Just a few things to keep in mind:

• This from Greg M. (I tried it - it works): A strategy tip for sorcerors/wizards is to use darkness. Just walk in, cast darkness and fireball (or some other area-effect spell) the area (you can also cast ultravision and pick targets instead of just relying on area spells. Darkvision helps as well, but the single best way to do this is to simply press your key. It'll "paint" the enemies for you and you can target them without other aid). It's an amazing combo. Nothing attacks you when it can't see you :->
• Read the manual! The manual is a terrific resource to teach you how races and classes, spells and skills, feats and many other things all work together to make this game what it is. You might think reading the instructions isn't for you, but trust me when I say it's worth it in this case.
• Make sure to update frequently. There will be regular bug fixes no doubt about it, so make sure you always have the newest version of the game.
• Change your settings to give you personal advantages (better control, more visibility, etc.). You can change controls, display, anything at all.
• REST OFTEN!, I cannot stress this enough. By resting you get skills back that you already used, and also complete restoration of HP. You can do this anywhere as long as you're not near an enemy(s).
• Save often! You'll hate yourself if you run into a trap or die unexpectedly and your last save was hours ago. Rest and saving are the most important things you can do!
• Use your map often, even if you have it at smallest, you have the important locations on there, and can also add your own.
• Talk to your henchmen to set up thier tactics the way you want them to be. Although you cannot buy items or equipment for your henchmen, they do automatically level when you do, and upgrade weapons and armor automatically free of charge!
• If you level while your henchman is in the temple (because they got killed), you can talk to them and tell them to level up when you get them back into your party. (Sorial)
• Read books. A lot of them will have tips or hints or a special use, notes especially. Mostly, books will teach you more about the history of this world and might help you later on in your journey.
• Persuasion is one of the most useful skills in the game. It allows you to access quests you wouldn't be able to, enter places you wouldn't be allowed to without paying, and make people give extra rewards for quests. Keep in mind that there ARE alternatives to persuasion - like muscle!
• Set hotkeys! This is most important for spellcasters and especially important in multiplayer games. For item's you can drag them onto the hotkey, and for anything and everything(and i mean everything) else just right click on the hotkey slot. Right click to remove a hotkey as well. Hold shift or ctrl for another bar of hotkey possibilities!
• When you level up you can check and see the amount of HP you will gain, and if you want more cancel and go through it again, until you find the max amount of hp gained for the level. (Thanks to Hauie!)
• When you get stuck in a part of the game CHECK YOUR JOURNAL, I cannot stress this enough, the quests that you have there will tell you what you have to do better then I can, so please DO NOT EMAIL me about not being able to get into Luskan or not being able to do something else.
• If you're a Mage or Wizard, using spells is the best way to unlock and disarm a chest. Especially with spells such as Fireball that can destroy 3-5 chests at a time without triggering a trap! Also remember that you have (as a result of your training) that nifty unlimited-use wand of frost. It can take forever to get through a tough chest or door, but at least you won't lose that scroll, or have to rest to get that fireball spell back.
• For a fighter, a room full of enemies and a boss can be the hardest thing in the world to live through. Best way to do this is to lure them out of the original room and go to a doorway, where only one or two monsters can attack you at once through the doorway, also make sure you put your cleric (you should have the cleric (Linu La'neral) if you're a fighter type) to heal you at 75% hp before doing it, so she'll start healing you at 75, and chances are it'll be under 50% when she actually gets the spell off.
• For more tips when you are loading read the tips that they give you, sometimes they are obvious tips, but sometimes they can really help.
• The damage done to your character has nothing to do with your armor class. Armor class only dictates how easily you can be hit using a d20 roll (20 sided dice). Keep in mind that having an armor class above 20 does not mean you can’t be hit. A natural 20 (unmodified 20) always hits no matter what your armor class. The higher level an opponent is, the more likely they are to be able to hit you. Also, the quicker or stronger they are, the more likely they are to be able to hit you. Right-clicking on the opponent will also tell you if their attack rolls are increased, and give you an idea of your impending doom. Once the attack roll is made and results in a hit, THEN is when damage is rolled and modified by any equipment you might have that absorbs that damage type, etc.
• Using the tab key will highlight items (including living ones) just as if you had your mouse pointer positioned above them. This is a good method to find things you hadn't noticed before. Enemies will appear red, allies green, and items blue.

The staff at Bioware made making a character incredibly easy. First off you have to pick weather you want to make a character of your own or choose from one of their pre-made ones. I made one for myself.

Next you choose your gender, easy choice.

Now you choose your race. Each race (with the exception of humans) have bonuses and decreases in major stats. They also have special skills just for picking that class. Also they even show the favored class for that race! And for those of you who have no idea what your doing they have a recommended button which picks out the easiest race/class/stats/etc.

