document_title: Role of the United States in the Vietnam War

question_text: america's involvement in the vietnam war ended under the administration of president

question_tokens: america 's involvement in the vietnam war ended under the administration of president

text: Role of the United States in the Vietnam War

text: Timeline[edit]

text: Woodrow Wilson (1913–21)[edit]

text: Wilson ignores petition by Ho Chi Minh for help in creating Vietnam independent from French rule and led by nationalist government.[5]

tag: ul

text: Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–45)[edit]

text: Roosevelt declines repeated requests from the French to assist France's attempts to recolonize Vietnam.[6]

text: Harry S. Truman (1945–53)[edit]

text: This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text:
August 15, 1945 — Japan surrenders to the Allies. In Indochina, the Japanese administration allows Hồ Chí Minh to take over control of the country. This is called the August Revolution. Hồ Chí Minh fights with a variety of other political factions for control of the major cities.
August 1945 — A few days after the Vietnamese "revolution", Nationalist Chinese forces enter from the north and, as previously planned by the allies, establish an administration in the country as far south as the 16th parallel north.
September 26, 1945: Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer Lieutenant Colonel A. Peter Dewey — working with the Viet Minh to repatriate Americans captured by the Japanese — is mistaken for a Frenchman, shot and killed by the Viet Minh. He thus became the first American casualty in Vietnam. (Not precisely accurate. Prior to 1950 the area later recognized as Viet Nam was known as French Indochina. Thus, LTC Dewey was the first American casualty in French Indochina).
October 1945 — British troops land in southern Vietnam and establish a provisional administration. The British free French soldiers and officials imprisoned by the Japanese. The French begin taking control of cities within the British zone of occupation.
February 1946 — The French sign an agreement with China. France gives up its concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports. In exchange, China agrees to assist the French in returning to Vietnam north of the 17th parallel.
March 6, 1946 — After negotiations with the Chinese and the Viet Minh, the French sign an agreement recognizing Vietnam within the French Union. Shortly after, the French land at Haiphong and occupy the rest of northern Vietnam. The Viet Minh use the negotiating process with France and China to buy time to use their armed forces to destroy all competing nationalist groups in the north.
December 1946 — Negotiations between the Viet Minh and the French break down. The Viet Minh are driven out of Hanoi into the countryside.
1947–1949 — The Viet Minh fight a limited insurgency in remote rural areas of northern Vietnam.
1949 — Chinese communists reach the northern border of Indochina. The Viet Minh drive the French from the border region and begin to receive large amounts of weapons from the Soviet Union and China. The weapons transform the Viet Minh from an irregular large-scale insurgency into a conventional army.
May 1, 1950 — After the capture of Hainan Island from Chinese Nationalist forces by the Chinese People's Liberation Army, President Truman approves $10 million in military assistance for anti-communist efforts in Indochina. The Defense Attaché Office was established in Saigon in May 1950, a formal recognition of Viet Nam (vice French IndoChina). This was the beginning of formal U.S. military personnel assignments in Viet Nam. U.S. Naval, Army and Air Force personnel established their respective attaches at this time.
September 1950 — Truman sends the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) Indochina to Vietnam to assist the French. The President claimed they were not sent as combat troops, but to supervise the use of $10 million worth of U.S. military equipment to support the French in their effort to fight the Viet Minh forces.
Following the outbreak of the Korean War, Truman announces "acceleration in the furnishing of military assistance to the forces of France and the Associated States in Indochina...". and sends 123 non-combat troops to help with supplies to fight against the communist Viet Minh.
1951 — Truman authorizes $150 million in French support.

text: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–61)[edit]

text:
1953 — By November, French commander in Indochina, General Navarre, asked U.S. General McArthur to loan twelve Fairchild C-119 aircraft, to be flown by French crews, to facilitate Operation Castor at Dien Bien Phu.
1954 — In January, Navarre's Deputy asked for additional transport aircraft. Negotiations ended on March 3 with 24 CIA pilots (CAT) to operate 12 U.S. Air Force C-119s, flying undercover using French insignia, but maintained by the USAF.[7]
1954 — General Paul Ely, the French Chief of Staff, proposed an American operation to rescue French forces. Operation Vulture was hastily planned but President Eisenhower, convinced that the political risks outweighed the possible benefits, decided against the intervention.[8][9]
1954 — The Viet Minh defeat the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The defeat, along with the end of the Korean War the previous year, causes the French to seek a negotiated settlement to the war.
1954 — The Geneva Conference (1954), called to determine the post-French future of Indochina, proposes a temporary division of Vietnam, to be followed by nationwide elections to unify the country in 1956.
1954 — Two months after the Geneva conference, North Vietnam forms Group 100 with headquarters at Ban Namèo. Its purpose is to direct, organize, train and supply the Pathet Lao to gain control of Laos, which along with Cambodia and Vietnam formed French Indochina.
1955 — North Vietnam launches an 'anti-landlord' campaign, during which counter-revolutionaries are imprisoned or killed. The numbers killed or imprisoned are disputed, with historian Stanley Karnow estimating about 6,000 while others (see the book "Fire in the Lake") estimate only 800. Rudolph Rummel puts the figure as high as 200,000.[10]
November 1, 1955 — President Eisenhower deploys the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. This marks the official beginning of American involvement in the war as recognized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.[11]
April 1956 — The last French troops leave Vietnam.
1954–1956 — 450,000 Vietnamese civilians flee the Viet Minh administration in North Vietnam and relocate in South Vietnam as part of the US government's Operation Passage to Freedom. Approximately 52,000 move in the opposite direction. Dr. Thomas Dooley works with the CIA to produce his influential disinformation book about the refugees Deliver Us from Evil.
1956 — National unification elections do not occur.
December 1958 — North Vietnam invades Laos and occupies parts of the country
July 8, 1959 — Charles Ovnand and Dale R. Buis become the first two American Advisers to die in Vietnam.[12]
September 1959 — North Vietnam forms Group 959, which assumes command of the Pathet Lao forces in Laos.
November 1960 — Coup attempt by paratroopers is foiled after Diệm falsely promises reform, allowing loyalists to crush the rebels.
December 20, 1960 — The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) is founded.

text: John F. Kennedy (1961–63)[edit]

text:
January 1961 — Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledges support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world. The idea of creating a neutral Laos is suggested to Kennedy.
May 1961 — Kennedy sends 400 United States Army Special Forces personnel to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers following a visit to the country by Vice-President Johnson.
June 1961 — Kennedy meets with Khrushchev in Vienna. He protests North Vietnam's attacks on Laos and points out that the U.S. was supporting the neutrality of Laos. The two leaders agree to pursue a policy of creating a neutral Laos.
June 1961 — Kennedy said, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place" to James Reston of The New York Times (immediately after meeting Khrushchev in Vienna).
August 10, 1961 — Test run of U.S. herbicidal warfare program in South Vietnam ("Operation Trail Dust")
October 1961 — Following successful NLF attacks, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara recommends sending six divisions (200,000 men) to Vietnam.
February 8, 1962 — The Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) is created by President Kennedy
February 1962 — Attempted assassination of Diệm by two air force officers who bombed his palace, fails.
July 23, 1962 — International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos is signed at Geneva, promising Laotian neutrality.
August 1, 1962 — Kennedy signs the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962, which provides "... military assistance to countries which are on the rim of the Communist world and under direct attack".
October 1962 — Operation Ranch Hand begins. U.S. planes spray herbicides and defoliants over South Vietnam until 1971.
January 3, 1963 — NLF victory in the Battle of Ap Bac.
May 8, 1963 — Buddhists demonstrate in Huế, South Vietnam after the display of religious flags were prohibited, during the celebration of Vesak, Gautama Buddha's birthday; but, Catholic flags celebrating the consecration of Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục, brother of Ngô Đình Diệm were not prohibited. The police of Ngô Đình Cẩn, Diệm's younger brother, open fire, killing nine.
May 1963 — Republican Barry Goldwater declares that the U.S. should fight to win or withdraw from Vietnam. Later on, during his presidential campaign against Lyndon B. Johnson, his Democratic opponents accuse him of wanting to use nuclear weapons in the conflict.
June 11, 1963 — Photographs of protesting Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đức, burning himself to death in protest, in Saigon, appear in U.S. newspapers.
Summer 1963 — Madame Nhu, de facto First Lady to the bachelor Diệm makes a series of vitriolic attacks on Buddhists, calling the immolations "barbecues". Diệm ignores U.S. calls to silence her.
August 21, 1963 — ARVN special forces loyal to Ngô Đình Nhu, younger brother of Diệm, stage raids across the country, attacking Buddhist temples and firing on monks. The cremated remains of Thích Quảng Đức are confiscated from Xá Lợi Pagoda in Saigon. New U.S. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge rebukes Diệm by visiting Xá Lợi and giving refuge to Buddhist leader Thích Trí Quang. The U.S. calls for Nhu to be dropped by Diệm, and threatens to cut aid to Colonel Lê Quang Tung's Special Forces if they are not sent into battle, rather than used to repress dissidents.
September 2, 1963 — Kennedy criticises the Diệm regime in an interview with Walter Cronkite, citing the Buddhist repression and claiming that Diệm is out of touch.
Late October 1963 — Nhu, unaware that Saigon region commander General Tôn Thất Đính is double-crossing him, draws up plans for a phony coup and counter-coup to reaffirm the Diệm regime. Đính sends Nhu's loyal special forces out of Saigon on the pretext of fighting communists and in readiness for the counter coup, and rings Saigon with rebel troops.
November 1, 1963 — Military officers launch a coup d'état against Diệm, with the tacit approval of the Kennedy administration. Diệm and Nhu escape the presidential residence via a secret exit after loyalist forces were locked out of Saigon, unable to rescue them.
November 2, 1963 — Diệm and Nhu are discovered in nearby Cholon. Although they had been promised exile by the junta, they are executed by Nguyễn Văn Nhung, bodyguard of General Dương Văn Minh. Minh leads the military junta.
November 1963 — By this time, Kennedy had increased the number of military personnel from the 900 that were there when he became President to 16,000 just before his death.[13]
November 22, 1963 — Kennedy is assassinated.

