The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Winterhawk99]

The City of Arabel

I usually do not redo servers I’ve already reviewed. There are so many servers out there, and I need to spend four to six months reviewing one properly. Still, one of their staff members got in contact with me and asked me to review the server again. He explained that they had a whole new staff and had made many changes to the world.

I’ve been to The City of Arabel twice already. The first time was to review the server. The second time was to chill a bit between reviews and all the other things I do with writing. I had mixed feelings about going back, but I was also curious about the changes. Well, I dove into it.

My last review was a really good review, mainly because even back then it was a good server. I really enjoyed my time there. The last time I was on, though, the DMs booted my character. Her name was Arelush. She is the adopted daughter of Lauriella, and they didn’t like the fact that my new character knew my old character…… even though she was dead… and alive. But the one that was alive didn’t know Arelush. Arelush was born during Netheril’s expansion period. Lauriella sent her to the future. So, you know what the first thing I did was? I put Arelush right back into the server for this review. The verdict…… I had no problems whatsoever. They accepted the character, knowing her past.

Amia also booted poor Arelush out of their server for being a time traveler. I’m kinda glad they did. Arelush is flourishing on The City of Arabel server, as you can see in her tales on my story forum.

So, let’s get down to business and what I found out about the city of Arabel.

[Winterhawk99]

Terrain/Area builds/Placeables:


On my last review I said: “I am a bit disappointed with the overall area builds. They are very simple with not many placeables (except for crafting supplies). Placeables do not cause any lag for those of you that wonder about them. They can cause extended load times. That you have to watch out for too. However, they could put a lot more placeables in the world without affecting much. Also, there are very few custom tile sets in this world. With their server only going to 10th level and with all that free paging and load capacity I would expect the world to be a bit brighter and with more placeables.”

I also said: I think the builders are a young and somewhat inexperienced team. I have been watching them carefully both on the boards and how the servers work. Even though they are young and perhaps inexperience their enthusiasm makes up for it. Every time there is either a suggestion or complaint about the building/scripting of the server the builders respond within hours usually, talk about it on the boards and then if approved work on it in the toolset. They may make some mistakes or two, but they are learning and gaining experience.

This new team is not inexperienced. They know all the secret buttons on the toolset board such as floor lighting. I saw that utilized many times along with other things a builder looks for when they see areas of someone else’s pw. They know what they are doing.

They have added a number of tilesets far more sophisticated than the original tilesets and used them very well. The areas that they have rebuilt or created do look fresh, clean, and more visually pleasing. That is a great thing. The server needed that shot in the arm.

While I have been there, they have made a few temporary areas. One in particular was a forest. They had to change it for environmental reasons. It is always dark now. They added just the right touches to make the dark forest feel magic. For instance, trees with multicolored fey lights in the branches. That was a good use of placeables.

There are only two downsides to what they are doing. Both are easily correctable. The first is the builders need to keep going and doing what they are doing. Those revamped and newly created areas maybe take up 10% of the server at most. The other 90% are areas made by the old team who for some reason hated placeables and seemed to lay out some tiles, put down some crafting placeables, and then say, “We’re Done!” Yea, that’s boring and I did complain about that in the last review.

If the new team can get even just 25% of these areas adjusted with some good placeables for effect, or recreate them with a more advanced tileset and tastefully done placeables, that would make it an ace in the hole kind of thing. They have shown me they have both the talent and the knowledge, especially in the underwater areas. Kudos. All they need to do is keep it up.

The chair test. I always do the chair test on any server I go into. And I will explain this in this review. To make a sittable chair in NWN, a builder has to first lay a chair placeable on the floor. They have to move it to the position they want. In the next step, they have to put an invisible seat placeable on the z-axis of where the player character will sit so it does not look like they are floating, and it doesn’t look like the chair mimic ate them, and their legs are in the right position, not backwards into the chair and not left or right. That does happen.

Now there are hundreds of chairs in a normal PW. Each one has to have a seat placeable on it in the right position. Putting a seat placeable in the right position isn’t that hard, but it’s a tedious job. It’s a standard for me to look at the attention to detail that builders have in the world.

