SoZ: Stuck on Crossroad Keep loadscreen - what now?

Neverwinter Nights 2 General
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I’ve always had a difficult relationship with NWN2, due to many smaller nitpicks adding up and making it a bit uncomfortable for me to play, but I keep on trying. Recently, I decided to give SoZ, the only campaign I hadn’t played through yet, another chance. I installed some UI mods to make getting into NWN2 again easier for me, and surprisingly, after a while I began to have fun and see the beauty in NWN2. I played it quite excessively, got far in SoZ and was already thinking ahead about trying more custom modules. In any case, I was convinced I’d still complete SoZ this month, because I was so into it.

But sadly, it seems the fun times have stopped and my playthrough has met a dead end, because now when I try to enter Crossroad Keep, the game gets stuck on the loadscreen, after loading 10 of 10 areas and claiming to load module now. Somehow I guess my game got corrupted? I loaded an earlier savegame (with a heavy heart, losing at least half an hour of progress and learning I shouldn’t rely on quicksaves only, but I guess it could have been worse), but even with that one, I don’t get into Crossroad Keep anymore. What do I do now? Is this the end? Is this known to happen with SoZ / NWN2? What could be the cause?

I also had another bug earlier, where the special resources tab was not shown to me anymore when trading with cities, only the common goods tab. At first I thought these cities had run out of special resources, until I found it affected ALL of them. Restarting the game and reloading solved this though.

Any advice?

EDIT: De-activating the override folder makes no difference.

EDIT2: I remember now that I got stuck on loadscreens a few times before, but restarting and reloading usually fixed the issue. Yet now with Crossroad Keep it seems to be permanent, reproducable every time.

EDIT3: I tried the third-to-last savegame and in that one I can still enter Crossroad Keep. But it’s almost 3 hours earlier. :frowning: And if I go back to it and repeat everything, how do I know it won’t happen again? Do I have to check in with Crossroad Keep every 10 minutes now to make sure and constantly save into 5 different slots? :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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UPDATE: A friend of mine, who has only started playing NWN2 recently, apparently had run into a similar issue already and knew a way to resolve it, by replacing the according area file (.Z) in the savegame with the version from an earlier save that’s still working.

It was a bit trickier in the case of SoZ, because the file was not conveniently named CrossroadKeep.Z or something like in the OC, but I was quickly able to identify that it’s F_X2.Z, the second-biggest .Z file in my save folder. I do notice a visual difference, in that one market stall of a city I’ve already established connections with is now missing in the area, but hopefully, that’s purely cosmetic and I can live with that.

So it looks like my adventure can continue, despite all, and without having to repeat anything. Woohoo! :partying_face:

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Funny. Just due to reading the title of this thread, I was going to suggest checking your save folder for the missing files. I don’t know what conditions cause NWN2 too not save the .z files.

I think it happens when leaving an area and the save for the area is made.

Are you using the Client Extension?

As good as it is, I think it has problems with specific transitions. I’m about to start a new runthrough of the OC and will pay close attention.

In the OC, I’ve had this missing .z files occur when leaving the outer fields of Crossroad Keep to deal with the lizardmen in Highcliff. Seems like it happened when leaving the docks using a transition near Sand’s shop. Loading NWN2 without using the Client Extension allowed the party to correctly transition.

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The file was not missing but apparently corrupted somehow, I assume? I overwrote it with the file from an older save (after making a backup copy, just in case).

That might be the case. The shortcut I start the game from links to a NWLauncher.exe. Is that the Client Extension? I think I initially set it up that way when I was still hoping to be able to play MP with my friend.

I never thought of trying to start the game without the Client Extension. That might be worth a try, thanks.

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Yes, the NWlauncher is the CE.

Hmmm. Maybe the .Z file was at least partially written, whereas my files were not written.

I’m interested in checking to see if the problem also happens when entering an area and an auto save happens. I know it’ll happen when leaving an area.

When playing the IWD Remake, multiplayer, two transitions didn’t work correctly while using the CE. We had to save, shut down, start without the CE, and loaded the save. Afterwards, we were able to properly use the transitions. Not necessarily anything to do with a bad save, but possibly does.

Just a note: I fixed the saved by copying and pasting the .Z file from an older save to the area I was headed to, as it seems you did.

I now make a manual save before a transition, and then after the transition.

