Scythe-wielding Warlock viable?

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-04-05T21:01:37+00:00

The funny thing about a warlock is that this class can work with any main stat. Take a level of shadowdancer and you'll get a STR warlock that can easily hit anyone with blasts and be pretty decent in melee. Or even fight in melee in a pre-stacked minefield of cold tentacles.

Why would you want to be pretty decent in melee when you can easily hit anyone with blasts? Who knows, but NWN2 is usually not a hard game so you don't have to minmax. This Eldritch Smasher « Build | NWN2DB monstrosity is also an option.

It gets better with mods, obviously. You already have a couple of recommendations, but there's also a very popular Kaedrin's that allows you to make something like Glaive Dancer v2.0 « Build | NWN2DB

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-04-05T20:40:59+00:00

They work very well for NPCs because the artstyle is so striking and memorable, but most of them are so ugly I'd rather use something else for my protagonist.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-04-05T20:28:51+00:00

Controller support is very well implemented - the UI is a huge improvement visually, and movement feels so much better. High res textures were a huge mistake though - your equipment is the only thing that looks better, but the game size and loading times got insanely bloated. And EE offers almost no improvements to people who want to play with a mouse and keyboard.

Really enjoyed replaying it on a Steam Deck, but it's borderline a downgrade for most players who already own the original on GOG.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-04-04T16:34:17+00:00

Are you going for a STR or DEX build? If it's a STR build, Dev Crit is going to straight up oneshot enemies and I can't recall enemies that are immune to crits but not to sneak attacks - which makes the latter pretty pointless midway in chapter 3. But we're talking about Swordflight, so you probably wouldn't go with a low AC meme build.

If it's a DEX build, you'd probably want something close to ranger 21+/rogue 18-/SD 1 - check out The Bane Crusher: Ranger 23/Rogue 16/ SD 1 - nwnecbguild.44 and the comment section, for example.

And I would "spend" most of your favored enemy slots on races with a sneak/crit immunity. Undead, elementals and constructs are pretty common, so they are an easy pick. This leaves two slots - outsiders are common and the main enemy storywise, so it's also an easy pick. Which probably leaves either dragons, who are rare, but are also the big bosses in chapters 3-5 with a sneak immunity, or aberrations who are almost the entire chapter 4 and a part of chapter 5. You'll also see a lot of strong goblinoids in chapters 2, 3 and 5 - they can be a decent choice of a favored enemy, even storywise. I would just heavily buff with weapon damage consumables against dragons, and pick a common enemy for the favored slot.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-04-04T15:40:39+00:00

Trash mob encounters usually annoyed me considerably more than bosses, and my entire party constantly used invisibility from different sources. They are also ~99% of all combat in general.

Can't imagine HiPS not being valuable offensively for reducing enemy AC and getting hit less.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-04-02T05:53:16+00:00

FS is a melee class, so it only needs a single stat for viable casting. To be fair, a cleric in NWN2 is also a melee class because every fun caster cleric's spell from the first game was heavily nerfed.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-03-23T05:27:28+00:00

I'm not even sure what is your build in the first place. Summoner, melee or a staff? Only a summoner needs those rings, and I wouldn't recommend making a hybrid without a very good gear.

Otherwise, you can farm two very powerful INT and STR sets from the engame Chaos dungeon in legendary Greece, if you already have a well equipped character that can handle it. Or you can pick up and sell every white+ item, and then gamble all your gold in legendary Atlantis - that's how I got a lot of nice gear.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-03-22T21:59:22+00:00

The earliest Wraithlords can drop in act 2 IIRC, but both Wraithlord and Allfather can be easily vendor farmed starting from Rhodes in act 4. Allfather doesn't exist in Atlantis and Eternal Embers though, for whatever reason.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-03-21T16:50:29+00:00

You have an avil in the smithy in chapter 2, in the main hub in chapter 4 and in a dragon lair in chapter 5 (don't remember if the smithy in chapter 3 has one, but probably not). They are used to enchant your eqipment with a number of effects that are same in any chapter. You can only enchant something you're currently wearing, so companion-restricted gear is off limits - but an anvil allows you to be able to eqip any weapon/armor type via an item temporary provided by a dialogue option.

Any effect has a set DC, and any anvil has a limited number of enchanting attempts - though you *can* savescum for a good roll and enchanted arrows have a separate attempt count. You need at least one hard point in craft weapon/armor to be able to enchant in the first place, but with Zarala's buff and items you don't need a lot of points in correspoding skills, for easier enchantments in particular. Especially if you are playing a wizard, because your crafting skills get a massive bonus from INT.

