=== The Town and Wilderness === After you have created your character, you will begin your Zangband adventure in the town. Symbols appearing on your screen will represent the 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]). ***** === Town and Wilderness Symbols === Symbols on your map can be broken down into three categories: terrain features such as walls, floor and doors, and trees, water and lava; objects which can be picked up such as treasure, weapons, magical devices, etc; and creatures which may or may not move about, but are mostly harmful to your character's well being. Symbols specific to the town and wilderness are shown below. Note that many creatures and objects from the dungeon may also appear in town and you should also review the comprehensive listing of all the various symbols which can be found in the dungeon section (see dungeon.txt#MapSymbols [2]). Terrains ------- % Trees and shrubs ~ Water/Lava terrains : Rubble/Stone terrains ; Grasses and swamps . Floor terrains (road, dirt, sand, mud, etc) ^ Mountains > Dungeon entrance # Town walls + Town gates [0-9] Shops and buildings Note that some of these terrains may also appear in the dungeon. ***** === The Town Level === The town level is where you will begin your adventure. The first time you are in town it will be daytime (unless you are playing an undead race who start at night), but note that the sun rises and falls as time passes and if you enter the town at night, the town will be dark. Fortunately, the various shops and the other special buildings are open on a 24-hour basis. Later versions of Zangband have introduced a dramatically extended town level to the game. In addition to the basic town and the standard nine shops, new buildings and multiple towns separated by a wilderness were added. While most people welcome these new additions, they are not for everyone and consequently, there are two possible town options in Zangband - the 'Standard' town(s) and the 'Vanilla' town. The default is the standard town. The vanilla town option can be selected during character generation. (see option.txt#StartUp [3]) Your choice of town is fixed for the duration of your character's life and will be the new default for future characters created with that savefile. This of course may be changed during the creation of your next character. ***** --- The 'Standard' Town --- The 'standard' town consists of a large world which contains themed wilderness terrain (mountainous areas, oceans, plains, etc). There are several towns located in various parts of the world. The wilderness is not uninhabited and can be dangerous indeed for the unwary. As a general rule, the further your character gets from civilization the more cautious he or she should be. Your character will start in a relatively harmless area of the wilderness. Towns vary in size and will contain a differing selection of shops. The starting town will contain an entrance to the dungeon and a Dungeon Supplies store which carries all the basic items you need to get through the first few levels of the game. As your character gains levels, you will need to journey into the wilderness seeking other towns and cities to purchase and sell higher-level objects. Zangband contains more than 100 different kinds of shops each with different themes. Specialist stores may stock powerful items but usually at steep premiums. Note that some shops offer services, rather than products. You should also note that the largere towns, do not contain entrances to the dungeon. You must be within a certain proximity to a dungeon entrance for spells and scrolls which teleport you to the dungeon to work. ***** --- The 'Vanilla' Town --- The vanilla town consists of nine shops (including a home) and an impenetrable wall which surrounds the town. There are no other embellishments. The nine shops available are similar to those in standard Angband (withth addition of a book store) and are designed to be sufficient for an entire game of Zangband. ***** === Townspeople === The town contains many different kinds of people. There are the street urchins, young children who will mob an adventurer for money, and seem to come out of the woodwork when excited. Blubbering idiots are a constant annoyance, but not harmful. Public drunks wander about the town singing, and are of no threat to anyone. Sneaky rogues who work for the black market are always greedily eyeing your backpack for potential new 'purchases'. . . And finally, what town would be complete without a swarm of half drunk warriors, who take offense or become annoyed just for the fun of it. Most of the townspeople should be avoided by the largest possible distance when you wander from store to store. Fights will break out, though, so be prepared. Since your character grew up in this world of intrigue, no experience is awarded for killing the town inhabitants, though you may acquire treasure. One word of warning however, occasionally a creature who normally would inhabit only the wilderness and dungeons may wander into the town. These should generally be handled with much more caution than the ordinary townspeople. ***** === Shopping in Town === Your character will begin his adventure with some basic supplies, and some extra gold with which to purchase more supplies at