Thirty years ago, the citizens of the city of Horzen threw off their king and their old gods and established a Republic, with Azzacio d'Horzen as the elected "First Citizen" and four "Gods of Reason" as their new faith. Now the city is locked in a vicious battle against an undead horde from the north. The city is in ruins. Supplies and goods are scarce. Neither side will relent.
You are a citizen of Horzen, and as of yesterday you received a notice stating that you had been promoted to the illustrious ranks of the Second Citizens, on the recommendation of Arryn Qurtz. These capable men and women uphold the values the city holds dear and keep it safe from its enemies, leading their fellows against all foes. And so today, you report to the Citizen's Office to meet the First Citizen and make your promotion official...
This module is designed for one (1) player and roughly 6-8 hours of gameplay content. A new character is strongly recommended, and will be given enough XP to reach level 7 upon module entry, with characters usually ending the module at level 11 or 12. Mechanical changes include but are not limited to:
-Point-buy raised from 30 to 32
-Multiclass XP penalty removed
-Light Armor/Small Shields no longer suffer arcane spell failure
-Champion of Torm reworked into Divine Champion, now available for all alignments
-Certain PrCs, including Pale Master and Divine Champion, have caster progression
-Wizard, Sorcerer hit dice increased to d6
-Rogue, Bard hit dice increased to d8
-No XP, reduced gold costs for scribe scroll/brew potion/craft wand
-Barbarians & Bards are no longer alignment-restricted
-Monk facelift, expansion of monk weapons
-Rework/facelift of Harper Scout and Purple Dragon Knight
-Blackguards now have spellcasting
-Significant buffs to Druid wildshape, expanded Druid spellbook
-Ranger Animal Companion at level 4, expanded Ranger spellbook
Spell changes include but are not limited to:
-cantrips scale with caster level
-New summons across the board; multi-summon for undead summons
-HD limit for daze & sleep scales based on caster level
-Keen edge can now apply to all melee weapons, not just slashing/piercing
-Scare is no longer limited by HD
-Heal/Harm now do 10 * caster level worth of healing/harming, to a maximum of 150
-Ice Dagger now inflicts 2 Dexterity damage if the target fails a Reflex save
-Contagion now inflicts 2d4 Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution damage up front
-Isaac's Lesser and Greater Missile Storms are now radials, with options to change spread and number of targets
-Blade Thirst now grants +3 vampiric regeneration instead of +3 Enhancement bonus - Rangers get Magic Weapon/Greater Magic Weapon to compensate
-Camouflage and Mass Camouflage now provide 10% concealment
-One with the Land provides +2 Dodge AC and +1 to all saves
-New Spells: Nature's Shield, Corrupt Weapon, Pridoni's Freezing Lightning, Bertolt's Monstrous Scream
Notes:
-Currently the only completely deprecated skills are Craft Armor, Craft Weapon, Craft Trap, and Ride.
-Undead enemies are no longer immune to crits or sneak attack. Go nuts.
-Save often! The game will autosave in some areas, but you never know if the game will crash or if you end up stuck. Better safe than sorry!
-There are no plot-protected NPCs! If you don't like someone, you can kill them. Most of the time, the plot will adapt.
-At this time, the module ends on a cliffhanger. I know that may be disappointing to some, but I needed to set a stopping point so I can take stock of everything the player had done up to that point and also want to be able to step back from it as needed. This does NOT mean I will never work on it again - quite the opposite, I fully intend to keep adding to the module in future updates - but if something in my personal life comes up, I'd rather have something out there that's relatively complete than be stuck with something that exists only on my hard drive.
If you are playing NWN:EE on Android, make sure to download the mobile version of the module. There is no difference between the two other than that the mobile version has been set to work with .34. I will continue to provide a dedicated mobile version of the module until the mobile version of NWN:EE has been updated to match the PC version.
