Seeing that I have been away for ~ 2 weeks due to work, I have not been able to see if some one could help me with the following game play issues:
1) How do you get an NPC to cast a spell on other charaters? I was trying to get the druid ( can't remember her name) to cast stone skin on some one else, but all she would do is cast it multiple times on her self. I shudder what would happen ( and from reading the posts ) if I took Quara.
2) Along the same lines, would turning off the puppet mode give me more freedom / control over the NPC's? I really hate it when the druid would wild shape before softening up the baddies with call lightning etc.
3) I noticed on Ziroc's 101 list of things to fix and the response of what the patch will repair, I saw no mention of switching between unarmed combat. Does anyone know it the option will now be able to drag the unarmed feat to the tool bar in the upcoming patch? It is really hard to play a monk with out this option.
4) Is the weapon and armor crafting skill really worth it? I can see the enchanting option , but if you don't have a spell caster who can do this.... well do you really need this feat. I can see the benefit of being able to generate some cash but that's really all with this feat.
Thanks in advance for any and all help.
P.S. I have found the time that I have played has been enjoyable but it seems to be lacking something. I can't really put my finger on it but it seems like its Oblivion clone. Maybe when some of the mods/ fan worlds/ expansions come out it will really shine. I did do a post about some future expansions in the planescape realm but have not seen anything else related to this. Has anyone heard if they will open up the epic levels in further expansions?

1) Left click on the spell caster first, hit the "F" key on the keyboard (calls up the quickcast menu), RIGHT click on the target and then left click on the spell in the quick cast menu - if you are planning on casting multiple spells on the same individual then left click on each one and "chain" them in sequence. They'll appear in order at the top of the screen.

2) Puppet mode is a personal preference. I haven't used it, but I probably will eventually.

3) Haven't played a monk and not sure if that has been fixed or not. It wouldn;t matter for me though since my monks ALWAYS fight unarmed.

4) IMO, yes! There are some esoteric materials available that will allow you to construct mithril, silver, darksteel and adamantine weapons or armors. You'll need a spell caster to do the enchanting and you don't want to dilute ONE character will all of the crafting skills necessary to craft weapons, armor, traps, potions etc. Better to spread them out. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Oblivion clone? I started Oblivion and gave up on it within a week. But to each his own. [img]smile.gif[/img]

They have what is called action-free selection in this game, where if you right click something it gets targetted. That means that any spell or action you then take will happen to the targetted item (within reason). It's a bit annoying until you get used to it.

Puppet mode will give you total freedom - the NPC won't do anything until you control it. Bit like the BG2 style, but requires lots of micromanagement and spacebar hitting.

They said they would fix this in the 1.02 patch (along with dual wield in the quickbar) but they weren't able to. I'm sure they'll do it in the next few patches (they have more important things to patch at the moment).

It is, as long as you know all the recipes. I haven't gotten too into it, it's too much of a pain for me, but I guess I'm using common weapons that are easily found/purchased (eg longsword, warhammer, etc).

It's a bit of a different game to Oblivion though - it's not as immersive and much more tactical. Definitely the Oblivion world was bigger (or felt bigger), and I felt the scope for roleplaying was higher. I loved how the NPCs would have random convos in Oblivion, and how each town felt different. But Oblivion's combat was a real letdown.

You can disable autotargeting in the menu.

Thanks for all the input and help.
Memnoch - I think you hit it on the head where it is not as immersive. When I played Oblivion there were random encounters and I think that is what this needs while traveling either with the quick map or in the mini map ( with in reason. I would hate to be in a regular plot related combat and it starts to spawn a bunch of things rain on my parade). I mean there are whole sections that other little things could have been placed in the swamp and on the road that would have livened things up. I'm holding off playing until the next patch to see what that fixes.