=== Using the Online Help ===

You can press Escape (ESC) at any time to leave the online help.

You can press Question Mark (?) to return to the previous help file.

You can press Space to advance one page, Plus (+) to advance one half page,
or Return to advance one line.  If you reach the end, you will jump to the
start.  You can press Minus (-) to back up one half page, Underscore (_) to
back up one page, or Equal (=) to back up one line.  If you reach the start,
you will stay there.  Advancing by one page is the only efficient method.

You can press Pound (#) [or Percent (%)] to go to a specific line [or file].

You can press Slash (/) [or Ampersand (&)] to search for [or highlight] a 
string (case-insensitive by default, (!) toggles to case-sensitive).
Use "#" + "0" + Return + "/" + Return to restart a search.

Please continue to press Space to view the rest of this file...


=== General Information ===

Angband is basically a complex single player dungeon simulation.  A player
creates a character, choosing from a variety of sexes, races and classes,
and then "runs" that character over a period of days, weeks, even months.

The player will begin his adventure on the town level where he may acquire
supplies, weapons, armor, and magical devices by buying from various shop
owners.  Then the player can descend into the Pits of Angband, where he will
explore the many levels of the dungeon, gaining experience by killing fierce
creatures, collecting powerful objects and valuable treasure, and returning
to town occasionally to buy and sell supplies.  Eventually, as the player
grows more experienced, he may attempt to win the game by defeating Morgoth,
the Lord of Darkness, who resides far below the surface.

Note that Angband is a very complex game, and it may be difficult to grasp
everything at first, especially if you have never played a "roguelike" game
before.  You should probably browse through all of the "online help files",
especially this one, before beginning any serious adventuring...

=== About the game ===

Angband has been maintained by a succession of volunteers since it was written
in the early 1990s. The current maintainer is Andi Sidwell. 

Angband is available for almost every known system (including Unix, Macintosh,
Amiga, Linux, Windows, DOS, Solaris, OS/2, RISC OS, etc).  It is written in C,
and the source code is freely available.  Creating a version for a new
platform involves writing as few as 100 lines of code and recompiling.

See the Official Angband Home Page at http://rephial.org/ for up to date
information about the latest version of Angband, including a complete list of
recent modifications and a wiki about the game which includes a full user
guide.

You can post compliments, complaints, suggestions, bug reports, and patches
at http://angband.oook.cz, or to the newsgroup 'rec.games.roguelike.angband'.
You can also post interesting experiences and ask for help.

This version of Angband is under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) version
2. A copy of this licence is included with the game, in the file copying.txt.

If you're interested in the development of the game, the public bug tracker
and development road map are at http://trac.rephial.org. 

The basic help files supplied with this game are more or less up to date,
but when in doubt, you should ask the newsgroup or the forum for confirmation.

Note that spoiler files are not distributed with the source since they may
spoil the game for new players (hence their name). If you want to use them,
you can obtain them from various places as with the source and executables.
Spoiler files may be placed into the "lib/info" directory, or into a user
specified external directory, to allow access via the "online help" system.

Remember to tell all your friends about how much you like Angband...




=== A quick demonstration ===

Angband is, as mentioned above, a very complex game, so you may want to
try the following quick demonstration.  The following instructions are
for demonstration purposes only, and so they are intentionally boring.

For this demo, I will assume that you have never played Angband before,
that you have not requested any special "sub-windows", that you have not
requested any special "graphics" modes, that you have a "numeric keypad"
on your computer, and that you are using the default options, including,
in particular, the "original" command set.  If any of these assumptions
are incorrect, you will need to keep in mind that this demo may not work.
There are many ways to view this file while playing, in particular, you
should be able to view it using the "online help" built into the game.

Any time you see the "-more-" prompt, read the message and press space.
This takes precedence over any other instructions.  At any other prompt,
for example, if you accidentally hit a key, you can normally "cancel" the
action in progress by pressing escape.

When the game starts up, depending on what platform you are using, you may
be taken directly to the character creation screen, or you may have to ask
to create a new character.  In either case, you will be shown the character
information screen, and you will be asked a series of questions.  For this
demo, press "a" four times to select a "female human warrior" character with
the point-based stat allocation system.  You will now be presented with a
description of your character.  Look over the description briefly, there is
a lot of information here, and most of it will not make any sense.  Press
enter three times and your character will be placed into the "town".

You should now be looking at the basic dungeon interaction screen.  To the
left is some information about your character.  To the right is an overhead
view of the town.  Nothing happens in Angband while the game is waiting for
you to specify a command, so take a good look at the town.  You will see a
variety of symbols on the screen.  Each symbol normally represents a terrain
feature, an object, or a monster.  The "@" symbol is special, it represents
your character.  You can use the "/" command to find out what a given symbol
represents.  Press "/" plus "@" now to verify the meaning of the "@" symbol.

