Guide: PvE & Gold Basics

[Skibbles]

Introduction

[Last Reviewed January 20th, 2022]

This guide is intended to help players understand some of the most basic mechanics of PvE content as well as how to make gold. Many of these concepts are very well understood by experienced players, but new players may be overwhelmed by the volume of details and custom mechanics in Arelith.

I put this together to help answer many of the common threads in recent years where players indicate great difficulty with making gold. It is my hope that this will help alleviate the concern over shops and quarters - you can make hundreds of thousands of gold with just your citizen storage and some practice.

Arelith is not easy, and even to long time players like myself there's always something new to learn or an embarrassing defeat to a horde of angry monsters.

I won't be busting out hyper-optimized statistics or every exact location in a step-by-step walkthrough. In my opinion a great portion of the fun on Arelith is the adventure of discovery.

Therefore the purpose is to simply show you what lies just behind the curtain; the things that most long-time players know so well it is ingrained into every adventure like muscle memory but may not nearly be so obvious to new or casual players.

Arelith is a Role-playing game first and foremost. Many times through this guide I'm going to direct you to just ask other characters, and this is because you can't do everything yourself. You can get a ton of help from other characters - everything from items, assistance, adventuring friends, and even just gold if you ask nicely.

If this is your first time on Arelith I highly recommend visiting the wiki's build guides to get some ideas for your character. Note that you don't need to make a carbon copy of what you may find listed there, but simply reviewing what the community has put together can go miles to understanding Arelith's mechanics.

Build Guides: http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Character_Builds

I have over ten thousand hours on Arelith with probably a total of over twenty thousand hours on NWN since it was released in 2002. I remember when Hordes of the Underdark was an expansion pack I was once hyped for.

Many of these hours were spent in PvE and I enjoy plain old Adventuring even today. It's fun, relaxing, challenging, and there's no substitute for the classic D&D dynamic of robbing monsters, finding cool stuff, while role-playing your character's personal dynamic.

I feel comfortable making this guide, but I encourage people to comment on any mistakes I've made. I didn't write this all in one sitting. After pasting this into the Forums for final editing I'm realizing the sheer scale is in line with what I imagine the new player experience might feel like even now.

Commands

Commands are a vital component of Arelith, and will be constantly referenced all over this guide.

In short, a Command is something you type into the chat window to either activate a feat, mechanic, or provide feedback on anything as simple as the game's current date.

Here's a short list of the commands I'll mention in the guide:

-guard
-date
-adventure
-feat

To get a full list of commands you can type '--' (two dashs, enter). There's dozens of commands, and if you factor that many have sub-commands, there's hundreds. Don't let this overwhelm you. Many of them are very niche and will not critically affect your experience as a new player (aside from the few I just mentioned).

Table of Contents (Copy/Paste a Subject to Search)

[001] Adventuring Parties, Writs, and XP Types
[002] The Basin & Bank
[003] Fighting
[004] Looting
[005] Vendors & Skills
[006] Rare Items, Player Shops, and Settlement Storage

[001] Adventuring Parties, Writs, and XP Types

http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Experience

Like the Wiki states - nobody knows the exact numbers on how to maximize XP (for obvious reasons) but we do know what gives more and what gives less.

The maximum party size is five characters, and they need to be within a level range of +- 5 for appropriate XP gains so you can't have your level 30 friend drag you through epic content while you come out the other side with ten more levels.

Having some adventuring friends increases your XP, but having too many will diminish it.

There's no maximum amount of characters you can invite to a party, but there will be a very dramatic falloff in XP gain at six character parties and up - especially if one of the characters is way over the 5 level threshold.

Note: Don't be surprised or offended if you ask to tag along on an adventure but are denied because there's too many people. It's not personal; it's simply that there will be minimal experience gained from the time spent and not everyone has a lot of time on their hands.

Some summoned creatures also provide penalties to XP gain if they're too strong or take the party over five characters. Don't be surprised if characters make remarks about there being too many summoned minions if it is taking the party size over the cap.

Most of Arelith's characters will talk about PvE by calling it 'Hunting' or sometimes 'Writ Work.'

There are tons of classes, multi-classes, weapons, skills, and spells on Arelith. Every adventure can feel a little different just by the company you're with, but the sheer number of combinations and classes can be daunting when trying to figure out what company to keep.

For the purpose of this basic guide parties can simply be broken down into the common multi-player MMO archetypes: DPS, Tank, and Support. Usually a good part consists of diverse classes and capabilities. If you're a tanky fighter, then you probably want to pair with a rogue or a wizard and vice versa.

The following is a basic list, not strictly by the class, but by how they might 'appear' in game to help very new players know what to look for.

Tank
1. 1H/Shield Wielders.
2. Monks.
3. Devout characters wearing heavy armor.

DPS
1. 2H Wielders.
2. Devout characters wearing heavy armor.
3. Rogues.
4. Warlocks.
5. Archers.

Support
1. Almost all Spellcasters.
2. Bards.
3. Devout characters.

This is overly simplified but should help you get through the earliest stages of adventuring. I put 'Devout Characters' into all three categories just to highlight that many characters can fill multiple roles, and sometimes it comes down to their build or how they prepare before the adventure.

Writs/Quests

Now that you've assembled a party, or decided to set out on your own, it's time to pick up a Writ from your local Adventuring Agency.

Most likely you'll be finding your Agent in Cordor's Inn 'The Nomad' or Andunor's Inner Hub (the latter is more difficult to find - it's up the stairs next to the purple portal in The Hub, hang a left and go all the way down the hall to a small office with a Duergar).

If you're not starting in Andunor or Cordor then just ask someone for directions to the 'Writ Office,' or something like that.

http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Quests

The Wiki calls them Quests, but almost every character refers to them in game as 'Writs' or sometimes 'Contracts.'

Speak to the agent, get your paperwork, and then talk to them again. Writ Agents offer you contracts near your level, and usually some directions on how to get to the dungeon. In order to see the details of the contract, at any time, you must examine the item in your inventory.

The helpfulness of doing Writs cannot be understated.

They give you gold, lots of experience, and serve as tour guides all in one. The latter point is the most helpful for new players, in my opinion, because the world of Arelith is staggeringly huge and you can get easily lost or find yourself in over your head if you just wander around.

The danger of the writ is usually, but not always, tied to the amount of gold paid out.

Other characters are a great resource to talk to when figuring out which writs to take. Very likely a new character in your party will be played by someone who has done it more than once - maybe even dozens of times - and can offer advice on which ones to take, how to get there, and how to best fight what you're going to face.

Types of Experience

Note from January 20th, 2022: This section is out of date as far as the recent writ and adventure XP overhaul, and I haven't had the time to take multiple new character through the entire 1-30 process. Most of it still holds up in the broader scope, in my estimation, but be aware.

http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Experience

There are two types of experience: Experience, which is exactly what you'd be used to in any RPG game, and Adventure Experience which is pooled but not immediately applied experience that slowly trickles to your character over time with every 'Tick' (that pop-up in your combat log that updates your character's status: food, water, rest, and so on.)

Adventure Experience is gained through writs, PvE, exploration, and crafting. In PvE it will reduce the Experience gained per kill, but give larger numbers to your Adventure Experience pool. This form of experience is intended to grant passive XP gain during RP.

At any time you can see your character's status, and accumulated Adventure Experience, by typing -date.

Writs, on completion, will give your character a lot of both experience types. You can quickly find that your character can have thousands of adventure experience that is piling up so it's important to know that you can actually toggle this feature on/off by typing -adventure.