text: Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969)[edit]

text: Feb 1965 - Operation Rolling Thunder begins

text: July 1965 - Sent troops to Vietnam for the first time[14]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (April 2016)

text: 1966 - Lyndon B. Johnson expanded the number of troops being sent into Vietnam

text: Richard M. Nixon (1969–74)[edit]

text: 1969 - Richard Nixon continued the war, but with a reduced amount of US troops via Vietnamization strategy.

text: Under the Kennedy Administration[edit]

text: In 1961 the new administration of President John F. Kennedy remained essentially committed to the bi-partisan, anti-communist foreign policies inherited from the administrations of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. During 1961, his first year in office, Kennedy found himself faced with a three-part crisis: The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba; the construction of the Berlin Wall by the Soviets; and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement. Fearing that another failure on the part of the U.S. to stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies, Kennedy realized, "Now we have a problem in making our power credible... and Vietnam looks like the place."[15] The commitment to defend South Vietnam was reaffirmed by Kennedy on May 11 in National Security Action Memorandum 52, which became known as "The Presidential Program for Vietnam". Its opening statement reads:

text: U.S. objectives and concept of operations [are] to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic, psychological, and covert character designed to achieve this objective.[16]

text: Kennedy was intrigued by the idea of utilizing United States Army Special Forces for counterinsurgency conflicts in Third World countries threatened by the new "wars of national liberation". Originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by Special Forces would be effective in the "brush fire" war in South Vietnam. He saw British success in using such forces during the Malayan Emergency as a strategic template. Thus in May 1961 Kennedy sent detachments of Green Berets to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in guerrilla warfare.

text: The Diệm regime had been initially able to cope with the insurgency of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, or derogatively, Viet Cong) in South Vietnam with the aid of U.S. matériel and advisers, and, by 1962, seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Senior U.S. military leaders received positive reports from the U.S. commander, General Paul D. Harkins of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, or MACV. By the following year, however, cracks began to appear in the façade of success. In January a possible victory that was turned into a stunning defeat for government forces at the Battle of Ap Bac caused consternation among both the military advisers in the field and among politicians in Washington, D.C. JFK also indicated to Walter Cronkite that the war may be unwinnable, and that it was ultimately a Vietnamese war, not an American war.[17]

text: Diệm was already growing unpopular with many of his countrymen because of his administration's nepotism, corruption, and its apparent bias in favor of the Catholic minority—of which Diệm was a part—at the expense of the Buddhist majority. This contributed to the impression of Diệm's rule as an extension of the French Colonial regime. Promised land reforms were not instituted, and Diệm's strategic hamlet program for village self-defense (and government control) was a disaster. The Kennedy administration grew increasingly frustrated with Diệm. In 1963, a crackdown by Diệm's forces was launched against Buddhist monks protesting discriminatory practices and demanding a political voice. Diệm's repression of the protests sparked the so-called Buddhist Revolt, during which several monks committed self-immolation, which was covered in the world press. The communists took full advantage of the situation and fueled anti-Diệm sentiment to create further instability.

text: Americanization[edit]

text: Gulf of Tonkin and the Westmoreland expansion[edit]

text: On July 27, 1964, 5,000 additional U.S. military advisers were ordered to the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam), bringing the total American troop level to 21,000. Shortly thereafter an incident occurred off the coast of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) that was destined to escalate the conflict to new levels and lead to the full scale Americanization of the war.

text: On the evening of August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox was conducting an electronic intelligence collection mission in international waters (even as claimed by North Vietnam) in the Gulf of Tonkin when it was attacked by three P-4 torpedo boats of the North Vietnamese Navy.[18] Reports later reached the Johnson administration saying that the Maddox was under attack. Two nights later, after being joined by the destroyer C. Turner Joy, the Maddox again reported that both vessels were under attack (this event, which took place under adverse weather conditions, in fact never occurred).[citation needed] Regardless, President Johnson addressed Congress asking for more political power to utilize American military forces in South Vietnam, using the attack on the Maddox as cause to get what he wanted.

text: There was rampant confusion in Washington, but the incident was seen by the administration as the perfect opportunity to present Congress with "a pre-dated declaration of war" in order to strengthen weakening morale in South Vietnam through reprisal attacks by the U.S. on the North.[19] Even before confirmation of the phantom attack had been received in Washington, President Johnson had decided that an attack could not go unanswered.

text: Just before midnight he appeared on television and announced that retaliatory air strikes were underway against North Vietnamese naval and port facilities. Neither Congress nor the American people learned the whole story about the events in the Gulf of Tonkin until the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1969. It was on the basis of the administration's assertions that the attacks were "unprovoked aggression" on the part of North Vietnam, that the United States Congress approved the Southeast Asia Resolution (also known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) on August 7. The law gave the President broad powers to conduct military operations without an actual declaration of war. The resolution passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and was opposed in the Senate by only two members.

text: National Security Council members, including United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and General Maxwell Taylor, agreed on November 28 to recommend that Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam.

text: Operation Rolling Thunder, 1965–68[edit]

text: In February 1965, a U.S. air base at Pleiku, in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, was attacked twice by the NLF, resulting in the deaths of over a dozen U.S. personnel. These guerrilla attacks prompted the administration to order retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam.

text: Operation Rolling Thunder was the code name given to a sustained strategic bombing campaign targeted against the North by aircraft of the U.S. Air Force and Navy that was inaugurated on March 2, 1965. Its original purpose was to bolster the morale of the South Vietnamese and to serve as a signaling device to Hanoi. U.S. airpower would act as a method of "strategic persuasion", deterring the North Vietnamese politically by the fear of continued or increased bombardment. Rolling Thunder gradually escalated in intensity, with aircraft striking only carefully selected targets. When that did not work, its goals were altered to destroying North Vietnam's will to fight by destroying the nation's industrial base, transportation network, and its (continually increasing) air defenses. After more than a million sorties were flown and three-quarters of a million tons of bombs were dropped, Rolling Thunder was ended on November 11, 1968.[20]

text: Other aerial campaigns (Operation Barrel Roll, Operation Steel Tiger, Operation Tiger Hound, and Operation Commando Hunt) were directed to counter the flow of men and material down the PAVN logistical system that flowed from North Vietnam through southeastern Laos, and into South Vietnam known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

text: Build-up[edit]

text: President Johnson had already appointed General William C. Westmoreland to succeed General Harkins as Commander of MACV in June 1964. Under Westmoreland, the expansion of American troop strength in South Vietnam took place. American forces rose from 16,000 during 1964 to more than 553,000 by 1969. With the U.S. decision to escalate its involvement, ANZUS Pact allies Australia and New Zealand agreed to contribute troops and matériel to the conflict. They were quickly joined by the Republic of Korea (second only to the Americans in troop strength), Thailand, and the Philippines. The U.S. paid for (through aid dollars) and logistically supplied all of the allied forces.

text: Meanwhile, political affairs in Saigon were finally settling down — at least as far as the Americans were concerned. On February 14 the most recent military junta, the National Leadership Committee, installed Air Vice-Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ as prime minister. In 1966, the junta selected General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to run for president with Ky on the ballot as the vice-presidential candidate in the 1967 election. Thieu and Ky were elected and remained in office for the duration of the war. In the presidential election of 1971, Thieu ran for the presidency unopposed. With the installation of the Thieu and Ky government (the Second Republic), the U.S. had a pliable, stable, and semi-legitimate government in Saigon with which to deal.

text: With the advent of Rolling Thunder, American airbases and facilities needed to be constructed and manned for the aerial effort. The defense of those bases would not be entrusted to the South Vietnamese. So, on March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines came ashore at Da Nang as the first wave of U.S. combat troops into South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 U.S. military advisers already in place. On May 5 the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade became the first U.S. Army ground unit committed to the conflict in South Vietnam. On August 18, Operation Starlite began as the first major U.S. ground operation, destroying an NLF stronghold in Quảng Ngãi Province. The NLF learned from their defeat and subsequently tried to avoid fighting an American-style ground war by reverting to small-unit guerrilla operations.

text: The North Vietnamese had already sent units of their regular army into southern Vietnam beginning in late 1964. Some officials in Hanoi had favored an immediate invasion of the South, and a plan was developed to use PAVN units to split southern Vietnam in half through the Central Highlands. The two imported adversaries first faced one another during Operation Silver Bayonet, better known as the Battle of the Ia Drang. During the savage fighting that took place, both sides learned important lessons. The North Vietnamese, who had taken horrendous casualties, began to adapt to the overwhelming American superiority in air mobility, supporting arms, and close air support by moving in as close as possible during confrontations, thereby negating the effects of the above. The Americans learned that PAVN (which was basically a light infantry force) was not a rag-tag band of guerrillas, but was instead a highly disciplined, proficient, and well motivated force.

text: Search and destroy, the strategy of attrition[edit]

text: On November 27, 1965, the Pentagon declared that if the major operations needed to neutralize North Vietnamese and NLF forces were to succeed, U.S. troop levels in South Vietnam would have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. In a series of meetings between Westmoreland and the President held in Honolulu in February 1966, Westmoreland argued that the U.S. presence had succeeded in preventing the immediate defeat of the South Vietnamese government but that more troops would be necessary if systematic offensive operations were to be conducted. The issue then became in what manner American forces would be used.