Think about this. If you, as a player-character, walk into the most trafficked inn in a persistent world and sit down. Then you find your butt is floating above the chair or your butt is half-way in the chair, what are you going to think? What I think is, if they can’t get this right, what else is wrong with the world? That’s what I would think.

So, when I went to the Old Gate Inn and did the chair test…….The server failed and failed in a spectacular way. I sat on a barstool, and my butt was literally ½ way down the stool. The top of the stool was coming out of my chest. I sat down by the fire and I’m facing the wrong way on a long bench, and you could not even see my legs. It’s the most trafficked area on the server. Builders just have to get that fixed. They also have to fix where chairs are too close to a table and the .Woks are too close together for you to sit down. .Wok is the part of the placeable that tells you if you can put your hand through it or if your hand stops on the surface.

Now I’ve given you the things that need correction. I will give you something the new team did exceptionally well that caught my attention. That is their environmental effects system. When it is too hot, too cold, or perhaps you are swimming underwater, builders can add environmental effects. My own system was to add variables to an area and a program in the module. When an area would be too hot, it would cause you damage depending on the environmental conditions. A volcanic crater would cause heat damage every so many rounds, and the closer you got to the crater, the more damage you would take.

Arabel does it better. Let’s say you go onto a glacier. When you get to the cold area, a bar will pop up on your game screen. It has a 0% on the left side and 100% on the right. As you walk through the area, that bar will light up and grow to the 100%. 0% means you are ok. 100% means you are an ice popsicle awaiting the nearest frost giant to come by and use you as a toothpick. He has a gnome stuck between his teeth.

You always know where you need to go inside, and when you get to 50%, the bar turns from blue to yellow to warn you to get warm or breathe air if you are swimming underwater. That’s great thinking and much better immersion than my own system. Really great job on that idea to the crew of The City of Arabel.

[Winterhawk99]

Scripting:

I’m going to paraphrase and shorten what I said in my last review. Lots and lots of good custom scripting They have come up with a lot of scripts like moving through game paths between trees to get to otherwise closed off sections of areas to jumping across small ravines. They do get a lot of (Too much information errors on this server) Stack overflows. Most but not all of these are involved in the crafting system. Some not so much. As I read the yellow warnings on the right side of my screen, I have seen it also in the death system and other systems. To the builder teams’ credit: They seem to get right on the problems while the non-builder/scripter players remain unawares.

The new team is led by a scripter of Axe Murderer/Thri-Kreen quality. Two of the best scripters ever to make a function or script for NWN. Now the engine purrs like a kitten. During my current visit of logging a few hundred hours I have seen one maybe two errors come up on my right-side board and both were in the crafting system.

Even if they gave me all their scripts for the server I highly doubt with my gorilla way of scripting with my bailing wire and duct tape way of doing things that I would be able to track any mistakes. If there are mistakes, I would miss them because I’m nowhere near this team's level.

As far as the crafting system I was a level 8 woodworker when I came in because they were using a cleaned-up version of the old system. They changed that a few months ago. After that I was done. It’s not that the new system is worse. In fact, the new system, which I have heard from other players, is better. However, everyone knows how much I like crafting systems in the first place. I’m a master gunsmith and have absolutely no reason to get off work and get on a game where… I’m right back at work again doing the same damn things. So, on the new crafting system I have no right to judge something I won’t participate in. As far as the scripting on the new crafting system I am willing to take a long bet (guess) it is much better just by the shear quality of the people building the system.

I did want to mention one other thing. Their file editing. CoA does a lot of file editing. The server only goes to 10th level. That means you really can't have a whole lot of meaningful prestige classes. They changed the file system so you can acquire prestige classes at lower level. With the circumstances of only being able to hit 10th level this is a really good and smart thing. The team also regularly updates several of their 2das and their .tlk files to be inclusive to individual player ideas. Also, a very good thing. They are always looking to put their customers first and foremost.

The last part of the scripting section is about their attention to player’s finding bugs. When a player finds a bug, they can put it on Discord, or they can go to CoA forums. I regularly check the forums for how fast they fix scripting and other problems. They are very quick in this and leave answers not only is it fixed but if it takes a bit longer, they even give progress reports to the players. Kudo’s Team CoA you are doing everything right.

