r/neverwinternights • u/Who_is_Daniel • 7d ago

NWN2 Edit and Save *.2da files

Hello,

I am trying to edit a couple of .2da files with the Toolset. I can view .2da files and change the characters in the cells but I cannot figure out how to save my changes, I feel pretty dumb for not being able to fire this out or find my answers by searching.

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u/revchj 7d ago

I'm not sure which toolset you mean, I didn't think that was an option in the module editor.

Whatever tool you use, you need to export the base .2da file somewhere, edit it, and then the simplest option would be to install your edited copy into your Override folder.

HOWEVER this will also override any customizations to that 2da made by the module you're playing. So if you are playin anything that comes with a .hak file you could render that module unplayable, or at least situationally broken.

If you still want to proceed, then you need to check the modules hak file(s) to find out if they have already overridden the 2da in question: if they have, you need to start from that module's 2da, make your changes, put your edited 2da in a new hak, and then install your hak at the top of that module's hak list.

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u/Who_is_Daniel 7d ago

Thank you for the reply. In the tool set that comes with the game, there's an option to view *.2da files. You can edit them but there seems to be no option to save or export them.

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u/PoplarStand 7d ago

I'd recommend reaching out to the folks on the Neverwinter Vault Discord. Editing 2DA's is a big topic and they can give you some live feedback on where to go first.

That said, I wrote a basic tutorial if you just want to get your feet wet.

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u/FarHorizonGames 7d ago

2da files are really just text spreadsheets. I use notepad++ most of the time for manual edits, but any text editor would work

It can be worth writing some scripts to generate them as well, if you are going to change many things & have the data in another format.