You can also find this module on the Steam workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2960623064
Like most living creatures, I enjoy eating, drinking, breathing, and having a roof over my head. This module is and will remain free, but if you enjoyed playing and would like to donate, you can find my Ko-Fi page here: https://ko-fi.com/protoss119
Credits:
Xovian - Extended Henchman Dialogue
Amethyst Costello - Printing Press model (original work)
LuckyDay - Printing Press model (importing/animating)
mr_bumpkin / WodahsEht - PrC caster level scripts
Tauredor - New spell icons
WouldBeBard - low-magic weapon/tower shield models
The Amethyst Dragon - Project Reforged
TaintedGlory - testing
Mymothersmeatloaf - testing
VKB48901 - testing
Crulon/MetalPig/Kyuzo - testing
Bioware - for all of the scripts I borrowed/stole from the campaigns in order to figure out how things work.
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
horzen_v110.zip (62) | 284.18 MB |
horzen_v110_mobile.zip (59) | 284.17 MB |
horzen_v109.zip (109) | 206.7 MB |
horzen_v109_mobile.zip (76) | 206.7 MB |
horzen_v108.zip (124) | 17.76 MB |
horzen_v108_mobile.zip (62) | 17.76 MB |
horzen_v107.zip (259) | 17.55 MB |
horzen_v107_mobile.zip (412) | 17.54 MB |
horzen_v106.zip (190) | 17.24 MB |
horzen_v106_mobile.zip (171) | 17.24 MB |
horzen_v105.zip (201) | 11.95 MB |
horzen_v104.zip (287) | 16.74 MB |
Well met.
The screenshots are amazing, and the outline story of the module is neat. Very Neverwinteresque. Well done to the max.
Agree with your rationale of getting to point in the evolving story, and publishing for all of us to really enjoy, rather than code sitting alone and unloved on a hard drive.
—
Phyte: My heart has been locked for longer than I can remember.
Sharwyn: Done, and done.
—
Looks promising. Is is playable through EE?
The module was made for EE, and works just fine there. I don't know about Diamond edition, though.
It will not work in Diamond / 1.69
I had a good time running through this module. The author described it as ending on a cliffhanger, which is quite different to me than ending with things unfinished. I beat the final boss and learned more about the threat to the city. So one part of the story ended by introducing the main plotline of the next part of the story. I hope the promised sequel comes to fruition, but the module as it exists now does have an ending.
The overall story is "save the city" which isn't ground breaking, but it doesn't have to be. The backstory is interesting (a while back, the people overthrew the monarchy AND tossed the gods out for good measure, and installed new gods) even though the existential threat that looms in the background of the module (the undead are waging war against the city. Why?) is never quite explained. The world is decently sketched out with some holes that either will get filled in subsequent chapters or maybe never. And that's ok.
Here are some observations from my playthrough:
There's a custom crafting system in place. Find unique material, and a smith or enchanter can create unique items or add properties to your existing items. Some of the bosses (but also some non-bosses? Why?) drop unique materials, so I was able to choose my own rewards by enchanting the items of my choice, rather than getting a random magical item that I didn't want. I like that a lot. But it wasn't entirely consistent. Some bosses dropped random items, some dropped nothing much, and some dropped these unique materials. And some of the types of ore that the smith could use to make weapons or armor were just found in specific areas, with no need to actually earn them. And then there were the crystals. In a couple of areas, I found these crystals that could be used to add weapon enhancement or elemental damage to weapons, or various armor bonuses to items. In the first area, I found a small handful of crystals and had to decide what I wanted to enhance. However, in a second area I found DOZENS of them, and I was subsequently able to give my weapon an extra 1-4 points of every single elemental damage type. Adding a new type did not override previous damage bonuses, so I ended up with a VERY overpowered weapon that made combat a joke. For the sake of game balance, I wish that there were fewer crystals to find and that similar bonuses did not stack. So, good idea here but uneven and unbalanced execution.
I'm glad the author released it, and I'm glad I played it. It's a good module, but not (yet) a great one.
Thank you for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed! This is exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for.
