Glad to hear that since I hope to play it someday. Regarding non-NWN:EE, I have a vivid memory of that cut-scene in HotU where the vampire mage (always the toughest class of opponents for me to beat in NWN and its modules) dramatically makes his entrance. The first time i played the expansion, I found him truly invincible and actually had to flee the encounter. 2nd time I played HotU, he was my bitch. I wonder what I did right.
Probably just better meta game knowledge, first time I played through swordflight I was getting stomped, second time, years later, it felt easier.
Yeah, nothing like a great ball of Greater Dispel Magic or Mordenkainen's Disjunction thrown at even the evilest and toughest NWN magic-users to take the piss, the shit, and the vinegar out of them to make them fodder for even your shortest of short swords. I tended to underuse my arsenal of counter-magic spells in my early days of playing NWN.
People make too much of this, as well as with companions for that matter. I did all the content with a companion and was never lacking in XP, I was not max level at the end of the game, (lvl 16) but I also didn't need to be. As for summons, it's not as if you'll be using them for every encounter, but they mostly trivialize the tougher ones.
It doesn't fucking matter because anything that got a single level less than you isn't going to give shit, going single-classed without any summon will just give you 1 ahead anyone else at most.
Ordering of quest should matter even more, I ended up with a level more on my dual-classed characters compared to a sigle classed one, probably because I did things a bit different.
Much of NWN's combat is typically set up using Encounters, which are configurable spawns that will, within the set boundaries, scale to the estimated challenge rating of the player's party. They're used widely from the OC to Swordflight, though to varying degrees, to control for non-linear progression, variable party size and co-op.
It probably happened to me quite a lot, especially for boss or difficult encounter, given how useless most of the henchman are.
Usually, encounter triggers are set up in relatively close proximity to the spawn point, like on a funneling corridor or in front of a door, so unless your associates kick the bucket or you're deliberately dismissing summons during combat, it's unlikely to turn out that way.
that was what I was implying,
Awesome find, man, thanks for sharing! Straight from the horse's mouth with what NWN was about, quite telling that they start the presentation with the Toolset and it's a lot of fun seeing the old interfaces. Also, is it me or were some of those spell effects more "spectacular" in that early build? Reckon they were too distracting or it was necessary to optimise stuff here and there?
I replayed all the NWN EE campaigns about 12 months ago and I really had a good time, the expansions like HotU are better than the OC but thats a minor criticism
