=== The Dungeon === Although Zangband contains an extensive town level featuring multiple towns and a large wilderness area, the bulk of your adventuring will take place in the dungeon. Symbols appearing on your screen will represent the dungeon's walls, floor, objects, features, and creatures lurking about. In order to direct your character through his adventure, you will enter single character commands (see command.txt [1]). ***** === Symbols On Your Map === Symbols on your map can be broken down into three categories: Features of the dungeon such as walls, floor, doors, and traps; Objects which can be picked up such as treasure, weapons, magical devices, etc; and creatures which may or may not move about the dungeon, but are mostly harmful to your character's well being. Some symbols are used to represent more than one type of entity, and some symbols are used to represent entities in more than one category. The "@" symbol (by default) is used to represent the character. It will not be necessary to remember all of the symbols and their meanings. The "slash" command ("/") will identify any character appearing on your map Note that you can use a "user pref file" to change any of these symbols to something you are more comfortable with. --- Features that do not block line of sight --- . A floor space % (Green) A Tree . A trap (hidden) ~ (Light Blue) Shallow Water ^ A trap (known) ~ (Dark Blue) Deep Water ; A glyph of warding ~ (Orange) Shallow Lava ' An open door ~ (Red) Deep Lava ' A broken door < A staircase up > A staircase down --- Features that block line of sight --- # A secret door # A wall + A closed door % A mineral vein + A locked door * Treasure in wall / Pattern + A jammed door : A pile of rubble ***** === Within The Dungeon === Once your character is adequately supplied with food, light, armor, and weapons, he is ready to enter the dungeon. Move on top of the '>' symbol and use the "Down" command (">"). Your character will enter a maze of interconnecting staircases and finally arrive somewhere on the first level of the dungeon. Each level of the dungeon is fifty feet high (thus dungeon level "Lev 1" is often called "50 ft"), and is divided into (large) rectangular regions (several times larger than the screen) by titanium walls. Once you leave a level by a staircase, you will never again find your way back to that region of that level, but there are an infinite number of other regions at that same "depth" that you can explore later. So be careful that you have found all the treasure before you leave a level, or you may never find it again! The monsters, of course, can use the stairs, and you may eventually encounter them again. In the dungeon, there are many things to find, but your character must survive many horrible and challenging encounters to find the treasure lying about and take it safely back to the town to sell. There are two sources for light once inside the dungeon. Permanent light which has been magically placed within rooms, and a light source carried by the player. If neither is present, the character will be unable to see. This will affect searching, picking locks, disarming traps, reading scrolls, casting spells, browsing books, etc. So be very careful not to run out of light! A character must wield a torch or lamp in order to supply his own light. A torch or lamp burns fuel as it is used, and once it is out of fuel, it stops supplying light. You will be warned as the light approaches this point. You may use the "Fuel" command ("F") to refuel your lantern (with flasks of oil) or your torch (with other torches), so it is a good idea to carry extra torches or flasks of oil, as appropriate. There are rumors of objects of exceptional power which glow with their own never-ending light. ***** === Objects In The Dungeon === The dungeons are full of objects just waiting to be picked up and used. How did they get there? Well, the main source for useful items are all the foolish adventurers that proceeded into the dungeon before you. They get killed, and the helpful creatures scatter the various treasure throughout the dungeon. Most cursed items are placed there by the joyful evil sorcerers, who enjoy a good joke when it gets you killed. One item in particular will be discussed here. The scroll of "Word of Recall" can be found within the dungeon, or bought at the temple in town. It acts in two manners, depending upon your current location. If read within the dungeon, it will teleport you back to town. If read in town, it will teleport you back down to the deepest level of the dungeon which your character has previously been on. This makes the scroll very useful for getting back to the deeper levels of Zangband. Once the scroll has been read it takes a while for the spell to act, so don't expect it to save you in a crisis. Reading a second scroll before the first has had a chance to take effect will cancel both scrolls. Since an accidental dive to a new depth (via a trapdoor, for example), may result in the Word of Recall dungeon depth being 'broken', so to speak (meaning that the next Word of Recall in town will take you back deeper than you would like to), there is a new feature in Zangband which allows you to read a scroll of Word of Recall on a different level and 'reset' the recall depth to that level (instead of the deepest level). A more complete description of Zangband objects is found elsewhere in the documentation (see objects.txt [2]). ***** === Mining === Much of the treasure within the dungeon can be found only by mining it out of the walls. Many rich strikes exist within each level, but must be found and mined. Quartz veins are the richest, yielding the most metals and gems, but magma veins will have some hordes hidden within. Mining is rather difficult without a pick or shovel. Picks and shovels have an additional magical ability expressed as '(+#)'. The higher the number, the better the magical digging ability of the tool. A pick or shovel also has plusses to hit and damage, and can be used as a weapon, because, in fact, it is one. When a vein of quartz or magma is located, the character may wield his pick or shovel and begin digging out a section. When that section is removed, he can locate another section of the vein and begin the process again. Since granite rock is much harder to dig through, it is much faster to follow the vein exactly and dig around the granite. There is an option for highlighting magma and quartz. At a certain point, it becomes more cumbersome to dig out treasure than to simply kill monsters and discover items in the dungeon to sell. However, early on mineral veins can be a wonderful source of easy treasure. If the character has a scroll, staff, or spell of treasure location, he can immediately locate all strikes of treasure within a vein shown on the screen. This makes mining much easier and more profitable. Note that a character with high strength and/or a heavy weapon does not need a shovel/pick to dig, but even the strongest character will benefit