Weird that the final quest wasn't being offered. I will look into this. Do you remember which of the last of those three or four main quests you turned in?
I loved that weapon with the triple elemental damage.. one thing I like about this module is that you can run through it roughshod with the 4 henchmen and your triple elemental damage weapon, just decimating everything. Or equip one of the weaker weapons and just take 1 or two henchmen along or none. About halfway through the content I took 1 henchmen and equipped a weaker weapon. I love the amount of amazing equipment in this module. It can make you overpowered but great thing is you want a challenge just equip something weaker. This module was so fun I didn't care I was overpowered. Just about story and fun. The amazing dungeons and story and so much to do even if don't want to follow the main plot. I have no idea how someone just played through it in a couple hours. I assume they missed a large amount of the content that wasn't part of the main quest which is really easy to do. I was trying to solve a side quest and ended up finding several other fairly awesome dungeons and quests. Btw carry resurrection scrolls because henchman do not come back to life nor return to the guild.
v105 is now live! I have not had much time to work on the module lately, but I have made sure to at least update spells.2da to show Beamdog's new AoE indicators. Let me know if you run into any more bugs!
I played through this module, only really taking me a couple of hours to get through. However, they were quite enjoyable. The companions all have interesting stories. I greatly enjoyed the Monk companion. The only companion that I didn't work with, was the Paladinesk companion as he wouldn't have worked well with the monk as well as my bard pc. The story itself is slightly lackluster, though the world building within it is quite magnificent to have read through. Just as other commenters have put, the idea of gods storming a city, and mortals bringing their own twist into it is very interesting. The customization of being able to summon different creatures with the summoning spells was greatly appreciated. I could also see a lot of inspiration coming from D&D 5e.
**Spoilers**
The only problem that I really had with the module was when my character had attacked one of the commanding officers, I was able to tell the first citizen about it. However the quest never ended. I'm not really sure if I missed something, or if this is a dead tree.
Another problem that I had was the constant alignment ships upon taking on the Vaerings. Thankfully it wasn't enough to affect my class, however it was still very annoying.
I greatly enjoyed being able to transfer different planes, a lot of the textures were really well done. Being able to build up a large group of allies to defend the city was interesting.
Thank you for letting me know about the bug. As of v106, it has now been fixed.
How did you remove the multiclass xp penalty? Could it be released as an override?
You can disable the multiclass XP penalty by editing classes.2da and changing the values under the XPPenalty column from 1 to 0. I believe as of version .35-40, there is a copy of classes.2da in the ovr folder in the NWN:EE directory, so you can copy that file, make said edits, and then place it into the override folder in your NWN directory under Documents.
This is great! Thanks, man!
v106 is now live! I have added a new sidequest and made significant overhauls to Ranger and Druid with the goal of bringing them in line with the other base classes. I have also been fixing bugs wherever I can find them, so let me know if you find any more.
Ahhhhhh. Doesn't work on Mobile versions! They haven't updated to the latest NWM Build. Somebody contact Beamdog and put a fire under their ass. No way they should be updating builds and leaving Android and iPhone behind. Any way to make this backwards compatible with 86.8193.34??
I admittedly do not have much experience with the mobile version of NWN. That said, I managed to slap together a version of v106 that works for .34 by manually changing the module version. Let me know if it works, or if anything breaks otherwise.
It should essentially be the same as regular EE but the issue is they haven't updated since 2022 so modules made with any newer assets/features explicit to 8193.35 may run into problems (Crimson Tides suffers from this)... Not sure that's the case here or not? I at least got your module to start, thank you. Will see if run into any issues and report back.
Double post
Okay, I give up. How to get out of the underground village? I got stuck in there completely underpowered. Ended up turning on godmode, destroyed everything including the Steel King. I still can't find the way out. The scroll won't allow me to teleport.
Edit: okay, found it. Had to use it near the runestone it seems. There was an autosave, wish it had saved outside the village instead of inside. (Save often, as recommended above!) I was way underpowered for this area and no henchmen with me, though it's true I was powerful enough to make my way to the runestone I guess by trial and error would have been possible.
