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Sinister Sweetwater Cider
v1.1.2 (See changelog)
by Mark Romphf
Level: 1
Players: 1 - 3 (Single party)
Class: Any
Race: Any
Alignment: Any (Leaning lawful)
Length: 5 - 8 hours
Your journeys have led you to the mountainous hills of Sweetwater Valley, where municipal leadership seeks to expand settlements to the unmapped southern region. To earn some money and learn the land, you've taken a contract from the regional guard to scout the area and report any disturbances.
As your assignment concludes and you begin your return to headquarters, you discover a new beverage becoming popular in the valley: Sweetwater Cider. It's fresh, it's delicious, it's everywhere! But there may be more to this beverage than first taste. It seems like those who drink it are becoming violently ill. Or worse.
Is it a coincidence, or is there something sinister about Sweetwater Cider that could swell into a disaster that devastates the valley?
HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS
Your gear will be replaced when you first enter the module.
There are two NPC party members available: a rogue and a cleric. Maximum one henchman per player.
The XP respawn penalty has been removed.
Resting is prohibited in some areas. Look for safe rooms!
Disarming most traps yields XP.
For multiplayer games, a single party is recommended. The module's behavior in multi-party or PvP games is undefined. DM not required.
Most undead mobs have had their immunity to sneak attacks and critical hits removed. Go nuts.
No formal support for crafting or mounts.
Re: Artificial Intelligence. The cover image was generated by DALL-E. All text and dialogue in the module was handwritten without the use of a large language model.
Thanks to my pal Kevin for helping with graphic design, and my pal Anthony for playtesting.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Sinister Sweetwater Cider 1.1.2 (0) | 2.15 MB |
| Sinister Sweetwater Cider 1.1 (0) | 2.15 MB |
| Sinister Sweetwater Cider 1.0 (157) | 2.02 MB |
 Roadmap | 282 bytes |
| Changelog | 322 bytes |
I'm diggin' the box art
!
Thanks!
I tried to mimic the Advanced D&D modules from the 80s (specifically, Cult of the Reptile God)
Wondering what the criteria is for showing up on the "New Community Content" landing page, or being listed in the "New Modules" sidebar?
You need to edit this page, checking the box near the top right marked "If this is a first release and this is *not* a migration, check this box to promote the project to the "New" page"
I'm embarressed I missed that.
Thank you, Proleric! That was incredibly helpful.
Well met.
Neat story description. And neat areas in the screenshots. Looking forward to this. Downloaded.
A cider pearl to you.
—
Phyte: My heart has been locked for longer than I can remember.
Sharwyn: Done, and done.
—
Looks awesome!
Sounds and looks mighty interesting! :D I'll definitely be check it out when I find the time! :)
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Birger's NWN 1 Hall of Fame Awarded DARK FANTASY Stories:
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Nice, fairly well done. Worth a couple of playthru's with different classes
Thank you for playing and voting!
More quests coming in v1.1
--Mark
This was a really well-polished dungeon crawl with a good variety of encounters and obstacles. The only bug I noticed was the vanishing powder item, which seemed to come with zero charges. Enjoyed this a lot.
Just played this with my favorite paladin build. I wouldn't say I had an EASY time (as the description says) but it sure was fun.
Areas were nicely sized. A few small ones, a few medium sized ones, and no mindless trekking through too-big ones. Excellent!
Combat was pretty fair for the most part, especially at lower levels. Not a ton of gear, but that's ok. A few +1 weapons here and there. A couple of +2 attack weapons (one looted, one quest reward), and two weapons with elemental damage near the end.
I took the rogue henchman to deal with some locks and traps. He had nothing to say, but at least he took care of the traps and at least I could poke around his inventory.
One major bug. At two separate points in the module (hobgoblin mines and final dungeon), my holy water just vanished from my inventory. I had to respawn it with the debug command. But otherwise, the module played pretty cleanly.
Took a few hours to go from level 1 to level 7. Had a blast. Well worth playing, and the author is promising more side quests in future versions, so likely will be worth replaying.
Your holy water vanished? woof. Straight to the top of the bug list. Thank you for pointing that out!
