incavead/HOWTO.txt

How to play
===========

a) Surviving
------------

This game is different from other roguelikes in several
important ways:

* Killing monsters is usually useless or outright
  suicidal. Careful sneaking and evasion tactics are better.

* There is no notion of 'experience', 'skill' or 'stats
  attribute', only the player's level. Your level and your
  equipment solely determines your power and skill as a
  character.

* There is no inventory, only equipment. For example, you
  can't carry a second melee weapon; you only carry what's
  equipped on your body. (Some things, like healing
  mushrooms, are carried, but need to be activated
  explicitly by a command.)

* Your health doesn't regenerate. You need a healing item to
  recharge your health.

* The screen doesn't show squares you've already
  visited. You only see what's directly in your field of
  view.

* Your character and every monster moves at exactly the same
  speed. For every square you move, the monsters also move
  exactly one square!

Some more tips for survival:

Every monster has a range. If you're outside the monster's
rage, you can safely move without the monster noticing
you. (The range of each monster is not known beforehand,
you'll need to figure it out by trial and error.)

Weapons, and monsters, have an attack type and a damage
factor. (For example, '3.5 poison' or '1.3 physical'.)
Armor, and monsters, also have a defense type and a defense
factor. (Likewise: for example, '0.5 physical'.)

When attacking a monster, four things are taken into
account:
1. Your level
2. Your attack type with attack factor. (Or types with
   factors, if the weapon has several attack types.)
3. The monster's level.
4. The monster's defense factor. (Corresponding to the
   attack type of your weapon.)

These four things are compared, and the damage score is
calculated.  (It also works the same way when a monster
attacks your character.)

By far the most important is the level of your character and
the monster, though very weak or useless weapons also exist.

There are only two ways to raise your character's level:
1. Killing a monster that has a higher level than you.
2. Scoring a critical hit against a monster that has a level
   that is equal to your level.

Killing a monster with a lower level than you is
useless. (Though some monsters can drop items when dead; in
that case you might want to kill them for their item drop.)

The level of the monster is usually equal to the dungeon
depth. (That is, monsters on dungeon level 4 are level 4
monsters.)

Besides health, there is one more important stat: your
character's hunger.

Hunger gradually and very slowly decreases, and once it
reaches a critical threshold your character starts to slowly
lose health.

Hunger and health are represented on-screen by a scale of -3
to +3. (When health reaches -3 you die; when hunger reaches
-3 you start losing health.)


b) Traversing the dungeon
-------------------------

The in-game universe is a stack of dungeons, extending above
and below the surface level you start on.

Each level is actually 9 sub-levels which you can reach by
following a tunnel. (In fact, the universe is more like 9
stacks of dungeons.)

All dungeons are permanent, in that the features, walls,
lakes and such are always the same. (The monsters and items
are different on each visit, however.)

There are special items that allow you to permanently alter
the dungeon. (These special items are represented in the
game as 'sigils'.)

There are tools and magic spells which allow you to dig into
the walls. Digging with tools is permanent, but any changes to 
the dungeon by spells aren't, and will revert on the next time
you visit the dungeon.

Each dungeon level typically has a hole which lets you reach
a lower dungeon level, though this isn't guaranteed. Some
levels have special means of going up or down that you will
need to figure out yourself. (Sometimes the links between
the universe layers are quite tricky, forming loops, dead
ends or bypasses.)


c) Winning the game
-------------------

Winning the game is deceptively simple: all you need to do
is find the Ring of Power and return it to the Astral
Throne, on the bottom of the lowest dungeon level. However,
there are caveats:

* There is one and only one Ring of Power in the game,
  regardless of the number of concurrent players.

* The Ring of Power will stay where you left it, regardless
  of when or who is playing.

* When the Ring of Power is in possession of a player, it
  grows in malignancy. The more malignant is the Ring, the
  more is affects your player's hunger stat.

* The only way to "reset" the Ring's malignancy is by
  destroying it; you can destroy it at any time, but
  destroying the ring will make it impossible to win the
  game for the next two hours.

* If the ring is destroyed it will regenerate on dungeon
  level 1 after two hours. The Ring will alse regenerate if
  it is in possession by a player for more than two hours.

At the very start of the game the Ring will be somewhere on
dungeon level 1.


d) Magic spells
---------------

There are two ways to gain the ability to cast spells:

1. By using statues.

2. By finding special items.

Statues are found on almost every dungeon level. To gain a
spell, you need to use the statue and have the appropriately
high (or low) karma, depending on the statue.

Your character's karma is either negative or positive, in
the range of -3 to 3. Karma is raised and lowered by killing
certain kinds of monsters.

Beware: if, once you gain a spell via a statue, your karma
then changes and falls outside the appropriate threshold,
you will lose the spell.

Spellcasting items are much rarer and more special, and they
don't have restrictions on karma. As long as the
spellcasting item is equipped, you will be able to cast the
spell (or spells).

To cast a spell your character doesn't need any sort of
'mana' or 'magic' energy. Magic energy is drawn directly
from the dungeon level. You can keep casting spells as long
as the ground or walls has enough magic energy left.

Note that magic energy, like karma, can be either 'positive'
or 'negative'. Which kind of energy is consumed depends on
the spell: some spells use 'positive' energy, while others
use 'negative' energy.

When magic energy is depleted from the ground it doesn't
disappear, it changes its sign. (Which means that if you
alternate a 'positive'-consuming spell and a
'negative'-consuming spell you can keep casting them
indefinitely.)


e) Graves and money
-------------------

When your character dies, a permanent gravestone mark is
left on the dungeon level. Next to the gravestone there
usually is a pile of gold pieces, corresponding to the
approximate net worth of the late character's posessions.

In general, gold is useless in the game, except for one
exception: the Temple of Midas.

You can sacrifice any gold in your equipment at the Temple,
in return for a special protective forcefield. This
forcefield will take damage instead of your character,
securely protecting against all kinds of possible attack
types. The capacity of the forcefield will depend on the
amount of money sacrificed.

As you sacrifice gold, the gold supply on the level will
become depleted. More characters will need to die to
replenish the gold piece piles.


f) The highscore tables
-----------------------

When playing online, every death will be recorded in the
highscore table.

There are four ways to browse the highscore table:
1. By highest player character level.
2. By lower dungeon level.
3. By highest dungeon level.
4. By largest net worth.

Just for fun you can also see the last 10 games played.