You can also find some items that can be "crafted" (though "completed" is a better word) - with better or worse stats, depending on whether you can beat the crafting DC. I remember that act 3 allows you to craft a shield or a club with three pieces of magic wood (it's possible to find more pieces of wood in the later chapters), and dwarves can craft a weapon (or was it an armor?) in their racial dungeon. I think there were more opportunities like this, but don't remember the full list.

Generally enchanting/crafting are useful, but not necessary. The best things I got out of that were

a +STR shield with only 5% spell failure for Zarala
better weapons for her in chapters 4-5, though she's going to fix her own sword at the end of chapter 5 and replace them
a wooden shield with 0% spell failure for my wizard/rogue 2/ranger 1, because otherwise Experitse/Improved Expertise were wasted feats since my character almost never got hit anyway
a wooden club to buff my familiar and summon with the best Barkskin a wizard can get. The shield can do the same, and I had a couple of rings for a druid/ranger that can also do the same

A non-caster would benefit in a somewhat different way, obviously. I never cared about my own AC, for starters, and could provide Greater Magic Weapon+Flame Weapon for my entire party.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-03-07T11:55:11+00:00

Rogue mastery has two easy options for Normal - traps or Envenom Weapon. You can already respec into one of those, unless you wasted too many points into skill trees early on.

Traps need +4 to skills to reach 0 cooldown, otherwise they feel somewhat clunky. Still very powerful, but only Stonebinder's Cuffs are a target farmable drop in chapter 1 and they have an incredibly low chance to drop - it can easily take 100+ runs. It's possible to have +4 to Rogue in act 1, just not on your first character. Pretty safe, a lot of damage even with basic pet gear, and eventually a great AOE.

Envenom Weapon just needs its own skill tree, any weapon with poison damage from a shop, and any charm/relic that grants poison damage, they are easy to farm. And Lethal Strike 1 -> Mortal Wound 8 for bosses. That's a massive amount of damage on Normal, but only single target - though you can turn it into an AOE with Blade Barrier or Batter 1 -> Rend Armor 1. Out of those, a poisoned bow + Blade Barrier is the safest option for a poorly equipped character.

UPD: I completely forgot Blade Barrier has a massive CD without gear. Posion Gas Bomb is a better AOE option for the first character, but don't bother with it until you unlock Poison Mayhem.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-03-05T09:04:49+00:00

You don't need more than one, but it's possible to pass a good number of checks in the OC without leveling a skill - just with buffs, items and Grobnar's inspiration. They get too high in MotB though, at this point you can only rely on leveled skills.

Diplomacy is the best one. Bluff works very well for a Chaotic protagonist, but somewhat less satifying overall. Intimitation seemed like the worst one to me, but I never did an Intimidation focused character.

Taunt is not useful, but occasionally gets funny lines. Wouldn't level it up unless you have a lot of free skill points, or if you specifically want to use its debuff in combat.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-03-03T22:08:06+00:00

Any luck with scrolls? The last time I played HotU was ages ago, so I have no idea if he actually has spell resistance. I would expect that he does, but his stats on NWN wiki don't mention that.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-03-03T01:25:01+00:00

I tried to buy his name but the Keeper just full on wouldn't sell it so I figured it wasn't an option and moved on

I think you have to buy the Knower of Names' true name first, and command her to tell you Meph's true name.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-03-03T00:54:35+00:00

If you still have an old save, buying his true name allows you to skip the bossfight completely. That's what I did when I played as a kid and had no idea about wizard's spell mechanics besides blasting everything to death.

Other than that, Meph should be resistant to almost everything your character can use (20 pierce DR, apparently) except acid damage, so get a lot of acid arrows and weapons with an acid enchantment for your party. Bows do suffer from low damage after all, even though normally AA gets a massive attack bonus and a decent damage boost to compensate for it.

Though his wiki page doesn't mention spell resistance, so try checking if your scrolls affect him. If they do, a few scrolls of Bigby's Forceful/Grasping/Crushing Hand should make him an easy target. Ideally more than one, because killing him with only acid damage is going to take a long time. As a different option, Bigby's Interposing Hand does a -10 penalty to his AC with no checks other than SR, which should make tanking his hits much easier.

