Thursday, April 4, 2013

Crimmor is released!

Vault link.

Now to cross my fingers and hope no one finds any gamebreaking bugs. :-)

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 1.0 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.

5 comments:

  1. Congrats on another release Kamal. However it is received, you can be proud of finishing yet another module ... simply because I know how much work goes into one.

    Lance.

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  2. Thank you for creating Crimmor. There are a lot of places to go and explore. Would you please consider making a walkthrough and post it on the Vault? Please make a walkthrough (where exactly does a character need to go to complete each quest?).

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  3. Hi, Kamal,

    I'm playing the latest release Of Crimmor, and enjoying it quite a bit. However, I've encountered a number of quest-stopping bugs that, when checking on the "Crimmor Fixed Bugs" page on your pathofevil wika page have been reported and supposedly fixed. The biggest one is the Shadowmaster not moving with my PC from Wheel Ward back to hideout in Docks Ward when I inform him that the Fell Talisman has been stolen and the appraiser killed. Is there any way to proceed with the main plot, at this point?

    Thanks,

    Dan (posting anonymously for convenience)

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  4. I enjoy this campaign, it is amazing.
    I don't know if I downloaded the right version (the neverwintervault description states it is 1.06), but I found some more bugs not listed on "fixed bugs" page.
    1. "Hemmishield something" quest doesn't point anywhere: there are no map pinpoints, no clue, which district/street one should look. I understand it is not a bug, but I couldn't find it even on other crimmor maps (http://www.realmshelps.net/faerun/cities/crimmormap.shtml for example, No. 42 is nowhere to see). I did find a noname house with some mage, bloodstained forks and basket, but the only option was "1. Leave". Maybe it is not a bug, but it is annoying to visit every location, make sure that there is no map pinpoint in any of them, and then spending hours looking at every single door and NPC to see if they are your target. (It applies to the other quests as well).
    2. The Dark Host ability growth doesn't work like a feat. There wasn't any feat at all. In my case, it was a temporary bonus that didn't stack with any other and after first rest (the arcane trickster needs to rest quite often) all the bonuses were gone. Maybe it is not a bug, but it doesn't match the description.
    3. As an arcane trickster, my char met the pre-reqs of Hidden Theurge, but didn't find any class book that grants access to this PRC, and I also don't have any journal entries for this class. BUT there was an option to charm Krimmevol clerk using Hidden Theurge and Charm Person. I used it, and encountered a bug in the dialog with a questgiver: after the line about sabotaging the books, the dialog ends (the NPC answers nothing to that, PC line is the last in that dialog). I tried starting the dialog with other quests from that NPC, and they were completed normally. I decided to say "that's all i could do", and then suddenly ALL three quest were marked as "you reported your failure" (even if they were marked as successfully completed and gold/xp was given) and there are no other quests from that NPC or from the same dead drop available. I completed the quest before the dark host.

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  5. 4. I visited the moonless vault just for exploration and found there a clue to the main quest and four thugs. After a couple of in-game days I was exploring purse ward and accidentally found an armor of Namarch guard. I found Namarch in his estate, then the item, and then showed it to my guildmaster. When I visited the appraiser at night (breaking the lock, of course), he wasn't there (but he was there before the quest started, telling me he's the appraiser and nothing more). I waited till the morning and returned, but again he wasn't there. I also didn't search for the "maintenance men", in case that matters.
    5. I found some Enclave scroll while exploring and brought it to the translator. I gave him money, the scroll, but didn't get the scroll back. After the deal, the dialog goes just like it was going before. Maybe it's not a bug too, and he said something like 'come back in a week', but I don't remember it.

    It is obviously not a bug, but there are not many magic scrolls available (but there are many potions of nearly any spell). Wizard/arcane tricksters have to learn all the necessary spells before starting the module.
    It is also not a bug, but you can kill any NPC and it may stop all the quests with that NPC. But you will not know of it until you take the quest with them. Maybe you can make the journal entry like "you fool, you killed the main quest npc, reload now", or make them invulnerable to all attacks.
    There are also some questions:
    Is it possible to use the spell scrolls as a hidden theurge (like in Wizard's apprentice 2)?
    Is it possible to use mass charm monster, dominate monster, hiss of sleep, and other high level mind-affecting spells as a hidden theurge (from spell scrolls too)?
    Is it possible to provoke all the commoners on the street to fight me and kill them with a wail of banshee to increase FPS?:)

    Sorry for all the errors, and many thanks for creating this interesting city!

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