Neverwinter Nights 2 Walkthrough - Original Campaign - Part 10

Neverwinter Nights 2 - Original Campaign - Walkthrough Part 10 - Aldanon's Manse, Tavorick Estate, Crossroad Keep raid

This is one of a series of walkthroughs/hints for Neverwinter Nights 2 (Original Campaign). Click here for a listing of all our guides for Neverwinter Nights 2.

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Aldanon's Manse

• Neeshka cannot reliably stay hidden as you face thieves with both very good stealth and good perception skills. Using an Invisibility spell is recommended while she clears traps.
• You get a bit of bonus XP if you can save various hostages, but it is a tiny amount all out of proportion to the effort. Having at least two strong spellcasters will help a lot here as you can lay down lingering area effect spells (provided they have Long Range -- any less and you will probably trigger the event first, which also clears all action queues) prior to triggering the events, and then overwhelm the opposition with powerful attack spells to kill them quickly. Straight combat will probably not be able to save any hostages unless they luck out and aren't hit too many times. There are basically two such events: The butler on the ground floor, and Aldanon's staff in the basement.
• In the room with the butler, you can stand just inside and wait for your party to enter. If you don't move too far in toward the thugs, you won't trigger the dialogue. No one is marked hostile until the dialogue is over, but you can lay down something like Evard's Black Tentacles first.
• In the basement, Scab and his cohorts don't move until you walk over the invisible script trigger that allows them to detect you no matter how well you are concealed. There is a trap in front of them but behind the trigger, so if you were sneaking up to disable the trap, you will end up triggering the script. Engage whoever is moving toward the hostages with ranged weapons first, then rush them when you have dealt with the trap. Alternatively, run through the trap if you think you can make the saving throw.

Tavorick Estate

• Although it seems like a good idea to carpet the ground with traps, this is actually tricky to use because Ballard and his men can trigger those traps and get themselves killed.
• Ballard's men don't actually have to survive, but you get bonus XP if they do.
• If a guard has a scripted scene but is killed by your traps, the script will not complete properly and you will have to reload a saved game.
• You are dealing with a lot of Outsiders and you will need both Alchemical Silver (against devils) and Cold Iron (against demons) weapons if you want to bypass their Damage Reduction.
• This situations is actually a bit odd because Dungeons and Dragons lore includes the Blood War, where demons and devils are eternally at war.
• Imps and Erinyes are devils, while Succubi and the Hezrou are demons. One of the issues here is that the encounters mix the two types of fiends so you may find your fighters frequently switching weapons. If you have a powerful enough weapon attack you can still inflict a bit of damage, but light weapon fighters may have a hard time. Also, unless damage is inflicted On Hit weapon effects do not trigger.
• The less complicated way of getting through the encounters would be to use Holy weapons (2d6 damage versus Evil-aligned creatures) or mid- to high-level spells that can put out damage to exceed the elemental resistance of the fiend. The best spells to use are those that inflict Magic Damage or Sonic Damage since hardly anyone has resistance to these in the game.

Crossroad Keep Exterior

• Opposition is light and limited, so if you have spellcasters, feel free to overkill the encounter and thereby prevent the Many-Starred Cloaks from making too many kills (and denying you the XP for the kills).

Crossroad Keep Escape Tunnel

Crossroad Keep Interior

• No resting allowed here, and once you enter you cannot leave. But the initial opposition is light and the final battle can go very quickly. You will probably use only a fraction of Qara's spellpower, depending on her spell selections so just overkill everything.
• At the ritual chamber, you can stand just outside, or slightly inside, without triggering the encounter. Like the hostage situations, you can therefore buff and lay down lingering spell effects before moving in.
• After the battle, tell the Many-Starred Cloaks to wait while you loot everything, including another Silver Shard and a book about Golems that Grobnar needs to reactivate the construct found earlier. You can go back upstairs, but the Many-Starred Cloaks will not follow and you cannot leave Crossroad Keep.
• Looting a Silver Shard here will result in your having two Shards with Mind Bonuses, but like all attribute bonuses, they do not stack with anything. You can, however, give it to another Companion.