Hello GOG community, happy new year!

I never played this series, I have :

- Neverwinter Nights Diamond

- Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition + DLCs
Infinite Dungeons, Pirates of the Sword Coast, Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, Darkness Over Daggerford

- Neverwinter Nights 2 Complete

Questions :

1. Should I play Diamond or Enhanced Edition?

2. Should I play Enhanced Edition even if I don't have yet Tyrants of the Moonsea and Dark Dreams of Furiae. Will I miss a lot if I don't have them? If I finished the game and bought them later, will these DLCs be playable separately with their own start mission so that I don't have to replay everything again?

3. If I should wait for these 2 DLCs (sales), can I play NWN2 first, can I transfer a character from NWN1 to NWN2, is this a direct sequel and will I miss a lot of lore allusions to NWN1? Also reviews say it's buggy, are they serious bugs like corrupting your saves or crashing, or are they more like "glitches". If I don't care too much about quality of life and cosmetic improvements, do I still need certain mods to improve the game technically, or is the game OK as it is?

Thanks for your lights!

Thanks a lot for your replies and the link!

It depends on what you want to play. There are some classic community campaigns which currently seem to have issues at certain spots when run with the EE, like the much acclaimed series "The Prophet". They can be overcome, but it might be a hassle and spoil the fun a bit. At least for that one, I'd recommend to err on the side of caution and use the Diamond Edition instead. Most other modules and official content I've played with the EE worked fine though, which is no guarantee, but I would say go for the EE unless you run into some serious issues. It's not perfect, but not all that buggy either, you win some, you lose some, but all in all it brings some minor improvements over Diamond. And especially if you want to play the DLCs which are not compatible with Diamond, or multiplayer which has much better support in the EE. Still, it's good that you have both edition, just in case. Yes, like olnorton already said, those are completely separate stories you can play anytime you want to, independently of the main game. They vary in quality though. I haven't played Dark Dreams of Furiae yet, but all I hear about it are bad things, it was received with very mixed to negative reviews, is rather short and possibly without much relevant interaction. Tyrants of the Moonsea on the other hand is worth playing, as is Darkness over Daggerford. IMO, those are the best DLCs, followed by Pirates of the Sword Coast. Wyvern Crown of Cormyr was alright, but I found it more interesting for its innovations and experiments, not so much for its gameplay and story. Infinite Dungeons is also more of an experiment, to create a rogue-like/Diablo-style randomized dungeon crawler experience. It's somewhat interesting but not a must, especially not if you put more store in storytelling than combat and looting.

NWN has three official campaign, the original one, just named Neverwinter Nights (often called OC), is okayish, but nothing too special, IMO, rather lengthy and I felt like a pawn in the story of rather uninteresting side characters without being able to influence any of their asinine actions and decisions. Some people love it regardless, so YMMV. It will bring your starting character from level 1 to 15+. The first expansion, Shadows of Undrentide (SoU), expects you to create a new level 1 character and will bring them to level 13+. The second expansion, Hordes of the Underdark (HotU), allows (and somewhat expects) you to continue with that same character from SoU, but instead of transferring your character you could also create a new one of level 12-15 or so (if you bring in a lower level character they will be leveled up automatically). Theoretically you could also play SoU with your OC character, but you would be pretty overpowered, or you could play HotU with your OC character, which might work regarding the balance, but not fit 100% to the story. There are some allusions to the OC and SoU in HotU, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter all that much, so if you wanted to, you could play the three campaigns in any order, but OC, SoU+HotU is the recommended one.

Ahem, and to get back to your actual question, yes, all of the DLCs and campaigns/expansion are self-contained stories, none of them is integrated into another, so you can play them whenever you want to, with any characters you want to (within the suggested level range, that is), and without the need to repeat anything. Like olnorton already said, you can't transfer characters between NWN and NWN2, they are basically two different games, sharing the same name and vision and several similarities on the outside, but they are also significantly apart from each other, not just with regards to the graphics; e.g. in NWN you only ever have full control of your player character and can only give vague orders to the AI controlled companions, in NWN you can take control of companions, too. NWN2 is okay if you use the fix that olnorton linked to, and if you're not afraid of tinkering with a hex editor, the camera issues can be tamed a little as well with these recently discovered changes.

There are some minor allusion to NWN's OC and SoU/HotU in NWN2, but they are not that important, so play in any order you like. Although, to be fair, now that I think about it, some minor encounter in NWN2 might count as a spoiler for NWN's OC story, and the same goes for HotU, which also has a spoiler for the OC. I guess I just didn't think about that before, because I found the OC's story so dumb that IMO there is anything interesting to spoil in the first place ... XD But I admit I'm heavily biased against the OC, and you have now been warned.

Thanks a lot for your detailed answer! Usually, I look up info myself before starting a game but I'd rather ask on a forum for these 2, because with 100 hours+ announced, so many unofficial mods/expansions, and contradictory opinions, I didn't want to start a lenghty session to discover half-way that I missed something crucial. I'm sure your post will help other people decide too.
So I'll go for NWN1 EE first and follow the official sequence you indicated. I don't know yet if I'll be hooked enough to play on top of it the unofficial stories (or come back later to the game for them), so EE should be ok for now.

For me it was the other way around - the official campaign didn't hook me at all, so I aborted it and played the unofficial stories (and HotU) instead, and I had much more fun with them. ;) (I completed all of the official content at some point later on, but it didn't really change my mind about it, a lot of the user created stuff is vastly superior. And some of the DLCs are better than the main campaign, too, IMO.) So if you end up not liking the game that much, do yourself a favor and give those alternatives a try before abandoning it completely just because of the comparatively lacklustre main campaign.