The npc companions are tragically underwritten. Further developing backstory, banter, and their own quests is top priority for v1.1
Thanks for the review, glad you had fun!
(Perhaps I overestimated the power of the paladin. Would you recommend I remove that disclaimer?)
--Mark
Short but sweet, excellent use of journal entries.
Just finished a run with a paladin and I recomend to anyone who wants an mow down fodder with turn undead and Bless Weapon
Excellent module. Very enjoyable from end to end. I strongly recommend anyone who likes a low level module to give this on a shot.
Love the classy box art!
I enjoyed an open world nature of the module - there's a comfy central hub area (my favorite place in the adventure, feels like a safe heaven when the apocalypse is raging all around it) and a bunch of locations and quests surrounding it that you can tackle in any order. So you can pick your own difficulty.
Limited resting made my cleric playthrough more enjoyable so I had to actually think about the spell choice and buff durations instead of just full buffing every encounter. Dungeon crawling was interesting enough - each dungeon had its own enemy compositions and there's a new type of environmental object - Shrines that provide full healing and temporal buffs in exchange for Holy Water (I though it was limited because I lost my Holy Water Bottle after like 5-6 shrines, but apparently it's a bug. Another bug I've encountered is an Invisibility magic item always having 0 charges.).
There's a few neat magic weapons you can find, I was lucky to Weapon Focus into the battle axe (the more 3.5 modules I play, the more I hate the stupid implementation of this feat in NWN).
Companions are pretty barebones, but at least we made a killer duo clearic team with one of them, so can't complain.
Thanks to everyone who's played and voted! I'm so glad people are having fun with the mod.
Here's the changelog for the new versions. The holy water bug should be addressed and the companions each get their own side quest.
Overall a fun little adventure to experience. Made a Human Fighter and didn't have much issue completing everything. The fights are balanced well enough for much of the adventure.
- Had one bug, the disappearing Holy Water (like others have reported). Easy to fix with a few commands in DM mode. Otherwise no other problems that I experienced.
- The basic vendor needs more/all common nonmagical weapons at the main town. I was focus in Greatswords and I didn't get one until 3/4 of the adventure was over.
- Maps are serviceable if maybe a little dull for some of them.
That said, worthy of a download for sure!
*SPOILERS*
I started to play this with a friend two weeks ago, and we were very impressed with the quality, especially considering that we had tried so many allegedly multiplayer compatible modules before that weren't really suited for MP, while this one worked perfectly and was a lot of fun.
We only found two bugs:
- the Holy Water disappearing is still a thing. I think for us it was the shrine in the mausoleum of Little River
- the barracks in Upper Valley grant 150 xp each time you enter them, not just the first time
Unfortunately, we're hopelessly stuck now, in what feels like close to the end. We've destroyed the mountain pass gate and could move one, but we're no closer to resolving the whole cider and zombie business and don't even have any leads. We feel like we've been everywhere and explored thoroughly, but we must have missed something because we still haven't found Valley Chronicles vol. 2, the fertilizer, "hardened glass that forms a head", and the ghost we summoned by solving a puzzle had nothing but dialogue to offer, about things we already knew. And we can attack and kill the wizard in the Gravelands tower, but it doesn't seem connected to any quest and he drops no loot (btw, is it intentional that his minions will stay neutral if we attack and kill him?).
Any advice?
PS: Oh, also, there was a locked door down in the lower level of the crypts that could be attacked but took forever to break down, and behind it were just two chests with average loot. That didn't feel quite right either.
PPS: And in case that's relevant, we played without the companions. Me a cleric, my friend a sorcerer.
Oh no! Sorry you got stuck. Here are a few points to unstick yourself.
The fertilizer is in the shed on the Forsworth Orchards map. And the Valley Chronical vol. 2 is on a bookshelf in the upper floor of the Forsworth Manor.
The "hardened glass that forms a head" refers to an item called the Warp Skull. This is dropped by a mob called the Vengeful Visage, in the Chamber of Fury in the Lower Tombs.
Thanks for pointing out the other bugs and issues. Do you mind me asking which version you were playing? I'll tackle these in the next update.
