=== The Hengband Newbie Guide === Note: This guide has been adapted from The Angband Newbie Guide by Chris Weisiger and has undergone certain revisions to conform more closely to Hengband. === Basic Training === When you load the game, select "Start a new character." Go through the step-by-step instructions for picking a gender, race, and class. For your first time, we recommend choosing a Golem Warrior. Avoid the spellcaster types; they're much more difficult to play. If you want basic information about races and classes, go to the on-line help (type "?") and read "Character Attributes". You should probably read most of the help files here; the commands list is especially important to someone new to Hengband. After naming your character, you'll start in the town. The various numbers represent stores, where you can buy new equipment and sell stuff you've found in the dungeon. The little ">" is a staircase, the entrance to the dungeon. Stand on the entrance to the dungeon, and type ">", and you enters into the dungeon, and then type "<", and you return to the surface. Next, type "<" again on the surface. If there are no hostile monsters near you, you will enters the Global Map mode which displays all the world of Hengband. Type ">" to return from global map mode to normal map mode. If you want to know what a specific symbol stands for, type "/", and then the symbol. For instance, if you're wondering what all the t's are, type "/t", and the game will tell you that these are townspeople. You can also "l"ook at an item, feature, or monster. While looking, pressing space or enter will cycle through the different "interesting" things in view. There is also a full map function: type "M". It will bring up a map of the entire area (just a single screen in the case of the town, but useful later on in the dungeon). Finally, if you type "L", you can scroll the (full-zoom) map around the dungeon. In general, you can use "M" to find areas that look interesting and "L" to look at them in detail. Take a look around the town, but avoid the Mean-Looking Mercenaries and Battle-Scarred Veterans; they can kill you fairly easily. A note on shop #7; it's the black market, where very powerful items are sold for an absolutely ridiculous price. Any good item can show up in this store (barring standard artifacts), so look here for those items that don't show up in other stores. Be sure to visit shops #1 and #2, the General Store and Armory, respectively. At the General Store, buy a cloak and a Brass Lantern, and a flask of oil or two. Sell your torches. At the Armory, buy some of the light armor. Suggested: Hard Leather Boots, a Leather Cap, Leather Gloves. If a Small Leather Shield is on sale and you can afford it, buy it. This should have cleaned out your money. However, if it hasn't, it is strongly recommended that you go to the Alchemist's shop (#5) and purchase a scroll of Phase Door. If you get surrounded by monsters, read it, and you'll be teleported a short distance away. Of course, it's possible that these items will not be available in the stores. The stores will "refresh" themselves every 1000 turns, getting rid of old items and buying new ones. If you ever find that there's something you need which the stores don't currently have, you can wait a while for the stores to refresh. Hengband's not actually all that difficult to learn to play. You should get the hang of it fairly quickly. From here on we'll be giving detailed dungeon survival information. Some of it is intuitive, and some of it you aren't likely to find out without a lot of deaths first. If you want to experience the painful learning process in all it's glory, don't read further. If, however, you're sick and tired of dying, read ahead. === On weapons and multiple blows === Most characters will start the game being able to get two blows per round with their weapon when attacking. Whether or not you get more blows than this later in the game will be determined by your class, your weapon weight, your Strength, and your Dexterity. Check your Character display (type "C"). Somewhere on this page, there is a number that is your number of blows/round. Multiple blows become very important later in the dungeon since the more times you hit, the more damage your weapon does (obviously). === On important magical items === You might think that you can get by without magical items. If so, you're bound for an interesting, but short, stay in the dungeon. It'll probably be one-way, too. --- Teleportation Items --- The most important items have be those of teleportation. There are many basic types: Phase Door teleports you up to 10 squares away. Useful for the Shoot 'n Scoot maneuver; more on this later. Teleport teleports you across the dungeon, sometimes landing you in more trouble than you started in. Better than certain death, though. Teleport Away teleports a monster (or several monsters) away from you. Safer than Teleport, but you might not be able to get them all in one