Beyond this, so far the module is amazing. Romancing, henchmen with backstories, your own house with caretakers and your own live-in shopkeeper, choices that change outcomes, journal entries that clearly outline locations of objectives, unique buildings and scenery, NPCs with detailed backstories and quests, low on tricks/traps/chests/locks (good for me), multiple ways to solve quests. Epic so far, want to keep playing and not stop. Outstanding job.
I will update this post as I go
Possible bugs:
Smooth Claudis options keep giving me the option to give him Kirills head but he never actually takes it and re-gives rapier and dagger each time
Henchmen don't do as requested (identify equipment, cast buffing spells)
Offered Grandmarshall Dieter's head to Vairing boss but stayed in inventory. Not sure this is by design or.
Confusion:
Bandit cave Tafeld 2nd floor requires a key, no idea where
Is it possible to side with knights of the stag? I went across the bridge, was warned to stay away then they automatically became hostile.
Possible improvements
Tafeld Vairing map, nothing is marked (settlement, exits)
Thank you for your kind words, and for letting me know about the bug with Claudis. I tracked it down and it should be fixed in the next version of the module.
It is possible to side with the Knights of the Stag. If you have the Second Citizen's papers on you and show it to the guard, or if you have Gerhard in your party when you speak to him, then you can pass without incident.
Henchmen buffs are a bit quirky. Gerhard clearly has them, and will cast them on himself, but you are not able to ask him to cast them on you. Meanwhile, another potential companion does have buffs (Haste, Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace) that he can cast on you. I am not certain why some buffs are available and others aren't.
Henchman identify is actually working, but the problem is that none of them have sufficient Lore by themselves to identify most items, even when they sink points into Lore as part of their package. I have added a skill bonus to their identify check in the next version to compensate. In the meantime, if you feel like shilling out gold, potions of Lore will usually put you over and let you identify in bulk to boot.
Thoroughly enjoyed. Just finished. Minus couple side quests. Still confused about bandit cave (Bandit King I assume), can't get upstairs, door unlockable and unbashable and no key.
Beyond this, I'd really recommend an auto-save outside the underground village (steel king) because if stuck there low powered there's no way out unless randomly figuring out can use the scroll in a specific area. Actually that was the only way out I could find regardless even after defeating steel king. There was no clue as to how to get out of this area unless I missed something the only way is to use the scroll in the specific area. Almost gave up until randomly trying it (by the runestone in one of the buildings if I remember correct)
The other quests I will work further on (the EEF Deploys, Heart of the Forge)
Do you happen to have the henchmen creature codes? I lost one and didn't have a resurrection scroll and can't remember where the heck she is now.
Reminds me some of Prince of Thorns (Book series by Mark Lawrence. Highly recommended if you read fantasy at all)
Amazing module. Looking forward to part 2! Would be a great multiplayer module too. I would like to make small contribution to support development, I sent you an email.
I'm glad you enjoyed!
If it's the big circular gate coming out of the underground altar, the key should be the gatestone on the altar as you exit the underground village, the same one that opens the other two leading up to the bandit cave. If you lose one, the pedestal you got it from will spawn another. The other two doors are opened by a different key, but neither of them lead out of the cave.
The henchmen tag and resref should be the same as their names.
I played version 104 and was enjoying the mod but did run into a few glitches (transition areas not working...on caused a crash to desktop everytime) So I saw you had updated the mod to 106. However when I try to run the updated mod, NWN EE tells me I am missing a required HAK file. I extracted all the files in 106 and put them in the required sub directories MOD HAK and TLK. The HAK file for 106 is where it's supposed to be...any ideas?
If you look under Documents/Neverwinter Nights/logs, there is a file called nwclientLog1.txt that tells you everything you did the last time you played the game. It should tell you what .hak files you're missing if you try to run the module, get the error, and then exit out.
