If you’re just looking for the solution:
1) The Mac player searches for and runs the 1.11 to 1.12 (1295) patch. Google’s the fastest way to find it– it’s hidden on the nwn site.
2) The PC player goes to nwvault.ign.com and downloads the 1.11 to 1.12 (1295) patch [even though they’re patched up to 1.13 (1409)], and the patch running program.
3) PC player unzips the patch running program and launches it. Select the patch and check the “ignore missing files” box. Ignore the scary warning. After a few minutes your version is set back to 1.12 (1295).
4) Launch multiplayer and find each other’s games.
The story follows.
Jennifer and I decided to play Neverwinter Nights 2 together. It’s a great idea, but the execution reminded me of hosting a lan party– you spend hours playing “make the computers talk to each other”. Yesterday it took about six hours…
OK, I’m cheating a little with that. I spent an hour driving up to Best Buy, searching for it in vain, getting handed Neverwinter 1 by the sales clerk and not double checking it, driving home and realizing it was the wrong version (thankfully, before opening it at all), going through the hassle of returning it and finding it on the endcap rather than where I’d been searching (like car keys– it’s always in plain sight), and bringing it home again. Unfortunately, even with that cheating, I only counted that as an hour. Where did the rest of the time go?
I installed the software, which went smoothly. But when I launched the game, it started to patch. And patch some more. After one hour and seven minutes (it counted), I was finally patched up to 1.13 (1409). Yay, time to play!
So I started a multiplayer game over the LAN and she tried to join. Incompatible versions. So she started one over the internet and I tried to join. Incompatible versions. Sigh.
The Mac version shipped as 1.11. So, after some hunting down poorly marked locations, she found the patch to 1.12 (1295). We tried again… they still wouldn’t talk to each other. We searched google and found nothing useful, other than exclamations of joy that Mac had patched to 1295. Yeah, while that’s nice… we couldn’t actually play together.
We took a break for dinner and TV, then came back at it. I looked for a way to rollback to 1295. No instructions anywhere. Finally, on nwvault.ign.com I found the individual patches and a patch applier. So I downloaded the 1.11 to 1.12 (1295) patch and ran the installer. It failed on the third line– file not found.
Jennifer gave up and headed for bed. I decided to try again and selected the “ignore missing files” box (and watched as it warned me that if I followed through, I’d given up hope of official support). I ran it again, got a few warnings about missing files… but at the end it “updated” the version to 1.12 (1295). I launched the game and convinced Jennifer to come out and launch hers. We started up, and after a moment of panic, found each other’s games! Success!
We played for a few minutes, but shut down before it could suck us in and leave us too wiped to work this morning. Maybe tonight we’ll actually play together for more than five minutes. Here’s to hoping.