strike. Teleport Level moves you up or down one level. If the level you're on is full of dangerous monsters and you need to teleport, this could be your ticket to safety. *Destruction* this powerful spell removes everything (including artifacts!) from the area around you, blasting the surroundings and causing rock to fall from the ceiling. If you're ever in deep trouble, this is the safest way to escape. --- Healing Items --- The second most important items are those of healing. Healing, in this case, covers Cure Light/Serious/Critical Wounds, Healing, *Healing*, and Life Potions, from weakest to strongest. Cure Light Wounds restores 2d8 hitpoints and removes cuts, blindness and berserk. Cure Serious Wounds restores 4d8 hitpoints and removes cuts, blindness, confusion and berserk. Cure Critical Wounds restores 6d8 hitpoints and removes cuts, blindness, confusion, stun, poison and berserk. Curing restores 50 hitpoints and removes cuts, blindness, confusion, stun, poison and hallucination. Healing restores 300 hitpoints and removes cuts, blindness, confusion, stun, poison and berserk. *Healing* restores 1200 hitpoints and removes cuts, blindness, confusion, stun, poison and berserk. Potions of Life restores 5000 hitpoints (about 5 times more than you'll ever have), restores all drained stats and experience, and removes all bad effects except hunger. These are very rare; save them in your home for a dangerous fight. --- Items for Identifying Objects --- There are various methods of Identify which you *need*. Identify comes in the form of scrolls, Staffs of Perception, Rods of Perception, the spell Identify, and the prayer Perception. These will tell you any magical properties of the item, like magical bonuses to hit and to damage, and magical bonuses to stats. It also tells you if the item is cursed. It tells you what a wand/rod/staff/potion/scroll/mushroom/etc. does, and this is very important. There are nasty potions deep in the dungeon that you *do not* want to drink! Sometimes, the descriptions of the items are a little obscure; things like Staves of Holiness and Power, Mushrooms of Unhealth, and others. You may have to experiment a bit to determine their powers. There is also an advanced form of Identify, called *Identify*. This is available primarily as a Scroll of *Identify* but certain magic realms contain a similar spell although it may be called something different. In addition, some towns may provide a shop offering *identify* as a service. Identifying an item by one of these means tells you every single property of the item, like whether or not it lets you see invisible monsters, sustains stats, gives you regeneration, and so on. You should only use *identify* on artifacts and certain powerful ego-items some of which may have random abilities which can only be discovered by this method. --- Items for Lighting the Dungeon --- Notes on lighting: You can't do much without light. You won't be able to see most monsters, cast spells or read scrolls, or, in general, see the dungeon. You should carry a light source of which torches and brass lanterns are the most common and this will light up the area which is immediately around you. There are items which will light up the dungeon, but only parts of it. Any item/spell of Light or Illumination will light up the room you are standing it (or part of the corridor). A potion of Enlightenment/the prayer Clairvoyance will light up the entire level. --- Word of Recall --- Finally, the most useful magical item in general is a Scroll of Word-of-Recall (often abbreviated WoR). When you are in the town and read it, you are teleported to the lowest level you have been to in the dungeon. When read in the dungeon, you are teleported to the town. The activation takes place about 50 turns after reading the scroll, so it's not a perfect escape method. === On Resistances ==== There are many different kinds of attacks in Hengband, generally falling under physical, magical, and breath attacks. They can all cause specialized kinds of damage, which can kill a character if he/she does not have resistance to that attack. The majority of attack types have a corresponding resistance. These resistances include: acid, electricity, fire, and cold (often collectively referred to as "low" or "elemental" resists) and poison, light, dark, shards, confusion, sound, nether, nexus, chaos, disenchantment, blindness and fear (often collectively referred to as "high" resists). Two other abilities - free action, and hold life, can be considered as resists in some sense since they provide resistance to paralyzing/slowing attacks and to experience draining attacks respectively. Resistances can be provided by certain items and also may be part of your racial characteristics. There are certain types of items that provide all four elemental resistances. These include Defender weapons, Robes of Permanence, armors/shields of Resistance, armor of Elvenkind, and Helms/Crowns of the Magi. Many artifacts