House Vandree: Gith Characters in Neverwinter

The latest update module, Uprising brings the Endless war between the githyanki and the mind flaying Illithids into Undermountain.

Player characters can play a new race with interesting features:

According to the official announcement, the new gith race will be free for a limited time:

Free to VIP for the first 2 weeks of the module (August 13 - August 26)
Free to everyone (including VIP) for the 2 weeks after that (August 27 - September 9)
Starting September 10, players who didn’t log in for the free gith will have to buy a pack to get access to this race.

Character Creation

To create a Gith character, press ESC and get the Game-Menu.

Use the Change Character button and wait for you existing characters to show up. There is a button at the bottom that lets you create a new character.

Select Race Gith:

Race Selection

Select Appropriate Class:

At the core of Neverwinter’s gameplay the classes. Neverwinter has evolved and changed over the years through so many updates. With the current update, Neverwinter is moving away from the 4th Edition D&D pre-defined build classes towards classes, that should be known by their core names that are very familiar to anyone who has played D&D:

Cleric
Fighter – Previously Guardian Fighter
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Warlock
Wizard
Barbarian (formerly known as Great Weapon Fighter).

Details are explained in the official developers blog. Another source that is accessible in game is the Antiquities Scholar in Protectors Enclave (near Harper Boward).

New gith character talking to the Antiquities Scholar.

Expertise of the Antiquities Scholar.

In game description of Babarian Class.

Class Selection

Select Stat-Bonus:

The Undermountain expansion brought a lot of changes with it to fix balance and progression in Neverwinter. The core math of the game and how that math is different than what it was before is explained in another official developers blog.

The concept of opposing rolls is very important to understand. It simply means that you have a rating, such as Critical Strike, and an opponent has an opposing rating such as Critical Avoidance. These two ratings are compared to figure out how effective you are against that opponent.

In other words, harder opponents are more skilled and therefore you are less effective against them than you would be against a weaker opponent who had lower ratings.

The developers point out:

Enemies will have the same value for all of their ratings, and all of the enemies in a given zone/dungeon will all have the same rating values.

Critical Strike gets a bonus 5% chance by default. This is a modification of the opposing rolls concept above, insofar as Critical Strike gets a 5% bonus. The player would actually have an 11% chance to crit instead of a 6%. Critical Strike is capped at 50%.

Deflect also now caps out at 50%

Combat Advantage Bonus gets a 10% boost by default and caps out at 100%.

Main ratings and their oppositions.

Stats-Bonus Selection

Intro

The tutorial has been cleaned up to make game play from levels 1- 20 more straight forward. This brings an improvement of flow, quests, and players are getting the mount sooner. Blacklake and the Tower district were cleaned up.

Leveling from 20 to 70

Any adventurer's Forgotten Realms journey begins with a first, small step into the vast and fascinating world of Neverwinter. To guide brave new adventurers through their first hours, an official guide was created to shed light on a path to endless riches in order become Neverwinter's next hero.

The key to rapid leveling is XP. You get them from adventuring. If you want to get your new gith character as fast as possible to the Stardock, there are several things, you can do:

Start the Acquisitions Inc Campaign at level 15

XP-Bonus of House Vandree.

Join a guild once you reach level 20, activate the XP Boon if available

Activation of Guild XP Boon.

Pray as often, as possible

Pray at a campfire.

Increasing XP from praying.

Do the daily missions from the quest givers in the stronghold

The Cleric quest: leveling queue.

Donate shards to the guild coffer.

Exchange Shards for Guild Marks.

Convert Guild marks to AD.

It is important to know that it is not necessary to do all quests in all areas that are offered to reach level 70. If you do the missions from all stronghold quest givers on a daily basis and activate all guild boons available, you will level fairly quickly.