As well as altering the setting, we have made significant changes and additions to Bioware's Neverwinter Nights engine to assist in tailoring a custom roleplaying experience on Escape from the Underdark. Use the links to the left to read more.

In addition, here is a list of a number of systems you may not have encountered on other NWN servers.

"Escaped from the Underdark: Quest System" is a powerful, custom-designed quest system that allows for the efficient use of upwards of a hundred different, repeatable scripted quests. Our system maximizes server efficiency and minimizes lag while allowing the building team to create a large variety of unique challenges with multiple forms of objectives.

"Escaped from the Underdark: Status and Logging" is a powerful, custom-designed web-based application that interfaces with our server. With EFUSL, players can track their character's statistics and see what other characters are logged on remotely. DMs have access to dozens of different features that allows us to do our job better.

"Escaped from the Underdark: Voyage System" is a powerful, custom-designed system that simulates boat and ship voyages. When a character or party of characters hires, through a NPC, a ship to take them to a destination, they have the opportunity to fully roleplay out the voyage rather than simply appearing at the desired port.

EFUVS takes into account the actual distance of the port as well as the speed of every ship to reflect travel time, and incorporates monster attacks, pirate raids, shipwrecks, storms, and half a dozen other elements as possibilities throughout the voyage.

"Escaped from the Underdark: Encounter System" is a custom system that allows us to randomly populate our world with monsters. Using EFURE, builders can specify what kind of monsters might be found in a particular spot during a particular time of day, while allowing us to adhere to random elements as much as we please. Some kinds of monsters emerge only at night, while others might be found only one in ten thousand times you visit an area.

EFU:A's custom loot system allows the building team to incorporate thousands of different pieces of unique and ambient loot for characters. Some items may be found only rarely in certain chests on certain quests, while other items are common to a particular region.

EFU:A's unique custom death system enhances the importance of meaningful consequences to death while minimizing feelings of OOC frustration. In EfU:A, if characters drop below 0 hitpoints they are considered bleeding to death. They may either recover, be healed, or bleed to death at -10 HPs. If a character is sent below -10 HPs, they die instantly. A character's corpse, fully equipped with items, drops to the ground next to a bag that contains the rest of their inventory. A character's body can be moved around, or have the equipment removed, by living characters. Other characters can raise the deceased character which reduces the amount of XP lost, or the dead character may choose to respawn, either to a safe location (such as a town mausoleum), or directly to their corpse, which while risky does allow for an immediate return to the action.

In order to enhance the customizability of the cleric class, EFU:A features an entirely optional override download that allows players to select from a much greater variety of custom-made cleric domains.

• List of the new domains can be found here.

In EfU:A, character summoning is an entirely unique experience. In addition to the default theme, characters can learn entirely new themes of monsters to summon, or find special reagents that enhances the power of their summon or unlocks new summonable monsters. Additionally, EFU:A has hundreds of unique pieces of loot that summon different kinds of monsters. Examples of some of our themes include: aberrations, animals, rats, ooze, devils, ghosts, demons, spiders, illusionary monsters, defenders of nature, elements (water, earth, fire, air), shadows, and many, many more.

Similarly, based on your proficiency in conjuring magic (calculated by the feats spell focus and greater spell focus in conjuration), you may be able to control multiple summoned creatures at any one time.

EfU:A is deliberately not primarily a crafting server, and characters can not independently enchant powerful weapons or create armor. However, EfU:A does support Engineering, Herbalism, Alchemy, Cooking, and Wand/Potion crafting.

• Engineering is primarily (although not exclusively) DM-dependent due to balance concern, but is a way in which characters can engineer, design, or build complicated gadgetry or mechanisms. Examples of some of the things characters that specialize in engineering can do without DMs includes: setting up portable ballistas/repeating crossbows/catapults and accurately using them, repair and use of unique weapons, perform certain repairs, and learn the use and purpose of certain IG mechanisms. Examples of some of the things exceptional characters can do with DM assistance have been: the design and manufacture of scripted crowbars, the development of new and unique forms of ammunition, the development and control of unique permanent animatronic golem summons, the repair of major plot-related devices, and much more.
• Herbalism is a custom-system that allows characters to plant and grow a wide variety of unique plants and fungi. This flora is persistent through resets, although it can be destroyed or overharvested by characters and NPCs. Different plants can be harvested for different kinds of materials.
• Alchemy is a custom-system that allows characters to combine different kinds of materials (some derived from herbalism, others found on scripted quests) to create new and useful items: anything from medicinal herbs and tanglefoot bags to powerful reagents that improves summoning.
• Cooking is similar to alchemy, except the end product is a food item (either mundane or magical). Mundane food is a RP object, while particularly talented cooks can produce such magical foods as the Evil Muffin.
• Wand/Potion crafting is a way in which characters can produce highly useful magical potions and wands through the expenditure of experience points and gold.