text: The nature of the American military's strategic and tactical decisions made during this period would color the conduct and nature of the conflict for the duration of the American commitment. Classical military logic demanded that the U.S. attack the locus of PAVN/NLF in the North. If that country could not be invaded, then the enemy's logistical system in Laos and Cambodia should be cut by ground forces, isolating the southern battlefield. However, political considerations limited U.S. military actions, mainly because of the memory of communist reactions during the Korean War. Ever present in the minds of diplomats, military officers, and politicians was the possibility of a spiraling escalation of the conflict into a superpower confrontation and the possibility of a nuclear exchange. Therefore, there would be no invasion of North Vietnam, the "neutrality" of Laos and Cambodia would be respected, and Rolling Thunder would not resemble the bombing of Germany and Japan during the Second World War.

text: These limitations were not foisted upon the military as an afterthought. Before the first U.S. soldiers came ashore at Da Nang, the Pentagon was cognizant of all of the parameters that would be imposed by their civilian leaders, yet they still agreed that the mission could be accomplished within them. Westmoreland believed that he had found a strategy that would either defeat North Vietnam or force it into serious negotiations. Attrition was to be the key. The general held that larger offensive operations would grind down the communists and eventually lead to a "crossover point" in PAVN/NLF casualties after which a decisive (or at least political) victory would be possible.

text: It is widely held that the average U.S. serviceman was nineteen years old, as evidenced by the casual reference in a pop song ("19" by Paul Hardcastle); the figure is cited by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman ret. of the Killology Research Group in his 1995 book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (p. 265). However, it is disputed by the[21] Vietnam Helicopter Flight Crew Network Website, which claims the average age of MOS 11B personnel was 22. This compares with 26 years of age for those who participated in World War II. Soldiers served a one-year tour of duty. The average age of the U.S. military men who died in Vietnam was 22.8 years old.[22]

text: The one-year tour of duty deprived units of experienced leadership. As one observer put it, "we were not in Vietnam for 10 years, but for one year 10 times."[23] As a result, training programs were shortened. Some NCOs were referred to as "Shake 'N' Bake" to highlight their accelerated training. Unlike soldiers in World War II and Korea, there were no secure rear areas in which to get rest and relaxation.[citation needed] One unidentified soldier said to United Press International that there was nothing to do in Vietnam and therefore many of the men smoked marijuana. He said, "One of the biggest reasons that a lot of GIs do get high over here is there is nothing to do. This place is really a drag; it's a bore over here. Like right now sitting around here, we are getting loaded. Whereas, it doesn't really get you messed up; that's I guess the main reason why we smoke it."[24]

text: American forces would conduct operations against PAVN forces, pushing them further back into the countryside away from the heavily populated coastal lowlands. In the backcountry the U.S. could fully utilize its superiority in firepower and mobility to bleed the enemy in set-piece battles. The cleaning-out of the NLF and the pacification of the villages would be the responsibility of the South Vietnamese military. The adoption of this strategy, however, brought Westmoreland into direct conflict with his Marine Corps commander, General Lewis W. Walt, who had already recognized the security of the villages as the key to success. Walt had immediately commenced pacification efforts in his area of responsibility, but Westmoreland was unhappy, believing that the Marines were being underutilized and fighting the wrong enemy. In the end, MACV won out and Westmoreland's search and destroy concept, predicated on the attrition of enemy forces, won the day.

text: Both sides chose similar strategies. PAVN, which had been operating a more conventional, large-unit war, switched back to small-unit operations in the face of U.S. military capabilities. The struggle moved to the villages, where the "hearts and minds" of the South Vietnamese peasants, whose cooperation was absolutely necessary to military success, would be won or lost. The U.S. had given responsibility for this struggle to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), whose troops and commanders were notoriously unfit for the task.

text: For the American soldier, whose doctrine was one of absolute commitment to total victory, this strategy led to a frustrating small-unit war. Most of the combat was conducted by units smaller than battalion-size (the majority at the platoon level). Since the goal of the operations was to kill the enemy, terrain was not taken and held as in previous wars. Savage fighting and the retreat of the communists was immediately followed by the abandonment of the terrain just seized. Combined with this was the anger and frustration engendered among American troops by the effective tactics of the NLF, who conducted a war of sniping, booby traps, mines, and terror against the Americans.

text: As a result of the conference held in Honolulu, President Johnson authorized an increase in troop strength to 429,000 by August 1966. The large increase in troops enabled MACV to carry out numerous operations that grew in size and complexity during the next two years. For U.S. troops participating in these operations (Operation Masher/White Wing, Operation Attleboro, Operation Cedar Falls, Operation Junction City and dozens of others) the war boiled down to hard marching through some of the most difficult terrain on the planet and weather conditions that were alternately hot and dry, or cold and wet. It was the PAVN/NLF that actually controlled the pace of the war, fighting only when their commanders believed that they had the upper hand and then disappearing when the Americans and/or ARVN brought their superiority in numbers and firepower to bear. North Vietnam, utilizing the Ho Chi Minh and Sihanouk Trails, matched the U.S. at every point of the escalation, funneling manpower and supplies to the southern battlefields.

text: During the Vietnam War, the use of the helicopter, known as "Air Mobile", was an essential tool for conducting the war. In fact, the whole conduct and strategy of the war depended on it. Vietnam was the first time the helicopter was used on a major scale, and in such important roles. Search and destroy missions, for example, would have been nearly impossible without it. Helicopters allowed American commanders to move large numbers of troops to virtually anywhere, regardless of the terrain or roads. Troops could also be easily resupplied in remote areas. The helicopter also provided another new and vital capability: medical evacuation. It could fly wounded soldiers to aid stations very quickly, usually within the critical first hour. This gave wounded soldiers a higher chance of survival in Vietnam than in any previous war. The helicopter was also adapted for many other roles in Vietnam, including ground attack, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare. Without the helicopter, the war would have been fought very differently.[25]

text: Border battles and the Tet Offensive[edit]

text: By mid-1967, Westmoreland said that it was conceivable that U.S. forces could be phased out of the war within two years, turning over progressively more of the fighting to the ARVN.[26] That fall, however, savage fighting broke out in the northern provinces. Beginning below the DMZ at Con Tien and then spreading west to the Laotian border near Dak To, large PAVN forces began to stand their ground and fight. This willingness of the communists to remain fixed in place inspired MACV to send reinforcements from other sectors of South Vietnam. The Border Battles had begun.

text: Most of the PAVN/NLF operational capability was possible only because of the unhindered movement of men along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. To threaten this flow of supplies, the Marine Corps established a combat base on the South Vietnamese side of the Laotian frontier, near the village of Khe Sanh. The U.S. used the base as a border surveillance position overlooking Route 9, the only east-west road that crossed the border in the province. Westmoreland also hoped to use the base as a jump-off point for any future incursion against the Trail system in Laos. During the spring of 1967, a series of small-unit actions near Khe Sanh prompted MACV to increase its forces. These small unit actions and increasing intelligence information indicated that the PAVN was building up significant forces just across the border.

text: Indeed, PAVN was doing just that. Two regular divisions (and later elements of a third) were moving toward Khe Sanh, eventually surrounding the base and cutting off its only road access. Westmoreland, contrary to the advice of his Marine commanders, reinforced the outpost. As far as he was concerned, if the communists were willing to mass their forces for destruction by American air power, so much the better. He described the ideal outcome as a "Dien Bien Phu in reverse". MACV then launched the largest concentrated aerial bombardment effort of the conflict (Operation Niagara) to defend Khe Sanh. Another massive aerial effort was undertaken to keep the beleaguered Marines supplied. There were many comparisons (by the media, Americans military and political officials, and the North Vietnamese) to the possibility of PAVN staging a repeat of its victory at Dien Bien Phu, but the differences outweighed the similarities in any comparison.

text: MACV used this opportunity to field its latest technology against the North Vietnamese. A sensor-driven, anti-infiltration system known as Operation Igloo White was in the process of being field tested in Laos as the siege of Khe Sanh began. Westmoreland ordered that it be employed to detect PAVN troop movements near the Marine base and the system worked well. By March, the long-awaited ground assault against the base had failed to materialize and communist forces began to melt back toward Laos. MACV (and future historians) were left with only questions. What was the goal of the PAVN? Was the siege a real attempt to stage another Dien Bien Phu? Or had the battles near the border (which eventually drew in half of MACV's maneuver battalions) been a diversion, meant to pull forces away from the cities, where another PAVN offensive would soon commence?

text: General Westmoreland's public reassurances that "the light at the end of the tunnel" was near were countered when, on January 30, 1968, PAVN and NLF forces broke the truce that accompanied the Tết holiday and mounted their largest offensive thus far, in hopes of sparking a general uprising among the South Vietnamese. These forces, ranging in size from small groups to entire regiments, attacked nearly every city and major military installation in South Vietnam. The Americans and South Vietnamese, initially surprised by the scope and scale of the offensive, quickly responded and inflicted severe casualties on their enemies. The NLF was essentially eliminated as a fighting force and the places of the dead within its ranks were increasingly filled by North Vietnamese.

text: The PAVN/NLF attacks were speedily and bloodily repulsed in virtually all areas except Saigon, where the fighting lasted for three days, and in the old imperial capital of Huế, where it continued for a month. During the occupation of the historic city, 2,800 South Vietnamese were murdered by the NLF in the single worst massacre of the conflict. The hoped-for uprising never took place; indeed, the offensive drove some previously apathetic South Vietnamese to fight for the government. Another surprise for the communists was that the ARVN did not collapse under the onslaught, instead turning in a performance that pleased even its American patrons.

