Harp & Chrysanthemum

From the old vault - a classic of NWN2 storytelling!

Comments on this one that I posted on the old vault. This is a special module.
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This is a really spectacular module. It is stunning, evocative, and powerful. While not perfect, where it excels it is so amazing that it overshadows its few flaws and drawbacks.

Harp and Chrysanthemum features the most spectacularly designed areas I've seen in NWN2. Far more so than anything you see in the official campaigns, Maerduin makes brilliant use of vertical scale in many of his areas. The main town in the module, Drawn Swords, is a shining example of this, and is a major feature of the module. On top of his area design skills, the author creatures powerful--if not chill-inducing--moments with his expert use of cinematic cut scenes that showcase his areas, as well as custom music. I have never seen better use of the camera than the author achieved in this module; it should be required viewing for any aspiring modder who wants to learn how to do it right.

The story is fascinating, and is told largely via the interactions of strongly developed NPC's. You begin the module in the company of a rogue, an old friend, and shortly thereafter are joined by a paladin. The paladin, in particular, is a wonderful character. In many ways, she's tragic: seemingly cold and powerful, but, as you soon learn, also vulnerable and insecure. It's been quite a while since a character came alive before me like she did in this module--perhaps not since playing some of Alazander's old modules. Moreover, the story is punctuated by dramatic moments that had me saying "oh my god!" to my screen.

This is not to say that the module is perfect. As many have said in the module's comments page, the combat is quite challenging. I initially tried to let my barbarian lead the charge, but quickly found that I needed to boost the paladin's armor class as much as possible and let her tank, only allowing the others to join after the enemies had her surrounded. Challenging combat isn't a bad thing off hand, but it was even necessary to micro-manage to this degree on "random encounter" monsters. Some of these monsters were on respawn triggers, at times re-spawning shockingly close to the party, which became really annoying. At one point, I just ran through an area with the paladin, just allowing the other party members to fall to the monsters, because I just wanted to get back to the inn in town and rest. On top of all this, even decent healing supplies, such as potions of moderate healing, are in limited supply--though you can buy an extremely expensive liquor at the bar that works just as well, if you have the coin. Often, you don't.

On top of some combat frustration, I ran into several bugs. One innocuous one resulted in the town leader materializing in the middle of town without any scripts attached to him. At one point, another copy of that same leader had a conversation with my characters and walked right past his clone on his way back to his shop. I also somehow completely missed what was supposed to be an earlier encounter with some elven tomb defenders. This made a later conversation with them extremely confusing.

But what this module does right it just does so well that I can't let myself get hung up on those problems. The author's attention to detail, from the area design, to the stories on each custom item, to some of the charming side quests (the dryad was a favorite), to the fact that (if I remember correctly) the author actually recorded several pieces of the custom music himself, is unsurpassed. Objectively, maybe this module is a 9. But I experienced such a genuine, emotional connection to the story and its characters that I can't justify anything other than a 10. It's not perfect, but I can't imagine a way in which this module can't be considered legitimately groundbreaking.

Great Mod! Too bad it doesn't have a sequel.

Finally got around to playing this mod. This thing has more awards than you can shake a stick at, so I figured I'd give it a try. 

There's a lot to like here, from the custom music to the area design to the really well done writing (the highlight for me) and interesting use of cut-scenes. There are many complaints about the battles being difficult, but I found that if I went to Castle Joyous at the earliest possible time, it helped level my group such that the remaining module battles seemed well balanced and not too difficult. Without the level gained from the Castle Joyous side-quest, then yes, the remaining battles can be overly difficult. 

That said, it's a fun and interesting module, right up until the end. It is the end battle that ruined the whole mod for me. It was impossible for me to win without a wizard in my party. After a dozen different attempts, I gave up and had to watch the ending of the mod on YouTube. 

Having a battle like that after a module transition and a long cut-scene is a disaster for the player. The party buffs get wiped out, and since the fight starts while you're still reading the final lines of the cut-scene, there's no chance to buff or prepare for battle. If you realized you're hosed and want to try to go with a different combination of memorized spells, you have to go back to a save prior to the module transition and cut-scene, and remem, rest, and then sit through the whole long cut-scene all over again. Then you still have zero chance to buff before unquestionably the most difficult battle in the game. 

Strategically the final fight is a good idea. But in execution it's a killer. Without a wizard to do AoE the battle is basically impossible. I don't want to give anything away for anyone who hasn't played it and wants to give this module a spin, but do yourselve a favor and roll a wizard. Without one I cannot see how the final battle can be won. 