[Winterhawk99]

General Game Play and the XP system:

General gameplay on The City of Arabel is very different from a normal server. You start at 4th level, and the world only goes to 10th. The world itself is far more brutal than most. You will die often unless you build something extremely durable, such as a Fighter/Weapon Master combination. This server is specifically a storyline‑driven world that adheres to different rules than most persistent worlds.

My character Arelush has played on the server for six months now and still has not reached level 10. She is close, but she has not made it yet. I have hope she will be my first character to do so. Nearly every player dies frequently and is raised or resurrected, and the penalty is steep. Unless you are at the very top of your level, expect to lose at least one — and possibly two — levels depending on whether you are raised or resurrected. Resurrection costs more gold but results in a smaller XP hit.

XP progression gets harder as you climb levels. At the moment, you can get full XP rewards for levels 4–7. Once you hit 8th level, you no longer get XP for kills, though you still receive XP for quests and DM events. At level 9, you stop getting XP for quests entirely. Your only means of leveling becomes DM events, a very small number of special quests, and crafting.

Does it work? Yes — because this is not a general server. It is a heavy RP storyline server, and the XP system is designed specifically for that environment.

The world is not a cooperative game world. Players who run evil characters excel at it. Players who run good characters excel at that too. Everything in between is represented, and everyone plays their alignment well. There is a great deal of PvP — psychological, mental, and physical. Before you say anything, yes, it is closely monitored by DMs to ensure fairness. Even players who run evil characters are good people out of game, so PvP does not lead to anger or grudges, at least not that I have seen.

There are many factions you can join, and you can even create your own. If you do, the DMs will challenge your faction with enemies, and other player factions may challenge you as well. Arelush, my character, is a Ranger in charge of one of the five druid groves (she is Keeper of the Hullack Grove). She is challenged by the Eldreth Veluuthra, evil druid groves, city people who want to harm the forest, and other enemies pitted against her. She even put her foot down to try to stop a hunt in her forest of a famous old wyvern called Old Scar, who does clean‑up duty for her by disposing of large carcasses.

General gameplay and XP progression work for this world because it has a very unique and specific flavor. This system would not work in worlds such as Harrowsport, Arelith, or almost any other server. Because of the backdrop and flavor of Arabel, they needed a custom system tailored to their world — and it works rather well.

[Winterhawk99]

Economy:

Here we hit a very bumpy road. The Economy. I see in my last review of The City of Arabel I did not mention the economy at all. There are two reasons. 1. I had not done many reviews yet and did not know how to handle what I saw on the server. 2. The economy is graded very heavily against the player character. It’s hard to make a buck there. In fact, in other reviews, I often called Arabel’s economy the very worst that I had come across. Well, The Dragon’s Neck took its place. Even with such a slanted economy there are a couple of saving graces, and I will get to those. Right now, Let’s talk about the general economy.

The general economy goes like this. Merchants will sell you items at the fair market value for most servers. A potion of strength will cost you about 120 gp, a raise dead 2500. However, they only buy things up to a price of 15 gp. You have a potion of moderate wounds you sell to a merchant? They will give you 15gp for it. You sell a +1 suite of draconic plate armor that has 10% immunity to slashing/bludgeoning/ piercing? The merchant will give you exactly….15 gold for it.

The first time Arelush was venturing on the server she picked up woodworking and got fairly good at it. She was making +1 longbows with a +2 mighty for 8 gp of material and selling them to a merchant for 15 gp. I took a look then at what he was selling them back for it was a little over 1,000 gp. At least she was making a profit of 7gp, so she made a whole bunch of them before she was banned. When she came back it cost her 21 gp to make the same bow. So, she could not possibly make a profit at all.

Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m not going to sit down and make custom 30-06 rifle. And put 5,000 dollars in material in it just to sell it for 1,000 bucks. It makes no sense craft for a craftsman to do that.

I’ve had two characters on the server. Lauriella Sithmore and Arelush. Lauriella spent about 6 months on the server and managed to accumulate 35,000 in gold. Arelush has spent more time here and has only ever had 15,000 to her name and she is the one that knew crafting. As I said the crafting system has changed when that happened, I just gave up mainly because I was right back to 0 and don’t like to participate in any crafting system anyway. It's really hard to keep gold in your pocket here, especially with the number of times you will get raised or raise others. Arelush has a soft heart she doesn’t charge anyone if she raises them.