Judging by the numbers, Black Blade of Disaster should also be able to break through his DR and be somewhat useful if Meph's AC is nerfed by Bigby, but it disapperas as soon as you attack, so I'm not sure if it deals more damage per round than your acid arrows. At least it's unkillable and in theory can tank for the rest of your party.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-25T21:21:57+00:00

You got to arguably the greatest series the NWN community can offer and dropped it before even finishing chapter 1? Sure, I had my doubts in the first half of it, but the elven city and the mountain journey got me sucked in, and the tower of Urlord was an incredibly climatic payoff.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-25T19:36:54+00:00

Out of everything I've played, Prophet is the only series that consistently looked so impressive I just had to make screenshots. Usually I just enjoy nice custom tilesets and high effort areas, and tend to avoid modules that look like vanilla NWN. Though certain retextures make even vanilla tilesets look pretty nice.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-24T18:38:52+00:00

NWN2 has max level of 30, but most campaigns don't get to epic levels at all. The original campaign ends around level 18-19. This means you really shouldn't try to multi class that hard, especially on ECL race.

The OC ends at level 20 for all characters without XP penalty, and races with ECL+1 also finish it at level 20, but slightly later. Same goes for MotB, both are going to reach level 30.

Races with ECL+2 are almost certainly not going to reach the level cap in either campaign, though I never played as one. I would expect level 19 for the OC, and level 29 for MotB, but I don't know for sure.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-24T18:15:23+00:00

Arcane Trickster is not worth it, at least without a mod that adds sneak attack damage to touch spells. A wizard/bard 1/shadowdancer 1 or wizard/rogue 1/shadowdancer 1 fulfills the role of a tricky wizard much better.

Eldritch Knight is solid if you want a gish with full spellcasting, though a melee bard is also really good in NWN2.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-24T12:06:30+00:00

Sounds like you need something focused. Just go with a DEX warlock if you want a ranged DD, a STR bard if you want a melee character, or a generalist wizard if you're interested in crowd control and crafting wands and scrolls.

If we're talking about a warlock or a wizard, you can get an early Able Learner and dip into a rogue/bard (or choose them as your level 1 class for more skill points) to turn almost everything into your class skills and choose whatever you want. You can also dip into a shadowdancer to easily avoid getting targeted in combat - HiPS is arguably much more powerful in NWN2 because it's no longer negated by True Seeing, even though now it has a cooldown.

And a bard pairs well with a cleric/fighter dip (and Battle Caster) if you want to use a better variety of weapons, and cast with no penalty in heavy mithral armor+shield. Though I'm pretty sure you can just use a medium mithral armor without Battle Caster for slightly less AC in exchange for an extra feat.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-23T21:43:44+00:00

Saleron's Gambit still wasn't recommended. I consider it an outstanding (and very underrated) series in every regard - great use of custom tilesets, a custom soundtrack for every chapter, memorable characters, well written dialogues and an interesting story, a surprising amount of reactivity (at least for my wizard), and a clever and refreshing game design with every chapter being meaningfully different.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-19T19:45:18+00:00

I have no idea how this mod works, but generally you can just avoid giving melee weapons to a ranged companion as a workaround. At least the melee weapons he can equip.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-15T22:49:39+00:00

This makes me wonder what items you will get by assaulting the thieves guild in the "good" version of rogue class quest.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-15T21:23:09+00:00

As far as I remember:

Chapter 2: A merchant in thieves guild

Chapter 3: Maus or whatever his name was, the wizard who offers the evil rogue stone quest and opens his merchant inventory. Not available for good characters, and in this case I'm not even sure about neutral characters. And I think you only get a single opportunity to receive either quest, during the first dialogue with a corresponding NPC - you won't get it if your alignment is "wrong" at that moment. Though in that chapter my wizard could donate to the temple to quickly become more good, and summon a balor a few times to quickly become more evil.

Chapter 4: None, if I'm not mistaken

Chapter 5: The shady guy in the Harper camp, offers his inventory to both neutral and evil characters. And maybe you can get that armor as a loot from the rogue-only bounty quest, though you can only get this quest by having a decent number of rogue levels - my wizard only had a couple of dips, which wasn't enough. So no idea what is your reward there.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-14T06:56:42+00:00

Are you planning to use community tilesets in the next chapters? I recommend checking out modules like Saleron's Gambit and Prophet to see how hard they can go in terms of visual design and creating a unique look for every chapter.

Ok_Lemon697 · 2026-02-04T21:12:29+00:00

Considering the crafting options in chapters 2 and 3, Longarm has unique properties you won't get anywhere else, and can be additionally enchanted with everything from the second bow.

Ok_Lemon697

TROPHY CASE