The questions players ask us, answered. Most of these are how the original 1991 game behaves, not something the revival changed – it just never explained them. For keys and commands, see the Help page.

Gems, items and money

I appraised a gem, chose Keep, and it disappeared.

It didn't – it moved. Keep takes the gem out of your “fine collection” and turns it into an item called GEM, worth the price you were just told. Look in View, then Items: each gem you kept has its own line. The game just doesn't say so. The same goes for jewellery.

Then what is appraising for?

Gems and jewellery you find are only a count, with no value, until a shopkeeper appraises them. That is when each one gets its price. Then you choose:

• Sell – the shop pays you for it on the spot. Usually what you want.
• Keep – it becomes a GEM (or jewellery) item with that value. You can carry it, sell it at any shop later (Items, then Sell), or hand it to another player.

Carry at least one item before you keep a gem.

A quirk of the original game: if your character carries no items at all, a gem you Keep is lost. With even one item in your pack, it is kept as it should be.

I can't give gold or an item to another player.

• You need to be a party: one of you follows the other. Otherwise the other player isn't offered as someone to trade with.
• The player receiving must accept gifts: Tab switches that on and off, and it starts off. If it is off, your screen says you can't trade with them.
• Items must not be readied (in use), and cursed items can't be traded.

Other players

Someone is in the same place as me, but I can't see them.

You see other players only when they are within three steps of you, and they appear in the list on the right of the screen. Walk towards them. F2 tells you who is nearby, and Shift-F2 who is in the whole realm and where.

How do I talk to one player only, or someone far away?

Start your line with their name and a colon: NAME: hello. Only they get it, wherever they are in the realm. F5/F6 pick from the names you have talked with.

I can't see what I just said.

That's how the game always worked: your own lines are not shown back to you. The others did get them.

Can other players hurt me?

Only where the status line beside the area name says pvp: the wild lands, the woods, the dungeons and the corner of Triboar with the arena. Those are the original game's own PvP areas; on AOL keeping the peace elsewhere was a players' rule, and in the revival the game keeps it. Towns are safe.

In a PvP area, inside a battle you are both in, other players can use harmful spells on you (as in the 1990s) and, new in the revival, weapons. Two things work differently from a monster's attack:

• Your armour counts, but protective spells on you may not count against another player's blow.
• A sleeping or held player is struck like anyone else, not slain outright.

The Hall says "GAME.EXE NOT UPDATED" and I can't enter the realms.

Every player needs the same game, so NWN.COM changes a few bytes of your GAME.EXE when it starts (fights between players need it on both sides). It only does that to the unchanged 2.22 GAME.EXE of 439,000 bytes, and it must be able to write to it. Check that the file is not read-only (on a CD, a write-protected floppy or marked read-only), and if your GAME.EXE was changed by another program, put back an original copy. Then start NWN again. NWN /U puts GAME.EXE back as shipped, if you ever need it.

Combat

My thief never backstabs.

Backstabbing is hard to set up in this game, and the game never says what it needs. All of these must be true at the moment your thief strikes:

• A thief. Any character with thief levels, including a multi-class thief.
• A suitable weapon. A short sword works, and so do bare hands. Many bigger weapons don't.
• Directly behind. Stand on the square exactly opposite the way the target is facing. A square to its side doesn't count.
• Already fighting. The target must already have been attacked in melee since its own last turn.

The catch: a monster turns to face the first one who attacks it after its own turn. So the first blow never comes from behind, and the backstab has to be a second attack before the monster acts again. In practice that means your thief gets two turns in a row (last in one round, first in the next): strike once, step round behind it, and strike again.

Another player's attack doesn't set it up. Each player's blows are worked out on their own computer, so on yours the monster still counts your thief as its first attacker and turns to face you.

When it works, the combat text says -Backstabs-. The thief gets +4 to hit against the target's rear armour, and the damage is doubled at thief levels 1–4, tripled at 5–8, and so on. Attacks (from behind) is something else: any character striking an already-busy target from the rear. It hits the rear armour but does normal damage.

Controls

I pressed a letter to pick a menu choice and it went into the chat line.

In this game, typing letters starts a chat line. To pick from a menu, use the arrow keys and Enter, or hold Alt and press the choice's highlighted letter (Alt-V for View). In DOSBox on a Mac, Alt is the Option key. Backspace clears a chat line you started by accident.

Your character

My line dropped and my character looks wrong, or is missing.

Don't make a new one. The realm keeps your last complete save, so write to us with your account name and roughly when it happened, and we will put it right.