Neverwinter Nights runs natively under Linux which means you don't have to worry about using Wine. There are a few steps involved and quite a lot to download, but once it's done, it's done. This guide doesn't require you to have installed the game in Windows because many people wanting to do this likely wouldn't have Windows installed anyway.

Bioware have their own Linux installation guide which you may want to look over if all else fails. Keep in mind that their guide doesn't let you download the Linux binaries without logging in first.

Before we start, you will need a working Internet connection (obviously) and the CDs of Neverwinter Nights, Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark with their respective keys.

Installing Neverwinter Nights

The first step is to download the Linux Client Resources (which are the core files for the game). You can find those here. They weigh in at roughly 1.12 GB so it may take some time to download depending on your internet connection. Once you have downloaded that file, extract the nwresources129.tar.gz archive to somewhere inside your home (~) folder, this will act as the game's installation folder. It should extract everything automatically to a folder named nwn.

You will now need to download the Linux Client Binaries which are used to actually run the game, they can be found here and weigh in at a much smaller 5.3 MB. Extract the nwclient129.tar.gz archive you have just downloaded into the nwn folder that you made earlier when extracting the Client Resources archive.

If you're not sure how to do what has been mentioned above, the following should give you a rough idea of what to do:

cd ~ wget "http://files.bioware.com/neverwinternights/updates/linux/nwresources129.tar.gz" tar zxvf nwresources129.tar.gz cd nwn wget "http://files.bioware.com/neverwinternights/updates/linux/nwclient129.tar.gz" tar zxvf nwclient129.tar.gz

cd ~ changes your location to your home folder, wget downloads the file and tar zxvf extracts that files from the archive you downloaded.

Installing The Shadows of Undrentide

Shadows of Undrentide comes next which requires you to directly copy the files from your Undrentide CD to the nwn folder. This can be done in a few easy steps shown below:

cd ~/nwn unzip /mnt/cdrom/Data_Shared.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_data.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_update.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Data_Linux.zip rm data/patch.bif rm patch.key ./fixinstall

This assumes a few things, firstly that you've got the nwn folder in your home directory and secondly that your CD-ROM drive is mounted as /mnt/cdrom. If either of those aren't true then you simply need to change those locations to where things are located on your computer (the CD-ROM drive is often /media/something on Ubuntu).

Installing Hordes of the Underdark

Now onto installing the second expansion, Hordes of the Underdark. The first thing you need to do is remove the files patch.key, data/patch.bif, xp1patch.key, data/xp1patch.bif from your nwn folder if they exist.

You now also need to remove any files in the 'override' directory. If you're feeling lazy, the command below will do both this and the other key files mentioned above for you (again assuming the nwn folder is in your home directory, if not then just change the ~/nwn line to the correct location):

cd ~/nwn rm patch.key data/patch.bif xp1patch.key data/xp1patch.bif override/*

Next step is to copy the data over from your HOTU disc to your new install. You need to copy the contents of three archives from the CD to your nwn folder: Data_Shared.zip, Language_data.zip and Language_update.zip.

If you have inserted the HOTU CD into your CD-ROM drive, you can use the following commands to do this:

cd ~/nwn unzip /mnt/cdrom/Data_Shared.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_data.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_update.zip

With that installed you now need to download the Hordes of the Underdark Client Files from this location and extract the nwclienthotu.tar.gz archive into your nwn folder. It isn't too large at 37.7 MB.

Lastly you need to run one last command from inside your NWN folder to finish the install of HOTU:

./fixinstall

Updating the Game

The last stage in the install is to update Neverwinter Nights and the Expansions. To do this, download the English_linuxclient169_xp2.tar.gz file into your nwn folder. You now need to empty your overrides folder again and then extract the archive you have just downloaded. This can be done with the commands below:

cd ~/nwn rm -f override/* tar -zxvf English_linuxclient169_xp2.tar.gz

You've finally finished. You can now run Neverwinter Nights by running the file named nwn from inside the 'nwn' folder.

Simple Script Method

For a rundown on all the commands we've used, I've put them in a list below which should work to virtually automate the process. Let me know how you get on if you do use it!

Insert the Neverwinter Nights CD
cd ~ wget "http://files.bioware.com/neverwinternights/updates/linux/nwresources129.tar.gz" tar zxvf nwresources129.tar.gz cd nwn wget "http://files.bioware.com/neverwinternights/updates/linux/nwclient129.tar.gz" tar zxvf nwclient129.tar.gz unzip /mnt/cdrom/Data_Shared.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_data.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_update.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Data_Linux.zip rm data/patch.bif rm patch.key ./fixinstall

Insert the Shadows of Undrentide CD
unzip /mnt/cdrom/Data_Shared.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_data.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_update.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Data_Linux.zip rm data/patch.bif rm patch.key ./fixinstall rm patch.key data/patch.bif xp1patch.key data/xp1patch.bif override/*

Insert the Hordes of the Underdark CD
unzip /mnt/cdrom/Data_Shared.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_data.zip unzip /mnt/cdrom/Language_update.zip wget "http://files.bioware.com/neverwinternights/updates/linux/nwclienthotu.tar.gz" tar zxvf nwclienthotu.tar.gz ./fixinstall rm -f override/* wget "http://files.bioware.com/neverwinternights/updates/linux/169/English_linuxclient169_xp2.tar.gz" tar zxvf English_linuxclient169_xp2.tar.gz