Turning off -adventure will increase the amount of Experience you get per monster, but completely remove the amount of Adventure XP you can from kills. It's technically a net negative, but you'll also gain levels faster.

If you have thousands of Adventure XP there's no need to continue stacking it all on and you can gain levels faster (and thus start fighting harder monsters and getting more money) by toggling -adventure as needed.

[002] The Basin & Bank

http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Dweomercraft

There are many names for the Basin and what it does, but essentially it allows you to make your own magic items. The Basin is a critical component for most character's progression, and the new player experience can be very difficult without knowing this exists.

Mechanically, and technically, it is called 'Dweomercrafting' and you'll see your skill in this craft by typing -date.

Most characters will call it 'Enchanting', 'Basin Work', or some close derivative. By and large, however, characters call the station where this is done The Basin (because it looks like a basin of water).

Like other crafting stations they're scattered throughout the module and players can make their own basins too. Most often you'll find them conspicuously placed near a bank NPC for convenience.

Speaking of banks this is where you will want to store your gold coins. You lose them all when you die.

There's a thousand ways to use the basin, because you can make really anything you want if you pour enough money into it, but the most basic newbie items you can make are cheap and effective.

Every character usually has a primary ability: Warriors often use Strength, Rogues will use Dexterity, Wizard with Intelligence, and so on. I recommend spending most of your writ income towards making very basic items that enhance these abilities once you've restocked on your potions and healing kits. (Don't forget to put your remaining gold in the bank to save up in case you die on your next adventure!)

It may feel costly, and sometimes you'll fail, but pretty quickly you'll have a bunch of basic magic items that are going to make your adventuring career infinitely easier until you're able to start finding and making better stuff.

I recommend not doing it yourself if don't have to, because chances are that other characters will have more skill with it and be able to do it for you, for cheaper, and with a higher chance of success. Many characters will barely charge you for the service, and simply asking for help making new items can sometimes make you some powerful friends.

[003] Fighting

I won't cover any single dungeon here, but I will outline some of Arelith's mechanics, skills, and spells that will not only make PvE easier but gold income easier too as you spend fewer resources in every fight.

Aggro

Before getting into the most important PvE mechanic of Guard, let's talk about monster Aggro. If you don't know: 'Aggro' is MMO short-form for having a monster's immediate attention.

Arelith's monster Aggro is usually very simple: they will go after whoever hurt them most recently, is doing the most damage, or whoever they saw first.

On rare occasions Aggro does not work as might be expected and a monster, or group of monsters, will absolutely not stop at chasing a character down even if that character has stopped putting out damage and other characters are still damaging those monsters.

Some spells and abilities will really rustle some monster jimmies, thus drawing permanent Aggro, but by and large monsters will only attack whoever hurt them last. I suspect that monster 'friendly fire' (I notice this a lot when monster's use a breath weapon and hit other monsters) may also break their typical AI when it comes to Guard.

Guard

Guarding is one of the most potent mechanics in PvE, and I'd even say it is the single most critical tool for party PvE.

Without proper usage of Guard some dungeons cannot even be done without using excessive resources.

In Essence: One character 'Guarding' another will draw all the 'Aggro' that the Guarded character generates. There is a limited proximity to Guard, so if you're being guarded you will want to be close to the character protecting yours. You'll get frequent pop-ups, in white text over the character's head, if it is working.

You can activate Guard by using the Guard Feat, or sending the character in question a private message of -guard. Don't worry - they won't actually see you awkwardly messaging this at them.

Only one character can be guarded at a time, and only by one other character.

Characters will frequently talk about Guard in game by saying things like, "Can anyone shield me?" or, "Do you need me to step in for you?" and things like that. It is usually a good idea to have this figured out before the party sets out.

The Tank/DPS guard relationship is the greatest tool in adventure, but guarding Support characters such as Warlock and Wizard can just as easily be of immense value. In very bad situations, where things are out of control and the monsters are winning, a very skilled Tank can sweep around a losing battle scooping up the Aggro from multiple characters until things are under control.

Let's take a quick look at the overwhelming difference Guard makes.

Adventuring Without Guard

Tank and Rogue go on an adventure without using Guard. They struggle through every encounter. Rogue takes more damage from their low AC, isn't doing much damage because they can't use Sneak Attack on monsters facing them, and Tank isn't doing enough damage to kill the monsters quickly because that isn't Tank's job. They're both using lots of healing items and the adventure is costing more money than they're going to make.

Adventuring With Guard

Tank and Rogue go on another adventure, but this time they are armed with the wonderful knowledge of Guard. Tank is using -guard on Rogue and drawing all the monster's attention. Now Rogue is protected and, because monsters are focused on Tank, Rogue is now doing tons of sneak attack damage! Tank's high AC means they're both using minimal supplies, and Rogue's damage is so high that they manage to get through most encounters quickly which further decreases the need to use their supplies.

Pro-Tips on Guard

Guard is amazing, but I've seen it used very poorly or ignored on many occasions, and so the following is a list of tips on how to take the best advantage of this incredibly powerful mechanic.

• 1. Pay attention to the white text pop-ups over your character's head. If you are taking a lot of damage, and your Tank is paying attention, you may see a pop-up 'Tank is now guarding you!'
  • 1a. If you see such a pop-up - get to that character as fast as you can and then STOP MOVING and DO NOT PANIC. You may take a little more damage from Attacks of Opportunity (AOO), or fiddly NWN mechanics, but within a round or two all those monsters will suddenly ignore you and go for your Guarding friend.
  • 1aa. This is the ideal opportunity to immediately start healing yourself, and then probably your Tank too, who could be getting overwhelmed. Using Healing Kits does not provoke AOOs, neither do wands, meaning you can further help by applying protective magic/healing to your Tank if you're a Support or character with Use Magic Device.
    • 1ab. Once again: STOP MOVING and DO NOT PANIC. I can't tell you how many times I've seen characters running all over the place while I try and chase them down to protect them - only to watch them keep running from my Guard until they're beaten to death by a horde of angry monsters. This gets worse when, in their panic, they draw even more monsters and then wipe out multiple characters or even the entire party.

  The #1 cause of a 'Party Wipe' is panic.

  2. Casting offensive spells while under Guard can be done with just a little investment into the Concentration Skill, turning on Defensive Casting, and being near your Guard when the monsters are affected by the spell. That fireball that would usually get a wizard into heaps of trouble, for example, will instead direct all its victims to the Tank. This works perfectly with Warlock's incantations.
  
  3. Archers can also fire safely from Guard. Guard does have a limited proximity, but with a lot of practice and good positioning it's possible to shoot at monsters in melee with the Tank, while still being Guarded, and also not provoking Attacks of Opportunity (AOO).
  • 3a. This is not easy to do, and every now and then you'll still get smacked, but I promise it's a lot better than running in panic circles while monsters chase an Archer around provoking multiple AOOs and simply being struck by monster flurries when they occasionally catch up - all while the rest of the party is also running in circles trying to interdict the monsters as every fight turns into a giant mess when it doesn't need to be.
  • 3b. I think the size of the monster might determine the range of their AOO. Small creatures are easier to shoot at from guard, but a giant may have a larger reach.

