David Gaider, Designer

About Oooze

Quote: Were oozes and the like discussed and played with during the development phase of nwn or were they just axed right off the bat?

They were probably discussed, but there are only so many creatures that we have art time to develop. Like other sorts of models that require special consideration, they will always be the first to be put on the back-burner if there are others we can do first.

Quote: I am just a bit perplexed how a basic monster such as this would not be taken into consideration when building the game engine.

Is this a basic monster? Everyone has a different opinion on which creatures are more important than others... how important are slimes and jellies, relatively? More important than kobolds? Those weren't in the original NWN. More important than hobgoblins and manticores? Those just got added. More important than beholders and mind flayers? Those haven't even been done yet. So we're working on it. If an easier way to do them is dicovered that isn't too time-intensive and it looks good, we may see them yet, who knows?

Regarding Portraits

As far as portraits go, our experience has been that the number of them we do is largely irrelevant... there will still never be enough to satisfy everyone. We could include, say, three portraits that we think should satisfy for monks... and there is certain to be a thread eventually that goes "What?! NO MONK PORTRAITS?!". After all... what does a monk look like? How about a paladin? How about a rogue? Yes, yes, I'm sure you all have ideas... and that's the point, because they'll all be different. Now, I agree that putting in custom portraits could be easier (it's my understanding that the Live Team is looking at that for the near future), but insofar as tsk tsking us for not including race X/class Y/alignment Z -type portraits (or your particular slant thereof)... I'm afraid there's probably not much we can do about that, sorry.

Henchmen Wizards

Quote: I'm just curious, can we expect a henchmen wizard in the toolset for SoU? With all of the improvements on henchman I think it would be expected, but I'm just curious.

Nope. Henchman are a feature of the official campaigns, not of the toolset. Seeing as dialogue needs to be written to make them even minimally functional, I'm not sure how easy it would be to make a "henchman wizard", per se, even if we wanted to.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Patch 1.30 Info

Quote: From the threads I read and exchanges I have had with various devs it was said xp1/patch 1.30 would be more a feature extension then a bug fix as thats the point of a XP.

Correct, but that doesn't mean we won't fix bugs that crop up while we are developing an expansion pack, especially if they directly affect the expansion.

Quote: Now I see the patch 1.30 read me and I am VERY confused. Theres a TON of fixes that many dont seem directly related the the content in XP1.

Correct. The Live Team worked on bug fixes since the release of 1.29 for about 2 months. We were just about to release the next Update when we entered the code freeze. This action didn't mean that we lost those 2 months of work, just that the release was delayed.

Quote: I was under the impression from what people like Derek said and such that patches were mostly for a later date.

Correct. Any bugs reported in the last month will go into the 1.31 Update and aren't part of the 1.30 Update.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

Playing a Harper in SoU

I agree the Harper is a great character for someone who wants to do more roleplaying. Having a spy-type character is pretty useless unless you play a certain level of roleplaying in your campaign. If there is nothing but waves of monsters the Harper is pretty useless compared to other classes. It really depends on your party and you DM and what sort of game you are playing.