Even in 2020, the Neverwinter Nights series remain unparalleled. In addition to being the most content-rich RPGs, they are extremely moddable games. This article contains a list of mods for each game just for getting started, but remember to explore what’s out there on your own too. And of course, always read the readme for each mod for installation instructions and more, but installing mods for these games is very easy; mods generally go into the folders in Documents\Neverwinter Nights and Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2.
Remember, both games have tons of custom campaigns (modules). Truly countless, so pick and choose what looks interesting to you. Look here for the first game, and here for the second. In the mod lists below, we list some of the most popular modules just to get you started, but there are so many others out there as you can see.
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is the ultimate version of Neverwinter Nights, a remaster of the original with engine improvements and new content. All of these mods are compatible with it.
| Mod Name and Hyperlink | Description |
| NWNCQ Project | HD tileset. Use the extended override version and the patch for it. This will also add ceilings to some interiors that lack them. |
| Community Expansion Pack (CEP) | Basically a massive content pack for module builders. Some modules might require it, so be sure to use this. |
| NUI Spell Widget | One of the most requested features for Enhanced Edition, which has yet to be fulfilled officially, is NWN 2’s Quickcast menu. You see, NWN relies on 36 quickbar slots for quick use of spells and other active abilities, since they are otherwise buried in nested radial menus which is disgustingly slow. NWN 2’s Quickcast menu allows quick, easy access to all spells, even ones prepared with metamagic. Well, modders have stepped up and answered the call with this mod. Note that it is incompatible with classes using custom spellbooks, but can be installed alongside such mods; those custom spellbooks just won’t use this system. |
| Player Resource Consortium (PRC) | This is one of the biggest content expansion mods for any games, implementing an unbelievable amount of PnP content in order to transform the game into a more direct PnP adaptation. With this mod, NWN will always be unparalleled as a cRPG. Comes with an installer to install it into modules. Highly recommended, it’s as necessary for NWN as ACE3 is for Arma 3. I use it in every module though I found out the hard way that it doesn’t work in the Prophet series. |
| Quality Fantasy Portrait Pack | Huge compilation of high quality fantasy portraits, currently at 275. |
| Module Hall of Fame | A list of all the most popular community modules (campaigns) in the history of Neverwinter Nights, based on user reviews. In addition to this, I’ll list some individual modules below. |
| PRCified Premium Modules | The premium modules of NWN now with PRC installed. Ignore if not using PRC. |
| PRC Modules | Huge collection of modules with PRC installed, and usually CEP3 facelift too. My top recommendations are: Swordflight, which is simply the best campaign ever made for NWN (5 chapters!), Prophet series, Eye of the Beholder, AL2 – Crimson Tides of Tethyr. |
| PRC Modules by NateE | A collection of modules, including Crimson Tides of Tethyr and The Aielund Saga, set up for use with the PRC mod. If you don’t want to use the PRC mod, then ignore this and just get the normal modules below. But I highly recommend PRC. |
| Sands of Fate | A three part series that has gained a lot of favor for Neverwinter Nights over the years. |
| Sanctum of the Archmage – The Sight and The Quest | A two chapter module from a fantasy author. He is making another NWN module too, so this is not his last. |
| The Accursed Tower | Based on a pen and paper adventure of the same name from 1999, you can think of this as Icewind Dale III. It even contains many characters from Icewind Dale II as cameos. Aside from the blatant lack of role-playing (fitting for the Icewind Dale series ironically), this module is a lot of fun. |
| Lords of Darkness | A four chapter series that is also one of the highest rated for NWN. Emphasizes hack and slash combat. |
| Shadowlords, Dreamcatcher, and Demon Campaigns | Three classic modules bundled together. |
| The Halls of Advanced Training Deluxe | A module just for leveling and outfitting your characters, and testing things (e.g. I use it to test custom modded weapons I create). Also full of insanely overpowered God-tier equipment so choose wisely. |
| nwnexplorer | Tool for viewing and extracting data archives, for modders only. |
| TlkEdit2 | Tool for editing TLK files and more. For modders only. |
| Leto 1.69 | Save game editor for those who want to tinker. |
| Leto PRC plus updated lists.leto.xml file | Save game editor for saves made with PRC mod. |
| NWN 2DA Tool | Macro enabled Excel document for editing 2DA files. For modders only. |
| OpenAL Soft | Superior OpenAL installation. Enables surround sound since by default the game doesn’t support it, it’s customizable and you can also enable 3D HRTF. Read more about the installation here. |
Neverwinter Nights 2
The mods below are for Neverwinter Nights 2 Complete Edition, which is only sold on GOG.
