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Crimmor
Crimmor is a module for solo rogues of level 8 (you can level up and receive appropriate gold ingame). Use skills and rogue abilities as a Shadow Thief in the streets of the Amnian city of Crimmor.
You may like this module, you may not. Crimmor is experimental and is focused primarily on the urban environment and providing the "feel" of a city, as well as rogue focused non-combat gameplay. If you are all about combat, this is probably not the module for you.
Crimmor pushes the NWN2 toolset's hard limit on objects in the external city areas, additionally, there are numerous npcs in the city. I recommend a modern pc. You've been warned.
Crimmor takes many things, from food, street, shop, and npc names, to the unusual relationship of the Shadow Thieves to the city, from Ed Greenwood's article on the city in Dragon Magazine issue 334. Thank you Ed. Some things I had to change in the interest of gameplay.
Characters without rogue levels are unsupported, though bards will probably work fine as well. You are not required to have levels in the Shadow Thief of Amn prestige class. You are not required to be evil.
Magic levels are low, there are few +2 items. Don't worry about that, Crimmor isn't a module about "powering up". You can reach up to level 14 in Crimmor. There are four possible endings, not all of which are good for the pc, and it is possible to end the game via decisions you make before the "end".
Among other things, Crimmor uses a custom lockpicking system (courtesy of RWS), all custom sound in the environment (courtesy freesound.org). It has custom weapon and item classes, and pseudo prestige classes (Crimmor does not change any 2das except for the loadscreens and trees.2das, so it works with any custom content that does not alter these, including class packs). Finally, the thieves speak cant. A pdf guide has been provided that goes over gameplay things, and includes a dictionary of the cant used as well as some background on Crimmor.
The module is completable without killing anything. There's no secret achievement or bonus for doing so. No xp is awarded for combat, only quest completion and exploration. There are approximately 10 hours of content.
There's a lot going on behind the scenes with things, and some things are pretty complicated. As with any release, there are bound to be some bugs that managed to slip by, but there are two I am aware of:
Lockpicking does not consume lockpicks (yay for you, freebie!). Lights do not affect the hide skill though the DM will tell you it does, as there were seemingly unsolvable problems with this (I hope to get this fixed via patch). These have minimal game effect and were significantly delaying release, so I chose to go ahead and release.
Thanks to my testers: Arkalezth, PJ156, GFallen01.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 credits.txt | 1.74 KB |
 Crimmor v1.06 (2237) | 541.7 MB |
 crimmor.pdf (2839) | 1.59 MB |
| If you want to be heavily spoiled, or have finished and are wondering about easter eggs. (406) | 7.86 KB |
The current version is 1.06, which is the version on this website.
It looks very promising. A pity that it hasn't been downloaded more often and a pity that I don't have the time to play modules, otherwise I would play this.
As a die-hard fan of rogue-ish wizardry, er, play, I have to say this mod suits me to my toes.
I have played through three times and partials about a dozen times. I have some bugs and quirks that I think are mostly due to the wierd install on my laptop Vixen, but I love this story enough to play through the long load times and occaisional technicolor crashes.
Fair warning, though. Kamal *says* it pushes the limits of the machinery and he's not blowing smoke in your eyes. This is a beast of a mod, but the detail and non-hack focus is worth every stress.
The link to the pdf was broken. Uploaded it again and tested it.
"The module is completable without killing anything" - Unfortunately this statement appears to not be true.
Quest "Maintenance Men" does not proceed, unless player kills Ollain (checked by cheating). Only then will reading notebook in adjacent room advance quest. Notebook can be read before killing Ollain, but in that case it has different content and does not advance quest.
Because I believed statement about not needing to kill anyone, I did not build my character appropriately for battle (did not pile ton of AC boosting stuff, etc). And now I need to kill 2 NPC-s, who are much tougher than my character and are currently not beatable. So I have to come back later, when I have more levels under my belt and many items boosting my abilities for battle.
So far I have enjoyed this module and refreshing amount of non-combat gameplay (especially sneaking through caves filled with enemies). But this sudden totally unexpected (both by module introduction and gameplay so far) need of combat prowess is really annoying and shifts attention away from what this module is supposedly all about.
Advancing non violently in that quest requires finding the physical proof that Arriz was there, and then sneaking past Ollain and Arriz to read the notes in the side room. You apparently missed finding the physical proof in Ollain's house that Arriz has been there and without that, you were unable to interpret Ollain's notes on jobs in Arriz's wards correctly.
