AD Only, No VIP, Guide to Neverwinter

I want to make it clear, while I don't care for VIP benefits, I am not saying players should not buy it. Buy what you want, how you desire. This is only a guide not a rule book. While I admit, I am bias against several things other players find amazing and fun, I will not and do not expect everyone to follow me. What prompted me to write this guide, I keep showing this to new players, and they have all thanked me for my advice. This I hope will be quicker than a half dozen mail and a lot of personal messages in chat.

Day One - You are a new player with a new character. There isn't much to do, except follow the tutorial and quest chain, until you reach level 20. You should be able to get to level 20 within a few hours at most. If you buy any armors or weapons they will quickly expire at this stage. This is why you should just use what is given or found. The reason you should level quickly is by level 12, you will be able to run the Cloak Tower leveling dungeon. Open the group queues with the K key, on the right you will see a list. Choosing Random Que (RQ) will randomize the list of dungeons. However, if you are level 12, you will only be allowed in the Cloak Tower, not very random with only 1 choice. Why would a player choose this option? RQ's grant you rough Astral Diamonds (rAD) and experience (XP). While the amounts will lessen with each run through, you will still get paid. Repeat as much as you can tolerate.

Also I recommend invocation. This is where you pray to your god, at any campfire, six times per day. It will take 4 hours, wait times increase 15, 30, 45, 60, and 90 minutes. This gives you XP and Bonus AD. Bonus AD (bAD) is only collected when you make rAD yourself. Think of the bAD as a bank that owes you this rAD. If you have 1000 bAD and you make 500 rAD, you get paid 750 rAD instead. The extra 250 was pulled from the bAD bank and now you will see it is at 750. In short, invoking will not pay off right away, but it does pay to pray.

Day Two - Fresh level 20 all ready to make some gold now. Take Workshop Opportunity from Sergeant Knox, then walk to the south end of the city. Follow this tutorial up until you meet the nasty Miss Begum. I don't care for her at all. You should focus on making money for you and ignore paying her off. You can pay her later, she will always be there with her hand out. Almost every profession has an item early in the workshop menu that will make you tons of gold coins. For example; Jewelry has the Copper Pendant each one will cost you a few coppers to create it, then it sells for 21 silver and change to any street vendor. Five copper pendants equals 1 gold profit, you can make many of these every day. Other higher level items you will find you can create for 1 silver and sell for 34 silver and 3 makes 1 gold profit.

Day Three - Now you are sitting on a pile of gold... cool? You are looking around, there isn't much to spend it on. The vendors you buy potions from, players need health potions, and potions do sell for AD (not rough AD) in the Auction House (AH). The vendors also sell Gold Bars and they trade (depending on market saturation) for 250 to 350 AD per gold bar. Gold is also useful for pulling enchantments off your armor and weapons in one piece. I am sure, if you look at what the vendors sell to you for gold, you will find a lot of those items in the AH.

Day Four - When am I going to start making millions of AD? All investors start the same way, buy low and sell high. There are some items that will wildly fluctuate on the AH in price. If you are into day trading, this might be for you. I am a banker at heart, for extra inventory space, I use guild banks. Create a guild, pay players some of that gold to help you make a guild. You need a full party of people NOT in a guild and level 15 or higher. They all need to be in the same instance and viola! You have a guild, pay the players and kick them all out. Next you save up some AD and buy a bank pane. The first one will cost you 150,000 AD. When you think about how much bags cost, this is a bargain. I own four banks with 2 panes each (total cost of 450K times 4 is 1.8 million) but start with one and build up. I buy items, I know will not be available forever and bank them. As they age, like art and wine, I wait 3 to 6 months and make a profit selling them. I hope you remember to play the game during this time too!

Leveling is important as well, getting up to level 40 seems speedy compared to leveling from 40 to 60. Once you reach 60, you can get to level 70 doing Elemental Evil, and it takes about 2 days to complete the campaign. At level 70, you can do the same with Undermountain and you get gear and weapons handed to you by Lord Neverember. Once you are level 80 you can tackle almost anything. Vallenhas has a little demon called Juma, he sells you bags and they mostly have chickens, once in a while you get some good armor.

All campaigns have currency that can be converted into rAD through their campaign store. The issue most players have with collecting rAD, is the 100K per day level cap. The most you will refine is 3 million per month. When a new lock box enters the game, I wait a few weeks and buy the items from the AH. The market saturates and a price war ensues. Players currently have the legendary mounts below 900K AD and the mount from the prior lock box is twice that price. The lock boxes go away and the mount becomes harder to find. This is why I wait 3 to 6 months to sell anything from those lock boxes.

What about the items not sold in the AH??
I mostly bought my bank services, extra character slots, some wards, early on in the game, back when the Zen Astral Diamond Exchange (ZAX) was 500:1. I posted my offers and waited a very long time. If you are into paying cash anything, I would recommend bank and character slots. These are the only items of any value, I cannot buy in the AH.

What is it about VIP?
It doesn't offer me anything I don't already have. People seem to like opening the VIP bank a few steps away from the bank in many locations. These maps are nowhere near large enough to make me desire a VIP sign post. Also I invested in a lot of teleport to Protectors Enclave scrolls. Who knows, I might run out of those in a few years, and have to start using my Moonstone Mask teleport scrolls.

I know there is a few AD buffs, some discounts, etc. but nothing that made it worth the $10 price tag or waiting months to collect Zen. I don't open lock boxes... well, recently they introduced the keyless Astral Lock Box. I did buy 20 of them for 1.7 million AD and got a legendary golden lion mount. People say, the box is garbage, I cannot agree with that statement. They also make nice gifts for your friends in the game too!

To anyone saying the game is Pay to Win, I am living proof it is not. Anyone who pays cash, isn't a blood sucking parasite like me, I applaud your greatness! It is people like you, who pay the bills, so these games can continue. That about raps up how to make Gold, Astral Diamonds, and get some groovy items all while having fun killing the enemy.