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  • Everything you need to know about the City of Arabel.

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    HangmanH
    Welcome

    Greetings, adventurers, old and new, and welcome to the City of Arabel!

    Arabel is a Persistent World Server for the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, with a legacy spanning over twenty years of storytelling, adventure, and immersive roleplay.

    At our core, we are a roleplay focused server, where character development and narrative take centre stage. Our dedicated DM team works closely with the playerbase to support character arcs and craft dynamic, engaging storylines that players can explore and shape through their actions.

    We embrace heroes and villains alike, celebrating the full spectrum of character alignments and classes. Whether you walk the path of light or shadow, you'll find space here to thrive. Great stories demand conflict, choice, and consequence, and in Arabel, you’ll find a home for all of it.

    We are a low level server, with characters beginning at level 4 and capped at level 10. Loot and magical equipment are modest, carefully balanced to maintain challenge and reward.

    But while the mechanics may remain grounded, our storytelling soars to epic heights. You may arrive at our server familiar with the City of Arabel and the Forgotten Realms setting. However, to reset expectations, please note that we’ve moved beyond canon lore, embracing entirely homebrew content and forging our own unique path in exciting new directions. Our current metaplot, Winterfront, is a prime example:

    "Arabel and its surrounding lands are locked in a mysterious, unrelenting winter. A swirling storm of ice and snow has sealed off the region, cutting it off from the outside world. No one enters. No one leaves. Within this frozen prison, your story begins..."

    Helpful Links

    Join our vibrant Discord community to connect with fellow players, stay updated on events and server changes, and enjoy friendly conversation. The names highlighted in pink belong to our DM Team, feel free to reach out to any of them with your questions. Our player community is also exceptionally helpful and welcoming. You can find us all here, on our CoA Discord Channel.

    We offer a wealth of custom content, lore, and adaptations to the core game that are worth familiarising yourself with. You can explore them here, in our Player's Handbook.

    New to the server? We invite you to create a character and jump into the adventure. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask, we’re always happy to help. One of the best ways to get started is by joining other players in a group concept. To do that, you have two great options to explore:

    You can read all about our DM Factions here. Alternatively, our amazing community frequently shares group concepts right here.

    If you're interested in joining one of our DM Factions, an Application is required from the start. But don’t let that discourage you, it’s simply a way to ensure your character concept aligns well with the faction’s goals and tone. We aim to keep the process quick, straightforward, and supportive.

    You can read about our Application format here.

    Alternatively, you can join our DM Factions organically through gameplay by earning a recommendation from an existing member. This approach, commonly known as Earning In Game (EIG), is a natural path that many players enjoy.

    Stay up to date with the latest happenings in Arabel through our regularly updated Setting-Wide Rumours thread. It features two sub-categories for you to explore at your convenience:

    DM Only rumours, pertaining to server plots and major events. Player rumours, in which players can promote their own activity.

    Finally, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to a member of the DM Team via the forums or Discord

    You can find the full list of DMs here.

    The CoA DM Team

  • DM Introductions

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    HangmanH

    All, please refer to the below DM list for current activity, thank you.

    ACTIVE DMs DM Activity Timezone Folklore Active GMT + 1 ShadowRealm Active GMT + 1 Sphinxie Active GMT - 5 Moloch Active GMT - 5 Zool Background Development Only GMT + 1 INACTIVE DMs DM Activity Timezone Erebus Inactive GMT - 5 Primordial Inactive GMT - 5 Soothsayer Inactive GMT +1 Balladeer Inactive GMT + 2 Hangman Inactive GMT + 1
  • CoA Donations

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  • Core Values of the Server

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  • CoA - Core Rules

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  • Arabel: Winterfront

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  • CoA Discord Guidelines

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    Prof. MisclickP

    Hi all,

    Just a quality of life note for the entire community regarding resets.

    We do our best to do frequent resets however there is not a specific time period for them to be done. Often we are waiting on a module update before we ask people to log off and reset so there in a minimal interruption to gameplay. Please be patient If there has not been a reset in 48 hours please let us know, otherwise, we'll complete the reset when appropriate or time allows.

    Happy Gaming!

  • Module Changes

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    Mr.MolochM

    Big revision to the Warm Waterfall quest; there are already a lot of quests in this loop that have animals and elementals as foes. So now it has spoilers and, as you'ld expect, more dwarves since you're suppose to be fighting dwarven mercenaries.

    Treasure tables entirely updated, conversations changed to reflect the lore/story better.

    Enemies from this quest will also be appearing in areas of the module now.

    Improved the variability of enemy spawns on Barrenstone after feedback from a player that the spawns were repetitive; this was good to hear because it helped me find a bug that was preventing the 8 new kinds of fairies I made for this quest earlier this spring from appearing.

    People also complain about the layout of this map, revising it fully would take awhile, so I've added a climb check in the most useful place to help you get around quicker and kept it very easy.

    Fixed some reward items appearing on quests that didn't have charges, particularly the museum quest revision - looking at you Ashes of St. Darmos the Lucky.

  • DM Statement of Intent

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    folkloreF

    We have had a couple of DMs stepping back a bit, so very interested to hear from people across all timezones on this.

    If you have reached out before, please reach out again. Just keep nudging us!