Pro-Pro Tips on Guard

• 1. The white text pop-up floaty is immensely useful. It is the prime feedback that Guard is working, but also the prime feedback that Guard has just worked.
  • 1a. If nothing is around you, you're sticking next to your Guard like you should, and you suddenly see 'Tank has guarded you!' then you immediately know that you've drawn Aggro from something. This could be a stealthy monster, or an invisible mage monster about to lay down some magic hell, but if this happens then STOP MOVING and DO NOT PANIC. Depending what dungeon you're in you'll probably know what to expect and can act accordingly.
  • 1b. When the white text pop-up floaty triggers - it means the Tank has taken all the Aggro off your character. Usually this takes a full round to be on the safe side. Depending what type of class you're playing this means you don't need to be next to the Guard, from then on, if you don't intend to be actively doing damage or otherwise causing Aggro in the encounter.
  • For example: Wizard runs forward, blasts a group of monsters with a fireball, and thus draws all their Aggro. Wizard runs back to Tank, waits for floating 'Tank has guarded you!,' and then retreats further behind the line to better safety after having delivered all the Aggro to the guarding Tank. Monsters can be controlled like this frequently, and tactics like this make night and day difference between parties of experienced players and parties of very new players.

The final pro-tip on Guard is going to again be: STOP MOVING and DO NOT PANIC. If you're on the verge of death, even with a completely empty inventory, the single best thing you can do both for yourself and your party is to stand next to your Guard and do absolutely nothing.

IMPORTANT

Some enemies use magic, or have an ability, that summons other monsters. Usually this will be something like zombies, or a red slaad, and these temporary enemies have a different AI that ignores -guard altogether.

In some cases these extra minions aren't a big threat, but to squishy characters like mages or two-handers focused on offense they can put out a lot of damage with little warning.

You can either focus on the summoned monster quickly, or go for a two-in-one by killing the enemy that summoned the extra minions. Killing the summoner always immediately unsummons their minions.

Guard is generally very reliable, works like a charm, and has been an Arelith mechanic for as long as I can remember. There will be rare occasions where it doesn't function on time, maybe from a bug, lag, or group of monsters after an area transition, but you can turn every encounter into an absolute nightmare if you run in circles panicking.

Best Spells for PvE

I've used Fireball a few times in the examples above, to generally outline things, but the reality is that you should never prepare or even have fireball under any circumstance. There are very few exceptions to offensive magic in Arelith, and regular use of offensive magic is only viable with Warlocks and the very specific subclass of Sorcerer known as a True Flame - both who have infinite spells though with a small selection of them to choose from.

There are exceptions, but at the baseline my suggestion is to prepare Summoning and 'Warding' until you get a better feel for things because the vast majority of PvE content is far easier and cheaper with proper preparation for endurance rather than spectacular magical offense.

Whether you're a casting cleric, wizard, or shaman you're going to get much better results by investing your spells in the rest of the Party than you will by blowing through your limited spellslots in the first five encounters while the party struggles through the other sixty encounters and then the boss without your help.

Characters will refer to preparatory magic almost ubiquitously as 'Warding/Wards'.

Warding is any and every spell that protects or boosts another character. Bull's Strength, Stoneskin, Mind Blank, Magic Vestment, Protection from Alignment, and so on.

Arelith has changed or tweaked almost every spell in the game, but fortunately the In Game spell descriptions have been modified to be accurate to what they do and how long they last. If you aren't new to NWN in general a lot of magic may not do what you think it does. Make sure to read and experiment with anything you prepare.

Typically the most effective PvE Parties are best done with spellcasters in a Support role while Tanks and DPS, protected with magic, battle monsters with high efficiency.

The following are a few of the very best spells to use in PvE:

• Zoo Spells: These are any of the spells that directly modify Abilities such as Strength and Dexterity, and obviously have an animal in their spell name. You can ask your Support to prepare them as needed as you are the only one who knows what you need, and if you're the Support you can always ask your warriors what they need. Typically they will want Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Bear's Endurance, and sometimes Eagle's Splendor.

• Mage Armor: Plain old level one boring mage armor gives one of every AC type, lasts pretty much forever, and even with the most geared character will still provide at least 1 Dodge AC. There's no reason not to have it.

• Improved Invisibility: This is the single most important protective spell/effect in the game. The spell isn't used for its invisibility, but for its incredibly potent mechanic called Concealment. Imp Invis gives 50% Concealment which will cause monsters to miss 50% of all their hits, even feat based attacks like knockdown, but most importantly: Monsters can even miss Natural 20's and Critical Hits. Difficult fights can be turned around by using this one simple trick, and monsters hate it.
  • The power of this spell is ubiquitous across every single dungeon in Arelith with one exception: dungeons where every encounter contains monsters that immediately cast Invisibility Purge. You have to learn which dungeons have these monsters on your own, but they are a minority.
  • For Arcane classes this spell is shared on the same circle with Stoneskin which is a trap spell. Stoneskin is vastly inferior and should never be used when Improved Invisibility can be used instead. Monsters do a lot of damage on Arelith, and a small buffer of 100 HP is nothing compared to the thousands of HP of ignored damage from missed hits that Concealment provides. Stoneskin also turns characters into grey blobs, and some characters would rather die than cover up all that time spent making their sweet outfit.

• Haste/Mass Haste: Right alongside Improved Invisibility in its great importance in both PvE and PvP is the equally powerful Haste. Haste provides +4 AC, significantly boosts movement speed, grants a full extra attack per round, and also doubles the amounts of spells characters can cast per round. This allows Clerics, for example, to cast all their 'Wind Up Spells' at twice the speed - DPS characters can quickly get into contact with dangerous monsters - Tanks can maneuver where they need to be quicker. Everything is simply better and faster while Haste is in effect.
  • Mass Haste is limited to Sorcerers, Wizards and Bards currently, probably due to its immense power, and in high level content I would advise cramming your entire spellbook full of as many castings of this spell as you can. Everyone will love you, and you'll constantly be invited to every adventure for providing this great service.
  • Single target haste is widely available to other spellcasters and sold as wands and potions in player shops. If your character can't cast them naturally, then carrying a wand or handful of potions will help you get an upper hand in a losing battle or beat a hasty retreat.

• Storm of Vengeance: While it is a circle 9 spell, even a caster with very low numbers in their casting ability will find immense success with this spell. Even epic level monsters will frequently be stunned in this huge AoE. It is useful for getting control of bad situations, or luring in a horde of monsters to easily chop them up into piles of loot.

• Protection from Alignment: It doesn't provide full mind immunity anymore, but it does give a nice +2 Deflection AC and +6 Will bonus vs the alignment. Most monsters are evil. If they're neutral then the spell will still provide half its bonus. Easy to cast, widely available, and long lasting. Why not?

• Shield: Any character with 5 Lore and 50 gold can buy and use a shield scroll. Shield gives +4 Deflection AC and lasts long enough for more than one battle. Shield also protects you from Magic Missile which can and will do a lot of damage if its coming repeatedly from multiple sources. With feats in Spell Focus: Abjuration the shield will even absorb Missile Storm spells which are used by monsters in a lot of epic dungeons.

• Bless Weapon: Most classes can use bless scrolls with very minimal skill investment into Lore, and the benefits are incredibly strong versus Fiends/Undead which are frequent enemies. It also lasts for a good duration.

• Clarity: Super basic, but super necessary. Clarity potions and wands are very inexpensive, and provide full immunity to all mind effects including fear which is very dangerous. Confusion can be very dangerous to other party members if you're a Weaponmaster for example. Keep in mind that it lasts a very short time, and has a cooldown, so it will take some practice to recognize when to use it.

I could go on forever. There are a lot of spells, and many of them have immense value in certain dungeons and against certain monsters. There's no way to cover it all, but even with this basic list you'll be doing great.