As part of the Shadow Thieves compartmentalization of information for security purposes, the Maintenance Men are not supposed to know where the others of their rank live (so you couldn't sell out the location of other maintenance men if you got put in prison for instance). This is why the Guildmaster has to tell you where Ollain lives, because you didn't know where Ollain lives before the Guildmaster tells you. Proof that Arriz has been to Ollain's house shows their breach of Shadow Thief protocol, because Arriz isn't supposed to know where it is.
Theoretically you could see that Arriz is there at Ollain's (though if would be possible you don't recognize him since you would not have expected him to be there, and the lighting is dim), however I had decided that the Shadowmaster would need physical proof as otherwise it would be your word against theirs, and they are at the same level of the guild heirarchy as you so that would be a stalemate. Arriz's absentminded scratchings while waiting for Ollain at some point are that proof.
Hopefully that explains things in a not too spoilerish way, and also provides a rational explanation of why it's the way it is. If it doesn't seem rational, let me know and things can be altered, I tried to set things up in a way that was rational to me.
Well, considering that D&D should imply both combat and quests, it wouldn't SO bad if for completing an adventure you *have* to do at least SOME fights. Anyway, when you said this module press the engine to his limits, you weren't joking. You really put some hard work on it.
The author has put a lot of work on this project, the only thing I find weird (it does feel weird!) is the lack of combat. While there are hostiles out there you'd have to sneak around them or start running when you see them, because you are too weak to get into actual combat with them. There are a lot of sidequests to do and the story seems to be intriguing.
I'm stuck though at one point, there is a quest where you have to get poison for the smith (quest Purse Wards Dire rats or is it?) so you can get info from him. I'd expect that poison would be easy to find (or to be crafted), but I'm unable to find any.
Pet hate of the adventure: too many commoners in public places, makes it hard to play the game if you're using an older machine.
"Dire rats or is it?" You need strong venom (any type will do), it can be crafted for sure, but crafting it is not needed, you just have to have some to offer.
Well that's the problem I can't find any... Neither can find the ingredients to craft it...
Trying not to be too spoiler specific, there is a shop that sells ingredients in the same ward.
is this playable with a pure wizard with ranks in open lock/disable device/appraise/UMD/intimidate/diplomacy/search/spot/listen?
2 hours in and it looks very promising so far. My only concern is that dialogues are very hard to understand for non-native speakers like me. Considering there are not so clear indications for every single quest and there isn't even an available walkthrough I hope it doesn't become TOO hard. As usual I'll vote after reaching the end (granted that I'll manage to do it :P)
Yes, sorry about it being hard for non-native speakers. For authenticity, the thieves including the pc speak with actual Thieves Cant phrases, The "manual" I made does include a cant dictionary, which I drew from http://www.pascalbonenfant.com/18c/cant/.
Their should be map markers for quests, with quest givers telling you what ward it's in. The quest log should also start with the ward name where the quest is located, for example 'Purse Ward: Quest Name'
Yes and no, there are quests which have no markers, while others do have it. While I can understand the reason behind it (I suppose you didn't want to hold the player's hand all the time) I don't always get what criterion you applied for it. As an example, there is a quest in Drovers Gate given by the Harper contact where I have to tell an agent to change position. She's supposed to be dressed with something grey and red but I cannot find her anywhere and she isn't marked on the map. I think I have talked with every commoner, merchant, child and guardsmen in the map at least 5 times but I couldn't find her. In Wheel's Ward there is a similar quest where you have to steal an amulet from a girl near the river for your uncle. Even if that girl is practically unmissable (she is alone in that area) she is marked on the map. So, why one and not the other? :)
Another quest where I am totally at loss is the one where I am supposed to retrieve a spellbook from the Temple of Lathander in Pursue Ward. I cannot find where it is and the only thing I can do inside the temple is stealing the Holy Water. I found another spellbook in an unmarked manor in Alandor Gate before I even got the quest, but I don't know if the two things are related.
Don't take this as a complain. I had a lot of fun so far, and like I said, I find it nice to figure out some things on my own. But considering that Crimmor is a very big city with a lot of people and places to visit I find it a little frustrating when the clues are a little too vague. Just my opinion tho. Maybe there are also people who would prefer to have no quest markers at all like it was in old RPGs :)
I am quite conflicted about this module and how I should evaluate it.