NWN2 = “SAVE EARLY AND SAVE OFTEN”
~Moto Established 2006~

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Despite the fix, this kept happening again and again, so I had to keep applying the fix. Directly after applying the fix and leaving the Crossroad Keep map, I would be able to enter it again, but after spending some time doing other things in the world, I always ran into the same issue again when returning to the Keep. At first I thought it was because I had established a trading post in another town, which would normally add another market stall graphic to the CK map. But it kept happening even after I was done with establishing trading posts. The map itself also wasn’t very stable. Some of the stalls were shown only halfway, without the roof, and one time, while I was browsing at the local merchant’s, suddenly the game started a Loading process and teleported me to some entirely different spot on the overland map, which was very weird and scary.

Thankfully, I still managed to play on with the help of the fix and now that I’ve left CK behind, everything seems to work fine again. But that area map was really messed up for some reason, and unfortunately it was the one area I had to keep returning to …

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And another mistake I made was to not keep a backup of an older Crossroad Keep file for the fix. I thought, once I left Crossroad Keep I could leave all that behind me, but then some reasons turned up why returning to the Sword Coast during the endgame would have made sense (I had forgotten about the Wizard of Thay quest and also missed out on buying a few crafting recipes from the Thay merchant). But I could not return through the portal because the CK map wouldn’t load, and I could find a F_X2.Z files among my saves that worked as a fix …

Oh well. At least I was able to complete the campaign, even if I missed out on some things. All in all, I had fun with Storms of Zehir, but I still don’t know what might have caused this bug, and it soured the experience somewhat. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

I hope it was just a Zehir thing and nothing connected to the override mods I use or NWN2 in general. I’m a bit concerned now that if I start another NWN2 campaign, it might happen to me again at some point …

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Just a few questions:

Windows 11?

Do you have the game on a SATA drive?

What is in the override?

Did you use the Client Extension?

Did you try not using the Client Extension?

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  • No, Windows 10.
  • Er, this is quite embarrassing, but I’m rather ignorant when it comes to tech. I’m not quite sure what a SATA drive even is. :flushed: I run the game from an internal HDD, and it’s the only drive, C:, with the OS on as well. That’s all I know, I don’t know what kind of drive it is. If SATA is a special / fancy kind of drive, then probably not.
  • I’ll list the contents of the override folder below.
  • Previously yes. Until that bug/glitch happened and you suggested it might be connected.
  • Yes. After you mentioned it, I avoided using the client extension and started the game via nwn2main.exe instead.

Contents of the override folder:

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/gui/fireices-big-fonts-ui
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/gui/tchos-hd-widescreen-loading-screens
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/gui/square-minimap
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/gui/big-bag-inventory
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/gui/super-2-row-hotbar-soz
(the 20x2 version)

(but they don’t seem to work currently, maybe something else is conflicting with them)
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/hakpak/combined/nwn2-facelift-pack
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/script/charlies-item-appearance-changer
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/script/companion-and-monster-ai-210
(but I deleted inventoryscreen.xml from this AI mod, because it overwrote the Big Bag Inventory UI and I didn’t find anything about what the AI has to do with the inventory anyway)

That’s … all. :sweat_smile: :grimacing:

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The inventoryscreen.xml change is used to control the AI preferred weapons options based on the item type. Shields show the AI Shield option and not the melee and range weapon options, etc. This allows you to control what weapons and shields are switched to instead of the AI. If you don’t care about this feature, then no problem.

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I usually play with Puppet Mode on and control what weapons my companions use myself, but it’s good to know that removing the inventoryscreen.xml does not break anything in the AI mod. Thanks! :slight_smile:

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I combined the big bag inventory and TonyK’s AI 2.9 inventoryscreen.xml, and it worked great. Maybe I should post it.

The resulting inventoryscreen.xml seems to be good to go with TonyK’s ai 2.10.

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The inventory file probably won’t get changed much but the upcoming 2.11 version does contain a change. If you want, I can put your file as one of the downloads for the AI after putting in the 2.11 changes when I release 2.11. I already keep up a merge with Charlie’s UI and have been thinking about adding a merge for Tchos’ HD UI.

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That would be great. I use Tchos’ HD ui.

Actually, I think the inventoryscreen.xml I have is combining your file with Tchos’ HD ui and Big Bag Inventory.

I’ll have to check.

I also use Travus’ two files to work with your ai mod and Tchos’ HD ui.

I haven’t seen a need for four pages of inventory since I kicked my 17" CRT to the curb.
:slight_smile: