Unofficial patches, content, avatar packs - Things that enhance the base game, while still leaving it the base game, but better.

What's out there?

The big one - literally - is the Community Expansion Pack, or CEP.

Latest version is here: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Hakpaks.Detail&id=7849

The CEP is only useful for modules that explicitely use it. It won't change the official campaigns or modules which don't use the CEP.

On the other hand, there's NWNCQ, which has an override version (meaning that it replaces original resources, like models, textures and tilesets, with new ones) :

NWNCQ

There's also NWShader, which adds modern graphics effects by hooking into the NWN 3D engine :

NWShader

forgot the camera mod (unlocks the camera distance and angles). With this, you can play NWN using a first person view.

camera mod

Linux version

Awesome, thanks.

Customize Character Override Hak - Lets you customize your characters look and the appearance of your equipment in game. Great if you don't want to have your character look like a clown with all the different looking items on him (and you won't need to buy dye anymore). Plus it works with override-folder only, so no difficult installation required. :)

Played around with this, but (unless I've missed something) the first person view is pretty tough to work with. Rotating the camera doesn't rotate your character, and you still have to hold down the mousewheel to enable mouselook. Maybe there are some console commands to permanently turn on mouselook, and to bind left/right movement of the mouse to the "turn left/turn right" drive controls, and to eliminate the delay in turning left and right, but that's beyond me just at the moment.

this. is. AWESOOOMEEE.

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So it is. Naturally...if you want to play on a server or a module you need to have thoose HAK files that are necessary for that one.

(HAK files are custom content or overrides.)

There are however some "standard" HAK files that almost everyone theese days have. I would say they are:

- CEP
http://nwvault.ign.com/?dir=cep/downloads

- Project Q
http://www.qnwn.net/

- Worms tilesets
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Hakpaks.Detail&id=59802&id=6631

- and probably a couple more tilesets

As I said though...you will have to download what you need for each online server or module.



If you just want to "patch up" the original game there is an even better list here on the NWN forums:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/199/index/3275241

The length of this list suggests the game has been around for a very long time :-P

Hi, nice links thank you. I'm obviously being thick but how do I install these packs, like the NWNCQ? I couldn't quite work it out and there wasn't much in the way of install instructions on the download site, they obviously assumed people know! If someone could be so kind as to give me a little help it would be very appreciated.

Custom content goes in folders named after the file extensions of the custom content, unless you are downloading something that is overriding default content in the game (which is what NWNCQ does as I recall), in which case it all goes into the NWN\override folder. For hak files and tlk files (used by CEP), you will be putting them in NWN\hak and NWN\tlk folders, respectively. If any of these folders do not exist, you will have to create them in order to put the appropriate files into them.

I'm sorry if I made it sound like it gave you true FPS controls. It only unlocks camera distance and angles. I don't think there's a way to have true mouselook with the NWN engine.

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Personally I wouldn't install the NWNCQ because that is an override. I always had this thing about putting things in the override folder.

However I do have two small files in my override folder. It is so I can choose between all portraits and voicesets on character creation. (I can link you up if you would like it).

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Generally about files that you install it is pretty easy. HAK files go in the HAK folder, TLK files go in the TLK folder and so on (if they are not overrides I mean. If they are overrides they go in the *drumroll* override folder).

Thank you for the help there. I'm afraid I'm pretty rubbish at working those sorts of things out so thank you very much!

Are Project Q and NWNCQ the same thing?

No. Project Q is a hak pak (like the CEP one but smaller).

You can have as many hak paks as you want installed. They do not change the game in modules that don't specifically have it installed on them.

NWNCQ is an override. (Actually...to get a little bit technical here...the difference is not so big between hak's and override but the one big difference is that overrides go in the override folder AND that they actually even effect modules and part of the game that don't have theese specific overrides/hak's installed. Hmm...hope that makes some sense...)

I have to agree though...that parts of the NWNCQ looks very interesting. Personally I will be waiting for it to be added to the CEP hak pak....which I have heard is in the works...