New player guide
 Arelith Wiki | |
| Character Creation: | |
|---|---|
| Creation (New Players Guide) Race - Deity - Class Gifts - Backgrounds - Alignment Marks - Epic Sacrifice Customization - Head List - Builds | |
| Character Systems: | |
| Description - Disguise / Covered Languages - Experience - Quests Pickpocket - Rest - Role Play Bonus Death - Lycanthropy - Investigate Sequencers - Runic Sequencers | |
| World Systems: | |
| Settlements - Factions Quarters - Shops - Taverns - Banks Riding - Sailing - Boons Communication - Portals Time - Containers/Bags Radiant Heart - Assassin's Guild Sencliff's Pirates | |
| Item Creation Systems: | |
| Alchemy - Art Craft - Carpentry Herb - Smith - Tailor Dweomercraft - Runes | |
| Armor Weapons - Melee / Ranged / Siege Resources - Poison | |
| Arelith Changes: | |
| Classes - Skills - Feats - Trap Summons - Familiar Reskins Spells (list) - Misc | |
| Help: | |
| Rules - Roleplay - Maps Console Commands Common Bugs - Staff Support Tickets - Character Remake [The Astrolabe] | |
Contents
Welcome to Arelith!
What is Arelith?
- The Server
- Arelith is a Persistent World Roleplay Server based on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. This means that the server is active twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. (Except during maintenance and power or internet outages.)
- Arelith's main body consists of four servers: Surface, Cities and Planes, Underdark and Distant Shores. Movement between these servers is seamless and occurs automatically when a character touches an area transition leading to a different server.
- Surface contains most of the overworld and towns around the island of Arelith. Cities and Planes contains Cordor and the planes, like Baator or the Plane of Shadows. Underdark contains Andunor and the rest of the Underdark. Distant Shores contains the far islands of Sibayad and Skal.
- A fifth server exists, Pretty Good Character Creator (PGCC), that is disconnected from the main world but will allow you to build out new characters with Arelith mechanics to test out builds.
The server shift from Standard edition to Enhanced Edition occurred in March of 2018. In the forum there is information and instructions for old and new players that want to migrate their account from one server to the other and recover all their account and character data.
- The Setting
Arelith is a small isle off the Sword Coast, closest to Luskan and somewhat close to Ruathym. It takes place in the Forgotten Realms setting, 3.0-3.5 which is after the Time of Troubles but before the Spellplague. Specifically, the Arelith timeline diverges in early 1372 DR: Bane has been resurrected, but Lolth has never gone silent.
Time goes forward, but events that may have happened in the lorebooks past this age may or may not happen in the universe of Arelith at all at discretion of the developer team.
Roleplay
Arelith is a Roleplay server. As such, players are expected to remain in character at all times and play their characters in keeping with the contents of their character sheets. To maintain the ambience and environment, Out Of Character (OOC) chat is not allowed. (ex: //Hey, this is OOC!) Players are encouraged to use Tells to communicate with other players.
- Roleplay Bonus
- Arelith has a special Roleplay Bonus system, which rewards players for staying in character at all times and creating enjoyable roleplay for others through small XP bonuses every 5 real minutes (15 game minutes).
Rules
Players on Arelith are primarily governed by the Rules, which can be found on Arelith Astrolabe site.
Clarifications for specific cases are available, however common sense and cooperation with the DMs is usually sufficient.
Character Creation
Arelith has been heavily modified from base Neverwinter Nights mechanics.
- When creating a character, new players may wish to view the changes that have been made to the following character aspects:
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- Note: Do not use the subrace option during NWN character creation. Subrace selection will become available after logging in.
- Note that certain Prestige Classes require staff approval.
Backgrounds & Gifts
After a character is created, the player will have the option to choose from a variety of Backgrounds and Gifts, to further customize their characters. Backgrounds apply bonuses and penalties to skills and stats, as a tradeoff, while Gifts apply only bonuses at the cost of increased Effective Character Level.
All characters start with their racial abilities and stats, despite the base race (IE: The Imp is halfling-based, but it won't retain any halfling feat or skill; it will use its own).
Alignment
Characters are expected to remain within the range of acceptable behavior for their chosen alignment. Isolated incidents of aberrant behavior will not result in punishment; however, characters habitually acting outside of their alignment may be approached by a DM to re-evaluate their alignment choice. Any player may voluntarily request such a review in order to have their alignment altered. Alignments cannot be altered by player/character action alone.