The saving grace for this is there are merchants in the module that will be a storefront for you if you are a craftsman. Now that is good for the regular players. They can probably make a good deal of coin from crafting and having a storefront. There is however a caveat to this. What if you are a casual player like me? With my 10/4 schedule and getting home with a list of honey do’s waiting for me my time on the server is limited. There’s no way I can maintain a storefront. So, what I am left with is quests to make the coin I need…. well…. to do more quests of course.

The other saving grace are factions and special areas with prestige chests. A prestige chest is a special merchant. There are all kinds of items that have prestige points on them If you turn these into the chest you get those points to buy special items. Arelush being the keeper of the Hullack druid grove puts almost all of hers in the grove chest. These special items include things like 80% bags of holding, fire arrows, special pieces of armor you can only get at these merchants, even special companion animals like Shambling mounds, Griffins, and displacer beasts. So, what you have is a second underground economy that you can use instead of gold. That does help the overall system somewhat.

In the end what you have is an economic system highly rigged against the player character. There are a few saving graces, but most casual players will only be able to participate in one of those two. A regular player benefits from both.

The only other thing that I can say is that because the server only goes to level 10 you are not going to find any +3 items or higher. It's highly unlikely that you find a +2 item, but I have seen it happen once in a blue moon.

The city of Arabel’s economy works I will give it that. Personally, I don’t like the system because it keeps a player continually scrambling for coin and in some cases prestige points. It also hurts craftsmen that do not set up shops and in the worse way. In the end I would say either the Max price of merchants needs to go up enough that a craftsman can make some coin of the normal merchants/ Or the materials that a craftsman needs to make any item be less then 15 gp. If craftsmen cannot make any profit in a store and in fact loses money from their wares, it's not fair to the player.

[Winterhawk99]

Discord Tickets:

I've always had a problem with Discord tickets. My problem with them has always been the same: they’re impersonal, detached, and usually leave the customer with a bad taste in their mouth. You open a ticket, it gets tossed into a pile, and you feel like you’re talking to a wall. I hate Discord tickets almost as much as I hate crafting.

But Arabel did something that turns the whole system on its head.

Once you open a ticket, that ticket becomes your character’s permanent ticket. It doesn’t disappear. It doesn’t get closed and forgotten. It becomes your ongoing personal channel with the DM team. That one change makes the entire system feel different. Suddenly it’s not some cold, detached filing cabinet — it’s your own permanent passport to talking with the DMs.

You can go back to it any time. They can go back to it any time. It keeps context, history, conversations, and decisions all in one place. It feels personal. It feels connected. And for someone like me, who despises Discord tickets, this was a shock — in the best way possible.

I would like to say to all the other NWN servers out there this is the right way to do it, and The City of Arabel came up with this shit. It turns something that feels like a corporate request and memo into private personal channel for the player to talk with the Dm’s about their character anytime they want. That is something a player will highly appreciate. And I personally do. Kudo’s Arabel you found a way to turn me around on discord tickets. It’s a flash of genius.

[Winterhawk99]

DMs:

In the last review I did on this server, I wrote: I do not think I have encountered a better DM team as of yet than the DMs on this server. They did everything. They looked at PC backstories and used them as props for adventures. They created their own adventures. They worked together — sometimes in pairs — to keep the world story consistent and even mesh adventures together. These guys were not only good, but they were also better than any team I ever worked with back in the day on the many servers I DMed or administrated for.

They even watched what players wrote on the boards. I once called my friends and spouses for a night of revelry at the docks of Immersea and invited the mayor. When we got together on Sunday, I had no doubt one of the DMs would come on and play the mayor of Immersea. That’s how these guys worked. This team was amazing. And as you all know, I don’t say that often.

Then came the second time I returned — the first time with Arelush. The DMs had gone downhill quite a bit. You could see it in the server numbers, the in‑game quality of the campaigns, the number of events, and other signs. Maybe it was burnout. Maybe something else. I don’t know. But the decline was real, and it showed.