I don't place all the blame on the author though; this is a cancer of the NWN2 engine and the official campaigns themselves. Placing a fight after a cut-scene is standard. Without a mechanism to instantly buff the party, these sorts of unbalanced, hand-tied-behind-your-back fights are normal. That doesn't lessen the frustration any, but I understand that given the game engine this is something that is difficult to get away from. Still, it feels like the author either only tested the final battle with a wizard as the PC, or they didn't test it at all. It's so much more difficult than any of the previous fights as to feel unbalanced in the extreme. It just created too much frustration for me. Unlike the reviewer above, I cannot ignore this flaw. 

I'm still giving it 8 stars because so much is done well. But it didn't stick the landing. 

I have to agree fully with colorsfade. I found this to be a really enjoyable module, and worth an evening's play, but I also found the end to be less than satisfactory.

I found the end battle to be a let down, and for the same reasons that colorsfade has already mentioned. I also found the "romance" with Ianth to be wonky at best, and bat-sh!t crazy at worst. So, my romance ended up going from Ianth telling me that she only sees us as being friends to literally within two minutes later telling me she's going to be devoted to me, all because of a vision she gets from Sune. Yeah, that's kind of nuts... However, that kind of change of heart is something I experienced quite a bit from one of my ex-girlfriends (who also looked a little like Ianth), so yay for that... I guess.

Still, this is well-written and a lot of good work went into this. I don't know if this module is a one-off, but this module does feel like it was supposed to be part of a series. I would love to see more from this creator. The relative short play time (in such a great setting) and the let down of an ending make me give this an 8.

I have a good time with this module. As every one said here, it is very well crafted.

But I still can't quite grasp the whole story of the quest of Castle Joyous. I will try to gather my understanding and hope there are others giving me the right answers.

1 There were a knight and a woman who fell in love in each other some time ago. They built the castle joys as their home. One night, the knight discovered that the woman was actually a dragon in disguise and the knight, feeling betray, run away and lived in the Drawn Sword ever since. 
Well, this is where the story starts losing me. I mean that they were lovers and they had some trust issues with each other, which is quite common for a relationship IMO. What puzzles me is that they didn't talk to each other about their feeling toward each other for the rest of time, not even when the man died. Ah! If this the kind of love the goddess Sune approved or encouraged of, i can’t believe in this goddess. IMO, the story between the man and the dragon should be the best example to show us what ruins a relationship. If Sune is truly the goddess of love, she should use this lesson to teach us the best way of overcoming any difficulties in love is to talk about it openly instead of falling silent with grief until death.

2 When the knight passed away, he locked his tomb and leaved a poem as a clue to how to open his tomb. The poem was something like riddle which brought our hero to the castle of joys where the knight came from.
Well, i don’t know what the knight want to achieve by letting someones open his tomb in some unknown future at the first place.

3 Quite coincidentally, beneath the castle there is a portal leading to the Well of Dragons. Is this why the dragon stay here, to guard the portal? And after the portal was discovered and activated by the dwarfs accidentally, the dwarfs were killed by the serpentine guardians coming from the other side of the portal. Realizing her own neglecting while on duty, the dragon defeated the guardians and sealed the portal in the end.

4 Many years passed and a tribe of gnolls moved into this castle. Since gnolls worshiped her as a goddess, which was very convenient for the dragon, the dragon saw the gnolls as no threat and a handy tool of waking her from sleep at the time of a real threat and played as the goddess along. She even tell the shaman looking for clues in library when trying to awake her during emergency. 
Another plot hole for me, since the shaman couldn’t read ,why not give the key to shaman directly?

5 Another many years passed and a cult of dragon noticed the existence of a portal leading to the well of dragons and tried to raid the castle, where our heroes came in. 

6. Why the dragon needed the players to reach the portal and speak her true name? Couldn’t she reach the portal herself? 

7. Why the dragon will give the players the password to the tomb of her lover, so the players could disturb the long sleep of her lover ? 

8 Why the ghost of the Falcon didn’t attack the players at the first sight of the invading his own tomb?

9 Isn’t it evil to loot a knight’s tomb, especially his sarcophagus?

Good areas and a number of interesting quests with variety in how you get through them.

The terrain was well done and interesting. The fights were mostly balanced assuming you have all three companions. Could be pretty tough otherwise. The end fight can be problematic.

Nits: The "village" consisted of four buildings. Only one guy lived in the castle.  You also have to break into a crypt in friendly castle to get the Falcon and Dove quest. Not very RP friendly if you are playing a good PC. Two of your companions are fairly soft so you should plan on the PC getting in melee for most fights.

However the overall story, pace, and the depth of the NPCs were outstanding. Great cut scenes. Excellent musical selection.

-- Spoilers --

As noted above, the final battle can be a real PITA if you are not a spell caster. You have to be able to debuf the final boss while being attacked by a squad of fire elementals. There are plenty of scrolls available to do the job if your PC can use them. I played through with a Bard/Figher and got through the final battle on the 2nd try but I have played this one before with less than satisfactory results using other builds.