from a pick if trying to dig through a granite wall. It is sometimes possible to get a character trapped within the dungeon by using various magical spells and items. So it can be a good idea to always carry some kind of digging tool, even when you are not planning on tunneling for treasure. There are rumors of certain incredibly profitable rooms buried deep in the dungeon and completely surrounded by titanium and granite walls, requiring a digging implement or magical means to enter. The same rumors imply that these rooms are guarded by incredibly powerful monsters, so beware! ***** === Staircases, Secret Doors, Passages, and Rooms === Staircases are the manner in which you get deeper or climb out of the dungeon. The symbols for the up and down staircases are the same as the commands to use them. A "<" represents an up staircase and a ">" represents a down staircase. You must move your character over the staircase before you can use it. Each level has at least one up staircase and at least two down staircases. There are no exceptions to this rule. You may have trouble finding some well hidden secret doors, or you may have to dig through obstructions to get to them, but you can always find the stairs if you look hard enough. Stairs, like titanium walls, and the doors into shops, cannot be destroyed by any means. Many secret doors are used within the dungeon to confuse and demoralize adventurers foolish enough to enter. But with some luck, and lots of concentration, you can find these secret doors. Secret doors will sometimes hide rooms or corridors, or even entire sections of that level of the dungeon. Sometimes they simply hide small empty closets or even dead ends. Secret doors always look like granite walls, just like traps always look like normal floors. Like normal doors, a secret door may also be locked or jammed. Creatures in the dungeon will generally know and use these secret doors, and can often be counted on to leave them open behind them when they pass through. Often the creature won't know how to open a door and will simply bash it open. Once a door is bashed open, it is forever useless and cannot be closed. ***** === Level Feelings === Once you have been on a particular dungeon level for a while, you will receive a 'feeling' prompt representing what your intuition tells you about the quality of objects and the difficulty of the monsters found on that level. You may check this prompt again at any time after receiving it by pressing 'Ctrl-F'. The actual 'feeling' prompt is generated based on a number of factors. Things which increase the feeling level include the presence of vaults and certain other special rooms, out of depth objects and monsters and objects of a certain quality (for example, ego items, artifacts and other objects that are considered 'great' (see objects.txt)). A feeling is only indicative of the level at the time you entered it and has no impact on subsequent monsters generated or items dropped. In Zangband, the nastier the feeling prompt, the better the level. From worst to best, the prompts are as follows: 'What a boring place...' 'This level looks reasonably safe.' 'You don't like the look of this place.' 'You feel your luck is turning...' 'You feel nervous.' 'You have a bad feeling...' 'You have a very bad feeling...' 'This level looks very dangerous.' 'You nearly faint as horrible visions of death fill your mind!' Zangband also uses two other feeling prompts to denote special things. If you have not yet been on a level long enough to qualify for a prompt and press 'Ctrl-F', you will be given the prompt: 'Looks like any other level.' If you are playing in non-preserve mode, you may also occasionally receive the following prompt: 'You feel there is something special about this level.' A special feeling means one of two things, there is either a special room or vault on the level or there is an artifact on the level. As you get deeper on the dungeon, special feelings become increasingly less common for special room and vaults and are only commonly given when an artifact has been generated. Note it is possible that there could be both a vault and an artifact or more than one artifact on a special level so you should never leave a special level without fully exploring it unless your character's continued survival is in question. ***** === Random Quests === During character generation, you will be asked to input the number of random quests you wish to participate in. You may choose any number from 0 to 49. Random quests are always of the type 'Kill a random number of an out-of depth monster'. There is a limit to the number of levels a random quest monster may be out-of-depth but these quests can still be very dangerous. Random quests always appear on even levels and are equally spaced throughout the dungeon (for example, a choice of 49 random quests results in one such quest on every even level until level 98 (level 100 is the Serpent quest)). On entering a random quest level you will be told what the quest monster is and how many you have to kill (for example, 'This level is guarded by 10 young green dragons'). On random quest levels, no down staircases are generated until the last monster is killed which means that you cannot continue further into the dungeon until you have completed your quests. When you kill the last quest monster, the down staircase will be created and the monster will drop an item of 'excellent' quality or above. This is true even of monsters that do not normally drop items. Using the services of the Trump Tower (see the Town section) can teleport you past a particularly nasty quest but you must come back and finish it later if you want your character to be a winner. Random quests can be either 'easy' or 'hard' and you must choose which type you want during character generation. This choice is irrevocable for the duration of the character's dungeon diving career. 'Easy' means that the game tracks how many quest monsters you have killed on each attempt at the quest and adds these to the total count. This allows you to kill one or more quest monsters, leave the level and return later to finish up. 'Hard' means that each time you enter the quest level the number of quest monsters remaining is reset. In other words, you have to kill all the quest monsters in one go. 'Hard' quests can allow you to 'farm' the quest monsters by killing all but one, leaving the level and repeating. This allows you to collect and sell the dropped items and gain repeated experience for killing the monsters. This technique is frowned upon by many players and should be noted in any 'winner' post to the newsgroup. Note that to avoid some ugly abuses available to players, the Genocide, Mass-Genocide and *Destruction* spells are prevented from working on random quests monsters. Random quest monsters may also not be cloned or tamed. -- Original : (??) Updated : (??) Updated : Zangband DevTeam Last update: May 29, 2000 ***** Begin Hyperlinks ***** [1] command.txt ***** [2] objects.txt