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Newcomer Guide

Welcome to the world of Arkhalia! An action-oriented persistent world (PW) for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.

Introduction

Arkhalia features content for solo and party play starting from level one to 40 and beyond (Legendary Levels). It is also heavily modified compared to regular Neverwinter Nights, coming with lot of unique features. Let's take a look at what Arkhalia has to offer:

  • Yearly seasons that reset all progress and introduce new features
  • Up to four classes per character instead of the usual three
  • Multiclassing does not impose an XP penalty
  • Unlockable custom races and classes
  • Modifications to many of the base classes, feats, spells and skills
  • New custom feats and spells, including epic ones
  • No more spell slots! All casters are spontaneous spellslingers, similar to the default sorcerer class, and are limited by spell points (Mana, Arcana, Power).
  • An overhauled loot system:
    • Randomized drops from regular enemies, bosses and treasure chests
    • Items can have slots for insertable gems
    • Unique and set items
  • More than 500 locations to explore, including many secret areas
  • Many dungeons for solo and party play, plus hardcore variations for extra difficulty
  • An in-game achievement system with rewards
  • Crafting is more involved, featuring mining, smelting, hunting and more
  • No automatic failure on roll 1
  • Hardcore difficulty where spells affect the caster and party members
  • Treasure maps that expect you to travel the world and unearth valuable loot (some real juicy goodies)

Additional ruleset changes for Season 2025 and from the community patch can be found on the wiki.

Arrival in Loftenwood

Your adventure starts in Loftenwood, a small town in the east of Arkhalia.

A quick overview of what the town has to offer:

  • Temple: Houses a healer and bindstone. The latter functions as a checkpoint and travel location after binding your soul to it. More of these can be found throughout the world. Teleportation wands can be bought and found while doing quests.
  • Adventurer's Guild: Inside is a quest board with tasks to complete.
  • Magical supplies: Spells, potions, jewelry crafting and a mass identifier.
  • Level surgery: Here, you can make changes to your character progression and development, but that's for later.
  • Tailor: Fancy a new cloak style?
  • Tavern: Drinks en-mass!
  • The Bank: Deposit and withdraw funds, store items and exchange them between your different characters safely.
  • Blacksmith: Rudimentary shop for buying and selling basic gear. He also has crafting tools like a pickaxe, chisel or blacksmith hammer in store. Get them for cheap.
  • Ranger: Similar to the blacksmith, but ranger and rogue supplies instead. Buy the skinning knife, it allows you to retrieve hides and meats, boosting your hunting XP in the progress.
  • Player market: Here, players can buy and sell more valuable items with a custom copper coin currency. You acquire these coins by completing dungeons.

Hint: There's an achievement for talking to all the important people in Loftenwood! You can access the achievement screen via the journal.

Your next steps

  • Loftenwood's Cemetery (Level 1+), to the west, has foul and easy zombies to slay.
  • The farmer in town needs help with his infested barn attic (Level 1+). Get the quest from the board in the Adventurer's Guild first, otherwise he won't tell you anything.
  • Head over to the Mad Farm (Level 2+) in the east. Beware of the scarecrow and venture into the storage (Level 3-5).
  • North of Town, by following the path to the bridge, you will find the Bugs' Nest (Level 1-5).
  • Rescue mission for a missing girl. Talk to the NPC near the ranger, then walk into the South Forest and head east towards the Rocky Cliffs, where you find the wererats' lair (Level 2-6). Hint: Not every door needs a key when you got brute force!
  • Gerick of the Adventurer's Guild requires your assistance. Get the quest and complete it in the following order:
    1. Undeads are causing havoc in the Crypt (Level 3-6) below the cemetery. Hint: Invest in a +1 weapon, it will make your life quite a bit easier.
    2. Settle the score with the chieftain of the Orc Settlement (Level 1-7) north of town.
    3. Some nasty kobolds need a spanking. You can find them even further north in the Underground Lake caves (Level 4-8) below the Dark Woods.
    4. Lastly, pay mighty Gumbo, the goblin leader, a visit (Level 5-10). The smell is coming from somewhere in the Goblin Camps past the South Forest.
  • Onwards, it's only the beginning! If you follow the road south, you will eventually end up in Sandgrove, a town in the desert. There, and beyond, many more adventures, towns, treasures, bosses and dungeons are waiting to be explored.