text: After the Tet Offensive, influential news magazines and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Time and The New York Times, increasingly began to characterize the war as a stalemate. What shocked and dismayed the American public was the realization that either it had been lied to or that the American military command had been dangerously overoptimistic in its appraisal of the situation in Vietnam. The public could not understand how such an attack was possible after being told for several years that victory was just around the corner. The Tet Offensive came to embody the growing credibility gap at the heart of U.S. government statements. These realizations and changing attitudes forced the American public (and politicians) to face hard realities and to reexamine their position in Southeast Asia. Moreover, the U.S. media coverage made it even more clear that an overall victory in Vietnam was not imminent. It also massively weakened the domestic support for the Johnson administration at the time[27]. The days of an open-ended commitment to the conflict were over.

text: The psychological impact of the Tet Offensive effectively ended the political career of Lyndon Johnson. On March 11, Senator Eugene McCarthy won 42 percent of the vote in the Democratic New Hampshire primary. Although Johnson was not on the ballot, commentators viewed this as a defeat for the President. Shortly thereafter, Senator Robert Kennedy announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for the 1968 presidential election. On March 31, in a speech that took America and the world by surprise, Johnson announced that "I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President" and pledged himself to devoting the rest of his term in office to the search for peace in Vietnam.[28] Johnson announced that he was limiting bombing of North Vietnam to just north of the Demilitarized Zone and that U.S. representatives were prepared to meet with North Vietnamese counterparts in any suitable place "to discuss the means to bring this ugly war to an end". A few days later, much to Johnson's surprise, North Vietnam agreed to contacts between the two sides. On May 13, what became known as the Paris peace talks began.[29]

text: My Lai Massacre[edit]

text: On March 16, 1968, three companies of Task Force Barker, part of the Americal Division, took part in a search and destroy operation near the village of My Lai, in Quảng Nam Province. Although not all of the members of the company participated, a significant number of them, led by Calley, did. He personally ordered the executions of hundreds of villagers in large groups. The killings ended only when an American helicopter crew, headed by Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr., discovered Calley's unit in the act and threatened to attack them with his aircraft's weapons unless they stopped. One of the soldiers on the scene was Ron Haeberle, a photographer for the newspaper Stars and Stripes, who took unobtrusive official black-and-white photos of the operation through the lens of his military-issued camera and color shots of the massacre with his personal camera. Although the operation appeared suspicious to Calley's superiors, it was forgotten.

text: In 1969, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre in print, and the Haeberle photos were released to the world media. The Pentagon launched an investigation headed by General William R. Peers to look into the allegations. After a flurry of activity, the Peers Commission issued its report. It declared that "an atmosphere of atrocity" surrounded the event, concluding that a massacre had taken place and the crime had been covered up by the commander of the Americal Division and his executive officer. Perhaps 400 Vietnamese civilians, mostly old men, women, and children had been killed by Charlie company. Several men were charged in the killings, but only Calley was convicted. He was given a life sentence by a court-martial in 1970, but after numerous appeals he was finally set free; he had served just over three years of house arrest.

text: Although My Lai generated a lot of civilian recriminations and bad publicity for the military, it was not the only massacre. The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files made public in 1994 by the "Freedom of Information Act" reveal seven, albeit much smaller, massacres previously unacknowledged by the Pentagon, in which at least 137 civilians had died.[1] Cover-ups may have occurred in other cases, as detailed in the Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles concerning the Tiger Force of the 101st Airborne Division by the Toledo Blade in 2003.

text: Vietnamization, 1969–75[edit]

text: Richard Nixon had campaigned in the 1968 presidential election under the slogan that he would end the war in Vietnam and bring "peace with honor". However, there was no plan to do this, and the American commitment continued for another five years. The goal of the American military effort was to buy time, gradually building up the strength of the South Vietnamese armed forces, and re-equipping it with modern weapons so that they could defend their nation on their own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called Nixon Doctrine. As applied to Vietnam, it was labeled Vietnamization.

text: Nixon's papers show that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them to refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson. This action violated the Logan Act, banning private citizens from intruding into official government negotiations with a foreign nation, and has been said to constitute treason.[30]

text: Soon after Tet, General Westmoreland was promoted to Army Chief of Staff and he was replaced by his deputy, General Creighton W. Abrams. Because of the change in American strategy posed by Vietnamization, Abrams pursued a very different approach. The U.S. was gradually withdrawing from the conflict, and Abrams favored smaller-scale operations aimed at PAVN/NLF logistics, more openness with the media, less indiscriminate use of American firepower, elimination of the body count as the key indicator of battlefield success, and more meaningful cooperation with South Vietnamese forces.

text: Vietnamization of the war, however, created a dilemma for U.S. forces: the strategy required that U.S. troops fight long enough for the ARVN to improve enough to hold its own against Communist forces. Morale in the U.S. ranks rapidly declined during 1969–1972, as evidenced by declining discipline, worsening drug use among soldiers, and increased "fraggings" of U.S. officers by disgruntled troops.

text: One of Nixon's main foreign policy goals had been the achievement of a breakthrough in U.S. relations with the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. An avowed anti-communist since early in his political career, Nixon could make diplomatic overtures to the communists without being accused of being "soft on communism". The result of his overtures was an era of détente that led to nuclear arms reductions by the U.S. and Soviet Union and the beginning of a dialogue with China. In this context, Nixon viewed Vietnam as simply another limited conflict forming part of the larger tapestry of superpower relations; however, he was still determined to preserve South Vietnam until such time as he could not be blamed for what he saw as its inevitable collapse (or a "decent interval", as it was known). To this end he and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger employed Chinese and Soviet foreign policy gambits to successfully defuse some of the anti-war opposition at home and secured movement at the negotiations that had begun in Paris.

text: China and the Soviet Union had been the principal backers of North Vietnam's effort through large-scale military and financial aid. The two communist superpowers had competed with one another to prove their "fraternal socialist links" with the regime in Hanoi. The North Vietnamese had become adept at playing the two nations off against one another. Even with Nixon's rapprochement, their support of North Vietnam increased significantly in the years leading up to the U.S. departure in 1973, enabling the North Vietnamese to mount full-scale conventional offensives against the South, complete with tanks, heavy artillery, and the most modern surface-to-air missiles.

text: Pentagon Papers[edit]

text: The credibility of the U.S. government again suffered in 1971 when The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers serially published The Pentagon Papers (actually U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967). This top-secret historical study of the American commitment in Vietnam, from the Franklin Roosevelt administration until 1967, had been contracted to the RAND Corporation by Secretary of Defense McNamara. The documents were leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department official who had worked on the study.

text: The Pentagon Papers laid out the missteps taken by four administrations in their Vietnam policies. For example, they revealed the Johnson administration's obfuscations to Congress concerning the Gulf of Tonkin incidents that had led to direct U.S. intervention; they exposed the clandestine bombing of Laos that had begun in 1964; and they detailed the American government's complicity in the death of Ngô Đình Diệm. The study presented a continuously pessimistic view of the likelihood of victory and generated fierce criticism of U.S. policies.

text: The importance of the actual content of the papers to U.S. policy-making was disputed, but the window that they provided into the flawed decision-making process at the highest levels of the U.S. government opened the issue for other questions. Their publication was a news event and the government's legal (Nixon lost to the Supreme Court) and extra-legal efforts (the "Plumbers" break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist committed to gain material to discredit him, was one of the first steps on the road to Watergate) carried out to prevent their publication—mainly on national security grounds—then went on to generate yet more criticism and suspicion of the government by the American public.

text: Operation Menu and the Cambodian campaign, 1969–70[edit]

text: By 1969 the policy of non-alignment and neutrality had worn thin for Prince Sihanouk, ruler of Cambodia. Pressures from the right in Cambodia caused the prince to begin a shift away from the pro-left position he had assumed in 1965–1966. He began to make overtures for normalized relations with the U.S. and created a Government of National Salvation with the assistance of the pro-American General Lon Nol. Seeing a shift in the prince's position, President Nixon ordered the launching of a top-secret bombing campaign, targeted at the PAVN/NLF Base Areas and sanctuaries along Cambodia's eastern border.

text: On March 18, 1970, Sihanouk, who was out of the country on a state visit, was deposed by a vote of the National Assembly and replaced by General Lon Nol. Cambodia's ports were immediately closed to North Vietnamese military supplies, and the government demanded that PAVN/NLF forces be removed from the border areas within 72 hours. On March 29, 1970, the Vietnamese had taken matters into their own hands and launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. A force of North Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within 15 miles (24 km) of Phnom Penh allowing their allies, the Chinese-supported Khmer Rouge to extend their power. Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia by U.S. and ARVN troops in order to both destroy PAVN/NLF sanctuaries bordering South Vietnam and to buy time for the U.S. withdrawal. During the Cambodian Campaign, U.S. and ARVN forces discovered and removed or destroyed a huge logistical and intelligence haul in Cambodia.

text: The incursion also sparked large-scale demonstrations on and closures of American college campuses. The expansion of the conflict into Cambodia was seen as an expansion of the conflict into yet another country, nullifying Nixon's promises of de-escalating the war. During the ensuing protests, four students were killed and a score were wounded by Ohio National Guardsmen during a demonstration at Kent State University. Two other students were killed at Jackson State University in Mississippi. In an effort to lessen opposition to the U.S. commitment, Nixon announced on October 12 that the U.S. would withdraw 40,000 more troops from Vietnam before Christmas.

