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'm glad you got the Nvidia Proprietary drivers installed. That will help with games a lot. Will the Neverwinter launcher appear and start downloading the game?
Where exactly are you getting stuck?

Interesting that Ubuntu does not know what to do with the Spiral Knights.bin
That is a Java executable and it should use openJava to run it.
Make sure the .bin is executable and try using the Terminal to launch it.
The Drakensang download should be an .exe not a .dmg
The .dmg is for Mac

 

I'm glad you got the Nvidia Proprietary drivers installed. That will help with games a lot. Will the Neverwinter launcher appear and start downloading the game?
Where exactly are you getting stuck?

Interesting that Ubuntu does not know what to do with the Spiral Knights.bin
That is a Java executable and it should use openJava to run it.
Make sure the .bin is executable and try using the Terminal to launch it.
The Drakensang download should be an .exe not a .dmg
The .dmg is for Mac

Well I switched out to Linux Mint and got the game running and all seemed well. Then I have been getting a lot of crashes. Some nights its only 2 or 3 but others its like 10 -12. The crash basically says something about wine. I will have to get the exact error as usually i am in the middle of something when it happens and I rush to get back in. I have been adjusting the renderer and graphic detail settings which seemed to help but again tonight i had several crashes. Have any ideas on stopping those crashes? I am currently running wine 1.7.50 and going to try to go to 1.7.52. Anyway thanks for all your help.

 

First try Wine staging versions. Those also have a CMST setting in Wine Configuration that might improve performance.
I originally had a lot of crashing on one of my PC's but later found that one of my sticks of RAM was bad. I haven't tried it since.
The best thing you can do is send me the "debug" but make sure to post it here:
POLForum

 

I just tried to install this game via POL. I can't as it does not appear in my Steam library. I can't go to the store page as steamwebhelper.exe doesn’t work because wine/bugzilla bug report says; https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38960 .If I go to Steam for Linux it also does not show up in the library but I can find it in the store and it says it is already in my library. It doesn’t look like I can install via steam for windows.

 

I remembered the ARC installer also has it but I found out I need about 8 more Gigs of free space.

 

If you follow my updated guide or even use the PlayOnLinux script, you don't need Arc or Steam anymore. You are able to download the launcher directly (Just as Arc and Steam do) then launch it and download the game through it.
So its nice to avoid another client just to play a game.

 

I just used the playonlinux script to install never winter. What do I do about the audio problem? It sounds like the old Pulse Audio buffer underrun problem that affects so many games.

 

Use the Wine Manager to download Wine 1.7.55 or 1.7.55-staging
Pulseaudio is now compatible with Wine in that version

 

Hi, new to linux and POL, but hoping someone can help. I have NWO installed and running smoothly for normal play, but it crashes as soon as I accept a party join (for dungeons/pvp or just in general). Running under wine 1.7.4 having used the script to install. Everything works well EXCEPT the party joining. Has anyone else encountered this and hopefully have a workaround/solution? Thanks

 

Hi, new to linux and POL, but hoping someone can help. I have NWO installed and running smoothly for normal play, but it crashes as soon as I accept a party join (for dungeons/pvp or just in general). Running under wine 1.7.4 having used the script to install. Everything works well EXCEPT the party joining. Has anyone else encountered this and hopefully have a workaround/solution? Thanks

Actually no, my daughter and I would join a party together to play co-op and it worked perfectly. Its been a while, but I rarely had a problem with anything.
The first thing you could try is downloading Wine 1.8 from the Wine Manager and see if it improves things.

 

Actually no, my daughter and I would join a party together to play co-op and it worked perfectly. Its been a while, but I rarely had a problem with anything.
The first thing you could try is downloading Wine 1.8 from the Wine Manager and see if it improves things.

Thank you. To update, I have installed the newest wine 1.9.3 and it has corrected the issues, although I do tend to run out of video memory when changing areas often? I am running a Nvidia GTX 550ti 1GB Dedicated. Xorg.org shows NVIDIA: Using 3072.00 MB of virtual memory for indirect memory.
The one thing I have been confused about and havent found a guide that explains this properly... should I be setting wine video memory to 1024 (dedicated memory) or the full 3GB including virtual?

 

I have experienced some slowness in Neverwinter as well.
I always set Wine memory size to dedicated memory on the video card.
I have a GeForce 550 Ti 2GB RAM, so I set Memory size to 2048 MB

 

Hi! I have a somewhat unexpected issue. Namely, I currently have to run dual boot because I must use Windows for work -_- I would like to play Newerwinter on Ubuntu as I really hate using windows. Anyway, because of that, I had to manually partition my hard drive and the Ubuntu partition is only 1.7GB - too small for the game. Both wine and playonlinux see this partition as the only part of my hard drive that is usable, so I was wondering if there is a way for me to change the location of my installation that is, to make these programs "notice" the other pats of the hard drive that are empty and available.
Thanks

 

I haven't tried it before, but Linux can definitely see your Windows NTFS partitions. Which Windows are you using?

In theory, you can create a /home/username/.PlayOnLinux/ directory in your Windows partition and then link to it. So every virtual drive will be installed in the Windows partition. But you will need to set it up in fstab so it mounts every time you run Ubuntu. Otherwise none of your games will install or run without the directory mounted.

Its kind of a pain to setup. Do you have a spare hard drive you can use for Ubuntu?

 

LOL, the reply comes really late Sorry.
Anyway, I ended up uninstalling Windows, so I managed to install the game with no problem. I just can't seem to adjust the screen size and the game won't load in fullscreen. So I can't do anything when I'm asked to calibrate monitor settings, since I see only a part of the screen and the OK/Apply button is unreachable. Any ideas?
Thanks!

 

You may want to try setting the game resolution to match your Linux desktop, then go back to Wine Configuration and disable the virtual desktop.

 

OK, that worked, thanks! However, I can't start playing, the Protector's Enclave won't load (I've waited for a while, just in case)...

 

Exactly where do you get stuck?
Can you post the debug here in this forum: http://www.gamersonlinux.com/forum/forums/playonlinux.9/

 

Looks like Perfect World Entertainment has stopped Direct X 9 support, but there is a chance newer versions of Wine with Direct X 10 support might still work. Has anyone been able to test Neverwinter in newer versions of Wine?