Good to know

  • The custom player action from the ring menu allows you to teleport to your most recent bindstone for free. You also have some appearance options and the ability to see various stats like damage immunities, number of boss kills, deaths, etc.
  • Damage resistance from items and feats stacks: Having two items with 3/- and 2/- physical each, they would stack and block 5/- physical damage. Six levels of Dwarven Defender (3/-) would further increase the total resistance to 8/-.
  • The ability cap was raised from +12 to +18.
  • Ranged weapons no longer require any ammunition.
  • Arkhalia does away with the usual healing potions and packs, and features refillable potions that are placed into special slots below your armor. These potions refill after each rest. Later on, in other towns and by completing quests and achievements, you will get more potent versions of these potions.
  • Upon death, you leave behind a gravestone, replacing any previous one. If you return there, you can regain some of your lost XP and gold.
  • When you complete dungeons within your level range, you not just receive loot, but also one or more copper coins, depending on the difficulty of said dungeon. There are special shops (Numismatic) in various towns around the world, but also the Player Market, that only deal with these coins instead of regular GP. Ten copper coins can also be exchanged for one silver coin, ten silver coins for a one gold coin and vice-versa.
  • Green-labeled dungeon treasure contains personal loot for every player and does not need to be split.
  • Mom, I'm slow! Haste items are rare, but can appear as loot in dungeon treasure chests. Another option is to buy them in Agardon's (town) Numismatic for 20 copper coins.
  • Many dungeons require a 80%+ monster clear rate before you can enter the boss chamber. Check your combat log, the progress is shown there. Also, a red glowing transition indicates that the boss hasn't respawned yet, so don't proceed just yet or you will nullify the run.
  • Secrets await! Not every lock has to stay locked, some doors can be bashed instead. Yet again, others can only be overcome with the necessary skills. Make sure to invest some skill points into Open Lock, Disable Trap and Search, even if you have to cross-class them, otherwise you will miss out on loot and hinder your own exploration endeavor by not being able to complete dungeons.
  • Whenever you wear or use an item, it will be soulbound to your character, making it impossible to share with other characters and players. Later one, there are expensive vouchers to remove said property.
  • In Sandgrove and beyond, there a transportation quests that add an Dimensional Anchor, a special effect that disallows teleportation.
  • Casters behold, there's an auto-casting device in Northtown, one of the nordic towns, that allows you to fully self-buff your character by a mere click.
  • Not every part of the crafting system is in place yet, Alchemy, for example, is still incomplete. Thus, apart from questing, collecting plant and fungus parts has no use.
  • Gems can be removed from a slotted item by placing it in special gem removal chests. One such chest can be found in Loftenwood's Adventurer Guild. This service costs gold, but retains both the item and the gems.
  • A higher-tier socket property still allows lower-tier gems to be inserted. Chipped gems can go into perfect sockets, but not the other way around.
  • Dener (town) and Agardon (town) both have a crafting chest for sale that combines three gems of the same kind into a stronger variant.
  • Got some weight on your shoulders? Early on, weight reduction bags are rare, but can appear as random loot or be purchased in said bag shop in Agardon. Consider investing in some strength gear in the meantime, 2-3 points do wonders.
  • Once you got your crafting equipment from the shops, you can start right away.
  • Better safe than sorry! Creating a character with [test] in its name, will transport you to a leveling area where you can try out your build before jumping into the world.
  • When partying together, all players need to be within five levels of each other, otherwise they will not gain any XP.
  • A few custom classes are freely available, but most require special in-game books to unlock before they can be used. Same for the custom races.
  • The current map is outdated, some locations were shuffled around or removed in the meantime. A short overview:
    • Tanglebrook (town) was removed.
    • Snowgard (town) along with the surrounding areas is now accessible north of Agardon (town).
    • Dener (town) no longer connects to Kattinwell (town). You can get to the latter by boat from Agardon.
    • The Underdark can be accessed from somewhere south-east of Agardon.
    • The Dragon Mountains north of Agardon had their layout somewhat changed.
  • Some NPCs are only around during certain hours of the day. The farmer in Loftenwood is a good example.
  • You are expected to repeat dungeons multiple times for certain rewards. And some rewards can only be found in the most difficult party dungeons.
en/newcomer.txt · Last modified: 2025/01/17 01:42 by 127.0.0.1