Summons

Summons are technically spells but they need their own section because there's a massive amount of different summons in Arelith, and very often only certain classes have access to certain summons. I'm not going to compete with the Wiki here, as it's already laid out very well, but I'm mentioning it here just to point you there.

http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Summoning_Changes

Basically: Summons, whether they're undead or in the form of the widely available 'Summon Creature' spells, are by and large used to allow Casters with limited spellbooks to either play alone or boost their party with an extra minion. Arelith dungeons can be pretty long, and there's no chance any caster will ever be able to use offensive magic to get through without running out in the first few spawns, and so enters the summoned creature to pick up the slack.

There's plenty of ways to boost your summons, mostly with the magic I've just outlined, but certain feats and skills help too. Read the article if you plan on heavily dedicating to this kind of magic.

Henchmen

One of the newer features as of writing this guide are hireable mercenaries called Henchmen.

They can be often be found in public places like Taverns, and the Leadership skill affects their combat prowess in the field.

Right now I have not used a Henchmen NPC yet, but at the least they can probably be made effective the same way Summons are. Give them some magic, make sure you keep them healed up, and they'll help you beat up monsters.

Associate Tool and Fetch

Any NPC or Summon under your command can be managed with a special feat called Associate.

It is highly advised to make use of this feat, because the vanilla AI is not nearly as smart as you are.

To use the tool you activate the feat, click on the summon, and then further use of the tool allows you to contextually command the minion. If your summon spell calls multiple minions, like many undead spells, you can command all of them at once by using the tool on yourself first.

Without the tool your summons will run towards the first sign of enemies, trigger multiple groups of monsters spawns (this can easily get you and your party overwhelmed), attack the wrong enemies, get stuck on little rocks or trees, and in rare cases they will even attack your friends or other characters not in your party.

With the tool they will standby after a battle so you can heal and prepare for the next fight, can be directed to attack dangerous enemies first, will not go after your friends, and can be made to just stand to the side if you're having a dialogue with another player and don't want your massive Earth Elemental awkwardly in the way.

I usually assign this feat to F1 because it is used constantly. If you have a mouse with a few extra buttons you can likely use the software to macro a mouse button to F1+Click for added convenience. I just did this a month ago and it greatly increased the Quality of Life (QOL) with using summons.

Fetch (-fetch) is a nifty little command for when your summons get stuck on a pebble or outcrop of some kind, or are otherwise displaced in a manner where you can't retrieve them. Some same-area transitions can leave your pet zombies behind for example.

The command simply pulls your summon back to you. Keep in mind that it is considered exploiting to use -fetch to avoid game mechanics that you otherwise naturally have to deal with if you didn't have the command available. Using -fetch so your summon can avoid a series of traps, for example, is generally a no-no. This is why fetch has a cooldown.

Best Feats for PvE

For Warriors

Expertise/Improved Expertise: If you're planning to be in melee with monsters then you will want, even need, both of these feats. You can probably get away with only Expertise, but these feats are absolutely critical to survival, especially if you're planning to Tank, but even if you're a DPS character suddenly without a Guard this will be the difference between life and death. It functions just like vanilla: +5 AC, and +10 AC, at the expense of an equal amount of AB. In some epic level content you may be exclusively fighting with this active at all times or dying very fast without it.

Blind Fight: You aren't the only one armed with the supreme knowledge and power of Improved Invisibility. Lots of monsters know about it, and you can bet most characters do too. Blind fight rerolls all misses due to Concealment, and you can really feel it if you don't have this feat.

Armor Skin: It's an epic level feat, but +2 untyped AC is simply excellent. Nearly any melee character is going to try and find some way to slip this in for that extra 10% boost against incoming attacks.

Epic Skill Focus Discipline: Getting knocked down really sucks, and can often be the cause of death for any character. It also helps against feats like Called Shot, which can be surprisingly effective if not protected against, as well as disarm. All in all it's generally agreed that this is a feat most melee characters won't want to miss, and quite often it's a feat that almost every character will want to have. If you plan on sticking to mostly PvE content you can get away with not having this feat.

(Epic) Weapon Focus: Picking a main type of weapon your character will specialize in is very important, because these two feats are critical to getting enough AB to reliably be beating on monsters. Both feats add up to a total of +3 AB, which is a 15% higher chance of hitting enemies or confirming critical hits.

For Spellcasters

Extend Spell: This isn't a hugely important requirement for any caster, but if you really want to do lots of PvE content then this is one of my favorite meta magics. As a wizard/sorcerer you can double the amount of mass haste/improved invisibility spells you can cast, and many of them will last twice as long. Melee oriented Clerics can also get a lot of mileage out of this by doubling the amount and duration of all their Divine Power/Favor spells. Many traditional casters will get good use out of it, and it also allows for some spellbook wiggle room for classes that have to prepare their magic. For high level spells on a wizard/sorcerer you can save money on spell components by only casting a spell once , instead of twice, if it's extended.

Spell Focus Transmutation: Very helpful in PvE for most caster classes. Each tier of Spell Focus grants higher rolls on many of your ability-boosting spells you'll cast on your summons and friends, and it also grants some fun boons such as teleportation at higher levels.

Spell Focus Conjuration: Each tier of this Spell Focus gives a little boost to your summons, and higher tiers will give you a summon an entire level higher. Pretty handy if you will be using summons a lot.

Spell Focus Abjuration: I mentioned it earlier under the Shield spell, but Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus Abjuration will protect you from Lesser and Greater Missile Storm respectively. Tons of mage monsters use these highly damaging spells and if you have the room to take these feats you'll really notice it in epic dungeons.

[004] Looting

This is the part of the guide that inspired me to make the effort of doing this guide in the first place, because looting and selling can be quite a nuanced process if you really want to squeeze every last copper out of your valuable time.

Turning a profit can be anything from very easy to very hard. Some classes struggle with making money, some classes spend more money, and some classes have almost no use for money at all.

The number one tip, if you want to skip this entire section, is to loot everything and try to sell it.

Auto-Loot

Note from January 20th, 2022: Auto-Loot has been changed (massively upgraded) so the menus here are not what you'll see in game. At least you know about it, though, and that's what's important.

Before we dive in, let's talk about Auto-Loot.

If you're like me you probably want to avoid Carpal Tunnel, and turning on Auto-Loot is incredibly helpful both in making money but also saving money on future doctor's bills.

You can navigate to the following menu by hitting the rest button, selecting Character, and then you should see Auto-Looting Options.



I recommend turning them all on until you get a better feel for your own style, but you can tweak to however you want. I almost always take just about everything that isn't nailed down, unless I can also take the nails too.

You'll notice that Option 2 mentions automatically putting jewelry in a Jewelry Box. Option 7 doesn't mention it, but there's a Scroll Case that scrolls will automatically go into as well. Both of these 'Containers' are immensely useful for speeding up the looting and selling process and also not cluttering up your inventory with tons of items.

I highly recommend seeking out these Containers as soon as possible, especially the magical jewelry box as it makes jewelry weigh much less for characters that don't have the strength to haul loot everywhere, and a lot of new-character friendly shops will have a pile of these for sale at a good price.

Loot Skills

Search adds a chance of discovering up to two extra items when looting a corpse (max 100% at 100 Search). In a party, the largest Search bonus is used when looting.

It also helps with opening chests which isn't mentioned there probably by accident.

The main looting skill is Search. You'll see it pop up in the combat log whenever it works. You don't need to have this skill maxed out to make a lot of money, but clearly it's going to help if you really enjoy PvE as each point (even soft bonuses from items) is going to grant another 1% bonus.