I had just located that file...I was missing cep2_top_2_67.hak and cep2_add_reforge.hak.
I downloaded Cep2.70 and extracted those two files to my Hak folder and your mod is working now. Thanks for your prompt answer:)
Looking forward to playing the mod again
v107 is now live! I have not had as much time to work on the module due to coursework, but if you find any new bugs, let me know and I will fix them post-haste.
Thanks for continuing the work! And thanks for releasing a .34 version to keep it compatible with Android! Looks like significantly more mobile downloads than PC!
I'm curious if work has started on part 2 at all? Just curious, no pressure. I am super impressed with 1.07. areas marked out. I think I found even more areas due to the markings but can't quite remember. I'd love to see more way points for the scroll, maybe I'm missing it, but a way point back to the main town? And multiplayer support would be incredible if it ever comes. I'd like to play with my brother. Cheers.
I have a general idea of how the next part is going to go, but I am still deciding on the best way to execute it. I also want to prioritize filling all of the empty space that I currently have with content before I wrap things up. There is a v108 in the works, but I am also focusing on dissertation work, so it may be a while before it's out.
I've come across a locked round door in the bandit cave leader's area. I've killed everyone and released the hostages. I can't find any other key. Any ideas?
The round door is opened by the gatestone you can find in a pedestal at the entrance to the Underground Altar, which you first enter after taking the stairs up in the Underground Village. If you're still having trouble finding the way out, look here once you have the gatestone and opened those first two doors.
Okay, I see. So it can't be opened from the other side. This was my confusion.
Couple of notes, regarding aether warp, I'd love to see one to the town. And more aether warp points. Some I don't understand, for example to the sunken fort in the swamp, why would I want to return there. Maybe I'm missing the point to it.
Another, I'd like to see a way to send companions back to the hiring hall. I leave them behind and then forgot where I left them.
Also maybe some possibility of resurrection rod so not losing companions when don't have resurrection scroll. I created one in console.
Also, any way to gain good/evil points? I slayed a couple citizens just to see if I could and gained 10 evil. I haven't seen any opportunity to gain good. It would be interesting if being able to gain good/evil for some decisions made. Eg avoiding a fight through pursuade... Sparing the Red Orc captain etc...
Just a few notes I thought about . Thanks
I'm happy to report that I've addressed most of these in v109:
You can now send companions back to the Hiring Hall or your manor instead of leaving them out in the field.
A wand of Raise Dead has been added. Normally you can buy an unlimited number of Raise Dead scrolls from Lurtzog once you hire him, but then I learned that Evocation-specialist wizards couldn't use Raise Dead scrolls because Raise Dead is a conjuration spell...
There are a few more interactions that add alignment points.
v108 is now live! As the new semester starts, I will not have as much time to devote to the module due to dissertation work, but I will continue working on it. As ever, let me know if anything is broken, or if you discover any new bugs. Thank you for playing!
Happy easter, folks! v109 is now live! I was going to save this for the anniversary of the module's release, but I am about to hit a busy patch with the dissertation, so I decided to release it now in order to focus on that. I have incorporated some of WouldBeBard's low-magic weapon and shield models into the module, so the .hak file is much larger. Let me know if that becomes a problem, or if you run into anything broken or bugged out. Thank you for playing and enjoy!
v110 is now live! I've added new quests, changes to Shifter and Polymorph spells, a new companion, and a host of bugfixes, quality-of-life changes, and flavor addons. I've also incorporated more of WouldBeBard's fabulous low-magic weapon models; again, let me know if the .hak size becomes a problem, or if you find anything else broken.
Of note is that the module now incorporates a new .hak file, HorzenReforged.hak. This is just a bug-fixed version of the optional Project Reforged .hak that came with CEP around ~2.67 or so. The bug in question had already been fixed around CEP 2.70, so at some point, I may end up ditching the new .hak and simply updating to 2.70.
The best. Thanks for all your work. Not many people developing modules these days. Hopeong for multiplayer some day so can play with my brother.