Misc Changes
A place for all quirks and little things that don't go anywhere else, like the encumbrance changes and other special mechanics implemented.
The Mark of Destiny
A character with The Mark of Destiny will receive an additional 20XP every IG hour, on top of any Roleplay Bonus which they already receive, but will be automatically deleted after ten deaths.
Character Customization
Magical mirrors found on the island of Arelith allow characters to customize the shape and color of their clothing, weapons, and armor.
- If changes are desired after character creation, players may ask a DM to take their character to the Character Editing Room, where skin, hair, and tattoo colors can be altered, as well as Portraits and Voices. Players may be asked to justify these changes before a request is granted, and all changes must be approved by the overseeing DM before the character is returned to the game world.
Character Remake
There are several opinions available if you feel your character requires a remake.
Game Mechanics
Arelith employs a variety of special mechanics.
New Player Restrictions
A New Player is defined as not having had any PC with more than 40 hours of playtime. To not be a new player anymore, simply log on to a PC with greater than or equal to 40 hours of active playtime and you will have all features available across all characters. If you do not have any PCs with greater than or equal to 40 hours of active playtime, you will need to actively play on at least one PC for 40 hours.
New Players will not be able to do/have access to the following.
- Destroying fixtures
- Picking up fixtures they do not own
- Hurting non-hostile entities with traps
- Attacking non-hostile PC/NPCs
- Hostiling non-hostile PC/NPCs
- Pickpocketing PCs
- Taunting non-hostile PCs/NPCs
Experience & Levels
Experience gain and leveling up on Arelith can be considered relatively slow, and the level cap is set at 30. This means that it can and usually takes months for a character to reach maximum level, and some builds are not possible. Characters also receive additional experience when traveling with others; however, it is not necessary to be in a party to receive this bonus.
There are many ways to gain experience; exploration, adventuring, or even as time passes characters receive experience. Arelith encourages a pacing of continual exploration and unhurried roleplaying in this regard.
Character State
Every character's state of health is measured by the following statistics: (aside from hit points)
- Food
- Water
- Rest
- Sobriety
Characters must eat, drink, and sleep regularly in order to survive. Drinking alcohol will cause characters to become drunk, and excessive drinking can cause death. Allowing any other statistic to drop will incur penalties and risk death.
Languages
Depending on your Race and Class selections, your character may be able to speak a language, or many languages, other than Common. (English) Languages can be activated by chat commands, and appear as color coded jumbled text. Languages are automatically translated for any characters who can understand them, and additional languages can be learned by any character with sufficient Intelligence.
Deities
Arelith's Deity System allows characters to choose a deity to worship, in order to gain the deity's favor and use high level divine magic. Characters may also call on their deity for aid in times of need.
Banks
Found in every settlement on the island, as well as a few other places, Banks will hold your gold for you and allow you to access it at any other bank. Any gold carried by your character will be lost upon death, although others can collect it by picking up your character's corpse.
Transportation
Travelers on the island of Arelith have a variety of transportation methods available for rapid movement.
- Portals allow characters to travel instantly to any other portal destination which has already been activated. Portal sources are few and far between, and destinations must be discovered before they can be used.
- Portal Lens
- The Portal Lens is a handy item which allows its user to access Arelith's portal system from anywhere. Beware that these magical devices are rare and expensive, and only allow a single use.
- Boats
- NPC operated boats travel on demand along the coast of Arelith, but each trip costs a fee, and only certain destinations have ports.
- Caravans
- NPC operated caravans travel at regular intervals along inland routes. Passage is less expensive than boat travel and more accessible than portal travel, but often involves waiting. Caravans also do not travel at night.
Commonly Used Acronyms
Players use acronyms or abbreviations for out of game communication, a list can be found here.
What To Do
You've made a character. You're wandering around the island. Now, what? When you just want a break from deeper RP and more complicated narrative, you can dedicate to a few more trivial activities - or do both at the same time.
Adventuring
The island of Arelith, while small, is riddled with dungeons, caves, settlements, and other sorts of areas just begging to be explored. Gather up a party of adventurers and get out there! Remember to bring food, water, healing supplies, and some means of defending yourself.