The "#" symbols around the edge of the town represent the walls that surround
the the town.  The "#" symbols arranged in large rectangles represent stores.
The "numeric" symbols represent an "entrance" to a store.  The "." symbols
represent "floor" grids which are "illuminated".  It is currently daytime,
so most of the town should consist of stores and illuminated floor grids.

Any "alphabetic" symbols always represent monsters, where the word "monsters"
specifies a wide variety of entities, including people, animals, plants, etc.
Only a few "races" of monsters normally appear in town, and most of them are
harmless (avoid any mercenaries or veterans if you see them).  The most 
common "monsters" in town are small animals (cats and dogs) and townspeople 
(merchants, mercenaries, miscreants, etc).

Now use the "l" command to "look" around.  This will cause the cursor to be
moved onto each "interesting" grid that can be "seen" by your character, one
at a time, giving you a description of that grid.  The cursor always starts
on the grid containing your character.  In this case, you will see a message
telling you that your character is standing on a staircase.  Keep pressing
space until the prompt goes away.  Note that your character can only "see"
a subset of the things which are actually displayed on the screen.

Now press "i", to display your character's "inventory".  All new characters
start out with some objects to help them survive.  Your character will have
some food, a potion, some torches, and a scroll.  Press "e" to see what you
are wearing.  You will find you are wearing chain mail on your body, wielding
a broad sword and lighting the way with a torch.  You have many other
equipment slots but they are all currently empty.  

Press "t" to take something off.  Note that the equipment listing is reduced to
those objects which can actually be taken off.  Press "g" to take off the
chain mail, and then press "e" again.  Note that the chain mail is no longer
shown in the equipment.  Press escape.  Press "w" to wield something
and observe that the inventory listing is reduced to those objects which can 
actually be wielded or worn, press "e" to rewield the chain mail.

Monsters can only move after you use a command which takes "energy" from your
character.  So far, you have used the "w" and "t" commands, which take energy,
and the "e", "i", "l", and "/" commands, which are "free" commands, and so do
not take any energy.  In general, the only commands which take energy are the
ones which require your character to perform some action in the world of the
game, such as moving around, attacking monsters, and interacting with objects.

If there were any monsters near your character while you were experimenting
with the "w" and "t" commands, you may have seen them "move" or even "attack"
your character.  Although unlikely, it is even possible that your character
has already been killed.  This is the only way to lose the game.  So if you
have already lost, simply exit the game and restart this demo.

One of the most important things that your character can do is move around.
Use the numeric keys on the keypad to make your character move around.  The
"4", "6", "8", and "2" keys move your character west, east, north, and south,
and the "7", "9", "1" and "3" keys move your character diagonally.  When your
character first moves, observe the ">" symbol that is left behind.  This is
the "staircase" that she was standing on earlier in the demo.

Attempting to stay away from monsters, try and move your character towards
the entrance to the "general store", which is represented as a brown "1" on 
the screen.  As your character moves around, use the "l" command to look 
around.You can press escape at any time to cancel the looking.  If you die, 
start over.  As you get close to the general store, your character will be able
to "see" the entrance.  Note that you can see the entrance no matter where
your character is, but your character cannot see it unless she is close to
it, and there are no walls between her and the entrance.

One of the hardest things for people to get used to, when playing games of
this nature for the first time, is that the character is not the same as the
player.  The player presses keys, and looks at a computer screen, while the
character performs complex actions, and interacts with a virtual world.  The
player decides what the character should do, and tells her to do it, and the
character then performs the actions.  These actions may induce some changes
in the virtual world.  Some of these changes may be apparent to the character,
and information about the changes is then made available to the player by a
variety of methods, including messages, character state changes, or visual
changes to the screen.  Some changes may only be apparent to the player.

There are also a whole set of things that the player can do that can not even
be described in the virtual world inhabited by the character, such as resize
windows, read online help files, modify colormaps, or change options.  Some
of these things may even affect the character in abstract ways, for example,
the player can request that from now on all monsters know exactly where the
character is at all times, or that the character be able to "look" at things
which are on the other side of walls.  Likewise, there are some things that
the character does on a regular basis that the player may not even consider,
such as digesting food, or searching for traps while running down a hallway.

To make matters worse, as you get used to the difference between the player
and the character, it becomes so "obvious" that you start to ignore it.  At
that point, you find yourself merging the player and the character in your
mind, and you find yourself saying things like "So yesterday, I was at my
friend's house, and I stayed up late playing Angband, and I was attacked by
some wild dogs, and I got killed by a demon, but I made it to the high score
list", in which the pronoun changes back and forth from the real world to
the virtual one several times in the same sentence.  So, from this point on
you may have to separate the player and the character for yourself.