• Humans: Humans don't have any special bonuses whatsoever, other than their ability to learn and advance quickly. This is a great boon for a beginning character, since you can realize power sooner than with many other races.
• Elves: Elves have a few nice abilities that make them worth playing, not the least of which being their immunity to sleep spells. Their preferred class is one of the hardest classes to play: the wizard. They are well suited to being wizards, and are worth a serious look if that's your intended class. They also make reasonable rogues, considering their hightened dexterity.
• Half Elves: Half elves are almost identical to humans, with the exception of some inherited (and reduced) abilities from their elven parents. Probably best played as somewhere between brute force characters (Paladins, fighters, barbarians) and weaker characters like wizards and sorcerers. They should make excellent rangers, druids, bards, and passable rogues.
• Gnomes: Preferred class is sorcerer. There's a reason for this. Gnomes, like halflings, are small in stature and thus do much less damage with bare handed attacks, can only use smaller weapons, so aren't as capable as fighters. Spells, however, know no size limitations. Their bonus abilities are well in keeping with spellcasting classes as well.
• Dwarves: Dwarves' constitution makes them excellent fighters and clerics, and to a lesser extent barbarians. While you can play them as a rogue, wizard, sorcerer, or any other class, their favored class of fighter is definately recommended. Put one of these in full plate and a helm and zoom in on them. They look like little battle tanks (and hit like them too!)
• Halflings: Quintissential rogues. High dexterity and small stature (which gives them some interesting size bonuses, like gnomes have) gives them some extra sneaking ability that helps rogues out. Probably the worst classes for halflings are barbarian, fighter, paladin and monk (due to thier small stature and inability to use greatswords and other large weapons).
• Half Orcs: Brutes! Big, not so bright, not so pretty, but able to smash almost anything that points out that they're not bright or pretty. Perfect barbarians (which is their favored class) and fighters.

Next are the classes. Again you see their advantages and disadvantages and a basic description of each class. (yes, this is blank for now. I'll get to it, trust me! - Sorial)

• Barbarian:
• Bard:
• Cleric:
• Druid:
• Fighter:
• Monk:
• Paladin:
• Ranger:
• Rogue:
• Sorcerer:
• Wizard: As far as tips playing wizards are concerned, I have a few:
  1. Don't charge into combat.
  2. Where 1. fails, run run away.
  3. Use your familiar wisely. Each has their own advantages. Pixies for example can sneak attack and have rogue abilities (can pick locks and remove traps, for example).
  4. Creature summoning is helpful in that it puts one more level of friendlies between you and the bad guy who wants to rip your throat out.
  5. Area effect spells are wonderful for taking out large groups of enemies all at once. High level wizards can take out the bad guys faster than any other class under normal circumstances. Low level however, they're quite weak.
  6. Make sure you have individually effecting spells in your arsenal, like the simple magic missile, and flame arrow. There are times you don't WANT to effect an area - like when there are allies around who aren't in your party. Damage them, and it could affect the game and your alignment.

Again if you are totally new to these type of games, press the recommended button and they will choose the easiest one.

Next up is alignment. Again simple to choose, depending on what you want to roleplay in the game, recommended moves to the highest, since it is usually easy to be good rather then evil. I chose truely nueutral.

Next you get to set your stats. Click on each stat for a detailed discription for what they do and which class needs what. From that you can either manually put points into stats you want, press the recommended button and have them automatically put points into skills determaned on your class, or have them automatically put skills in, then take off points off of the skills you don't want/need, and put them on skills you need for that class.

Next you get to pick your package...basically the subclass of the class. Each class has different ones, and again it is easy to choose, just read the advantages of it or press recommended.

Customize is just that, picking body's and heads and other physicall appearances.

Now just pick your name and voice and your ready to start the game!!

Gameplay is really easy if your familiar with the 3rd edition D&D system. Using your skills is referred to as making "skill checks". Some skills have a certain amount of times per rest period (a day, even though it goes by quite fast) that you can use it. Once you use it that amount of times you must rest before you can use it again. The same goes for spells and special abilities, like the druid's shapechange ability.

The highest achievable level in NWN is 20th, which is awfully powerful where D&D is concerned. I imagine there will be "epic level" modules and expansions released for it, but I haven't heard any official word on that.

Battle is dice related, and skills that you have can help your rolls (either add or decrease) same goes for armor and weapons. Feats are similar to skills, but are typically much more powerful, and a bit more specialized. Spells also use the same rolling of the die.

Pause is an awesome tool, because battle is in real time, and while the game is paused you can use items or choose a magic spell to use, setting up a whole chain of spells or attacks so you can stragegize your moves. Pause is usually unuseable in multiplayer games though. (thanks to Dejime for confirmation!) (Sorial's note: A server administrator can set up their server to either allow pause use or not. Default configuration is to have pausing disabled.)

Movement is easy; just click where you want to run to and you run there (or walk if you happen to be in detect or stealth mode). Getting used to that and moving the camera around with the arrows will determine how good you are at this game.

Left clicking on people will bring up dialog (if they're not hostile, in which case you'll attack them - you can tell what you're about to do by paying attention to what the cursor looks like when you hover the mouse pointer over them. Also look at the color they glow. Red is hostile, blue isn't.), left click dragging items is how you loot things as well as equip them or move them from different bags. Right clicking an item will bring up a small menu, with things like drop, equip, look, etc.

The gameplay of this game is very nice and easy to learn and get used to. If anyone has any other comments for this section send me in an email.