I have a stupid question, but I have an excuse. I am 71 years old, and I am not as smart as I once was. I have NWN2 on disc that I bought many years ago, but I never did finish. I do not like SoZ’s game play style. I have manually patched my game to 1.23(1765) after installing MotB. I have never installed any mods to this game. Most of the better mods require SoZ, I do not like it, besides being buggier than the everglades. Now what I want to know is if I install SoZ (I dont have to play it) what will it do to my patched game ? Will it repatch the game to its own point (1.21 I think) or will it update itself or will I have to do a partiaI repatch it was a pain in the xxx to do it the 1st time, I dont want to have to do it again. Since it is patched to 1.23 do I still need SoZ to download & install the mods that I would like to try or is there parts of SoZ that I need to meet the requirements, (of course there is) ? Any help will be appreciated. 1 question (?) sorry for the book… .Sirten Deth.
I believe to play mods that use SoZ you have to install it. iirc
If you are using install from CD version you could update your game with auto patcher which is included in the game directory after installation. 1.23 version even if it’s still buggy but it is the most and best at the current stage so I highly recommend installing the latest patch. GOG version already has complete NWN2 with all expansions and latest patch.
Even if you don’t like SOZ(campaign) you still should install SOZ as it brings dozens of new feats, spells, races, gameplay features even apart from campaign. (You can play new class or race from SOZ expansion in OC or MOTB).
Furthermore, you have mentioned you don’t have any mods, but there are few out here, that it must have installed for various fixes and improvements made by the community. Personally, I can’t play the game without:
NWN2 fixes (dozens of known bugs fixes)
Optional: Kaedrin’s PrC Pack v1.42.1 (Dozens of new classes, prestige classes,feats, spells)
Optional: Spell Fixes and Improvements (Good compilation of some spell fixes)
After all maybe you will have a second chance to SOZ 
Frankly I’d recommend just purchasing the NWN2 download from GoG. It’ll cost you $20 – about the price of a dinner. Or you could wait for it to come on sale.
i doubt that anyone ever tried that order of installation - that is, installing an addon after fully patching the base game. personally i would just manually copy the installation folder and look what happens after soz is being installed. dunno what the patches changed, but at least the data files (zip packages located in the data folder) are being kept separate so this all could work out.
I am one of those who bought SoZ on disc, but have never played it, just so that I could play all modules I wanted. That being said, it is a total chore to patch up the discs manually with the CD version nowadays. Like @rjshae, I highly recommend buying the game on GoG and just do a new installation. It is totally worth it. Spares you a lot of time and headache.
The auto patcher has not worked for a very long time as it points to links that no longer exist. I also do not see any reason to spend more money to buy a game I already own. No offence to you or any one else on this site or any where else but I want to know how many live on $850 a month (rjshae). That is about half of a months rent in most cases. Let alone groceries & utilities, auto ins, etc, etc. I do have games from GOG (11 I think, including the gold box set of Pool of Radiance, etc.) and steam too.
I tried SoZ before but did not like it. It was so bad that I uninstalled the whole game. Then reinstalled it including MotB. Then patched it all he way to 1.23(1765) manually to get it to the latest patch. And yes it was as I said a pain in the butt. Then I went to look for mods AFTER, that is why the weird load order. It kind of upset me when MOST of the mods I want said that SoZ was required for the mod to install and\or work. I use to have LOTS of DOS games even before the Gold Box edition (PoR, CotAB, SotSB,Pod). I had lots of games on 5 1/4" TRUE floppies. My first “pc” had 2 slots & NO hd at all and a monochrome (before 16 color) monitor. I also had almost every version of windows there was. Even one that Bill Gates got sued over because it had files he stole from Job. It seems that the further things “improved” the harder they got. I still whish I could go back to win XP, of which I still have an unused copy of XP Pro. Sorry for the book again but I am just trying to make a point that I do know games but not how to manipulate them any more. I guess I will just have to make two different installs. I was jut trying yo avoid that. Thanks to all that replied to this post… Sirten Deth.
Sirten_Deth
It’s awesome you’re going to continue playing the game!
I still have my original 7 CD NWN2 install copy. I moved on to the Steam version, but now rely on GOG. I miss a lot of things about XP. My XP rig was running like a top. My most streamlines gaming rig was '98. I always laughed at the problems my Windows 2000 buddies had.
Definately, download nwn2fixes and unzip it into the “override” folder. Huge improvement/corrections for the OC, MotB,and Soz.
Just a question for someone who has recently patched the game from disc, what procedure did you use to patch?
Seems to me the difficult part would be finding the files to download, which is a real problem. Using the updater with the patches in the main install folder (while the computer is unplugged from the internet) should run smoothly.
Edit: I may have to install from cd onto Windows 10, just to see what happens…
For my part, I still have my original discs but when I came back to the community a few years ago I ended up just getting the GoG version. Patching is a mess and my computer is not the best so its a process I would likely have to repeat.