text: Following the coup, Sihanouk arrived in Beijing, where he established and headed a government in exile, throwing his substantial personal support behind the Khmer Rouge, the North Vietnamese, and the Laotian Pathet Lao.

text: Lam Son 719[edit]

text: In 1971 the U.S. authorized the ARVN to carry out an offensive operation aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southeastern Laos. Besides attacking the PAVN logistical system (which would buy time for the U.S. withdrawal) the incursion would be a significant test of Vietnamization. Backed by U.S. air and artillery support (American troops were forbidden to enter Laos), the ARVN moved across the border along Route 9, utilizing the abandoned Marine outpost of Khe Sanh as a jumping-off point. At first, the incursion went well, but unlike the Cambodian operation of 1970, the PAVN decided to stand and fight, finally mustering around 60,000 men on the battlefield.

text: The North Vietnamese first struck the flanks of the ARVN column, smashed its outposts, and then moved in on the main ARVN force. Unlike previous encounters during the conflict, the PAVN fielded armored formations, heavy artillery, and large amounts of the latest anti-aircraft artillery. After two months of savage fighting, the ARVN retreated back across the border, closely pursued by the North Vietnamese. One half of the invasion force was killed or captured during the operation, and Vietnamization was seen as a failure.

text: On August 18, Australia and New Zealand decided to withdraw their troops from the conflict. The total number of U.S. forces in South Vietnam dropped to 196,700 on October 29, 1971, the lowest level since January 1966. On November 12, 1971, Nixon set a February 1, 1972 deadline for the removal of another 45,000 troops.

text: Easter Offensive[edit]

text: Vietnamization received another severe test in the spring of 1972 when the North Vietnamese launched a massive conventional offensive across the Demilitarized Zone. Beginning on March 30, the Easter Offensive (known as the Nguyễn Huệ Offensive to the North Vietnamese) quickly overran the three northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, including the provincial capital of Quảng Trị City. PAVN forces then drove south toward Huế.

text: Early in April, PAVN opened two additional operations. The first, a three-division thrust supported by tanks and heavy artillery, advanced out of Cambodia on April 5. The North Vietnamese seized the town of Loc Ninh and advanced toward the provincial capital of An Lộc in Bình Long Province. The second new offensive, launched from the tri-border region into the Central Highlands, seized a complex of ARVN outposts near Dak To and then advanced toward Kon Tum, threatening to split South Vietnam in two.

text: The U.S. countered with a buildup of American airpower to support ARVN defensive operations and to conduct Operation Linebacker, the first offensive bombing of North Vietnam since Rolling Thunder had been terminated in 1968. The PAVN attacks against Huế, An Lộc, and Kon Tum were contained and the ARVN launched a counteroffensive in May to retake the lost northern provinces. On September 10, the South Vietnamese flag once again flew over the ruins of the Citadel of Quảng Trị City, but the ARVN offensive then ran out of steam, conceding the rest of the occupied territory to the North Vietnamese. South Vietnam had countered the heaviest attack since Tet, but it was very evident that it was totally dependent on U.S. airpower for its survival. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of American troops, who numbered less than 100,000 at the beginning of the year, was continued as scheduled. By June only six infantry battalions remained. On August 12, the last American ground combat division left the country. However, the U.S. continued to operate the base At Long Binh. Combat patrols continued there until November 11 when the U.S. handed over the base to the South Vietnamese. After this, only 24,000 American troops remained in Vietnam and President Nixon announced that they would stay there until all U.S. POW's were freed.

text: At the beginning of the North Vietnamese invasion, the media, including conservative commentator William F. Buckley, predicted the downfall of the Republic of Vietnam; Buckley even called for the firing of General Creighton Abrams as an incompetent military leader. But the ARVN succeeded in defeating General Giap and his huge invading army. His forces were shattered at the Battle of An Lộc, where he threw several divisions at the entrenched South Vietnamese forces, ultimately losing over half of his army as casualties. General Giap's loss and subsequent retreat was viewed as so great a failure by the North Vietnamese Communist Party that Giap was relieved of his command. Although ARVN troops withstood and repelled the massive PAVN attack at An Lộc, American air power seems to have been a key to the ARVN success, just as it had been a key factor in supporting U.S. ground forces when they operated in South Vietnam prior to 1972. Thus, the 1973 withdrawal of U.S. military support and passage of Congressional resolutions cutting off U.S. funding for combat activities in Indochina (H.R. 9055 and H.J.Res. 636) opened the way for the 1975 defeat of the Republic of Vietnam.

text: Election of 1972 and Operation Linebacker II[edit]

text: During the run-up to the 1972 presidential election, the war was once again a major issue. An antiwar Democrat, George McGovern, ran against President Nixon. The president ended Operation Linebacker on October 22 after the negotiating deadlock was broken and a tentative agreement had been hammered out by U.S. and North Vietnamese representatives at the peace negotiations in Paris. The head of the U.S. negotiating team, Henry Kissinger, declared that "peace is at hand" shortly before election day, dealing a death blow to McGovern's already doomed campaign. Kissinger had not, however, counted on the intransigence of South Vietnamese President Thieu, who refused to accept the agreement and demanded some 90 changes in its text. These the North Vietnamese refused to accept, and Nixon was not inclined to put too much pressure on Thieu just before the election, even though his victory was all but assured. The mood between the U.S. and North further turned sour when Hanoi went public with the details of the agreement. The Nixon Administration claimed that North Vietnamese negotiators had used the pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the President and to weaken the United States. White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler told the press on November 30 that there would be no more public announcements concerning U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam since force levels were down to 27,000.

text: Because of Thieu's unhappiness with the agreement, primarily the stipulation that North Vietnamese troops could remain "in place" on South Vietnamese soil, the negotiations in Paris stalled as Hanoi refused to accept Thieu's changes and retaliated with amendments of its own. To reassure Thieu of American resolve, Nixon ordered a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam utilizing B-52s and tactical aircraft in Operation Linebacker II, which began on December 18 with large raids against both Hanoi and the port of Haiphong. Nixon justified his actions by blaming the impasse in negotiations on the North Vietnamese, causing one commentator to describe his actions as "War by tantrum". Although this heavy bombing campaign caused protests, both domestically and internationally, and despite significant aircraft losses over North Vietnam, Nixon continued the operation until December 29. He also exerted pressure on Thieu to accept the terms of the agreement reached in October.

text: Return to Paris[edit]

text: On January 15, 1973, citing progress in peace negotiations, Nixon announced the suspension of all offensive actions against North Vietnam, to be followed by a unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. troops. The Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" were signed on January 27, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

text: The agreement called for the withdrawal of all U.S. personnel and an exchange of prisoners of war. Within South Vietnam, a cease-fire was declared (to be overseen by a multi-national, 1,160-man International Control Commission force) and both ARVN and PAVN/NLF forces would remain in control of the areas they then occupied, effectively partitioning South Vietnam. Both sides pledged to work toward a compromise political solution, possibly resulting in a coalition government. To maximize the area under their control, both sides in South Vietnam almost immediately engaged in land-grabbing military operations, which turned into flashpoints. The signing of the Accords was the main motivation for the awarding of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger and to leading North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. A separate cease-fire had been installed in Laos in February. Five days before the signing of the agreement in Paris, President Lyndon Johnson, whose presidency had been tainted with the Vietnam issue, died.

text: The first U.S. prisoners of war were released by North Vietnam on February 11, and all U.S. military personnel were ordered to leave South Vietnam by March 29. As an inducement for Thieu's government to sign the agreement, Nixon had promised that the U.S. would provide financial and limited military support (in the form of air strikes) so that the South would not be overrun. But Nixon was fighting for his political life in the growing Watergate scandal and facing an increasingly hostile Congress that withheld funding. The President was able to exert little influence on a hostile public long sick of the Vietnam War.

text: Thus, Nixon (or his successor Gerald Ford) was unable to fulfill his promises to Thieu. At the same time, aid to North Vietnam from the Soviet Union increased. With the U.S. no longer heavily involved, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union no longer saw the war as significant to their relations. The balance of power shifted decisively in North Vietnam's favor, and the North subsequently launched a major military offensive, the Ho Chi Minh Campaign, against the South that culminated in the surrender of the Republic of Vietnam to PAVN forces on April 30, 1975.


document_title: Neverwinter Nights

question_text: when does neverwinter nights enhanced edition come out

root

text: Neverwinter Nights

text: Gameplay[edit]

text: The original scenario supplied with the Neverwinter Nights game engine is known as the official campaign. It comprises approximately sixty hours of gameplay.[3] The gameplay centers on the development of a player character (PC) through adventuring, who ultimately becomes the hero of the story. The PC is tasked with defeating a powerful cult, collecting four reagents required to stop a plague, and finally thwarting an attack on the city of Neverwinter, located along the Sword Coast of Faerûn, in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons. The first and final chapters of the official campaign deal with the city of Neverwinter itself, but the lengthy mid-story requires the player to venture into the surrounding countryside and travel northward to the city of Luskan. Along the way, many optional side quests are made available.

tag: p

text: As in the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game, the first thing a player must do is create a new character. The game provides a set of ready-made characters, or the player may create one from scratch.[4] A series of panels are presented for selection of the character's gender, race, character class, alignment, ability scores (such as strength and intelligence), specialized abilities called skills and feats, in-game appearance, and name.[5] This process grants significant allowance for customization; one can be, for example, an outdoorsman (ranger) or a healer (cleric), then choose skills and feats that would work well with that class in the game.