Thanks for the super quick reply! I think we're on the latest version, downloaded two weeks ago. At least the time stamp on the module file is Oct 28th. Or is there a better way to find out?
Version number should be listed at the top of the module description.
It says v1.1.2.
Thought for sure I'd solved the holy water bug. How embarressing
Thanks for the feedback!
I was able to confirm now that all the missing things are still there in our savegame and we did indeed overlook them. I can only explain it like this:
- We're both very thorough and play systematically, but we have no clear looting system apart from "whoever is closest/gets there first". I guess in the case of the book, we might actually have missed looting this particular shelf among all the other containers, because we both thought the other had taken care of it already. Another possibility is that we did not notice the book was special enough to pick up because we went there before even finding the crossroads and getting the quest, and there were a lot of other lore books. But we picked up all the others regardless, so it's more likely we overlooked the whole shelf container.
- In the case of the fertilizer, we overlooked the whole shed indeed. Possibly because contrary to all other things of interest and importance in the module, it has no map pin.
- Not sure how it could happen that we didn't loot the skull, but apparently we did leave it on the floor, not noticing the remains it was contained in. I assume it was the spectre that dropped it? Maybe we did not perceive it as a mini boss and there were still lots of other opponents left to distract from its remains during the fight. It's possible that immediately after the fight my friend playing the sorcerer had to backtrack to rest and I followed, and after resting we didn't go back there.
It's unusual for us to overlook loot, but I guess it can happen. Sometimes two players see more than one, sometimes, apparently, they also miss more than one would. And if that happens, it can be overwhelming to have to search the whole module for what we missed, especially when we're under the impression that we've already looted everything there was to loot and have no clue where to start. So thanks a lot for your quick and detailed help, we should be able to continue now! :)
This is very helpful, thank you!
Important drops being overlooked is always a concern. I have some ideas about how to mitigate the risk going forward (redundant drops, map notes, npc hints, etc), so I'll apply effort into addressing this in the next version.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the mod!
* SPOILERS *
We managed to finish the module tonight, thanks! Some more things we noticed:
- When we completed the researcher's quest, she gave one of us 500 gp. When we completed the farmer's quest, he gave both of us 150 gp. I don't know if the rule in MP is supposed to be that only the speaker gets the gold reward or whether all players are supposed to get it, but apparently it's not consistently the same with all quests.
- Very minor thing, because you shouldn't be drinking it in the first place, but if you have a stack of cider and drink one bottle, the whole stack will vanish along with it.
- When the module ends, characters don't get exported automatically for the next adventure. I guess it's just a matter of preference, after all you can still do it manually, but there are players who appreciate when modules do it automatically or are even disappointed when they don't.
- Was Mr. Buttons just a joke or was there a use for the doll?
- Now the major thing: For us, the main quest didn't really work. The final battle was fun, and then we destroyed the thing just because we could and suspected it might be the right thing. But we had never found a connection between Mars and the events in the crypt. We just went back to him, because what he said about experimentation on children didn't sit right with my friend and he wanted him dead for that. But suddenly the dialogue had changed and we could tell him that we destroyed the thing, without having a good reason to do so, in-character, because we knew nothing of his involvement. Just that Benjamin Forsworth half incriminated him, but then wouldn't tell us the whole story. It felt like there was a whole chunk of the story we were missing there. That last dialogue with Mars was as if we were supposed to know a lot more than we actually did. Killing him also wasn't related to any quest, there was no journal entry or anything, and Mars dropped no loot. The fight with him felt entirely optional. My friend suggested that maybe we should have talked to the ghost at the puzzle location first, after defeating the boss and before talking to Mars, so I reloaded an earlier savegame, but the ghost had nothing new to say. Did we miss something there as well? Was the ghost just there to share a bit of lore or did he have another purpose? That felt a bit pointless after solving the puzzle. And we never really learnt how the events in the crypt were related to the cider, how it was spread etc. Only hints from Benjamin. I don't know how much of this confusion is due to us not getting the full story because we had to share it between us two players, but I don't think it was only that. I suspect the module at some points (like the last Mars dialogue) assumed things about our knowledge that we didn't really have.
