New player guide

Welcome to Arelith!

What is Arelith?

The Server

Arelith is a Neverwinger Nights Persistent World Roleplay Server. This means that the server is active twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. (Except during maintenance and power or internet outtages.)

Arelith's main body consists of three servers: Cordor, The Surface, and The Underdark. Movement between these servers is seamless, and occurs automatically when a character touches an area transition leading to a different server.

The Setting

Arelith is a small island located somewhere on The Trackless Sea, west of The Sword Coast and The Moonshae Islands. It is populated with a broad variety of races, who inhabit a number of settlememnts spread across the island. Beneath the surface of Arelith is The Underdark, where a separate society of monster races lives. These worlds don't often collide, but when they do, the results are usually quite interesting.

Roleplay

Arelith is a Roleplay server. As such, all 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, 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 game hour.

Rules

Players on Arelith are primarily governed by the 5 Golden Rules, which can be found on Arelith's Homepage. 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:

• Race - Arelith has 26 subraces, beyond the original 7.

Note: Do not use the subrace option during NWN character creation. Subrace selection will become available after logging in.

• Class - Many classes offer alternate Paths which change the way they function, to varying degrees.

Note that certain Prestige Classes require staff approval.

• Feats
• Spells
• Skills

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.

To use the custom bonuses and penalties for your chosen Race choose the Subrace Properties option from the Gifts menu in the Arelith Entry Area, after character creation.

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.

Alignment

Characters are expected to remain within the range of acceptable behavior for their chosen alignment. Isolated incidents of abberant 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.

The Mark of Destiny

Any character may choose to take the Mark of Destiny during initial character setup. A character with The Mark of Destiny will receive an additional 20XP per hour, on top of any Roleplay Bonus which they already receive, but will be automatically deleted after ten deaths. It is recommended that new players read the entire Mark of Destiny article before choosing the option, in order to fully understand its ramifications.

Character Customization

Magical mirrors found on the island of Arelith allow characters to customize the shape and color of their clothing, weapons, and armor.

Character Editing Room

Portraits and Voices

Game Mechanics

Arelith employs a variety of special mechanics to enhance immersion and empower players to

Experience & Levels

Experience gain and leveling up on Arelith is relatively slow compared to most other servers, and the level cap is set at 30. This means that it can take months or even years 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.

Experience is primarily gained by killing NPCs or through the Roleplay Bonus, however other bonuses can be found in the module, and DMs can award one-time XP bonuses for exceptional roleplay.

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.

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.

Transportation

Travelers on the island of Arelith have a variety of transportation methods available for rapid movement.

Portals

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 Lense 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.

What To Do

You've made a character. You're wandering around the island. Now, what?

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, Cooking, 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

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 per in game month as upkeep, and each player (not each character) may only hold one of each property type. Properties must be visited regularly, or they will automatically go up for sale, and all of their contents will be free for the taking.

Shops

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 & Guildhouses

Quarters and Guildhouses may be purchased by characters. Typically they are 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.

Storage Chests

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.

Citizenship

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.

Leadership

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.

Resources

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 accomodate 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. Malicious characters may choose to destroy a corpse to prevent other characters from resurrecting it.

Respawning

If your companions are unable to revive your corpse, or if you simply have no friends, you may opt to respawn at a previously chosen Respawn Point, somewhere in the module. 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 can never 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 Triumvirate of Arelith is:
Jjjerm - Server Owner and Creator
Mithreas - Lead Coder
Artos - Lead Area Designer

Requests and concerns should be brought to the attention of the DMs. Arelith's DM staff rotates every six months, and a list can be found on the forums.

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.

IRC Channel

Arelith hosts an IRC channel on Mibbit, for player chat. Connection details can be found here.