text: Following a small prelude, there are four chapters in the original game, with each chapter following part of the general storyline. Within each chapter, there are many quests, subquests, and mini-storylines provided to the player. Depending on the specific quests completed, and the unique items kept, some storylines are continued throughout the entire game, such as the Henchman's or Aribeth's tales. Completing many of the side quests will give the player's character more experience and special items, making them improve more rapidly and continue to make the game easier as the player progresses. These improvements come in the form of levels earned through experience points, with each level providing the protagonist with a set of enhancements as selected by the player.

text: The game's mechanics are based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rule set;[6] the outcome of most actions, such as combat and skills usage, are randomly determined by dice rolls.[7][8] For example, when a fighter attacks, the computer would digitally "roll" a 20-sided die (called a d20 in-game) to determine if he hits the target. On a success, another die is rolled to determine the damage dealt, with powerful weapons assigned to dice with a greater number of sides, due to their ability to do more damage. Although the outcome of nearly all actions is determined by dice rolls, the player does not see them, with the results calculated in the background. However, the player has the option to display the outcomes of these rolls. The player can control the game almost entirely via the mouse.[4]

text: Multiplayer[edit]

text: A robust multiplayer component separates Neverwinter Nights from previous Dungeons & Dragons games, as this allows players to play on many different servers hosting games. Depending on hardware and bandwidth, each server can support up to ninety-six players on the same server application, plus Dungeon Masters (DM) to run the games, if desired. Neverwinter Nights game modules are run in a variety of genres and themes, including persistent worlds (which are similar to MUD), combat arenas (player versus player modules), whole servers dedicated to sexually oriented roleplay, [9][10] and simple social gatherings similar to a chat room. BioWare requires that these persistent worlds be free of charge, primarily for reasons of copyright law.

text: Because Neverwinter Nights lacks a global chat function aside from the supported GameSpy, players typically join pickup games through the game's multiplayer interface, or schedule games in advance with friends. Matchmaking sites can facilitate scheduling of games, and the experience is much like traditional pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Persistent worlds do this work for them by inviting players to visit their website and continue to roleplay there.

text: An important feature of Neverwinter Nights is the Dungeon Master Client: a tool that allows an individual to take the role of the Dungeon Master, who guides the players through the story and has complete control of the server.[11] Previous games such as Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, based on the printed gamebooks by White Wolf Publishing, utilized this feature to a limited extent.[12] When it was released, Neverwinter Nights was viewed as the first successful implementation of the feature.[11] The DM Client allows players to participate in regular campaigns, while also allowing persistent world servers to flourish by permitting the DMs of those servers to take control of non-player characters (NPC) in mid-game for added realism and flexibility. The Dungeon Master Client also permits the user to spawn and control masses of monsters and NPC much in the same way as units would be controlled in a real time strategy game.

text: Custom content[edit]

text: Neverwinter Nights ships with the Aurora toolset, which allows players to create custom modules for the game.[13] These modules may take the form of online multiplayer worlds,[14] single player adventures, character trainers or technology demos. Additionally, several third party utilities have further expanded the community's ability to create custom content for the game. By the end of 2002, there were over 1,000 custom adventures available.[15][16]

text: Custom content creators are known as builders in the Neverwinter Nights community. The Aurora toolset allows builders to create map areas using a tile system; the appearance and surface textures of the area are defined by the area's selected tileset. Builders can overlay placeable objects onto areas, and use the built-in scripting language NWScript, which is based on the C programming language, to run cut scenes, quests, mini-games and conversations.[15] Third party utilities allow builders to create custom content for most aspects of the game, ranging from new playable races and character classes to new tilesets, monsters and equipment. Custom content is added to the game in the form of hakpaks. Builders have used the Aurora toolset in combination with hakpaks to create playing experiences beyond the scope of the original campaign. Additionally, the Aurora toolset has allowed for the creation of a number of ongoing persistent worlds modules.

text: Despite the game's age, the Neverwinter Nights custom content community remains active. The community, mostly centered on the Neverwinter Vault, has created over 4,000 modules for the game, among them, many award-winning adventures and series such as Dreamcatcher.[17] The Aurora toolset is not available for the Linux and Macintosh versions of Neverwinter Nights. The open source project neveredit aims to port the toolset features to these platforms. The game's module-making legacy was continued by Neverwinter Nights 2.

text: Plot[edit]

text: The story begins with the player character (PC), under the guidance of Lady Aribeth,[6] being sent to recover four creatures (dryad, intellect devourer, yuan-ti, and cockatrice), known collectively as the Waterdhavian creatures. The Waterdhavian creatures are needed to make a cure for the Wailing Death, a plague that is sweeping the city of Neverwinter and forcing a quarantine.[13] With the help of Fenthick Moss, Aribeth's love interest, and Desther, Fenthick's friend, the main character is able to retrieve the creatures. As they collect the creatures, they are attacked by mysterious assassins from a cult that is behind the spreading of the plague.

text: As the cure is being made, Castle Neverwinter is attacked by the minions of Desther, who betrays the heroes. Desther takes the completed cure and escapes the castle, with the hero and Fenthick in pursuit. When they catch up to Desther, he surrenders after a short battle. Desther is sentenced to burn at the stake, and Fenthick, despite being unaware of Desther's true intentions, is sentenced to hang. The protagonist meets up with Aribeth, and they begin searching for the cult responsible for the plague and the attack on Neverwinter. With the help of Aarin Gend, Neverwinter's spymaster, the main character retrieves the diaries of dead cultists and letters from a person named Maugrim, which convince Aribeth that the cult's headquarters are in Luskan. Aribeth goes ahead to Luskan, and the hero follows after speaking once more to Gend.

text: After arriving in Luskan, the protagonist hears rumors that Aribeth is joining with the cultists. These fears are confirmed when she is found meeting with Maugrim and Morag, Queen of the Old Ones. They seek a group of magical relics called the Words of Power. The main character retrieves all of the Words of Power except for one held by the cult. The hero discovers that the Words open a portal to a pocket world inside the Source Stone, where Morag and the other Old Ones are.[clarification needed] The protagonist confronts Aribeth, and depending on how the meeting is handled, she either surrenders to the main character or they are forced to kill her. The hero battles Maugrim for the final Word, then uses the Words to enter the Source Stone and battle with Morag. After Morag's death, the protagonist escapes the Stone as the world inside it implodes.

text: Development[edit]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2014)

tag: table

text: A posting at the Neverwinter Nights 2 Vault on June 4, 2008 contained information from what appeared to be original Neverwinter Nights documentation. At the BioWare forums, Neverwinter Lead Designer Rob Bartel confirmed that the "series of excerpts from the game's design doc" were not a hoax. When asked if the plans were altered due to time constraints, Bartel referenced various legal difficulties that the company was working through.[18]

text: Release[edit]

text: Official expansion packs[edit]

text: Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide (SU) was released in June 2003. It added five prestige classes, sixteen new creatures (two of them available as additional familiars), three new tilesets, more than thirty new feats, more than fifty new spells, and additional scripting abilities for those using the Aurora toolkit. The expansion pack features a story line concerning a student sent out to recover some stolen magical objects. The story begins in the Silver Marches, eventually moving toward the desert of Anauroch and the old Netherese city of Undrentide.

text: Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark (HU) was released in December 2003. It increased the maximum character level to 40, and added a number of spells and items appropriate to such characters, as well as adding further tilesets, prestige classes, feats, and abilities, and compatibility with the Intel Pentium 4 Processor, which was unsupported in previous versions. The story continued where Shadows of Undrentide ended, with a character of at least 15th level, and led into the vast subterranean world known as the Underdark. The first chapter of the story took place in the Undermountain dungeon beneath the city of Waterdeep.

text: Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker was released in November 2004, and features three premium modules: the award-winning Kingmaker,[19] Shadowguard, and Witch's Wake.

text: Community-created expansion packs[edit]

text: Atari and BioWare helped to promote and release free downloadable hakpaks, models, and tileset expansion packs, which greatly expanded the possibilities of mod-making.[citation needed]

text: The Players Resource Consortium (PRC) was released in early December 2003, and is a group of hakpaks adding classes, races, skills, and spells to the game.[citation needed] The PRC has roughly three times the number of prestige classes the original game had.[citation needed] It also adds dozens of epic spells, and many normal spells that make better use of BioWare's Aurora engine.[citation needed] Psionic powers have also been included.[citation needed]

text: The Community Expansion Pack (CEP), originally released in March 2004 (last updated in January 2017), is based on the Neverwinter Nights community's fan-made material.[20] This freely downloadable expansion was compiled by members of the community. It combines a selection of previously released custom content into one group of hakpaks.[20]

text: Premium modules[edit]

text: In late 2004, BioWare launched its online store and started selling what it called "premium modules" as part of its digital distribution program. This initiative was led by BioWare's Live Team Lead Designer, Rob Bartel. These smaller-scale adventures introduced new storylines and gameplay, and include new music and art that BioWare integrated into later patches to the core game. According to BioWare, the revenue generated by sales of the premium modules would be used to support their fan community and provide ongoing updates and improvements to the game. The modules that are sold in the BioWare store require an active Internet connection to play, even when played in single player mode. The modules in the Kingmaker expansion were stripped of this requirement, but are only available for Windows systems. The modules included with Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition do not require Internet access to play. In August 2009, BioWare discontinued its selling of premium modules due to a request made by Atari.[21] Atari has not yet provided any alternative means to acquire the modules.

text: On June 16, 2011, the Neverwinter Nights digital rights management (DRM) authentication server was temporarily taken down as a reaction by Electronic Arts to the Neverwinter Nights store being hacked and customer data stolen.[citation needed] Premium modules which were purchased via BioWare's store could not be played during that time because they could not connect to the server to validate the purchase,[22] though DRM-free modules were unaffected. The exact duration of the temporary outage has not been documented. The modules Kingmaker, Shadowguard, and Witch's Wake were sold as part of the Diamond Edition package.[23] The modules Infinite Dungeons, Pirates of the Sword Coast, and Wyvern Crown of Cormyr were only sold with DRM.