So anyway, keep walking towards the entrance to the general store until you
actually walk into it.  At this point, the screen should change to the store
interaction screen.  You will see the name of the shop-keeper, and the name
of the shop, and a list of objects which are available.  If there are more
than twelve different objects, you can use the space key to advance to the
next page of objects.  The general store is the only store with a fixed 
inventory, although the amount of various items may vary.  One of the items
sold here are flasks of oil.  Press "down" to highlight the line with flasks
of oil and press the "p" key to purchase some.  If you are asked how many 
you want, just hit enter.  Any time you are asked a question and there is 
already something under the cursor, pressing return will accept that choice.  
Hit enter to accept the price.  Many commands work inside the store,
for example, use the "i" command to see your inventory, with the new flask
of oil.  Note that your inventory is always kept sorted in a semi-logical
order, so the indexes of some of the objects may change as your inventory
changes.

Purchase a few more flasks of oil, if possible, this time, when asked how
many you want, press "3" plus return to buy three flasks at once.  Flasks of
oil are very important for low level characters, because not only can they
be used to fuel a lantern (whenyou find one), but also, they can be ignited 
and thrown at monsters from a distance.  So it is often a good idea to have 
a few extra flasks of oil.  Press escape to leave the store.  If you want, 
take time to visit the rest of the stores.  One of the buildings, marked with 
an "8", is your "home", and is not a real store.  You can drop things off at
home and they will stay there until you return to pick them up.  The interface
is exactly the same as a store, but there is no paying prompt.

Now move to the staircase, represented by the ">" symbol, and press ">", to
go down the stairs.  At this point, you are in the dungeon.  Use the "l"
command to look around.  Note that you are standing on a staircase leading
back to town.  Use the "<" command to take the stairs back to town.  You may
find that any townspeople that were here before have disappeared and new ones
have appeared instead.  This happens any time you move to a new level  Now use
the ">" command to go back down the stairs into the dungeon.  You are now in
a different part of the dungeon than you were in before.  The dungeon is so
huge, once you leave one part of the dungeon, you will never find it again.

Now look the screen.  Your character may be in a lit room, represented as a
large rectangle of illuminated floor grids ("."), surrounded by walls ("#").
If you are not in a lit room, keep going back up to the town and back down
into the dungeon until you are.  Now look around.  You may see some closed
doors ("+") or some open doors ("'") or some holes (".") in the walls which
surround the room.  If you do not, keep playing the stairway game until you
are in such a room.  This will keep the demo simple.

Now look around using the "l" command.  You may see some monsters and/or some
objects in the room with you.  You may see some stairs up ("<") or some stairs
down (">").  If you see any monsters, move up next to the monster, using the
movement keys, and then try and move into the monster.  This will cause you to
attack the monster.  Keep moving into the monster until you kill the monster,
or it runs away, or you die.  If you die, start a new game.  If the monster
runs away, ignore it, or chase it, but do not leave the room.  Once all the
monsters in the room are dead or gone, walk on top of any objects in the room.
Press "g" to get the object, and it will be added to your inventory.  If there 
are any closed doors ("+") in the room walk up next to them and press "o" 
and then the direction key which would move you into the door, which should 
attempt to "open" the door.

Now use the movement keys to explore the dungeon.  As you leave the room, you
will probably notice that your character cannot see nearly as far as she could
in the room.  Also, you will notice that as she moves around, the screen keeps
displaying some of the grids that your character has seen.  Think of this as a
kind of "map" superimposed on the world itself, the player can see the entire
map, but the character can only see those parts of the world which are actually
nearby.  If the character gets near the edge of the "map" portion of the screen
the entire map will scroll to show a new portion of the world.  Only about ten
percent of the dungeon level can be seen by the player at one time, but you
can use the "L" command to look at other pieces of the map.  Use the "." key,
plus a direction, to "run" through the dungeon.  Use the "R" key, plus return,
to force your character to "rest" until she has recovered from any damage she
incurs while attacking monsters.  Use the "M" key to see the entire dungeon
level at once, and hit escape when done.  If your food rations are still at
index "a" in your inventory, press "E" + "a" to eat some food.  If your oil
is still at index "b" in your inventory, and there is a monster nearby, press 
"v" + "b" + "'" to throw a flask of oil at the nearest monster.  To drop an 
item from your inventory, press "d" plus the index of that item.  You can use 
the "^X" key to quit and save the game.

You now know enough to play a quick game of Angband.  There is a lot more for
you to learn, including how to interpret information about your character, how
to create different kinds of characters, how to determine which equipment to
wield/wear, how to use various kinds of objects, and how to use the more than
fifty different commands available to your character.  The best resource for
learning these things is the online help, which include, among other things,
a complete list of all commands available to your player, and a list of all
the symbols which you may encounter in the dungeon, and information about
creating new characters.