Oh boy, i completely missed Castle Joyous..., and the burrows hint about the east is actually in the west..., and no map pins even though the author states so in the update.And i still didn't get through the final battle

Very nice even so.

Another little gem from the endless treasure which is the Vault. Great story, beautiful art and unique atmospheres. Its main flaw imho is just that it's too short. I suppose it would work better as a prelude to a larger campaign rather than as a stand-alone module.

I'm unsure how to go about asking for here since I don't actually see an author link so am posting here. I did the easy install and the game appears to be playing fine (in fact, very happy with it so far). However, the load screen graphic persists in  being a four-square color box saying "2-D image not loaded." Once Ianth had joined the party, I did notice her "Ruby Rose" icon displays this image. Should I be OK or is there something I need to do? The game seems to be playing OK otherwise. Thanks for any who can direct me! (And it was hysterically funny to see the "Ruby Rose" mention. Our household are fans of the RWBY series, whose titular heroine is named Ruby Rose---although this game was written when developer Roosterteeth probably hadn't cracked open its shell yet!)

Sorry, on the above post, that message is "2D missing texture" and the only other thing that seems not to be working is the journal, which I realize may be an artistic choice. Thanks again!

I finally sorted out my problems installing this game. For some reason, the auto-installer didn't install the campaign in the campaigns folder. I removed everything, redownloaded, and installed manually. Voila. Turns out I had been playing from the mods folder because no "H&C" campaign content manifested in the campaign folder.

I'm agreeing with nearly everything that's been said. I played a spellcaster because I always play a spellcaster and love the experience I'm getting with the sorcerer class, which I'd never tried before. Let me say this to everyone who has said you need a spellcaster to survive the final fight. Yes you do. Unfortunately, because of the wonkiness of the cutscene cutting immediately to a fight with devastating opponents, even if you've done all the quests, you likely will not have gotten a sorcerer or wizard-type buffed high enough to have spells that will affect your side opponents (slight spoiler---they manifest as a specific elemental type). Also, if you play fair, it's likely your caster with his measly 4 hp per level will go down before he gets to do anything. I will admit I finally cheated in a few levels just so my poor sorcerer survived having an atomic bomb dropped on the party. This also gave the halfling priest the chance to have a few more HotG and, above all, Raise Dead.

There is so much good stuff here, I wanted to see this campaign go on and on. The writing is excellent, some serious thought went into a lot of the side quests like the Dryad and Boar and Temple Guardians mentioned above (I missed the  Barrow quest and may go back to try it), and , what's better, there are multiple paths to solving a number of the quests. Plus, although it doesn't amount to much, you get to join the group-that-shall-not-be-named who serve as sort of the Jedi Knights for this campaign setting. If you do this and you have a good bluff skill, you get the bluff of all bluffs to thin out the ranks of the enemies on one fight.

Healing items are indeed in short supply, and your ability to buy them is lost without warning at one point. I wasn't rolling in gold for most of the game so had to be moderate in my purchases of healing supplies, but without access to healing kits come the tough battles, you lose an easy way to stretch out potion use, and you can't really afford to have your priest spontaneously convert all his spells to keep the other 3 players up. On the other hand, the tough battles were interesting because they made you think about how best to use your team. I had forgotten how long it took clerics to get spells that did damage, so you'll have to give some thought to what spells to have him take and how to allocate the buffing spells that are pretty much the mainstay of the first few spell levels. I realize you can take the "inflict wound" series, but touch-attack spells on non-fighter lower level characters scare me.

I played a male and went for the romance with Ianth. I actually kind of liked the resolution, although it comes so close to the end of the game, you never see it develop. Suffice it to say that was a pretty cool vision with a lot more happening than the change in her understanding of her relationship with your character. If you've read LotR, it may remind you a little of the relationship between Eowyn and Faramir. I understand there's a romance option for a female player as well.

What threw me that knocked my rating down is the abruptness of the ending, not just that the battle was impossible but that (attempting not to give spoilers) a magical subject is brought up an instant before the battle starts and it's something that the ultimate boss wants; the implication is that whatever this thing is is transfered to your character, but that's the last you hear of it. Cut scene, roll credits. You do get a cutscene of the 4 of you wandering off but I was really expecting a cutscene that would explain this rather than one that just had the characters ambling through the Backlands with a slow fade to white, also possibly a little more depth to the explanation of where this new group came from---they're almost peripheral to the story, then a journal of an NPC shows him going from devout belief in on of the Usual Suspect Faerunian gods to utter devotion to this new deity virtually overnight, so there was some backstory that begged to be told about what happened there.