text:
Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker – In November 2004, BioWare announced their flagship premium module, which later received the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences 'PC RPG of the Year' award.[19] In the module's story, the hero must defeat the evil at the Keep of Cyan and win the throne.
Neverwinter Nights: ShadowGuard – Created by community member Ben McJunkin, it features a new setting, Abaron, and a story focused on the main character's adventures and interaction with a secret Shadowguard group.
Neverwinter Nights: Witch's Wake - The remastered version of Rob Bartel's popular story-oriented module by the same name added new subraces, music, and substantial voice-acting throughout. The game features a story of a character who lost their memories and awakens on a field of battle. A sequel, Witch's Wake II: The Witch Hunters, was in development, but it was ultimately canceled.
Neverwinter Nights: Pirates of the Sword Coast – In June 2005, BioWare announced the upcoming release of a new premium module. The story begins in the city of Neverwinter, and leads to a lengthy ship-borne, swashbuckling-style adventure.
Neverwinter Nights: Infinite Dungeons – In May 2006, BioWare released a module taking place in the Undermountain area below Waterdeep. The main feature is randomly generated dungeons, which are suitable for all levels of adventurer. The module is designed for single and multiplayer gaming. With the exception of the ability to respawn one's character, Infinite Dungeons is very similar to a three dimensional roguelike.
Neverwinter Nights: Wyvern Crown of Cormyr – In September 2006, BioWare announced a new premium module. It features fully ridable horses, flowing cloaks, tabards and long coats, a new prestige class (the Purple Dragon Knight), and extensive new art, creatures, and tilesets.

text: Post-premium modules[edit]

text: Premium modules were eventually discontinued. Three premium modules were known to be in development before cancellation. Two of them ended up being free downloads, while the third, a planned sequel to Witch's Wake, was never released.

text:
Hex Coda - On May 15, 2005, Stefan Gagne released Hex Coda, the first cancelled premium module, to Neverwinter Vault. The story was a mix of fantasy and science fiction and involved the protagonist dealing with the machinations of a multinational corporation called Cathedral. A sequel was in development, but was cancelled.
Darkness over Daggerford – In August 2006, Ossian Studios Inc., headed up by Alan Miranda, a former producer at BioWare, released the second canceled premium module to the Vault. The story takes place in and around Daggerford and has been compared favorably to Baldur's Gate 2 in terms of its scope. Characters start at the 8th level. The module includes a cinematic intro (like the main campaign) and a world map. Darkness over Daggerford's status as a quasi-official expansion pack was supported by the next release of the team, this time a fully official one: Mysteries of Westgate for Neverwinter Nights 2.

text: Editions and re-releases[edit]

text: Atari released subsequent editions of the game following its first release in 2002. These editions are:

text:
Neverwinter Nights: Gold (2003), which includes Shadows of Undrentide
Neverwinter Nights: Platinum (2004) (in Europe: Neverwinter Nights: Deluxe Edition), which includes both Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark
Neverwinter Nights: Diamond (2005) (in Europe: Neverwinter Nights Deluxe: Special Edition), which includes everything in the Platinum edition plus the Kingmaker expansion pack

In 2010, the Diamond edition was licensed for online distribution to Good Old Games.[24]

text: Atari also re-released the game and both expansion packs in the following collections:

text:
Atari Collection: Rollenspiele (2005)
Neverwinter Nights 2: Lawful Good Edition (2006)
Neverwinter Nights 2: Chaotic Evil Edition (2006)
Ultimate Dungeons & Dragons (2006); Rollenspiele: Deluxe Edition (2007)
Neverwinter Nights 3-Pack (2007)
Neverwinter Nights: The Complete Collection (2011) contains Neverwinter Nights 2 and expansions as well.

text: Beamdog announced the upcoming release of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on November 20, 2017. This version will include fixes made by the community since the last official release, graphic improvements, premium modules, and a return to a multiplayer server list that was lost when Gamespy was shut down. A digital deluxe version will include the soundtrack and the rest of the premium modules. A pre-release version was made available to purchase on November 21.[25] Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition officially launched on Steam on March 27, 2018.[26]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Sales[edit]

text: For the launch of Neverwinter Nights, publisher Infogrames shipped 1 million copies to stores, with half allocated to North America and the rest to international markets.[27] In an experimental move, the company priced the game at $55, an increase over the $50 typical of computer games at the time. CNN Money columnist Chris Morris reported that "gamers complained loudly about" this decision.[28] The game proceeded to sell 125,000 copies by June 27, after its release on the 18th.[27] It debuted at #1 on The NPD Group's computer game sales chart during the June 16-22 period,[29] and held the position for two weeks, before being displaced by Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.[30][31] However, Neverwinter Nights continued to place in the chart's top 10 consistently for its first three months of release.[32] By July 23, the game's global sales had surpassed 200,000 units.[33] NPD reported North American sales of 330,000 copies by late December, which brought in revenues of $18 million.[28]

text: Greg Zeschuk remarked in June 2003 that Neverwinter Nights had sold above 1 million copies, before the release of its first expansion pack.[34] In the United States alone, the game sold 510,000 copies and earned $23.2 million by August 2006. At that time, Edge declared it the country's 26th-best-selling computer game released since January 2000.[35] It also received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association,[36] which indicates sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.[37] Combined global sales of Neverwinter Nights and its expansion packs surpassed 2.6 million units by early 2005;[38] by August 2006, the games totaled 1.3 million sales in the United States alone.[35] Discounting its expansions, the original Neverwinter Nights ultimately sold 2.2 million copies, as of 2007.[39]

text: Critical reviews[edit]

text:
Reception

Aggregate scores

Aggregator
Score

GameRankings
89.08%[40]

Metacritic
91/100[41]

Review scores

Publication
Score

AllGame
[42]

Game Informer
8.75/10[43]

GamePro
[44]

GameSpot
9.2/10[45]

GameSpy
91/100[46]

GameZone
9.3/10[47]

PC Gamer (US)
95/100[48]

Gameplanet

Awards

Publication
Award

Best Role Playing Game, Best Online Multiplayer[50]

Best Role Playing Game[51]

Best Role Playing Game[52]

Computer Role Playing Game of the Year[53]

text: In general, Neverwinter Nights met with positive reviews, receiving "universal acclaim" according to Metacritic.[41] GameSpot referred to it as "one of those exceedingly rare games that has a lot to offer virtually everyone, even if they aren't already into RPGs", and praised it for its campaign, its Aurora toolset, and its graphics.[45] PC Gamer US called it "a total package—a PC gaming classic for the ages", and said that its "storyline [is] as persuasive as any I’ve encountered in a fantasy roleplaying game".[48] Chris Chan of New Straits Times said, "Neverwinter Nights is every role-playing gamer's dream".[6] Allgame found that the game's story was "humdrum" and "mediocre".[42] Mark Meadows of The Wisconsin State Journal agreed, saying the game was too focused on technical details.[15] Victor Godinez of Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service did not care for the turn-based combat system, preferring to have direct control. He also said the controls were difficult to use occasionally.[7]

text: GamePro noted the game's graphics as being "gorgeous" and its sound as "untouchable",[44] and GameZone likewise praised its visuals, specifically mentioning its combat animation and spell effects as being well done.[47] GameSpy wasn't as impressed by the graphics, saying "The biggest, and arguably the only, glaring flaw in the game, is its graphics. You can tell that this game has been in development for five years[...]"; however, they praised its voice acting and music.[46] Godinez agreed, and also liked the game's audio, noting in particular the scraps of conversation that can be heard in the background throughout the city.[7]

text: Allgame praised Neverwinter Night's DM tools, calling the game's level creation options "impressive" and the multiplayer options "great".[42] GamePro thought that Neverwinter Nights is the closest that any video game has come to accurately representing the full Dungeons & Dragons rules,[44] a statement further reinforced by Greg Kasavin of GameSpot, who said that "Neverwinter Nights isn't the first Dungeons & Dragons game for the computer to make use of the pen-and-paper game's 3rd Edition rules, but it's the first to implement them so well".[45] GameZone said that the Aurora Toolset was one of the "best features" of the game.[47] John Breeden II of The Washington Post said including the tool set was "smartest thing Bioware did".[23] He went on to say that giving such tools to the players became more commonplace, but was a bold move at the time of the game's release.[23] Chan commented, "you could use the Aurora tools to create a dream world".[6]

text: Peter Suciu of Newsweek magazine called Neverwinter Nights "possibly the richest fantasy PC experience ever created."[54] According to GameSpy, "Neverwinter's contribution to D&D gaming is always a hot topic and a source of argument."[55]

text: Awards[edit]

text: Neverwinter Nights was named the best computer role-playing game of 2002 by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS),[56] PC Gamer US and GameSpot.[57][58] RPG Vault declared it "Product of the Year",[59] while Computer Games Magazine ranked it the year's second-best computer game across all genres. The latter publication's editors wrote that the "single-player game is merely passable", but they highly praised Neverwinter Nights' content-creation tools, and argued that the game is "what computer role-playing games should have been all along".[60]

text: The game won special awards for its technology from Computer Games,[60] the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) and RPG Vault, the latter two for its network programming and Aurora Toolset, respectively.[59][61] Aurora was also a nominee in the AIAS's "PC Simulation" category.[56] RPG Vault's staff hailed the tool as "an unprecedented combination of power, flexibility and ease of use."[59] Neverwinter Nights received further nominations in the AIAS's special categories for "Innovation in PC Gaming" and "Game Design", and in RPG Vault's categories for music and writing, but lost these to other titles.[59][56] However, it did win RPG Vault's "Outstanding Achievement in Community Building" prize.[59]

