{"id":2544,"date":"2015-03-14T16:41:29","date_gmt":"2015-03-14T16:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wiki.davelevy.info\/?p=2544"},"modified":"2018-07-21T14:51:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-21T14:51:06","slug":"crossroads-keep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/crossroads-keep\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossroads Keep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my run through <strong>Neverwinter Nights 2<\/strong>, I have come to the Keep, which is the <acronym title=\"a story device in D&amp;D, a base and economic resource for the protagonist.\">Stronghold<\/acronym> for the protagonist. I have <acronym title=\"except in Baldur's Gate where yo get it late and to far from the action\">never played D&amp;D with a &#8220;stronghold&#8221; before<\/acronym> and this one would seem to have a lot of playing within it. I hope it doesn&#8217;t lead to too much of the resource based gamesplay style; but it seems there&#8217;s plenty of fetch and carry quests and Kana looks ready to keep me busy.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I have checked out these two walkthroughs pages.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"at Games Banshee\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gamebanshee.com\/neverwinternights2\/walkthrough\/crossroadkeep-yourcontrol.php\">http:\/\/www.gamebanshee.com\/neverwinternights2\/walkthrough\/crossroadkeep-yourcontrol.php<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"at nwn2 wikia\" href=\"http:\/\/nwn2.wikia.com\/wiki\/Crossroad_Keep\">http:\/\/nwn2.wikia.com\/wiki\/Crossroad_Keep<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The latter is particularly good at explaining the impact of the building works.<\/p>\n<p>I have built a graph, assuming that we want money first in order to finance the rebuilding.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2556\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2556\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/grapheconomicsxroads.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-2556\" src=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/grapheconomicsxroads-1024x684.png\" alt=\"graph economics of xroads keep\" width=\"640\" height=\"428\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/grapheconomicsxroads-1024x684.png 1024w, https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/grapheconomicsxroads-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/grapheconomicsxroads-1272x850.png 1272w, https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/grapheconomicsxroads.png 1301w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2556\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The development of Crossroads Keep, a graph using dot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Let&#8217;s start with the money.\u00a0 We need to build the mall, and some roads; Veeble the Stonemason maybe the first bottleneck; he&#8217;s quite quick. (He completes everything by the next visit. Given you have to recruit the staff, this is the critical path and cash is the bottleneck.<\/p>\n<p>It might be wise to explore Kana&#8217;s conversational opportunities thoroughly at each conversation.<\/p>\n<p>Pentin is stroppy, I failed to intimidate him to stay, and I am a <em>Barbarian<\/em> with <em>intimidate<\/em> as a class skill, reinforced by pre-adventurer background (I think).\u00a0 So I replayed it, intimidate is influenced by CHArisma and I don&#8217;t have a lot of that so I bought and used a <em>Harvest Cloak<\/em> and drank a <em>Potion of Eagle&#8217;s Splendour<\/em>; the <em>intimidate<\/em> still failed but I was offered a diplomacy after and that worked. What&#8217;s my Diplomacy skill? I have been investing in it because I need a score for class swapping latter. Anyway, he seems to be there and I have also recruited Edario as a second blacksmith which the walkthrough says needs Pentin as a pre-requisite.\u00a0 <del>Do I need them both?<\/del> How do I keep them busy with Iron Ore?<\/p>\n<p>It may be necessary to <em>repair the library<\/em> before proceeding to Ammon Jerro&#8217;s Haven.<\/p>\n<p>I need advice on <em>tithes<\/em>, although I have placed a small tithe on both the farmers and merchants while developing the stronghold i.e. before leaving for Arvhan. It was Kana&#8217;s idea and I am not sure if this offered only after certain developments in the graph. On return from the Temple of the Seasons, I sold a bunch of excess goods and finished the roads and the library. On return from the Guardian Ruins in the Swamp, Kana offered a year end tax policy decision on the farmer&#8217;s taxes. I chose to set them at Lord Nasher&#8217;s average and promised to reduce them when possible. I also told the collectors not to use violence.\u00a0 Also on return from the Temple of the Seasons, the Treasury had generated some cash, about 6000 gp.<a name=\"a3\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In Act III, the Game Banshee Walkthrough makes some suggestions as to order of quests, each of the alliance quests (except the Druids) leads to some \u2018ore\u2019 and I had run out. Edario the Armourer wouldn\u2019t upgrade the armour without it. I think it best firstly to go back to Neverwinter and take the first test with Light of Heaven &amp; pick up Joy (oh err). Secondly go to Port Llast for the second test and the route to the Wendersneven; the Strange Clearing has an Ore source. On return to Crossroads keep, you can pick up Light of Heaven and re-arrange the sergeants. LoH on recruiting, Katriona and Bevil on special projects. I have failed to persuade Jalboun to join me. (Is there an exclusive choice between Jalboun and Light of Heaven, depending on the good &amp; bad paths through Neverwinter?) Anyway at this point, I got fed up with the continual low security in the land, I think I have failed some important special projects because the size of my militia is so low. I have lowered the threshold of recruitment; this may have best been done immediately after the creation of the captain\u2019s company; it will make the <em>Ziffer the Bailiff<\/em> quest easier to win. I lost it because I was trying to defend the quality of the militia recruits. Another piece of advice is not to <acronym title=\"by which I mean the order of areas in act III.\">follow the walkthroughs<\/acronym> so carefully. Doing the economics first is probably best.<\/p>\n<p>Also The Road to Highcliff has ore, but it can only be encountered once AFAIK. Don\u2019t miss it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">ooOOOoo<\/p>\n<p>This is\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamefaqs.com\/pc\/922154-neverwinter-nights-2\/faqs\/46126\">a FAQ on the keep<\/a> at GameFAQS.<\/p>\n<p>For more of an idea as to what a stronghold might be, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kismetrose.com\/dnd\/DMStronghold.html\">Kismet&#8217;s Review of the Stronghold Builder&#8217;s Guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my run through Neverwinter Nights 2, I have come to the Keep, which is the Stronghold for the protagonist. I have never played D&amp;D with a &#8220;stronghold&#8221; before and this one would seem to have a lot of playing within it. I hope it doesn&#8217;t lead to too much of the resource based gamesplay&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[60,63],"tags":[846,921,361,217,847],"class_list":["post-2544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games","category-nwn","tag-crossrads-keep","tag-games","tag-neverwinter-nights","tag-nwn2","tag-stronghold"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/crossroadskeep1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2546,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions\/2546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}