Like many others said the visuals are amazing. Crimmor is probably one of the most beautiful and lively cities that I've seen in a game. Ever. The module put to good use each of the rogue skills. All of them. And this is probably another thing that I've hardly seen in any other rogue specific module. While the other ones usually rely on the stealth abiliies and the typycal social/open lock/disable traps skills, in Crimmor you will have the option to use every rogue class specific skill: from appraise, to craft alchemy, to craft weapon, to listen, there isn't a single skill which is overlooked or that won't prove to be useful sooner or later. Of course you won't be able to maximize all of them, therefore you will be forced to make choices and in some situations you will be more advantaged than in others. On the bad side, this module suffers from open-world syndrome: you can easily break quests or make them unsolvable if you visit too soon a place or if you don't do the quests in the right order. I reached the epilogue without even knowing what was the deal about the amulet (which btw I thought was the main quest of the game when it clearly wasn't) and this happened because by the time I retrieved it the person who I was supposed to give it to was already dead. I couldn't even try to purify it because I accidentally wasted the holy water from the temple at the beginning of the game and there wasn't another temple in the city who had a fountain of holy water. This is why i am always against giving 100% freedom to the player and I think that at least some things should be locked by plot. This module would need 2 playtroughs, the first one in order to figure out the right order of doing the things and the second one to finally enjoy it at the fullest. Another thing I really wonder is why it wasn't implemented fast travel. After a while it gets really boring when you have to travel between two areas which are not directly connected. I think that under different circumstances I would have given this module a lower score, perhaps between 7 and 8, but considering that the author was very clear by stating that "Crimmor is an experimental module" I choose to take it for what it is and to reward the huge amount of work that was clearly put into its creation.
I have started playing this campaign in January 2019, but got stuck and gave up. Now I have recently created an account, so I am able to come out and ask for help. I feel that I am quite close to the “finish line”, but I am stuck with that Orsil not wanting to talk to me; I have already brought the Evercarpet and this guy is supposed to come and also bring some Zaafirah with him, according to the journal, but when clicking on him, he only says “Yes” and no dialogue opens. Is it because I was not able to show the Talisman to the Shadow master before he died?
I have got lucky on this one... In the file globals.xml of the save folder, I have found a variable __convsh_drover_resker7 that was set to 1; I have set it to 0 and this has brought friend Orsil back in the mood to talk! Now it looks like I'm in for some roof action...
I have finally come through this campaign, and I must admit that, of all the Vault campaigns that I have played so far, this one is my favourite.
In my case, the author has fully succeeded in providing that “feel” of a city, since he has managed to build a huge city that looks and feels incredibly real. This realism is reached by a high density of placeables and people, and this high density comes at a price: lower FPS. Especially in the Wheel Ward I could sometimes easily count the frames, but even some indoor areas had a visible impact on the FPS.
I have reached level 16 and got enough points to level up once more by reaching the “finish line”, with the following impressions:
* Playing motivation: excellent
It was an interesting challenge to depend on much more skills than I usually develop in other campaigns, and the atmosphere, the rhythm and the quality of the quests have kept my motivation in the ceiling at all times. Even the long time that has passed since I got stuck has not killed my desire to see this campaign through.
* Story: very good
The story on which this campaign builds is really well-thought: it is intricate, not fully predictable and leaves the (winning) player with that “Yes, I did it!” feeling. And I am sure that it was not easy to come up with such a good story, given the quite restrictive theme.
As the author clearly states, this is a campaign for a solo Rogue, so those who look for companion interaction will not find it here. But there is a lot of NPC interaction, which is however a little hard to follow at times, and now I remember that I had to smile over the use of the term “non-native speaker” in the posts above, realizing that everybody is a native speaker, and nobody is a native speaker of cant!
I would dare to describe this campaign as non-linear, since there is really a lot of freedom in the sequence of doing quests and going around. However, there are certain quests that need to be completed in a certain sequence with respect to each other in order to reach the best outcome, and no apparent way to tell the right sequence while playing.
* Area design: excellent
It looks like a city, it feels like a city and it IS a city! Pardon… THE city! Go and see it, really!
I have addressed already the performance issues that appear to be related with the high number of 3D objects in the areas, but another side effect of having dense areas is long loading times at transitions between areas. And I was often thinking during those loading times: “A map would have been nice!”