The other two loot skills are Open Lock and Disable Trap, to open chests, so let's get into that now.

Open Lock/Disable Trap

Threads on the forums regarding these skills pop up fairly frequently because there's no central source of information on the topic, so you have to sift through tons of old threads and offhand comments to track down exactly how this works. Most experienced players know how it works, and it isn't a secret, but it's just not spelled out clearly anywhere. So here it is in all its detail.

Locks are very easy to deal with, and only very few chests/doors are an exception to this, because almost anyone can use a scroll of knock with 10 points in Lore (scrolls are used with Lore in Arelith, not Use Magic Device). Knock automatically unlocks just about everything. Most characters, especially DEX based ones, can break locks with just one point in Open Lock and a few equipped items.

The Spell 'Knock' will no longer open containers or doors with a DC above 40 (This currently still allows it to open all existing loot chests)

Lots of chests, especially the epic level ones, are protected by traps. Many of the traps cannot be disabled just by purposefully triggering them, eating the damage, and then opening the chest. The trap will remain permanently until disabled; if you can't disable the trap it's impossible to open the chest unless you 'Bash' it apart.

Traps are a little more tricky. Let's look at the ways people deal with traps:

• Most arcane casters choose to have a pixie familiar, which is a rogue, that can get into any but the most epic chests.

• Rogue characters naturally have it easier when dealing with traps.

• Damaging a chest until it breaks (which usually ends up dealing a lot of damage to whoever is doing it if it's an epic chest).

• Everyone else has to itemize heavily for disabling traps but almost anyone can accomplish it with just a few cross-class points, lots of gear, and some magic.

The first two are self-explanatory, but the third gives mixed results.

'Bashing' the average chest will break all the items inside and give you some gold instead, but epic chests can be bashed and still give epic loot (and as far as I know this doesn't devalue the loot inside, but it very well could and it would be consistent with the norm). Either way be careful when Bashing an epic chest in melee, as those traps can do a LOT of damage. There are a few epic chests in the game that cannot be bashed at all and MUST be opened by disabling the trap.

Now let's look at the fourth item in the list because that's what gets the most confusion, applies to the most characters, and is asked all the time.

Let's take a look at what trap disabling looks like for most Adventurers looking to get rich. Bear in mind that you cannot even try to break a trap without having at least one point in the Disable Trap skill. I recommend having at least 3-5 points, which can be an expensive skill investment especially if it's cross classed, but this recommendation is mostly for quality of life and you should be able to get into just about anything with just one point.

Behold! The trap kit:



Basically: Any time you find a chest you strip down and equip your looting gear, break the trap, open the chest, take the stuff, and then put back on your regular gear.

Pictured above is my Ranger's trap breaking ensemble for epic chests, but this isn't necessary for average stuff.

Every single one of these items, even the daggers which are dual wielded, are enchanted with +2 Open Lock/Disable Trap/Search at the most base, but as you progress and make more money you can even add DEX and INT bonuses to the items to maximize the Ability scores tied to these skills. The cloak is actually a craftable item called the Dungeon-Delver's Cloak and it gives excellent bonuses and even let's you use the Find Trap spell a few times per day.

The cloak can be found on the wiki here: http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Tailoring#Cloak

There are items you can find in the loot matrix that also help.

So you might ask: "How do I get a trap kit like this?"

Easily, actually, and a basic version of it is incredibly cheap to acquire.

Crafting items with a basic loadout of +2 Open Lock/Disable Trap/Search only costs a few hundred gold per item. If you're a brand new character, and can't make items with +2 skills, you'll have to ask someone that can do Dweomercrafting. Chances are that anyone carrying a magic staff, or even just looks sort of like a wizard or spellcaster, can easily do this for you. If they're a veteran player they'll know exactly what you're asking for.

WARNING

Before you get super excited about looting a chest, and start stripping off all your items, make sure you've cleared the area of monsters. Things can get tricky if a bunch of enemies find you literally with your pants down.

IMPORTANT

Another mechanic that causes a lot of confusion is that anyone that doesn't have rogue levels will not be able to disable a trap over DC 35 even though you can be scoring well over it on your DC check. Only Rogues can disable a trap above this DC, so what everyone else has to do is recover the trap which adds another 10 to the DC. Naturally this can be very difficult to do if you aren't a Rogue which is why non-Rogues, like my Ranger above, have to carry a lot of extra equipment. Some epic traps can be landing upwards around DC 55 or, rarely, even more.

You don't have to do this to enjoy Arelith.

Many chests in the game have a much more manageable DC, still have great loot worth tens of thousands, and won't require a full half-page of inventory space to break into.

If you enjoy PvE like I do then I still recommend it for a character in their epic levels, however, because there's nothing worse than getting through an epic dungeon only to find out that nobody in the party can get into the epic chest.

Tips on Boosting Related Skills

Sometimes you're just one or two points short of hitting the DC which can be quite a frustrating experience when you're standing at the end of a difficult adventure! Here's a small list of things you can do to meet that threshold (besides items):

- The Prayer spell grants +1 to skill checks.
- The Good Hope spell grants +2 to skill checks.
- Fox's Cunning/Cat's Grace grants 2-4 ability which translates to 1-2 bonus skill.
- Skill Boosting Bard Songs.

SUPER MEGA IMPORTANT

If at any time you take something valuable into your inventory, FOR ANY REASON, immediately type '-save' once it's in your inventory. If you know it has incredible value I even recommend going so far as typing '-save' and fully logging out and back in to super-save your character because some rare crashes are worse than others and end up with a rollback. Relogging may help against the worst crashes, but nothing is guaranteed.

I have actually found a Pure Shard of Zardazik only once in all my time on Arelith, generally worth three million gold, and the server crashed less than a minute later. I would have lost it but because I typed '-save' I actually managed to preserve this item from the crash. There was much rejoicing from the party I was with at the time when we logged back in.

'Other' Loot and Special Vendors

Monsters don't have all the loot, and some things that monsters drop such as hides and meat don't sell to vendors but can still return huge amounts of gold if you have the strength to carry it all. Bookshelves can have scrolls/valuable books, crates and barrels can have scrap metal, trees and can be chopped for wood, ores/stone can be mined, spider silk harvested from cocoons, plants harvested, and so on. There's a litany of sources for gold scattered all over the world and I probably didn't even list all of them.

Characters with high Strength really shine in the area of carrying tons of this stuff because these forms of loot are usually very heavy.

This kind of loot is usually used in crafting. Ore can be processed into ingots which can be made in to weapons or alchemical ingredients. Wood can make furniture or bows/crossbows. I'm not going to go into painful detail of how much each is worth, and usually the market on these commodities changes a lot based on factors such as current availability or even game updates.

You can ask other characters how much some of this stuff is worth, and their answers are going to vary wildly, so for the most part this is something you'll just have to learn over time.

Quartermasters

You can make a decent amount of money selling hides, stone, meat, and other raw materials to a district or settlement.

Every district or settlement has a 'Quartermaster' NPC (the name can change slightly depending where you are). They usually stand near a resource chest. Dumping a bunch of stuff into the chest, speaking to the NPC, and selecting 'Sell Resources' will give you gold and a receipt.

IMPORTANT

After you do the above process make sure you check the resource chest again. I often mistake what the Quartermaster will actually buy and there may be leftover items in the chest. Don't forget to gather up whatever didn't sell so you can try selling it elsewhere.

If you're new you can just dump everything in the chest, select the Sell Resources option, and gather up whatever is left. Eventually you'll get a grasp for what they want and how much gold they'll give you.

