Neverwinter Free MMO Guide

There are already a lot of Dungeons & Dragons games out there. From board games to card games and video games. The Lore of D&D is nothing new to most of us...
But I am excited to see Neverwinter appear as a Free game with the ability to use everything available in the game without having to spend a penny. The graphics are beautiful, the the world is huge, fight along side friends, customize your character and all the rest of the expected RPG qualities.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Neverwinter in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the downloadable version of Neverwinter. Steam and Arc versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Note: March 2017 Perfect World Entertainment ended support for Windows XP and Direct X 9. This guide no longer applies until we can pursue more testing in Wine.

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.8
Wine: 1.7.40

Wine Installation

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.7.40
Note: Try using stable Wine 1.8 and 1.8-staging

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.7.40 is installed and you can close this window

Download the Neverwinter installer here:
http://download.perfectworld.com/nw/neverwinter_setup.exe

Save in a folder on your desktop

PlayOnLinux Setup

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "Install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name the virtual drive: neverwinter
Click Next

Check all three options:

• Use another version of Wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 1.7.40
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Wine Configuration

Applications Tab
Windows Version: Windows 7
Click Apply

Graphics Tab
Check "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"
Check "Emulate a virtual desktop"
Desktop size: 1024x768
Click OK

PlayOnLinux Packages (Libraries, Components, DLL's)

Check the following packages:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_tahoma

Click Next

Note: All packages will automatically download and install

Installing Neverwinter

Click Browse

Navigate to the folder on your desktop
Select "neverwinter_setup.exe"
Click Open

Click Next again

Select language
Click OK

Click Next

Click "I Agree"

Click Next

Uncheck "Create a desktop icon"
Click Install

Uncheck "Launch Neverwinter"
Click Finish

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select "Neverwinter.exe"
Click Next

Name your shortcut: Neverwinter
Click Next

Select "I don't want to make another shortcut"
Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Select Neverwinter
Click Configure

General Tab
Wine version: 1.7.40

Note: Click the + to download other versions of Wine. Click the down-arrow to select other versions of Wine

Display Tab
Video memory size: Enter the amount of memory your video card/chip uses

Close Configure

Launching Neverwinter

Select Neverwinter
Click Run

Login with your account credentials

Neverwinter will begin downloading and patching
In total the game is about 13 Gigabytes

Note: This process can take several hours depending on your internet speed

When its done downloading click PLAY

Long Cryptic loading screen
At first launch, this Cryptic screen can literally take 15-20 minutes
Please be patient and take a break

Sometimes the login will fail and end up at this login screen
Enter your account credentials
Click LOGIN

Once in game, select your character
Click Enter World

Optimization

Click Options
Click Graphics Tab

Adjust resolution to match your Linux desktop

Adjust:

• Screen
• Detail
• Effects
• Lights

or

Use the Render Quality (Video Card) and Graphics Detail (CPU) sliders

Go to the Advanced tab for more settings
Click OK or Apply

Note: When in-game, settings will automatically change on the screen

Conclusion:
Neverwinter runs extremely well on my Geforce 550 Ti. I can turn almost all the graphical settings to high and still get a decent frame rate. This game is beautiful for an Online MMO and its best to play on a desktop with a modern graphics card.
Normally when I first Enter World, there is a bit of lag as the level loads.

Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

 

I had to set Windows version to Windows XP and then install IE8. Make sure everything is in a 32-bit virtual drive.
IE8 is required for the Arc client

 

Thanks Steve for looking over the Neverwinter Guide. I wouldn't have checked for a long time because the Beta installer still runs fine on my machine.
Glad you were on it!

 

@booman :

Hi,

It seems that you're very pleased with overall performance ? I tested this (beautiful) game on my windows hard drive (tested is the good word, I barely never boot this hard drive, except for a few must have games I canno't play on linux, or for testing/comparisons), it worked flawlessly, graphics almost maxed out (except in the big city, where it was choppy on my pc -specs : athlon 64 x2 2x2.2ghz 4gb, nvidia gtx650ti 1gb ddr5).

I didn't made any framerate testing, since I didn't know the command for it in this game.

Regarding my PC specs, do you believe it worths to try a linux install of it ? Or should I wait my new processor (2x3.2ghz) ? I really don't want to play it in low settings.

It's a game I'd like to follow (I'm a big fan of D&D games, on tabletop and videogames), especially on linux.

thanks !