On EFU:A, we have developed a custom flora of plants and flowers that grow on the Shrouded Archipelago. For some of these plants, seeds can be harvested and the plants can be transplanted into other locations. Hence many player-character build their own little garden in some part of the gameworld which is persistent and can later be harvested to be used as part of the many crafting systems labelled above. Similarly, Druids and Rangers often protect the flora from overharvesting and ensure that plants of one specie do not dominate any one area.

Using a powerful NWNX plugin, EFU:A incorporates scores of different commands through simply typing certain phrases. These commands can in turn be hotkeyed by players and DMs for easy use. Examples of these commands are: different commands to adjust damage mode for PvP purposes, commands for different animated emotes, class specific tool commands such as ranger tracking or paladin detect evil, commands to swiftly pick up a dropped pack, commands to 'speak' through summoned companions, and many more. As well many other more localized benefits such as sendings, riddle/password detection scripts and a lot more!

• List of the voice commands can be found here.

Escaped from the Underdark: Archipelago incorporates an advanced, custom weather system. Weather is consistent through areas that are geographically located close to each other, and has a large impact on a variety of factors. Certain kinds of characters can even, with difficulty, learn how to control the weather or use it as a weapon.

As well, EFU:A has a persistent day/night cycle in which each gameworld hour lasts 27 minutes, hence nights and day are fairly long events on the server each filled with their own dangers and climactic ambience.

EFU:A has a completely customized subrace system. Players can, without applications, play the different varieties of standard races (such as Gold Dwarves, Wild Elves, etc.). Additionally, players can apply to the DM team to play any of our 20+ special subraces, such as lycanthropes, sahuagins, lizardmen, mountain orcs, aasimar, tiefling and many more!

• List of the subraces available can be found here.

We are extremely proud of the mechanics adjustments we've made on EFU. Many of the spells have been tweaked to allow for a more balanced environment that suits our level of play, along with other core systems such as resting and barbarian rage. The carefully considered choices we've made make for a very balanced server in which every character class is useful and has a strong niche within the gameworld.

• List of the mechanic adjustments can be found here.

Many of the default NWN prestige classes have been adjusted to better suit EFU:A and our level of play. Examples of these changes includes giving palemasters access to powerful undead summons, providing benefits to weaponmasters that enhances their speed-based fighting style, and creating a completely custom system for Shifters that allows them theoretical access to every kind of monster in the game as a potential form. Similarly, NEW prestige classes have also been added to the gameworld and we are planning to expand the array of prestige classes even more as EFU:A grows. These prestige class do not require an hakpak and are completely optional for players who manage to get an application approved for them.

• List of the Prestige Class adjustments can be found here.

One of the great new features Bioware has brought with the 1.69 patch has been the introduction of player tools. In EfU, we have scripted a system which allows players to customize their player tools to their liking. Some of these features include: catapult/ballista controls, improved tools to control animal companions and familiars, class-specific commands, and prestige class specific commands.

The server hosting the Escaped from Underdark: Archipelago module is extremely stable and fast responding. It can support large scale events with more than 30 players in a single area clashing with as many monsters with minimal amounts of lag or frame-per-seconds (FPS) drop. This highly performant machine lets us run massive server-wide events that are truly epic to spectate and participate in.

The features listed above are just a few examples. Other technical features EFU includes are: completely customized XP system, powerful customized AI enhancements for our monsters, unique scripted monsters and dangers, custom traps (such as deadfall traps and pit traps), a huge array of breathtaking visual effects, specially scripted unique placeables, unique scripted items and artifacts, customized outfits, persistent banking, persistent storage (limited as a perk for primarily faction characters), henchman NPCs that can be fully programmed to perform various tasks in-game by characters through voice commands, hundreds of powerful DM tools, a SetDescription feature for DMs, and much, much more.