SoZ is sloppy in a lot of ways but it also adds a fair bit to the game itself even if you never touch the campaign. I understand money being tight though.
I hope you find a solution you are satisfied with.
Yes I liked the way you could change the colors of the desk top in '95 and '98. XP also to a lesser degree. Then you could make all the buttons have 1 color on top 1 on bottom, button face 1 color and the digits another. You could make some REAL colorful looks back then, now all you get is a ‘pick your tint look’. I used XP until my newer games would not install then jumped to 10. I never touched 2K or vista, or 7 or 8. I have an Asus Rog g752 laptop, this one and a 5 year old desk top that I built myself, my third self build. I got my laptop at Newegg when it was on sale (and i was still working) for about $1100 & a week later it was about $2100. That was about 4 years ago. Your cd install should work fine as that is what I did, OC, MotB, & SoZ. By the way I installed SoZ on top of my 1.23 build & it down graded the version to 1.20(1541). So I had to reupdate it to 1.23(1765) manually again. That only took downloading 6 patches. In fact that is why I am back on this site. I think that is enough history lesson for tonight, so to ALL a good night… Sirten Deth.
With each expansion pack, the whole game gets patched. With the probable exception of Mysteries of Westgate, because it’s just an extra campaign, no real changes. You don’t have to play the campaign, it’s fun, but not nearly as great as the previous two. The only reasons you’d wanna have it is for the gameplay changes and allowing pretty much every mod to work for you. What exactly don’t you like about the patch, though?
Also are you actually a 71yo NWN2 fan, because that’s really awesome
It is not the patch that I dont like, it is Soz that I dont like. I dont like the change of play style, but may change my mind later. Yes I really am 71 with a dob of Sept. 1949.
57 here. Started computing in the mid-90s. The SoZ expansion adds a LOT of stuff to the base game – apart from the SoZ campaign – as you probly know by the amount of stuff in the Vault that requires it.
Things like the OverlandMap are so game-changing that it changes the game ;) etc.
/hope you’ve got everything sorted and updated to SoZ 1.23.1765
In reply to your pm that is almost exactly how I installed the very same patches. I did not do them from a que though, I did them 1 at a time, manually. What is the reason that you unplug the system from the power source ? Yes I did install to the main game folder. By the way I would like to know when a mod says to install to the override (etc) folder does it mean the one in the game folder or the one in the documents folder. I suspect the game folder but would like to know which for sure… Sirten Deth. PS As an aside I can not reply to all of every one elses reply as I am actually a 1 finger “hunt & peck” kind of typist which means it took me almost a 1/2 hour to answer this one.
The difference between the two override folders is only a matter of priority, the one in My Documents will “overwrite” the one in the game folder (if two files with the same name are present in both override directories, the one in My Documents will be the one actually used by the game), but either will work.
technically it’s only a matter of priority… in practice it’s (usually considered) best to put things only in the MyDocs folder. Even mods and add-ons that say they go in the installation folder, should be tried in the MyDocs folder first. Only things like plugins (and perhaps patches) need to go in the installation folder …
this way you can backup or archive your changes, and only the changes, by simply copying out your MyDocs/NwN2 folder
again there are only certain things that need to go in the installation hierarchy
Thank you for the reply. I thought of a couple more questions (DUH). What are the DM creator & the DM chooser ? When you spawn a DM through the “rs gr_dm” cheat it says you can have him open a store. When I try to open a store it says something like “.”. How do I get it to open a store of a particular (or any) kind ? Also I just tried a new game with a new character but all of the movements are very jumpy. I set the video settings to 1920x1080 on my laptop. My laptop is a 2.4 quadcore (running @ 3.1) with 24 megs of ram & an Nvidia Geforce Gtx 970m video. Everything was fine before I did this patching. What could cause this ? I am looking to install “nwn2 fixes”, “TCHOs UI Panels”, “OC Makeover SoZ Edition”, some portraits, & maybe a couple more. Would this be any problem ? … Sirten Deth.
Actually, I wanna know too how to use the DM. To this day I still can’t figure him out.
No idea about the DM creator, Client or Chooser but about the SoZ thing…
I didn’t like SoZ at all and got as far as the first town before quitting. However it does bring in a lot of things that can be usable in the toolset and they’re pretty good so I think that is why a lot of mods need SoZ, because they’re using it’s content rather than it’s game play style. Without it installed all sorts of things from buildings to creatures will be missing and could cause bad issues. So having SoZ installed is a good thing it’s just the game that’s not but you don’t have to play it.
As for installing and patching, I’m still running my original from disk NWN2 but haven’t used the discs for years as I kept all the updated/ patched folders ( Program Files and Documents ) on an external hard drive. That way I just swap it straight in if I need to reinstall it and don’t have to patch, it’s also very quick to do.