14 DAY TRIAL // Atari and the Wizards of the Coast are announcing that Storms of Zehir, the second expansion to Neverwinter Nights 2, is now code complete and ready to be multiplied for the official release.
This second expansion will allow players to create a complete party from scratch, rolling all the characters themselves, without having to recruit any non player character. It's the first time since Icewind Dale you have such direct control over the complete gameplay experience.
Storm of Zehir is also set to introduce a 3D Overland Map designed as a way to add a new layer to the game, where you can use brand new skills, like Spot and Hide to get through ambushes and dig up various artifacts which would otherwise not be accessible. The new locales that players will visit are various sites near the Sword Coast and in the Chultan Peninsula. You will travel to Neverwinter and Crossroad Keep but you will also take a stroll through the very xenophobic nation of Samarach, where you can experience life as a slave.
The experience is set to take about 30 hours of gameplay time to complete and the developers say that there is a lot of replay value to the expansion because of the new classes that are introduced, like the Swashbuckler and the Hellfire Warlock, but also because the player gets new spells and access to frsh playable races. The party that you create will have unique mechanics based on conversation, which affect the way they work together in battles.
Storm of Zehir also includes a more powerful version of the adventure editor which players can use to create their own adventure modules. The modding community built around Neverwinter Nights 2 is very active and there are a lot of modules worth trying.