Today, with this new team, they have somehow become even better than when I first stepped into the server all those years ago. The number of campaigns they run, how they administrate, how they focus on a wide range of player stories to help their customers reach their goals — it’s incomparable to other servers. And it shows. Their activity has been slowly climbing up the Beamdog master board for several months, often beating out general servers like Harrowsport.

I’ve tested them. I’ve watched them. I’ve looked for flaws. I could not find one thing I could point to and say, “Hey, this is something they did that was not right.” And you can see the results just by the way everyone treats each other — both in‑game and on the Discord channel. Everyone is courteous. Everyone respects each other. I haven’t seen one problem with players fighting or even causing a nuisance.

All I can say is: Damn, these guys are good. I have a lingering feeling they read all my tutorials and thoughts on DMing. They by far outperform anyone I have ever seen on NWN when it comes to treating their players like customers.

[Winterhawk99]

Players: In 2020 I wrote this about the players of The City of Arabel: Players are a mixed batch here. There are some really good role players and some not so good role players. The good thing is if players and dms find a not so good or new player they will help them along without being cannon lawyers. In fact, I haven’t found one cannon lawyer on this server. I even met and elven character from Greyhawk that was approved for play. And they create gods and goddesses and put the religion in the game. So, these people are really creative people that think for themselves. They even considered letting my play an Elder Fey’ri but decided the race was just too powerful for the server. Which is ok Elder fey’ri are a powerful race like Idra and should be a hard sell on any server. Players always have fun on this server.

Today players have matured 100%. Most if not, all feel like veteran role players of Pen and Paper games. They all seem to get along well both in games and in forums. Their playing is exceptional, and most players I feel like I can talk to at any time. Some even laugh at my corny jokes on discord. I’ve not even seen any hostile disagreements. People come here to play the game and be among friends. They don’t play politics (Except in Character) and egos are put to the side for the most part. I’ve even seen some players manufacture their own PC’s death with the help of other players and dms. It’s a really different server when it comes to the people here. Some of the best People in NWN come here to play. That is something to be proud of and something for the Dms to be proud of too because they set the tone.

[Winterhawk99]

Conclusion:

The City of Arabel has always been one of the best experiences I’ve had when playing NWN persistent worlds. The fact that this new team has made that experience even better for their customers is awesome. They have been innovative in seeking out new and creative solutions to give their players an even better experience and it shows.

People are taking notice of all these efforts. I’ve been watching the NWN Beamdog master board while I play, and they have been slowly moving up on the boards as one of the more popular worlds available. However, even with all this praise there are a few drawbacks that keep them bouncing a little bit up and down the charts so let’s take a look.

Because The City of Arabel is not a general server it detracts some players. It’s completely set up as a storyline server. When you go in Dm’s will focus on your individual character’s history and personality and try to get you involved and give you situations where you can complete your goals. It is a very specific type of play they cater for. Some players do not want that style of play.

Level 10 cap. Some players who love setting goals and play at higher levels will pass the server by simply because they like to play at higher levels. Both power gamers, hack and slash people, and those that test builds may pass the world up.

The last problem I see with the server is its rapid-fire campaigns. I would have to call my own playing a casual style of play. I go away from home for 10 days of work and come back for 4 days where I can play the game. In that time there were probably 12-14 dm quests to move their story along. When I come back to work there are times when I am personally completely lost. Sometimes in those 10 days factions have been born and already died. The political climate has completely changed, and my character has lost friends that she knew. It’s a very fast paced server. The fastest I have ever been on which can alienate casual players such as I.

The conclusion I reach is that the sever has been set up so long for this style of game play for so long giving it advantage in building and custom content that it would be hard to change the whole of it around. Even if they did, they would use the unique taste of their server.

This is one of those times where the faults I see within the server stopping it from becoming a top server up there with the Ravenloft server and Arelith servers are not any fault of the Dms and Staff. In my opinion they are the best I have ever seen. It’s just the old saying, “It is what it is.”

The good news is players are seeing the efforts. More players are finding The City of Arabel every month and if they continue what they are doing I can see them eventually getting up there with the top servers instead of just below and having some bounce. It’s a great server, folks. I would highly recommend it.