Anyway, lots to love here including use of Faerunian lore and a favorite group of antagonists, and I recommend it; just brace yourself for an abrupt ending after a wicked bad battle.

This has some of the best writing and scenery I've seen, and that includes the professionally made adventures. I missed most of the sidequests because I didn't use a guide, but that's good, so I have an excuse to play this again.

However, the final battle is just insane. It would have been impossible if I hadn't gotten lucky and had some items which barely made it beatable. I'm sure some characters can't possibly beat this, at least at level I've seen this recommended to be played.

I think I didn't have all possible characters in my team, though. But it's easy to end up there like that if you aren't using a walkthrough.

Nice custom music themes, amazing areas, believeable story, well composed cutscenes, good use of lore. Played it several times, always enjoyed it.

Plus: I really liked the paladin companion. ;-)

It's a very good module, no wonder this currently sits at #1 most voted here. It is VERY playable. Great customizations, level design and storytelling, especially in regards to lore. 

However, at the end it just begs for a sequel or even a real epilogue that just isn't there. 

Really, really enjoyed this module, especially the NPCs. I will now take Ianth along with my FS/Rogue PC to Edinmoor and Candle Cove. 

That said I also found the final battle way too hard. Especially since a couple times by the time the cut scene ended I'd already taken a bunch of HotG hits. One time in fact, it never cut away from the cutscenes and I watched that ass Theophillus lay waste to my whole party. By the time I got control, only Gossam was still standing, dazed and at half HP. 

I also found the finale a bit anti climatic and hard to follow. If everyone Apparates away at the beginning, how were they all killed. And what was that stuff with Manfred and his Word?!?

Anyway I did beat Theophillus finally. Here's how--

SPOILERS

I cheated. I went it to originally at lnl7. I leveled up to 8. Crucially this gave me:

lvl 4 spells for Gossam 

lvl 3 for my FS

lvl 2 for Ianth

enough UMD for Vorman to cast a mage armor spell on himself

i clicked into the battle from the cutscene as soon as it would let me and everyone cast a quick fire protection spell (e.g. Divine resistance, endure element, and saves boosters, mass aid and prayer, even resistance). I then had everyone spread out so one HotG wouldn't daze them all (and the saves boosts helped a lot here too) and Vorman and the FS started beating on Theo if only to disrupt his spell casting. Gossam spammed the fire elemental with Hypothermia (the extra spell slot from the level up being key here--it's the only cold damage spell I had and it devastated them)   He spontaneously converted healing as needed and everyone had lots of potions--nothing better to do when dazed than guzzle everquist. Once the elementals were done for, Gossam summoned a dire boar and together they hacked through Theo's damage reduction PDQ. Then the sudden, not dramatic enough ending...didn't even get to loot him :(

honestly i don't think this battle can be won with a lvl7 party. But overall what a great module. 

I have just downloaded this game and uploaded a .zip version http://bit.ly/2XUF1l8 , it'd be cool if some with edit rights on the page added it to the page so those without winrar can play the game. 

This is a fantastic adventure, however this does not appear to the latest version of the module, v1.01 as indicated in description.  The version 1.01 update "Added unlimited vials of acid to Asterchord's store", however these are not there.  Also v1.01 "Added map markers on the Barrows entrances to make the riddle less difficult", however these are not there either.  It would seem this is the original version of Harp & Chrysanthemum, not v1.01.

I have played this campaign towards the end of 2018, and I am rating it now because I have just created an account. I cannot remember details, but I do remember having enjoyed every bit of it: story, area design, music, economy and encounter balance, so all the superlatives found in other reviews are justified.

Regarding the much-criticized final battle, I have re-loaded the save just before it starts and I have triggered it in an attempt to try to remember what I did to win it.

Spoilers ahead!

My PC was Rogue 2 / Ranger 6, armed with a long bow. After fast-clicking through the cut-scene, I have just let my PC shoot at the boss, while the others had their AI working; I just wanted to remember the sequence in order to make a planned second attempt. At some point, there were no more elementals and Ianth went after the boss. Then my PC fell, followed after a few seconds by Ianth; however the boss was already at “Near Death”, and one shot from Vroman later, he fell too! No arcane caster, no planned buffs (though that cleric may have cast some buff that I did not observe) or tactics, hard-core difficulty, and yet the villain has fallen! And I am sure that I can manage to keep the whole party alive if I try harder, but right now I have no more patience…

Under the line, I cannot complain about the difficulty of the final fight. OK, the ending does suggest a continuation campaign that will probably never come, but at least there is one nice end cinematic, which some other modules don’t have!

End Spoilers

So I cannot justify giving this campaign anything else than the maximum rating; it is simply great!

My thanks to the author, even if he seems to be no longer around!