Every Quartermaster will give you different amounts of gold for resources, which is set by players governing the settlement, so you have to experiment with where to sell resources because it changes constantly. I've seen some districts in Andunor hold competitive drives for resources and give out significant prizes for whoever brings in the most.

Below is a picture of me selling 1 cotton and 7 spider silk to a district in Andunor. That's just under a thousand gold, and I wasn't even trying to make money. These were materials that were simply left over from something I crafted.



Scrap

Scrap metal, battered armor, broken helmets, and rusty springs drop occasionally from monsters, can be found in crates, and are very heavy. These are sold to very specific NPCs that deal only in taking scrap, but does give quite a bit of gold if you bring in enough.

I know they exist in Andunor and Cordor, and I assume they exist in other locations as well, but you'll have to ask around to find them.

Heads (Bounties) and Leadership

Most dungeons have one or more Boss enemies that drop a head when they are killed, and the heads can be delivered back in town for a tidy sum of cash. The NPC that deals with Bounties does it through conversation, and will claim all the heads in your inventory while returning gold straight into your pocket.

Usually these NPCs are something like a Captain of the City Guard, but if you have trouble finding them just ask around.

Leadership returns massive value on head bounties, but it also does other things that might be of value to your character. The non-gold related details can be found on the wiki: http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Skill_changes.

Value of bounties is increased capped at 100% per base (Hard) Leadership skill rank relative to your level, pay outs cap at 1600. The Formula is as follows
Epic: (Hard Ranks / (Character level + 3))
Pre-Epic:(Hard Ranks / (Character Level + 3)) - ((20-Character Level)/100)

It's ultimately up to you if you find Leadership to be valuable enough to take, but in my opinion the gold returns on head bounties with max Leadership is pretty decent. From memory - most epic heads return 800 gold per head for 0 leadership, and upwards of around 1600 per head with max point allocation. This adds up quickly over the course of a character's career.

If you find that you have an abundance of skill points, and a desire for some extra gold, this might be for you. Depending on your activities and loot preferences it may outperform Appraise.

If you can't quite afford to take points in Leadership you can save up your heads and ask around for anyone that might have, 'Good connections with the guard captain,' or something similar. From what I can tell people are still trying to work out ways to communicate this in a believable manner in game.

Loot Value

Almost every monster drops a little gold, but loose gold is the least valuable portion of Adventuring. Characters will draw in significant more income from the Jewelry and Scrolls that many monsters also drop. Some monsters such as constructs drop gears and ore, others have magic blood, but in general the real gold income is from random loot pictured below.



Everything pictured here has value. You can check an item's value by examining it. These pictures also demonstrate how little value loose gold has. The gem, scroll, jewelry, and blade orb are going to be worth over a thousand gold from these two monsters. The gold barely makes up 3% of the value here.

Below is a brass cog. It's not hugely valuable on its own, but scooping up a dozen of them on an Adventure is almost a thousand gold. It's here just as example that picking up all sorts of useless junk has value. It's worth mentioning that there are actually two kinds of brass cog items, with one of them selling for well over 80 gold, and it is always worth picking up and trying to sell things you don't recognize.



The displayed value of an item is very much a ballpark of the item, and it mostly applies to NPC vendors, but it's going to help you at least figure out which items not to take. Anything valued under 100 gold is probably not worth the time or trouble of clicking on it if it doesn't get auto-looted.

[005] Vendors & Skills

Vendors buy things based on a few variables.
1. Whether the vendor will actually buy it.
2. How much the vendor will pay for it.
3. How much the vendor is willing to pay, at maximum, based on a character's skills and race.

Main Concept: The only way to increase the amount of gold you can make from NPCs is by raising the maximum amount of money they'll pay to you for any one item. This is affected by the Appraise skill and we'll get into it soon.

Most vendors will buy things related to what they sell. If you want to sell weapons/armor you'll visit a blacksmith, jewelry goes to the jeweler, and so on. Miscellaneous items (such as the brass cog) are sold to very specific vendors and I'll get into that a little later.

All items sell the same to every vendor if the item being sold doesn't hit the max value a vendor is willing to spend. Our brass cog sells for 80 gold to anyone willing to buy it, and it will never change.



Now let's take one of my favorite sellables so we can talk about max value and character skills.

Behold! The almighty Blade Orb.

It weighs next to nothing, drops semi-frequently, and caps out at vendors willing to buy them (also it doesn't hurt to keep a few extra in your inventory to protect your pockets from thieves!). Items like this, of which there are many, are where character skills and race come into play - and this is where the real money is made.



We'll talk about the character's race first because it's the most simple, and I'll do it from the frame of the Underdark to make it easier to understand: Is it any wonder that a drow merchant pays less maximum money to a goblin than it will another drow? No, of course not, and that's... pretty much how it works. Duergar, as one of their racial abilities, get along with merchants of all races.

Being a citizen of a settlement also gives you a slight boost in your relation with the local merchants.

There's probably math involved here somewhere, but it doesn't matter. Same race/settlement = sometimes more money. Not same race/settlement = sometimes less money. It might be different for some merchants, or some cities, but this is all we really need to know. The difference is closer to negligible rather than a rule that absolutely must be adhered to.

You won't be losing out on tons of money just by making a goblin, and you should never let something like this get in the way of your character concept. In all the screenshots I'm using a human (which is like being a goblin as far as dealing with Underdark merchants goes), and still making plenty of money.

Appraise

The Appraise skill is highly valuable in PvE loot selling.

Does not affect buying prices from NPCs, only when selling. A higher appraise score will increase both the item value and the "gold cap per item" that the store allows. Dealing with a trader from the same settlement will factor positively in the reaction. All sources of the appraise skill are valid. In a party, the largest appraise bonus is used, provided the party ally is close enough. The reaction roll does not reset each time talking to the vendor, but instead, once every two hours. Traders are race and subrace-sensitive.

So let's again look at our Blade Orb.

This is the value of a Blade Orb while I had only 4 appraise through my INT score:



This is the value of that exact same Blade Orb after I equipped my Appraise items, raising Appraise to 18:



Without investing any points whatsoever in Appraise I'm raising the value of a single item by 114 gold per item, and since this is a hidden roll I have seen numbers into the low 400's on this same character.

I had a wizard with about twenty points in appraise, and the bonus gloves, bringing appraise to over 40 points. I've sold blade orbs around the 650 gold mark frequently on that character.

The Appraise skill is so powerful that you cannot put it on items using the basin and have to rely on finding them in the loot matrix. Thankfully they aren't very rare, and you'll eventually end up finding them yourself or spotting them in a player shop at a decent value.

Here's an example of some of the appraise boosting items.



Keep in mind the Blade Orb is only one example. There are a lot of items that quickly max out any vendor. Valuable potions, brass gears, scrolls, anything with an examine value similar to a Blade Orb will usually sell to someone for a heap of cash. Even a useless iron dagger will max out a smith vendor.

SPLIT YOUR STACKS

Make sure you split the stack before selling it to the vendor! One Blade Orb may sell to a vendor for 392 gold, but that same vendor will buy the entire stack for 392 gold too. Be very careful with these high value items, and split them apart one by one to make sure you're getting the money you're supposed to be getting. Selling 10 Blade Orbs all at once will instantly lose you thousands of gold.

I'm also using the Blade Orb as an example to segue into the type of Vendor that buys them. You can't sell these to any smith, jeweler, bowyer, or clothier. I don't even know what people call these types of Vendors, but I refer to them as 'Pawn Shop' Vendors because they usually sell nothing interesting but they'll buy just about anything.

