have been a mother animal caring for her helpless cubs, (3) the PCs being able to kill a paranoid hostile NPC who then turns out to have been a missing father who tried to provide for his refugee family, (4) the PCs being called for help against an assassination attempt but coming too late to save the victim etc., and in many cases the PCs have to be the bringers of bad news and deal with the grief of the survivors in order to complete the quests. One of the players left halfway through the module for their own reasons, deciding that NWN and D&D were not for him. The other one and I got to the end, where the module author warned that the second part would be a bit darker than the first, which made us laugh. We won't play the second part in co-op, due to this and the series being unfinished (which I forgot about, heh). But anyway ...

We still had a lot of fun. I stand by my initial opinion that A Tangled Web is very competently made and polished in general and that exploration and combat are really enjoyable. My remaining fellow player also liked the puzzles, even though some could have had better hints (I think one was only solvable if you had found a book with hints before, and if you had not, you could not go back, once confronted with the puzzle). The module can go a bit overboard with the word count (some NPCs are real blabbermouths), which is even more noticeable in MP, but all in all I still think it's well written, too, and a great accomplishment for the author. I just wish these bugs could still be ironed out, because some of them are pretty severe and can seriously ruin the fun.

I just finished the first part and I'm excited. Very well written adventure with countless information about people, events and also the history of the area. Beautiful dialogues, interesting puzzles and battles. I didn't get bored of it at all, the maps were neat and I didn't find it difficult to navigate. What made me especially happy is that there weren't many options for hiring a hench. Well, I'm a lone wolf, I prefer it better. Very good work, I'm moving on with the second part and I'll be back!

**UPDATE: I just finished the second part as well. It was very good! Atmosphere, plot, dialogues! It's a pity that the third part was not released... A piece of advice: Don't sell the passwood token you got from the dark druid! You won't be able to get into the tree where Alison's spirit rest, but you won't be able to get into the twisted tree either! Mind the small ravine to the south of C.Woods West. You must find the tomb to complete the quest with the headless spirit of the girl...

Very very good job!

Celestia's Module Testing 2024

Pretty fun module, very solid on technical level, story is building up to the third part, so let's hope we will live to see it.