  • June Prestige Update

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  • Immersea Pirate Plot Wrap-Up Notes

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  • DMless Event Starting

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  • Server Down Temporarily

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    folkloreF

    Server is back up and running - let us know if stuff doesn’t seem to be working or throws up any strange errors

    Thanks

  • New Base Class: Divine Soul

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  • In Testing: Wizard Cantrips

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  • The Dungeon Master cooking pot (Our new blog!)

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    Mr.MolochM

    This week I want to talk about the Immersea Plotline and discuss a little more about how we want it go progress just in terms of process. The idea here is visibly increase how much influence players have over the storyline and the setting.

    New Players Welcome

    According to our data, we've had about 12 new players come into game or Discord to check us out. Let's do all we can to help make players new here feel welcomed, reach out and try to include them in stories and roleplaying. Make sure that on DM events, you try to give the new players some voice and sense of involvement -- its easy to want to dominate on a DM event, but making sure the spotlight hits a new player once in awhile too is going to be a lot healthier for the community to be honest and finding ways to just share the limelight with everyone on an event always works wonders too.

    DM team is still willing to buy copies of NWN for any of your friends who want to buy it and try out City of Arabel. We're also still happy to make some cool cosmetic loot items for you if you can do some advertising for us - we're finding that Reddit and Facebook tend to be yielding the most engagement so far. But advertising is key, our player numbers are up almost 25% compared to March.

    Immersea Plot

    There were three pre-planned events for the storyline; the first was the Temple of the Drowned event where player were able to ask an Oracle three questions about the plot or anything else they wanted to do. That was followed by an effort to recruit Captain Ironbeard, and a third event comes this week.

    But more importantly, players are able to suggest their own ideas for what they want to see happen. I can't reveal the spoilers obviously, but these ideas will influence the outcome of the storyline. The more you involve other players, and create fun events for people (even when a DM isn't involved) the more impact those activities will have.

    For example, you want to help the pirates win? So maybe you go to the Wyvernwater with a team of allies to explore and look for weapons (found on quests, explorable dungeons, etc) and then your team does this until you feel you've collected 1000 prestige points worth of gear - you could then contact a DM to 'deliver' your gear to the pirates and do some diplomacy to win their support.

    I think the biggest thing we want to reward as a DM team has always been players who just do things to keep players having fun with them. Make Sendings to go do adventures, host a player tournament. The more you help engage everyone else around our virtual table, the healthier City of Arabel is!

    What's the end game? That's really up to the players involved and what you do, but the team is ready for anything from Immersea is destroyed and reduced to rubble to a player is announced the King of the Wyvernwater and rules over the town directly controlling its future. Its about us helping you tell the stories you want to tell. However, the ramifications of choices made on the three pre-planned events and the different player initiated events will all unfold in a grand finale event that will be announced ahead of time probably coming in the next week (timeline determined by how quick we get to all the players who wanted to try to impact it).

    Following up on the New Stuff Balladeer brought up last blog.

    New Classes and Upgraded PRCS

    One new class is 95% done, mostly getting tested right now. Discussion on rebalancing PRCs is on-going, and will be a lengthy process, we can't even estimate on when that'll be done. We're open to your ideas!
    https://forums.cityofarabel.com/topic/67610/new-base-classes-prcs/23

    Magic and Rebalancing
    Players expressed in the player survey last fall that they wanted a module with more sense of fantasy in terms of roleplaying, and to remain a low-magic server in terms of level range and power of items. But our power balance was all over the place, with many players wielding +50% damage weapons (+d4 damage when average weapon does d8 damage). That made balancing quests very difficult.

    The DM team has worked out a new balance, and we'll slowly be introducing these items through shops and quests. This balance roll out already began last month when we moved players back to maximum HP each level, we've begun to rebalance our quests (in order of how often they're done) in terms of both the monsters and the treasures you find there. You'll notice a wider range of gear and treasure over all. That said, if something looks a little too good - ask us just in case we made a mistake. If something seems too rubbish by far - ask us too - we may have made a mistake.

    Explaining all of how it'll work will be an entire blog update by itself, coming soonish as more of the changes are rolled out. Finally, on this topic, no, we don't have a firm idea on what we'll do with crafting yet. There's an ongoing discussion because we want the community involved in this. https://forums.cityofarabel.com/topic/68441/discussion-a-future-crafting-system

    New Dungeons, Quests, and Explorables

    I'm actively working on a new quest once the Immersea stuff is done, many of you have already seen a mysterious tower in the Stormlands; soon you'll be able to both explore it and find a quest inside.

    In the last month, we've added three new quests to the Wyvernwater Isles: Stormbreaker Isle specifically. We did revisions to the Sunken Ship quest in Immersea, including a new optional area. You can find our full list of quests here. I should have all the missing Stormhorn quests back in for you to play after we wrap up all the Immersea events.

    Signing Off

    That's it for this blog, what would you like to see us talk about in the future? This may be an online environment, but the whole DM team wants to make sure it feels like a friendly group around the table-top who can just chat about where we want to see our game going. So feel free to approach us with anything you want to see us cover.

  • Justiciars / Aetherpact / Oathsworn - App Free Opportunity

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  • DM Event Requests

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  • CoA Appless Week 30/4/25 to 7/5/25

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    folkloreF

    Appless week has now finished.

  • Player Suggestions

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  • Stepping Down

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  • Freedom

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