They're scattered about the module and most people know about them, especially the one in Cordor. The old guy outside Thoramind's magic shop in Cordor usually has two or three people dealing with him at a time. The only other one I usually use is the Duergar merchant in Andunor's Greyport district.

Gems

You're going to find hundreds of gems and raw gems in your travels, and they all have different values and crafting properties.

Raw gems can be processed by art crafters into normal gems and gem dust. Keep in mind that, depending on your crafting skills, some gems may be more valuable to you for crafting.

Gems are easily converted into gold at any bank by simply placing them in the gem scale. If you have a gem bag you can place that in the gem scale instead and it will convert all but the most precious gems inside (I haven't experimented with this fully and don't know which gems it sells and which it keeps.)

Miscellaneous Pro-Tips

Quick Buy/Quick Sell

The Numpad of your keyboard matches the radial menu.

This means, when buying and selling large quantities of single items, you can hold down the corresponding Numpad key (6 being the right-most option on the radial which is buy/sell) and furiously right click items you want to buy a whole lot of so you can avoid having to click-drag repeatedly which can be a tad annoying.

It also works when selling things quickly - though be very careful when blasting through your inventory like this because...

SUPER WARNING +++ ALARM EMOJIS +++ SUPER WARNING
When I say vendors will buy anything, I mean they'll usually buy anything. Including your incredibly high value items if you misclick. Currently there is no way to prevent accidentally selling one of your items, and indeed in the process of taking the screenshots for this very guide I forgot I had the vendor open, tried to equip my bracer, and....



...lost 60,548 gold buying it back. Ouch. Do the smart thing and don't be me here!

[006] Rare Items, Player Shops, and Settlement Storage

Rare Items

There are some items that can't be vendored. There are also some items that should not be vendored under any circumstance.

Here's a very small list of examples you can find in your adventures that can make you rich by holding onto them:

- Mithril Dust.
- Beljuril Gems.
- Star Sapphires.
- King's Crown (it's a pink flower).

Note: all of these are high-end crafting components. Typically these are the bread and butter of a very good adventure, but you'll lose out on tens of thousands of gold pawning these off to an NPC. Rare weapons and gear can be sold for quite a lot too.

Arelith has hundreds of items in the loot matrix and many of them are highly valuable. Anything from rare helmets that provide potent resistance to swords that are useful for very niche builds can only be found in adventures and thus can be sold at a premium.

As a basic rule - if you find something in a chest that looks rare and unique then don't sell it to a vendor right away. If you haven't seen it before there could be a reason why.

So how do we sell these items without spending gratuitous time pestering people like a door-to-door salesman? Enter the Player Shop!

Player Shops

http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Shop

There are two kinds of player shops: 'Permanent' and Temporary.

Permanent shops have a generally fixed lengthy duration and can be very difficult to procure. There are some shops that remain under a character's ownership for multiple IRL years so for the purposes of this guide we will proceed without them. We don't need them.

With some discretion and know-how it's very possible to make more money than you ever need without a permanent shop so we'll stick to tips regarding moving goods quickly with Temporary Shops.

Like the wiki says: Temporary Shops last for one hour after renting them and will be refreshed for one hour every time you touch it. In my experience there is almost always a Temporary Shop available to set up at. If there isn't - there will be soon.

Arelith has a living and breathing economy and an item's value can be in a variable state of flux depending on local market conditions. Even something as simple as a game update can change an item's value on the player market.

As a new player you're going to have a lot of difficulty knowing how much an item is worth so there comes to mind two tips that can help figure out how much to sell your special loot:

1. Ask a character what they think it's worth. Keep in mind some characters may lie to you to try and buy it at a steal, or maybe they don't actually know but take a guess. It may not be the best idea to get your market estimates from a Duergar with gold teeth.

2. Check other market stalls. Look at their goods. How much are they trying to sell them for? Chances are that at least one shop might be trying to sell the same thing you are. You can learn a lot about a local market within half an hour once you know where all the shops are.

In fact: you can learn a lot about all of Arelith by simply browsing shops without buying anything.

The rest of this chapter will use, as an example, one of the most sought after components: Mithril Dust.

As of a few months ago Mithril Dust was almost ubiquitously valued between 60,000-70,000 gold in Andunor's player market. Let's say you have a stroke of luck and find one Mithril Dust in a level 12-15 dungeon chest (I have once!) and you don't need it for yourself - so it serves you better by filling your bank account.

However selling items at fixed market value can be a slow process.

It may seem obvious, but I'll say it regardless: just sell it for a little less. An item like Mithril Dust being priced even just 5,000 gold less will fly right off your shelf.

Items that sit in your inventory taking up space waiting for the 'perfect sale' are worthless. Gold in your account now, however, can be used for anything immediately. Being level 13 with Mithril Dust and no plans to craft with it is not exciting. Being level 13 with a sudden deposit of 55,000 gold, because you marked it down, on the other hand, can easily fund the next twenty adventures.

Characters that recognize your own character as someone that sells things for a good price will be repeat customers and may net you more gold down the line.

Temporary Shop Tips

1. Sit at your shop and RP with any visitors. Let them know you'll haggle for anything that catches their eye. This is key because many characters that see something they like may not even mention it if its out of their price range. You might actually make friends this way too.

2. Long term: Start high and slowly go down. If you're planning on frequently using a Temp Shop then post your random loot at a high price and mark it down every time you have to subsequently try to sell it. You'll eventually sell it - or come to realize that an item is probably just vendor loot that nobody would want.

3. If you have an item that you wouldn't use yourself then you're probably wasting time trying to sell it.

I want to highlight something from the Wiki to talk about item stacks:

Stacks of Items To allow Customers to purchase single items from a stack click your shop sign and go through the following dialogue options. [Faction & Shop Options]-[Set Faction Permissions & Shop Settings]- {Shop} Buy partial stacks. If toggled on the display text will turn green.

Default shop settings do not break down a stack of items, and it's been this way forever for some reason. If you're trying to sell 100 potions without this option then players will have to buy the entire stack, and most likely won't buy any at all as a result. New players make this mistake a lot because people assume this is a default setting.

WARNING
What the Wiki doesn't warn you about is that selling stacks of items divides the listed total against the quantity.

When selling any stack of items you must multiply the price you wish to sell them at with the number of items in the stack.

If I price one Mithril Dust for 60,000 gold it will sell for 60,000 gold.

If I price two Mithril Dust for 60,000 gold they will sell for 60,000 gold total - that is to say 30,000 gold each. Oops! I just lost 60,000 gold. I needed to have listed the stack for a total of 120,000 gold.

Merchant PCs

There is an alternative way to offload valuables and that is by contacting owners of Permanent Shops and trying to cut a deal with them.

You can easily find out who to contact by looking at their shop's sign and then checking the player list or goblin/halfling messengers if they're logged in to try and cut a deal. They may even tell you items to watch out for in your travels that they'll happily buy off of you.

Merchant characters just love to wheel and deal on valuable goods so they can sell them in their shop or craft an item with it... to sell in their shop. Any merchant PC worth their salt would be willing to haggle on Mithril Dust to take if off your hands right then and there.

Bear in mind this method will require you to sell below market value. Merchants aren't stupid and they want to be sure their own time is worth the trouble. Nevertheless this is a solid option for getting gold into your bank quickly and that's what really matters.

