Update 1. Caution, big pictures ahead. If anyone could tell me how to make these things smaller, I'd appreciate it.

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Presenting out hero. Also presenting the interface. The middle is the map. I hope you weren't expecting fancy graphics, as the default is ASCII. This is an improvement. The bottom left and middle areas go to text. The bottom right is our inventory (currently a robe, a Book of Frost and a bread ration) and below it is a list of items on the ground, if any. Above that is the minimap - light grey is floor, dark grey represents walls, items are green, monsters are red, staircases up are blue, stairs down are purple, traps are yellow, friendly monsters are pink, and the character/casualty is the white dot.

Above these are stats. A name and a title - the title depends on your highest skill, and how many ranks we have in it. A small amount of ice magic as the highest skill nets the title of "chiller". Azurith the Chiller sounds vaguely like a rapper, but we'll just have to deal with that. Level, HP and MP are self-explanatory. Strength governs carrying capacity and meleeing, while dexterity governs evasion, stealth (I think), lighter weapons and ranged weapons. Int affects casting exclusively. Doesn't affect MP, surprisingly enough.

AC is armour class. It subtracts damage from every hit through a rather labyrinthine formula. EV stands for evasion - dodging things. SH is shield value - how much your shield helps to block things. Our shield, being non-existant, is rather unhelpful. Place and gold are self-explanatory. Exp Pool refers to XP gained from killing stuff, that is then spent to practice skills (practice only counts if the pool is not empty). Not to be confused with the XP used for levelling. Turn=turn count. Wp=wielded weapon or item. Qv= quivered item. Below this, you may sometimes see status effects.

With that out of the way, onward to horrible death!



I ignore the robe and sling, but take the unidentified potion and move further down. Bread ration, nice. Amulet this early on? Promising. The hobgoblin is less good. Some violence is clearly in order.



The hobgoblin was, in the above picture, asleep, as indicated by the ? above it. This does not last, being as thoroughly unstealthy as I am. The only spell we can call on at the moment is Freeze - not too damaging as yet, and only usable in melee range. At least it slows cold-blooded creatures. Two shots (1 MP each, and I only start with 3) takes out the hobgoblin. Incidentally, playing a merfolk caster is quite different from the Deep Elves I'm used to. Less MP and raw power, sure, but considerably more strength and, more importantly, HP. I'm used to 6 HP and 5 strength or so at this stage.



Pictured: Azurith one-shots a goblin with a runed dagger, followed by a giant newt. This is good. A dagger means a weapon, and one that can butcher corpses for food, at that. A giant newt, meanwhile, is edible. So are goblins, but being humanoids, they're liable to make the eater sick.

Wielding the dagger reveals that it has a brand attached. Specifically, the rather highly damaging brand of electrocution. Fancy. Too bad our noodly-armed caster won't be hitting anything much, but it makes for a decent backup weapon.



Giant geckos. Worse than it sounds, in the early game. For casters, at least. They can hit quite hard, and occasionally get two attacks/moves in the time that you get one. A quick look into the room it's in gets me spotted by a hobgoblin as well, though the kobold in the room thankfully doesn't notice me.



Two dagger blows and a handful of Freeze spells dispose of them, if only barely. The gecko is edible. Meanwhile, our hero is mauled, and finds the experience disagreeable. Let's not do that again. A little resting brings my HP back up.



As you can see, I later tracked down, froze and killed the kobold. Do not eat kobolds without the appropriate resistance, as they are one of a number of poisonous creatures in the game. I'm not joking when I say that, at this stage, eating a kobold will kill any character without a means to cure poison.

For those of you wondering about my inventory, the meat-on-the-bone pictures are reptile meat of various sorts, while the amulet is now around my neck. The only harmful amulet in the game is the amulet of inaccuracy, which is almost harmless on a caster, and the rest give out some decent immunities to status effects (confusion, for instance), so there's no harm in wearing it and identifying this thing later. I'll identify the potions by drinking them, as soon as I become tough enough to survive any potential poison potions.


That's it for this time, largely because of the high infodump content. That, and it's late here. Later updates will be less slow-paced, and probably just highlight anything interesting that happens. This is just a beginning for those new to the game, really. Sorry if it bored anyone.

Next update will probably come in two days. Maybe in about 24 hours, with some luck.