also provide some or all of the basic resistances, and also perhaps one or two "high" resistances. Resistances generally chop off a significant amount of damage, ranging from 1/5 to 2/3. Also, it is possible to doubly resist the basic four resistances and poison. When you doubly resist these, damage is chopped to 1/9. Double resistance is NOT having two permanent sources of the same resist! Double resistance is having both a permanent source and a temporary source. Multiple permanent sources do nothing for you. Resistances are vital to survival in the dungeon. For instance, the most powerful of fire dragons, the Great Hell Wyrm, can breath fire (big surprise). Unresisted, the damage caused is 1600 HPs worth; more than enough to kill the mightiest of warriors (if he's lucky, a warrior might top out at about 1200 HPs at level 50). However, if you have fire resistance, this is chopped to 1/3-533 damage. If you doubly resist the breath, the damage is a paltry 178 HP. === On Important Depths === There are certain depths in the dungeon beyond which it is important to have a certain resist or attribute. The depths given here are guidelines, and should not be taken literally. However, if you decide to go past the depth without the attribute, be very careful and don't complain if you get the dreaded "It breathes -more- You are dead" message. 20 (1000'): Free Action, See Invisible, Fire resistance 25 (1250'): Basic four Resistances 30 (1500'): Confusion Res, Blindness Res(Magician only), (Nexus Res) 35 (1750'): Poison Resistance, Blindness Resistance (for all) 40 (2000'): Nether Res, Chaos Res, (Darkness Res; sometimes) 50 (2500'): Hold Life, Telepathy 60 (3000'): Permanent Speed of +10 or greater 70 (3500'): Permanent Speed of +15 or greater, Shard Res, Darkness Res 90 (4500'): Permanent Speed of +25 or greater 99 (4950'): As much as you can get. Sustains, Speed, every resistance, Notes: If you have high infravision, you can probably hold off on See Invisible for a few levels. Not very many, however; Ghosts start showing up soon, and they're cold-blooded. Without Free Action you are very dead. Some monsters have a melee paralyzation attack, which can keep you immobile until death. Also, monsters start getting the paralyze spell about here. Nothing is more aggravating than watching a puny monster slowly kill your character as you watch, helpless. Confusion and Blindness resistance are vital. If you have these, you can rely on scrolls of Teleportation to get you out of any situation. Before this, you need Staves of Teleportation which can be activated when blinded or confused, although with a decent failure rate. Scrolls are fail-safe. Poison Resistance is necessary because two monsters, Ancient Multi-Hued Dragons, and Drolems, start showing up at about depth. Both of these monsters breath poison for huge amounts of damage (700 and 800 points, respectively). Moreover Poison Resistance is necessary to prevent fearful side effect of Toxic waste. Hold Life is very nice, but not important. If you can't get it, carry lots of Potions of Restore Life Levels. Chaos Resistance is *vital* since it not only does significant damage but can also have nasty side effects like causing hallucinations or mutating your character. Nether Resistance is also very important since there are a fairly large number of monsters with attacks of this type and because it can do significant damage. === On Secret Doors === Throughout the dungeon, many doors are hidden from view. To find them, use the (S)earch command, which toggles on and off the Searching mode. However, it is often difficult enough just knowing where to search. Usually, situations like this will have secret doors (walls containing secret doors are marked by *s): #*### ###'### ####*# ###*### *@... ..'@'.. ..@'.* ..'@... #*### ###*### ####'# ####### In general, if you see a door by itself in a corridor, there are usually others nearby. If you find a corner in a corridor with two doors, look for more. Intersections often have some secret doors. Finally, secret doors will never be in a situation where you have to move diagonally to open them. The dead-end situation (the first one) usually does have a secret door, but not always. If you search for a while and don't find anything, just give up and move on. Sometimes a dead end will occur near the end of a map, where there is no room to have a continuing corridor, and so no secret door is generated. === On the Maximize/Preserve modes === These are selected on or off at character creation, and cannot be changed after that. Maximize mode: with Maximize mode off, your statistics max out at 18/100, without outside magical effects, like a Ring of Strength. When Maximize mode is on, where your stats max out at is determined by your race and class. For instance, any Mage has -5 to Strength. A Human Mage's strength (Humans have no racial stat differences), therefore, could max out at 18/50, instead of 18/100. However, Mages also have +3 to