the town stores. You may enter any open store and barter with the owner for items you can afford by simply moving onto the entrance, which is represented by a number from 0 to 9. Once inside a store, you will see the name and race of the store owner, the name of the store, the maximum amount of cash that the store owner will pay for any one item, and the store inventory, listed along with tentative prices, which will become "fixed" (at the "final offer") should you ever manage to haggle a store owner down to his final offer (see below [4]). You will also see an (incomplete) list of available commands. Note that many of the commands which work in the dungeon work in the stores as well, but some do not, especially those which involve "using" objects. Stores do not always have everything in stock. As the game progresses, they may get new items so check from time to time. Also, if you sell them an item, it may get sold to a customer while you are adventuring, so don't always expect to be able to get back everything you have sold. The inventory of a store may change even if you don't go into the dungeon. If you have a lot of spare gold, you can purchase every item in a store, which will induce the store owner to bring out new stock, and perhaps even retire. Store owners will not buy harmful or useless items. If an object is unidentified, they will pay you some base price for it. Once they have bought it they will immediately identify the object. If it is a good object, they will add it to their inventory. If it was a bad bargain, they simply throw the item away. In any case, you may receive some knowledge of the item if another is encountered. ***** --- Bartering --- When bartering, you enter prices you will pay (or accept) for some object. You can either enter the absolute amount, or precede a number with a plus or minus sign to give a positive or negative increment on your previous offer. But be warned that the owners can easily be insulted, and may even throw you out for a while if you insult them too often. If you consistently bargain well in a store, that is, you reach the final offer much more often than not, then the store owner will eventually recognize that you are a superb haggler, and will go directly to the final offer instead of haggling with you. Items which cost less than 10 gold pieces do not count, as haggling well with these items is usually either very easy or almost impossible. The more expensive the item is, the less likely the store owner is to assume that you are a good haggler. Note that you may disable haggling with a software option, though this will inflict a 10% "sales tax" on all purchases for which the store owner would have required you to haggle. (See option.txt for details). ***** ---- Object Pricing --- Each store owner has three primary attributes: the maximum amount they will pay for an object, their race and how greedy they are. Each of these affects how much a store owner will charge for an object and how much they are prepared to pay for something. Only the first two attributes can be known by the player. The final factors affecting pricing are the race and charisma of the player. Each object has a base value which is contained in the game's source code. This value is modified based on the store owner's greed (greedy store owners charge more and will pay less), your charisma (charismatic players pay less and can charge more) and whether or not the shopkeeper is friendly to your race (dwarves dislike elves so a dwarf shopkeeper will charge an elf player more and pay less for items the player is selling). Finally, when selling objects, the cap on the store owner's purse is applied so that even a favored race with a high charisma can not sell an item for more than that amount. This cap applies only to single items so it is possible to sell a stack of similar items for more than the cap on the store owner's purse. ***** === List of Shops === Junk Stores ("0") Junk stores stock, lets face it, junk. But you may occasionally find smoething of use within them. General Suplies Stores ("1") General stores typically stock basic necessities for entering the dungeon such as food, drink, some clothing, torches, lamps, oil, shovels, picks, and spikes. Some general stores (notably the "Dungeon Supplies" store) may also sell basic magical items. Armour Stores ("2") Armour stores are where the town's armor is fashioned. All sorts of protective gear may be bought and sold here. Weapons Stores ("3") Weapons stores are where the town's weapons are fashioned. Hand and missile weapons may be purchased and sold here, along with arrows, bolts, and shots. Alchemy Stores ("5") Alchemy Stores deal in all types of potions and scrolls and magical books. Magic User's Stores ("6") Magic User's Stores deal in all sorts of rings, wands, amulets, and staves, as well as some magic books. Your Home ("8") This is your house where you can store objects that you cannot carry on your travels, or will need at a later date. Special Buildings ("7" and "9") Special buildings provide services at a price. -- Original : (??) Updated : (??) Updated : Zangband DevTeam Last update: May 25, 2001 ***** Begin Hyperlinks ***** [1] command.txt ***** [2] dungeon.txt#MapSymbols ***** [3] option.txt#StartUp ***** [4] town.txt#Bartering