text: Neverwinter Nights was a runner-up for the "Role-Playing Game of the Year" awards of Computer Gaming World, IGN, GameSpy and RPG Vault, all of which went to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.[62][59][63][64] The editors of Computer Gaming World wrote that Neverwinter Nights "gave gamers a fabulous toolset for creating their own adventures—too bad the single-player campaign prompted a staffwide shrugging of shoulders."[62] It was also nominated as the overall best computer game of 2002 by GameSpot, PC Gamer US and the AIAS,[57][56][58] and as the year's best game on any platform by the GDCA.[61] These prizes went variously to Warcraft III, Battlefield 1942 and Metroid Prime.[57][56][58][61]

text: Legacy[edit]

text: IGN ranked Neverwinter Nights No. 4 on their list of "The Top 11 Dungeons & Dragons Games of All Time" in 2014.[65] Ian Williams of Paste rated the game #4 on his list of "The 10 Greatest Dungeons and Dragons Videogames" in 2015.[66]

text: Since the original release of Neverwinter Nights, several in-game portraits have been modified in patches due to their having been copied from outside sources.[citation needed] In another instance, the Canadian Red Cross complained to BioWare about the appearance of the Red Cross symbol on the in-game item "Healer's Kit", as part of a long-running attempt to discourage outside usage of the symbol. This resulted in the Red Cross symbol being removed from the Healer's Kit through patches.[67]

text: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a role-playing video game based in the Star Wars universe, was also released by BioWare using a modified version of the Aurora engine of Neverwinter Nights, called the Odyssey Engine. The sequel, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, also used it. Because of this, modders have been able to modify these games using some Neverwinter Nights modding tools. The Witcher, a role-playing video game by CD Projekt Red, is also based on the Aurora engine of Neverwinter Nights. BioWare used Neverwinter Nights and its toolset to develop prototypes and mock-ups of various areas and scenarios for Dragon Age: Origins.[68]

text: Sequels[edit]

text: A sequel to Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a company with a long history with BioWare. According to BioWare, the change of developer was due to BioWare's business with other titles, such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins.[citation needed] Neverwinter Nights 2 shipped in November 2006.

text: On August 23, 2010, Atari announced Cryptic Studios would be developing Neverwinter, an online role-playing game based on the book series of the same name by R.A. Salvatore.[69] It is based on Wizards of the Coast's global property Dungeons & Dragons rules and feature the titular city Neverwinter. It was scheduled for an early 2013 release,[70] and was ultimately released on June 20, 2013.[citation needed]

text: Educational usage[edit]

text: Neverwinter Nights has been used by colleges and universities for a variety of educational purposes. It has been used at West Nottinghamshire College in the United Kingdom as a means of delivering key skills and of showing IT designers how to understand the coding in the game.[71][72] The Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University has used it as a basis for the creation of Arden: The World of Shakespeare, where Shakespeare's dramatic history of Richard III and The War of the Roses can be interactively explored.[73] The game and the Aurora toolset were also used at Macquarie University in Australia.[74] The University of Alberta has offered a video game design course which uses Neverwinter Nights and the Aurora Toolset as the platform for teaching and course projects.[75] The University of Minnesota has used the game to teach journalism students how to gather facts and information for news events with a modified modern setting for the game that involves interviewing witnesses and doing library research;[76] in a modified game, students would work in pairs putting together a story about a train accident that causes a toxic chemical spill.[77] Neverwinter Nights has also been used as an interface for some Moodle activity types.[78]


document_title: Nexo Knights

question_text: when is nexo knights season 5 coming out

text: Nexo Knights

text: Plot[edit]

text: In a medieval yet futuristic world, Clay, Aaron, Lance, Princess Macy, and Axl are five young knights who protect the kingdom of Knighton and its capital Knightonia from Jestro, the Book of Monsters, and their army of Lava Monsters. They also receive help from the Knightonia Royal Family, the digital wizard Merlok 2.0, Robin Underwood, and Ava Prentiss.

text: By the third season, the Cloud of Monstrox appears following his defeat as the Book of Monsters as he once again controls Jestro into helping him obtain the 10 Forbidden Powers where the Cloud of Monstrox uses his evil lightning to animate his Stone Monsters. The two of them later ally with a sculptor named Roberto Arnoldi who helps to sculpt things out of rock for Jestro and Monstrox to use.

text: A 5th season of Nexo knights is set to release on June 21st, 2018. Monstrux will become a digital virus with the sole purpose of infecting Merlock and taking over the kingdom.[citation needed]

text: Episodes[edit]

text: Broadcast[edit]

text: The series debuted on Cartoon Network in the United States on December 13, 2015[1] as Sneak Peek and January 2016[2] as Official. It premiered on Cartoon Network in Middle East[3] and Gulli in France on December 18, 2015.[4] Then it premiered Cartoon Network in Central and Eastern Europe on November 28, 2015.[5] It debuted on Cartoon Network in United Kingdom and Ireland on December 19, 2015 as a Sneak Peek[6] and February 1, 2016 as Official.[7] It premiered on Cartoon Network in Turkey on December 19, 2015.[8] It premiered on Cartoon Network in Nordic on December 23, 2015. It premiered on Cartoon Network in Poland on December 26, 2016 as Sneak Peek.[9] It debuted on Teletoon in Canada on January 8, 2016.[10] It debuted on Cartoon Network in Australia and New Zealand on February 6, 2016.[11] It premiered on Cartoon Network in Africa on February 27, 2016.[12] Kix and Pop debut in United Kingdom on March 4, 2017.

text: NEXO Knights: 4D Movie[edit]

text: The NEXO Knights: 4D Movie, "The Book of Creativity",[13] debuted in all LEGOLand Parks in the Summer of 2016. It features an original story line and enhanced production in 3D and with physical effects designed for theaters in the LEGOLand Parks. The plot involved the Nexo Knights fighting Jestro and the Book of Monsters when they attack the village of Buildburg so that the Book of Monsters can consume the Book of Creativity.

text: Merchandise[edit]

text:
Lego Nexo Knights

Sub‑themes
Castle

Availability
2016–2018

Total sets
21

Official website

text: Lego Nexo Knights is a fantasy-based castle LEGO theme released in January 2016. Announced at New York Comic Con 2015, it incorporates thematic elements drawn from both earlier space and castle themes while adding a 21st-century digital spin.[14][15] It replaced Legends of Chima, a theme released in 2013. The theme is discontinued after the January 2018 wave of releases.[16]

text: Merchandising launch[edit]

text: Fourteen building sets were available for sale in January 2016, ranging in price from $9.99 to $99.99. Additional building sets were launched in August 2016. The first two sets were revealed at New York Comic Con.

text: Sets[edit]

text:
70310 Knighton Disc Launchers
70311 Chaos Catapult
70312 Lance's Mecha Horse
70313 Moltor's Lava Launcher
70314 Beast Master's Chaos Chariot
70315 Clay's Rumble Blade
70316 Jestro's Evil Mobile
70317 Fortrex
70324 Merlok's Library 2.0
70325 Infernox captures the Queen
70327 The King's Mech

text: Ultimate

text:
70330 Ultimate Clay
70331 Ultimate Macy
70332 Ultimate Aaron
70333 Ultimate Robin
70334 Ultimate Beast Master
70335 Ultimate Lavaria

text: Polybags

text:
30371 Knight's Cycle
30372 Robin's Mini Fortrex
30373 Knighton Hyper Cannon
30374 The Lava Slinger

text: August 2016

text:
70318 The Glob Lobber
70319 Macy's Thunder Mace
70320 Aaron Fox's Aero-Striker V2
70321 General Magmar's Siege Machine of Doom
70322 Axl's Tower Carrier
70323 Jestro's Volcano Lair
70326 The Black Knight mech
70336 Ultimate Axl
70337 Ultimate Lance
70338 Ultimate General Magmar
70339 Ultimate Flama

text: Books[edit]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2016)

text: Lego has also released several books about the Lego Nexo Knights.

text: One particular book is called "Lego Nexo Knights: The Book of Monsters" which talks about the different evil spellbooks, the Book of Monsters' crush on the Book of Love, the bios of the Nexo Knights with vandalized pictures, the bios of the Lava Monster Army, the bios of the as-yet-unintroduced Forest Monster Army, and the bios of the as-yet-unintroduced Sea Monster Army.[17]

text: On September 27, 2016 Scholastic released "Lego Nexo Knights: The Knights Code", a guidebook for all knights-in-training.[18]

text: On January 31, 2017 Scholastic released "Knights Academy: The Forbidden Power" a Nexo Knights spin-off book series following Fletcher Bowman, an orphan from the countryside, and Izzy Richmond, little sister to Lance Richmond, on their adventures at the Knights Academy. A sequel has been confirmed by Lego.com and it will be titled "Knights Academy: The Secret Classroom".[19][20]

text: Mobile game[edit]

text:
Lego NEXO Knights: Merlok 2.0

Publisher(s)
The LEGO Group

Platform(s)
iOS, Android

Release
December 19, 2015

text: Lego NEXO Knights: Merlok 2.0 is an action battle mobile game was released for Android and iOS on December 19, 2015. The users has to play through the game to "Save the Kingdom". Each figurine has an accompanying shield. Each shield unlocks a Nexo Power for the user to play with, the more powers that are unlocked the more powerful they become. Later on, Combo Powers were added. Shields could be found in Lego sets, blindbags, and even pictures could be found in magazines.