* Technical correctness: very good
I cannot remember having encountered any bug, but there seem to be some issues with the sequence of quests.
Concluding, I have found this to be a great specialized campaign, so thank you kamal for building and sharing it!
Eventually I found the time to play this one, and I am really glad I did. It still takes its toll on the equipment (mine is certainly not the best, but not the worst either), one of the reasons why it took me so long to be able to play it.
While I have not finished it yet (there is just so much to do), yet I can confidently cast my vote: this is certainly one of the best NWN(2) campaigns out there. A credible city (probably the only credible one besides Westgate in MoW and maybe Aglarond's capital in Subtletly of Thay), with bustling streets and just so many opportunities and sidequests. It really feels lively when running through the winding alleys, so much can be explored. I think the distances are still very manageable, but you would miss out on some of the more "random" encounters (they are not really random, but a bit hard to spot) if fast travel was available. Only thing missing was maybe a shortcut between Dock Ward and Wheel Ward.
Whenever you think you know everything about an area, a mob or a druid appears in an unremarkable sideway. There are plenty of unique items to find and explore (I wished though, that sleight of hand would pay off more). There are custom loadscreens. There is plenty of FR lore woven into the city. So much effort and ingenuity has been spent on creating non-violent ways of resolving quests (lamp extinguishing and sneaking generally being my favorite mechanics), using all tools and abilities available for rogues (and similar scoundrels). I wished that lockpicking and traps disabling would give you some additional XP. I also loved the "Pseudo-PRCs", all of them sound super interesting and provide some nice and fitting benefits. Also loved the story and its twists so far. Also all the sidequests tie in well to the overall storyline and do not get boring (even if they are rather simple).
Only thing that left me a bit confused was the lockpicking GUI in the beginning, I thought I would need to push the lockbarrels to test them and it took me a bit of time to figure out that it really was just a game of luck to avoid the lock jamming (after which my arcane trickster could still force it open with it's the 'Knock' spell-one of the main reasons why I would have loved to see extra XP for nimble fingers). Also in the beginning the amount of marked locations on the map is scary, but it is easy to figure out that red ist for quest locations (updates perfectly working all the time), green are street names, yellow are area transitions, blue is for the guild dead drops and the normal metallic icon is for, well, normal places. For me it run bug free so far, which is not a minor accomplishment in such a huge world.
I found an extended readme on the nexus, which I would love to post here, since it provides some helpful insights as well as revealing some nice eastereggs. I, for instance, would have loved the rakshasas as an affiliable faction. They make for incredibly rare but interesting villains and would have fit perfectly in this particular setting.
PS: While so often companions are (well, not the core but) so important for such campaigns, this manages to do without (not counting a temporary henchman) and it's not even a drawback.
Thanks for creating this, Kamal! It was a blast and I am glad that there is still a bit left for me to enjoy!
I'm very glad you liked it!
Oh dear, I forgot about that spoiler/easter egg document. I've uploaded it here.
WOW! What can I say about this mod?
I haven't gotten too far into the story yet, so I will not comment on that just yet.
However, this mod is absolutely BEAUTIFUL! Stunning.
I also like the hidden pockets/lead lined garments aspect of the game. SO far, it has a very realistic feel to it, unlike any other rogue based mod.
So far, I am enjoying this mod. Be forwarned, it's huge & a bit confusing to navigate. But that is ok. Again, realistic.
I'm surprised by how overlooked this mod is by people! It is one of if not the most immersive of mods I've ever played on this site, and a fantastic rogue simmulator! One of my favorite parts have been sneaking around the Ogre mines! I honestly never thought I'd be so terrified of the ogres in this game. But you took a typical enemy in the OC's dungeons, and made them scarier using nothing but the environment. The atmosphere in that section and the lack of music made the sneaking so tense!
I will say though that I'd appreciate a spoiler walkthrough PDF docuement of some sort, since finding out where the next quest marker is is typically hard. Other than that, I really appreciate the attention to detail in the city! You really accomplished your goal and then some. It feels very alive! I can't sing enough gushing praises, because this is a fantastic module that honestly deserves to be its own video game!
- Alsmen Blackwell: The Hero of Neverwinter
As many have already said:
What unfortunately prevents me from putting 10 stars:
Nevertheless, it's really a campaign worth playing, I recommend it. Just save often and in different slots so you can "restart" if you find Resker or the Shadowmaster won't talk.