Some PCs may even be interested in sharing their shop. If both characters are able to trust one another then you may end up with a lucrative arrangement by giving your items to the merchant PC and they will send you your profits through the banking system. I have done this in the past with success measured in the weight of some 300,000 gold or so. Nevertheless I urge caution with this idea.

Settlement Storage

Every character can be a citizen of a city, or district if you're in Andunor, for the price of 10,000 gold. For any new character this is a monumental price, but eventually you'll progress to a stage when it's an affordable expense.

Being a citizen grants you access to a character-only storage chest that can hold up to 12 items.

This can be incredibly valuable if you're not a STR-based character, like a wizard alchemist for example, who has to store metal ingots or other heavy items that can't be carried around. This storage method is safe, secure, persists through resets, and in my experience is bug free. I've never lost anything to storage bugs before, and you will see in big red letters in the combat log if you've put too many items in the chest.

Stacks of an item are treated as a single item, so 15 gold ingots is still one item.

If you're trying to sell something heavy at a Temporary Shop that you know has value, albeit is a niche item, then settlement storage is the perfect place to keep it in the meantime.

[Rico_scorpion]

Great guide for beginners!

Maybe you should add a part on guard that states that when PVE enemies summon creatures, the summons ignore guard. While that may appear as a "niche situation", it will KILL newcomers (and even veterans) that blindly rely on guard as a failproof tool to DPS away.

The "workaround" is once you have identified a type of foe that has tendency to summon, is to CC it or to plainly focus it down until it can summon anything, leaving the guard/guarded duo failureproof.

My two cents!

(this guide should be wikified or pinned, I feel?)

[Skibbles]

Maybe you should add a part on guard that states that when PVE enemies summon creatures, the summons ignore guard.

Ah! Yes, of course, that's pretty important. I'll definitely add that in.

Thanks for reading it!

I'll be working on some formatting to make things more clear and adding in some stuff. I completely forgot head bounties and leadership too which is a massive source of easy income.

I need to add henchmen but I actually don't really know how they work yet (I'll put a placeholder to at least make people aware they exist). I plan on making a new character within a few months so I'll be using them later and adding some tips on it. I assume they're mostly just like summons - buff them up and turn 'em loose.

[Good Character]

Epic Prowess is one of the near-mandatory feats for melee. I say slap that in.

[Skibbles]

Epic Prowess is one of the near-mandatory feats for melee. I say slap that in.

Alright I threw it in.

I also did a ton of formatting and editing overhaul for clarity.

Added the Associate Tool, Henchmen, colored commands in blue (so far it doesn't seem to be painful to read), put important things in quotes, and made some little changes here and there.

[Drowble Oh Seven]

Wish I'd known all of this when I started; thank you! A couple of small points that I've also found useful and occasionally forgotten:

1. The -fetch command is a huge help when you need it, and new player essential knowledge. Being able to pull stuck summons back to you is a life-saver.

2. You can quickly sell items from your inventory by holding NUMPAD 6 and right clicking on them. This one's a real strain preventer in those early levels before you get containers.

[Skibbles]

Wish I'd known all of this when I started; thank you! A couple of small points that I've also found useful and occasionally forgotten:

1. The -fetch command is a huge help when you need it, and new player essential knowledge. Being able to pull stuck summons back to you is a life-saver.

2. You can quickly sell items from your inventory by holding NUMPAD 6 and right clicking on them. This one's a real strain preventer in those early levels before you get containers.

Thanks for reading and I'm glad it was helpful! These are good tips and I threw them in.

[Ork]

holding NUMPAD 6

you can just hold it......?!?!?!?!

love the guide.

[AstralUniverse]

holding NUMPAD 6

you can just hold it......?!?!?!?!

love the guide.

I literally just had the same response. like.. "I CAN DO THAT?"

And yeah, huge Kudos. Bunch of small nearly (but not) insignificant things in there that I didnt know. Thanks.

[Fava Beans]

I would add in that prayer adds +1 to all skills, and good hope adds +2, for hitting trap and lock DCs

also mention of how the prayer command works, since low enough piety gives you a stat boost instead of restorative effects, and that using -pray in combat costs XP, I know someone who had been playing for several years before they knew it cost them XP to -pray in combat

[Skibbles]

Did an update today and added a sixth chapter - Rare Items, Shops, and Settlement Storage.

Did some editing and formatting to try and cut down on the sheer bloat of this guide.

Added prayer and good hope to a list of tips for OL/DT as well as other things like bard song and trickery domain etc.

[Zanithar]

So, I have been reminding myself to ask you if it would be useful to wikify this guide with appropriate credits of course. Alternatively linking it on the wiki. Then someone pinged me and suggested it.

So, here I am asking . It will make it a little harder perhaps to manage updates but, if you are game, I am sure we can sort something out to keep them in synch!

I’d need to review the new players guide on the wiki in more details vs. this but my initial thought is to replace the new players guide with this.

Thoughts?

[Skibbles]

So, I have been reminding myself to ask you if it would be useful to wikify this guide with appropriate credits of course. Alternatively linking it on the wiki. Then someone pinged me and suggested it.

So, here I am asking . It will make it a little harder perhaps to manage updates but, if you are game, I am sure we can sort something out to keep them in synch!

I’d need to review the new players guide on the wiki in more details vs. this but my initial thought is to replace the new players guide with this.

Thoughts?

I don't see why not! I'm glad to know people are finding the material useful.

Send me a PM, or a message on Discord (Skibbles#6558) if that is preferred, if there's any questions or details that need to be hashed out. I don't have any experience with editing a wiki so there may be formatting issues to address.

I took a gander at the New Player's Guide on the wiki and I think my info here would be better as a supplement than a full replacement since this guide doesn't touch on a lot of things such as MoD, RPR, Alignment, etc.

[Skibbles]

Another editing pass to try and reduce the word count, but then I added head bounties and leadership. I'm not sure how I forgot that.

Added knock update.

Changed having a wizard to past tense. RIP.

Also added a blurb about gems and gem scale.

[Skibbles]

Added small warning to my adventure XP portion to reflect that the information there may now be inaccurate, and it is a system currently in progress. I'll try to get back to it once the dust settles.

Somewhat unrelated - I have a dweomercrafting from scratch guide (not runes) coming up that will show people how to use the basin to make the iconic 'standard end-game soft 5%' magic items (1/1 2/2/2/2/1, and 1/1 2/2/2) that many 'veteran players' have been using for like 10 years or something. It's designed to give new players, and even old players that simply never interfaced with this part of Arelith, a more even playing field and greater understanding of what's possible in Arelith.

There will be pictures.

[MRFTW]

There will be pictures.

This reads like a threat.

I love it. Eagerly anticipating.

[Edens_Fall]

Great guide Skibbles!

[Skibbles]

Thanks, and with the recent threads on money I sort of did a quick (emphasis on quick) review and micro update (emphasis on micro):

- Added a blurb at the Writ/Adventure XP section to highlight I haven't personally, and thoroughly, experienced the writ overhaul enough to write authoritatively on it. I assume the very basics of it is probably mostly accurate, however, but someone can hopefully correct me if it isn't.

- Updated the leadership tip to quote the wiki correctly, reflect the new max income per epic head, and changed the phrase regarding returns from 'bonkers' to 'pretty decent.'

- Removed a comma that has been bugging the heck out of me for months. Feelsgoodman.

- Added at the very top of the page the date I last reviewed the guide so if I should ever fade from the Arelith scene then people ten years from now aren't reading this and assuming it is accurate.

- Noted in the Auto-Loot section a need for new screenshots to reflect Sincra's Apotheosis the greatly enhanced system.