- “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” -J.R.R. Tolkien
Crafting
Arelith features a robust crafting system, which allows characters to turn gathered supplies into useful equipment, weapons, consumables, and objects, through the use of Crafting Fixtures. The crafting system consists of six tradeskills - Forging, Carpentry, Art Crafting, Alchemy, Herbalism, and Tailoring - the products of which are easy to guess. As characters level up, they will earn points which can be invested, non-refundably, into these tradeskills in order to achieve a greater chance of successfully crafting items.
- Names & Descriptions
- Using any crafting fixture or enchantment basin, players may rename and add descriptions to their crafted items.
- Fixtures and plants
- Main article: Fixtures
- Among the items which can be crafted are fixtures; objects that can be placed in the game world by characters, which persist across resets, allowing players to add detail to the world.
Enchanting
Arelith features an item enchantment system, which allows characters to add special properties, such as skills, stats, saves, and more, to items found in the module or created through the crafting system. More powerful properties will have a higher cost and a lower chance of success.
Property Ownership
Characters can spend gold to purchase properties, which can be used for a variety of purposes. Note that all properties will cost a certain amount of gold every 4 real-time days (1 IG month) as upkeep. Properties must be visited regularly, or they will automatically go up for sale and all of their contents will be free for the taking. Ownership is limited to one quarter, one guildhouse, and one shop per player (NOT character) at a time.
- Shops are used to sell items to other characters. A price is set when an item is placed in the shop, after which any character may purchase it, regardless of whether the owner is logged in or not. Gold is automatically transferred to the owner's bank account.
- Quarters and Guildhouses may be purchased by characters. They are typically used as homes or meeting places, but their uses are limited only by imagination. Guildhouses are similar to quarters, but have other quarters within them, and are usually much larger.
- Ships
- Ships are very similar to quarters and guildhouses in their purpose, with the added benefit that they are capable of sailing to a number of ports on the island of Arelith, as well as exploring the other smaller island in the local archipelago. Ships are boarded via skiffs, which are found at whichever port the ship docked at last. Sailing is not without risk. Traveling to distant and dangerous destinations may attract the attention of pirates or other inhabitants of the sea.
- Most quarters, guildhouses, and ships (but not all) contain a storage chest. Some even contain two. Storage Chests can be used to store items across server resets. Only a certain number of items can be stored, and if a chest is overfilled, some of the items will be gone after the next reset.
Settlements
There are several settlements on Arelith's surface, each with its own culture. Settlements have citizens, leaders, and officers, but the larger a settlement grows, the more resources it requires to thrive.
- Any character can choose to become a citizen of any settlement for a price. Only citizens may vote for the next leader of a settlement. Depending on the laws of a given settlement, citizenship may offer other benefits.
- After a period of time from the last election, any citizen may challenge the leadership of a settlement, and initiate an election. Becoming the leader of a settlement comes with both power and responsibility. Settlement leaders may revoke citizenship, evict Player Characters from properties, and exile unwelcome characters. Leaders who abuse their power, or fail to effect positive change may find it difficult to win another election.
- For each registered citizen, a settlement requires a fixed amount of resources of varied types. Resources can be brought, and either donated or sold, to the city, by Player Characters. If the resource quota is not met by the end of a year, the settlement is forced to purchase resources with gold at an enormous markup. If the treasury cannot accommodate a resource purchase, the settlement will go bankrupt; the leaders will be impeached; and new elections will begin.
Death
The eventual end for most characters. Or not!
Corpses
When a Player Character dies, he or she is transported to The Fugue to await final judgement. However, their corpse remains on The Prime Material Plane, and may be returned to life by another character with the appropriate skills and resources. A corpse may be destroyed to prevent resurrection; this does not prevent respawning.
Respawning
If your companions are unable to revive your corpse, you may opt to respawn at a previously chosen Respawn Point, somewhere in the module. If you haven't selected a respawn point yet then you will respawn in the original starting point, respective of the server you are playing at the moment. Respawning comes at a steep price. The gods do not perform favors for free, and will tax your character a piece of their soul for the service.
Epic Sacrifice
THE END. When your character's story has come to an end, you may choose to permanently delete them from the server vault , using the -delete_character console command. Be very careful when using this command, as characters which have been deleted will not be restored. If your character is level 16 or above, you will have the chance to receive a Retirement Award, which can be used to apply bonuses and special characteristics to a new character.
Community
The Staff
The current member list of the Arelith Staff can be found here.
The Forums
Arelith has a very active forum with a variety of subforums for asking questions about the game, finding roleplay tips, and general friendly discussion.
Please remember to read the rules before posting.
[Donations]
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