 

Oh yeah, give it a try, Neverwinter ran pretty good for me. Its slow to download and launch, but once you are in-game it ran really well for me. You can always lower the video options to get better frame rates too. Unfortunately I think you have to download the whole game again in Linux. I tried backing up the beta game files and restoring them in the new Arc version and it didn't work. I had to wait a few hours to download again.

 

I'll try it. Too bad I cannot just take the windows folder.

I'll keep you informed about the result, thank you !

 

edit (sort of...) : Like for path of exile, following your guide, playonlinux asks me if I prefer a 32bit windows installation or 64bit windows installation.

Perhaps it's because I'm using ubuntu 12.04 64bit ?

What choice should I do ? Is it the same choice for any game ?

thanks

 

edit2 (sorry)


I installed the game using 32bit windows. It's working nicely, but it's a bit choppy, even outside the city. I'm not sure the graphics card (gtx650ti 1gb ddr5) is responsable, since no matter the graphics settings, the speed seems to be barely the same.

Perhaps my old processor is guilty. 2x2.2ghz, 2x512kb cache is a bit slow in 2013 I guess. I need to upgrade it. I can go as far as a 2x3.2ghz 2x1mb cache processor.

 

Yes always select 32-bit virtual drive.

I've seen this problem with a few other games... no matter what video setting I select, its still a bit slow. I bet it has something to do with wine and CPU processing, but I really don't know. As newer Wine versions are released I keep testing to see if optimizations are improved.

Thanks for your help. Since our site is new, we do not get a lot of feedback on our Guides. Glad to see you are having some success.

 

You're welcome. I bookmarked this website

Concerning your guide, by the way, with my graphics card I don't have the "failed system specs check" message. The game recognize my card and directly offer me to run it maxed out (it's also why I don't think my 3d card is faulty in the choppy framerate).

The game stills playable on linux, especially in "dungeons" (interior instances). A lot more than Champions online or Startrek. Wich is a bit weird since neverwinter is a newer game, don't you think ?

 

You don't get that error? Strange because I get it every time and after clicking "low settings" the options show maxed settings anyways.... very strange.

Yes, I would expect Neverwinter to run slower, but then again, maybe Paradox has learned a lot from their first games and have optimized everything better to run on all hardware.
Now if they would just make a native Linux version.

 

No error, absolutly.

By the way, I disabled GSGL for this game too, and performances increased significantly. Since it's late (almost 2am) maybe there is less players, but I don't think so.

Now even exterior dungeons (like blacktale night district or something like that) now are very playable, with graphics options to factory max settings (my resolution is 1280x1024). By max settings, I mean : I didn't touch advanced settings, I only pushed the 2 basic configuration cursors to max (wich are the recommanded settings).


I can't wait to receive my new processor. The game should fly with it. But it's already perfectly playable keeping the nice graphics, really impressive.

 

Very nice, I'll have to try that too

 

New processor hu? I need a entire new computer. To bad the Sims money tree is a game. Lol.

 

By the way I tried the "ad games" link in Arc and nothing happens for me either. It eventually crashes. I'll look into the debug and see why it won't connect to their database so we can install another game.

 

I abandonned the idea of installing CHampions for now. Too bad since it's one of my favourites.

Neverwinter works really well with new processor. Except in the main city, the game is very fast. BUT it suffers some micro freezes when I change the character direction suddenly. I believe it's something related to GSGL. Because when I enable GSGL, the freezes are massive. When I disable GSGL, the freezes are almost not noticeable, but annoying regarding the native windows version of the game.

I don't know what is the problem. It's not PC performance related, because except this, it's very fast, almost Quake3-ish speed and smoothness (lol). And these micro freezes (or micro lags) doesn't depand on graphics settings level. Low or high, same behaviour.


The game stills perfectly playable. And the performance is very similar to WIndows. Except the main city, but I suspect that it's also the "microlag/freeze" behaviour wich is responsable.

 

I had similar problems, but barely noticeable. I never messed with GLSL on most games.
The new Wine 1.7.1 may have the boost we need for performance in games.
They have implemented some speed boost for Direct3D in this version: Gamersonlinux

 

Will it be possible to change the wine version inside POL without reinstalling the whole game ?

 

Oh YEAH! That is the coolest feature of PlayOnLinux, change the Wine version any time you want.
No re-installs, but I do like to click "Windows reboot" in the Wine Tab just to make sure.

 

Really cool feature. i'm currently installing it to see if any difference exists inside neverwinter.


thanks

 

1.7.1? Lucky! I'm at work right now, so I won't have a chance till tomorrow morning.
Definitely try it on any games you allready have installed