So, we weren't fans of the main story because it seemed a bit half-baked and predictable to us, with a quite abrupt ending, but that being said, we liked everything else about the module, and I will write a positive review some time this week. It's clear that you put a lot of effort and passion into it and it's very, very impressive, especially if this is a debut. We didn't expect this kind of quality and length from a newly released module that I never heard about and it deserves all the attention it can get. :)
I accept all criticisms regarding the plot. I developed a lot of the main quest as/after I was building the levels and it shows in the end result. Lesson learned for future projects. Your feedback will be helpful for fleshing out the story in future versions of this module.
The Forgotten Priest you summoned was the conclusion of one of the npc companion side quests. The companions were never intended to be mandatory, but I can see how this would be a non-sequitur. You’ve inspired me to provide a reward for completing this puzzle regardless.
Mr. Buttons? Never heard of him ;)
Oh, I see. Maybe I should try and replay the module in single player with companions one time, to get the full picture. Thanks for your replies, I'm glad you found my comments helpful!
Working to ship v1.2 on Sat Dec 7
A very pleasant surprise! A friend and me started it on a whim, after having several bad experiences with supposedly MP compatible classic HoF modules and my friend asking whether there are still new modules getting released for NWN. Seeing that this looks like a debut, we totally expected it to be full of rookie mistakes, bugs and typos, but then found it to be full of extremely polished and mostly well made content that was able to entertain us for about three weekends. And contrary to those classics, it actually worked perfectly fine in multiplayer and seemed very well thought through in this regard. I'd go as far as to say, if someone asked me for an entertaining module to play in co-op mode, this might now be in my top 5 of all times. And this is why:
- It has a very open approach, in that it's a series of connected maps that you can explore at your own leisure and pace. You can go whereever you want to, and it's totally up to you what you focus on, whether you rush ahead to try and get where you're supposed to be due to your assignment, or explore off the path. All areas stay accessible until the end as well, and there are several "open world" side quests to keep you busy.
- The areas had just the right size and were designed with care. They were all memorable, and while, due to the open nature of the module, there was some backtracking involved, the author made sure to provide means to alleviate this, in the form of unlockable shortcuts and cheap town portal scrolls. So in the end, you can get everywhere within a minute or two, at max. And whenever we began to feel that we had to backtrack a bit much in order to rest, immediately after we discovered that we should have trusted the module and went just a little bit further to discover a safe resting space instead. The areas also had some very nice details that could easily be overlooked without much loss, but were a delight to discover. Call it little secrets that reward exploration and a keen eye.
- The encounters were varied and well balanced. We really enjoyed all combat in this module, from trash mobs to boss battles. It never got tedious, and it was all quite manageable, never frustrating (we played on Normal difficulty).
- Of course, with all the undead in the module, it helped a lot that I was playing a cleric. I rarely felt as powerful as a low level character as I did here, and it was also fun because it fit our roleplay. But, from what I've seen, the module caters very nicely to other classes as well. Rogues have the sneak attack immunity on undead opponents removed and will find many locks and traps to deal with (and while our cleric/sorcerer party was a bit less appreciative of the abundance of traps in some areas, I noticed that they were all laid out in such a way that careful players can find ways around them). Areas also had quite a few neutral animals of all kind, fitting the environment, supposedly to cater to druid's and ranger's Animal Empathy.
- We both found interesting equipment for our characters, either as loot drops, treasure or affordable store items. The economy in the module also seemed well balanced.
- Last but not least, there were a few optional puzzles that were nicely done. Not really difficult but not without challenge either, and accompanied by rewarding effects when solved.
- The only thing that didn't fully convince us was the main plot. There were no real surprises there, not just because it seemed like very simple and standard fantasy fare with predictable villains, but also because the name and description of the module give so much away already. And it didn't make all that much sense to us either, although we might have missed a few things here and there. On its own, all text in the module was quite well written and without typos, the story just didn't actually draw us in. Personally, I didn't really mind that though because there was enough content, atmosphere and delightful exploration to hook me regardless.