| Mod Name and Hyperlink | Description |
| NWN2 Client Extension | A game client extension that fixes bugs, restores and improves various multiplayer and DM client functionality. |
| Tchos HD Widescreen UI Menu and Loading Screen | Widescreen friendly UI and loading screens, a must for modern systems. |
| Tchos HD UI panels and dialogue compilation and expansion | More UI fixes for modern widescreen resolutions. |
| Companion and Monster AI 2.5 | A must-have AI mod that improves both enemies and companions. |
| NWN2 Facelift Pack | A very good higher quality face replacer for character models. These don’t look fake or as if they have horrible plastic surgery, this is just an improvement. |
| All NWN2 Terrain Re-bumped-mapped | Much higher resolution, bump mapped terrain. The quality of this and all texture replacers below is so high that they integrate seamlessly with the game without art design conflict. They are universal improvements. |
| All NWN2 Grass Desaturated with Added Detail | Higher quality grass textures that also desaturates them to make the tone more realistic instead of the flawed excessively colorful JRPG like default look. |
| Floorboards (Hi Rez & Bump-mapped) | Much higher resolution, bump mapped wooden floor boards. |
| Real Paving Stones, Curbs & Bricks | Much higher resolution, bump mapped stones and bricks and such. |
| Real Oak and Mahogany Textures (Hi Rez & Bump-Mapped) | Much higher resolution, bump mapped oak and mahogany textures. |
| Neverwinter Cobble texture (Hi Rez & Bump-mapped) | Much higher resolution, bump mapped cobble textures. |
| All Bracers, Pauldrons, Greaves now Shiny, Retextured & re-bumpmapped | Much higher resolution, bump mapped armor pieces. |
| All NWN2 Cloaks Retextured (Hi-Res & Bumpmapped) | Much higher resolution, bump mapped cloaks. They still have clipping issues just like the default ones, but no more than default. |
| MotB: Spirit Energy Tweak | This allows you to tweak how much your spirit energy drains from hunger in Mask of the Betrayer (the first expansion). By default, I find it to be too fast, so I personally use the 1/2 version included with this mod (energy drains at half speed). If you’re fine with how it is in vanilla MotB then ignore this. |
| MotB: Rooster-Cheat | Hardly a cheat, this mod just increases max party size so that you can always have all 4 party members with you throughout Mask of the Betrayer, which is so story and character driven. Without this, you will always have to leave ONE person behind, which is just stupid. Considering how character driven this story is, and how much input companions have during interactions, you really should not play without this. Note the creator of this and the above mod, JOG, has more stuff on his website but some of them are outdated and address issues that were fixed by official patches, so I personally only use these two. |
| Deserks NWN2 Portraits | A nice portrait addon, since by default NWN 2 has very few and just uses the crappy character model faces as PC portraits. |
| Zack’s Portraits | Can’t have too many portraits. |
| Colour scroll icons for NWN2 | Scrolls by default are all the same color, so it is difficult to tell what spell a scroll contains when just glancing at your inventory. This fixes that, giving them all the same colored icon as the actual spell. |
| Spell School Fixes | This 2DA override fixes the spell schools of several spells to be more appropriate. Both Drown spells are now Conjuration (originally Drown was Transmutation, Mass Drown was Conjuration), Blood to Water is now Transmutation instead of Necromancy, Death Ward and Mass Death Ward are now Abjuration instead of Necromancy, Implosion is now Necromancy instead of Evocation. These changes are both more logical and some of them are more accurate to PnP. |
| The Temple of Elemental Evil Unlocked | The Temple of Elemental Evil is a classic Greyhawk PnP module, action packed and very fun. Troika Games made it into a video game in 2001, but that game is full of bugs, and while it has extremely expansive gameplay, NWN 2 is even more expansive. Plus, NWN 2 has the benefit of being 3D, unlike the distant isometric-only 2D visuals of Troika’s game. This is the best way to enjoy The Temple of Elemental Evil in a video game. |
| Icewind Dale NWN2 | Icewind Dale has been faithfully remade as a NWN 2 module! Forget about Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, now you can play it with 3.5e rules and the much more expansive gameplay of NWN 2 (and without the original game’s horrendous UI). |
| Baldur’s Gate Reloaded | A very famous mod, as the name implies this is an incredibly faithful remake of Baldur’s Gate as a NWN 2 mod. As with Icewind Dale NWN2 above, this restores the original game’s cinematics, score, and it brings back more abilities that are not in NWN 2. Also since NWN 2 has Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep prestige class, you can play as that here which is uniquely fitting. Forget about Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition with those controversial, harmful changes, this is the definitive Baldur’s Gate experience. |
| Pool of Radiance Remastered | Another classic RPG remade in NWN 2. Pool of Radiance dates back to the 80s. It was a four part series but unfortunately only this first part was remade and polished for the NWN games (parts 2 and 3 were remade as NWN 1 modules but they’re flawed and difficult to recommend). As expected for an 80s RPG, this is a rather simple module that hasn’t aged well, but it’s a fun ride nonetheless. |
| The Halls of Advanced Training NWN2 | Just like its NWN 1 counterpart, this is a module just for leveling and outfitting your characters and testing things. And, as is the case with the NWN 1 version, you can get unlimited money and God-tier equipment here. |
| DSOAL | Converts the game’s sound to OpenAL Soft so that you can actually set the sound provider to EAX 3 in-game and get the best possible sound quality. This gives you the best surround spatialization, EAX effects and 3D HRTF. |
(12 votes, average: 4.08 out of 5)
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I am a single player of neverwinter nights mods that are downloaded
Diamond Edition is the better bet than the so-called “Enhanced” edition by Beamdog. The Beamdog version has had a history of updates for one platform before another, suddenly breaking cross-platform multi-player functionality. They also made arbitrary changes to some of the basic aspects of the Diamond Edition, in some cases nerfing certain player classes (Beamdog refers to this as bringing “balance”). Stick to Diamond Edition, the best persistent worlds run Diamond Edition (Avlis, Dalakora, Melniborne, and plenty of others).
Well, you’re comparing at times broken cross-platform to no cross-platform whatsoever. Good point about persistent worlds although best is subjective and many run Enhanced Edition + PRC, which would be more to my preference for example. Those interested in Persistent Worlds should check out both, but those not interested in that should play Enhanced for the newer modules (many recent and upcoming ones are EE only) and PRC. As for class balance, this is done best by PRC mod which everyone should be using I think.
So what do you like the most about the PRC mod?
It adds the vast majority of Wizards of the Coast 3e content and lots of their 3.5e content as well, thus adding most of what’s missing from every D&D video game. The end result is you get to choose from hundreds of playable races and classes, you have most of the PnP skills (jump and climb are particularly useful, most other new ones are module-specific), thousands of feats, thousands of spells across all spellbooks, magic of incarnum, truenaming, psionics, endless character build diversity and far more combat options and non-combat related ways to use magic.