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Neverwinter Nights 2

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Neverwinter Nights 2
Neverwinter Nights 2 cover
Developers
Obsidian Entertainment
Mysteries of Westgate Ossian Studios
macOS (OS X) Aspyr Media
Publishers
Original Atari
Current Hasbro
Engines
Electron Engine
Release dates
Windows October 31, 2006
macOS (OS X) February 27, 2008
Reception
Metacritic 82
IGDB 85
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase, Expansion pack
Microtransactions None
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Bird's-eye view
Controls Point and select
Genres RPG
Themes Fantasy
Series Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights 2 on HowLongToBeat
Neverwinter Nights 2 on IGDB
Neverwinter Nights 2 on MobyGames
Neverwinter Nights 2 on Wikipedia
Neverwinter Nights
Subseries of Dungeons & Dragons
Neverwinter Nights (1991) 1991
Neverwinter Nights 2002
Neverwinter Nights 2 2006
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition 2018

Warnings

The macOS (OS X) version of this game does not work on macOS Catalina (version 10.15) or later due to the removal of support for 32-bit-only apps.
GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

Neverwinter Nights 2 is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view RPG game in the Neverwinter Nights series.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions
NWN2 Nexus Mod with a collection of mods for the game

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
CD key
SecuROM 7 DRM.
Patch 1.23 removes the DRM.
StarForce 4 DRM[Note 1] for Russian copies.
Windows
macOS (OS X)
GOG.com
DRM-free
CD key
Complete Edition; includes all three expansions. Serial keys for multiplayer are shown in the game library entry; requires manual input via SerialTool.exe.
Windows
Steam (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
CD key
Platinum.
Windows
StarForce DRM for this game does not work on modern versions of Windows (see above for affected versions).

Version differences

The retail-only Gold edition includes the base game and the Mask of the Betrayer expansion.
The Platinum edition (sold also in retail as the Deluxe edition) includes the base game with the Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir expansions.
The Complete edition is a complete edition with the base game and all three expansions.

Monetization

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Mask of the Betrayer
Windows
Storm of Zehir
Windows
Mysteries of Westgate
Windows

Essential improvements

Patches

Official patches for the base game are available on Neverwinter Vault and Patches-Scrolls.
An official hotfix for missing dialog in the Mask of the Betrayer expansion is available from Patches-Scrolls.

Unofficial Patch

Introduces various bugfixes to the original campaign and expansions.

Skip intro videos

Edit nwn2.ini[3]
  1. Go to the configuration files location.
  2. Open nwn2.ini.
  3. Go to [Display Options]
  4. Add the line to the end of that section: Disable Intro Movies=1
  5. Save the file.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2\
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/2760/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2\saves\
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/2760/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
OneDrive
Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud

Video

Graphics settings
Graphics settings
Advanced graphics settings
Advanced graphics settings

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
UI does not scale with resolution and is extremely small in 4K.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Alt+ Enter to toggle on the fly.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Only Off, Medium and High settings.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Input

Interface settings
Interface settings

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Separate controls for each mode.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

Audio settings
Audio settings

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music, Voice, SFX
Surround sound
RAD RSX 3D
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
EAX 3. Can be re-enabled with Creative Alchemy. Also supports Miles Fast2D.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
Mysteries of Westage is only available in English.
German
Polish
Russian
No voice acting in DLC campaigns.
Spanish

Network

Online play requires a CD key.
Accessing LAN and direct connection functionalities requires a login attempt, despite official GameSpy servers being shut down since 2014.

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
LAN play
Online play
The official GameSpy service is offline;[4] use the NWN2 Client Extension for a player-run replacement.

Connection types

VR support

3D modes State Notes
vorpX
G3D
User created game profile, see vorpx forum profile introduction.

Issues fixed

TweakGuides has created a comprehensive guide for fixing issues in this game.

Changing the resolution causes a black screen

Notably, this happens when changing to the 1920x1080 resolution.
Method 1: Edit nwn2.ini[5]
  1. Go to the configuration files location.
  2. Open nwn2.ini.
  3. Edit the [Width] and [Height] values to the desired resolution.
  4. Save the file and run the game.
Method 2: Enter windowed mode before changing the resolution[6]

Running on a non-primary partition/hard disk

In Windows, if you are running Neverwinter Nights 2 off of any drive other than the C: drive, there are special system requirements for the game. In addition to the 5.5 GB of free hard-disk space required to install the game on your selected drive, you will need an additional 2-5 GB of free hard disk space on drive C: during run-time. Not having 2-5 GB free on drive C: while playing Neverwinter Nights 2 can cause the following issues:

  • Unable to Left-Click in main campaigns
  • Unable to use Actions in main campaigns
  • Unable to exit first room in main campaigns
  • Able to complete tutorial, but upon completion the game will not load the main campaigns.

NWN2 Fixes

Provides various bug fixes / improvements.

This extension fixes many bugs associated with the game, including choppy camera movement and animation glitches. In addition, it significantly improves multiplayer functionality. Details can be found on the Neverwinter Vault page.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9.0c
Shader Model support 2.0, 3.0
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
A universal binary patch was planned for PowerPC processors, but it never materialized.

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio DirectSound
Multiplayer GameSpy GameSpy master server is offline;[4] use the NWN2 Client Extension for a player-run replacement.

Restore original opening video

Edit nwn2.ini[7]
  1. Note that the expansion packs and Complete Edition broke the game's ability to display the opening video. If you only have the expansions and not the Westgate module, you could use the linked workaround, however it will disable the Westgate intro and ending videos, so it's better to follow these manual steps:
  2. Open the <path-to-game>\movies folder
  3. Rename or delete AtariLogo.bik
  4. Rename Intro.bik to AtariLogo.bik
  5. The opening move will now play first when launching the game.

Mods

Neverwinter Nights 2 has an extensive modding community, centered around Neverwinter Vault and Nexus Mods.

An extensive, although not up to date, modding guide is maintained by Lilura1.

The community outputs mostly standalone "stories", singleplayer or multiplayer, there is little in the way of quality of life improvements, like texture packs, bug fixing, high definition patches, etc.

Depending on the the type of modification, and its extension, files need to be put in certain directories. The most popular and used for QOL is the override folder. There is such a folder inside the game folder, and sometimes, like for textures, it works, although the wisdom is that you do not touch this folder, but the one which the game creates in the Documents folder, specifically %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2\override.

2022 HD Texture Pack

Download link
A complete upscale, manual and esrgan. It contains 2x and 4x (UHD) files. The recommended pack is the HD one, as the engine may bug out at 4x. Using LAA or NTCORE on the executables is preferable.
On a relatively new AMD processor, never use the AMD executable, as that executable tries to access the 3dnow set, which has been deprecated by AMD.

Trees Textures Overhaul

Download link

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) XP
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
System memory (RAM) 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 5.5 GB
Video card (GPU) ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Nvidia GeForce 6600
128 MB of VRAM
DirectX 9.0c compatible
Shader model 2.0 support


Notes

  1. This version of StarForce DRM does not work on Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or Windows 11.[1][2] For supported versions of Windows the StarForce driver may need to be updated manually using SFUPDATE.
  2. 2.0 2.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/2760/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (2760) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References