Intelligence. A Human Mage's Intelligence would max out at 18/130. When Maximize mode is off, it is possible to achieve higher starting stats for characters; a Gnomish Mage might be able to start with 18/80 Intelligence. However, since your stats can't reach as high levels, the end game is harder than with Maximize mode on. Preserve mode: with Preserve mode off, if a level is created with an artifact on it, and you don't get that artifact, it is gone forever. When Preserve mode is on, you always can find the artifact again unless you have already identified it and then leave it behind. However, in preserve mode you lose the "special" level feeling (more below). === On Level Feelings === When you enter a level, you receive a feeling giving you a vague idea how good the level is. In general, the more scary the feeling sounds, the better the items on the level, and the more difficult the monsters. Each unusual item or monster bumps up the rating of the level a bit. An item or monster is considered unusual if it is out of depth [normally occurs at a lower depth; for instance, a Longsword has a base level of 20, and would be considered unusual anywhere above that level (although not below it)]. Items can be out of depth without necessarily being anything special; a normal, non-magical katana could provoke a high level feeling at low depths, because it is so unusual. Also, pits (large rooms filled with a single type of monster) and vaults (dense, dangerous rooms with many out of depth monsters and items) can cause high level feelings. There is also a Special feeling, available only to players with Preserve mode off, which tells the player that there is an artifact on the level (most of the time. Sometimes, especially in the earlier levels, a monster pit or a vault will often trigger a special feeling). Also, if you have not spent enough time on the previous level before entering the new one, you get the feeling "Looks like any other level" which gives you no information whatsoever. === On weapons and armor === Your equipment will always carry around little numbers that tell you how effective it is. Armors take this form: A Robe (+x,+y) [a,+b] (+c) Weapons take this form: A Long Sword (XdY) (+x,+y) [+b] (+c) When unidentified, armors will show just this: A Robe [a] Weapons will show this: A Long Sword (XdY) (+x,+y). This is the item's magical bonuses to your to-hit and to-damage bonus respectively. These are added to whatever other bonuses you have when you attack. Some armors have similar bonuses to your to-hit and to-damage, but they are mostly artifacts, the exceptions being Gloves/Gauntlets/Cesti of Slaying and Power. Many body armors have a small negative number before the base armor bonus (see below); this is a penalty to your skill (the armor is so heavy that you have trouble moving around in it). However, this penalty is small enough for all but the youngest of characters to ignore. Rings of Combat or Skill have a single (+y) or (+x). When worn, they affect your to-damage and to-hit bonus in melee battle respectively. [a,+b]. This is the item's base armor class and magical bonus to armor. The higher, the better. While theoretically, a weapon could provide a base armor bonus, none of them do, and only a few weapons have a magical bonus to armor. Rings of Protection have a single [+b], which increases your AC. They are also practically worthless; the valuable ring slot is almost certainly better off being used for something else. (+c). This is the item's magical bonus to other statistics: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, Charisma, Speed, Stealth, Searching, Infravision, Attacks, and Tunneling. Not on every item, it is generally a good reason to choose the item. [Note that it does not affect every stat in this list! Most items that have a +c only affect one or two of these stats. Some items affect more (A Weapon of Westernesse affects Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution)]. As a side note for the above: Hengband follows the parenthesis for any item. If you see a number in brackets, like this: [b], it is a bonus to AC. If it is in parenthesis, like this: (+x), it is either a bonus to a stat or to hit/damage (and which should normally be obvious by the name of the item). For instance, a Holy Avenger (a powerful ego-item), looks like this: A Mace (Holy Avenger) (2d4) (+7, +5) [+4] (+1) Thus, it rolls 2 four-sided dice when attacking, has +7 bonus to hit and +5 bonus to damage, increases your AC by 4, and increases a stat (In this case Wisdom) by 1. XdY. This is the weapon's base damage. When you successfully hit a monster, X number of Y-sided dice are rolled. This number represents the amount of damage you do to the monster before magical bonuses, slays, brands, criticals, etc are applied. A Longsword, for example, rolls 2 five-sided dice (2d5) when you hit a monster. Ammunition, as well as having the normal weapon information, also shows how much damage they will do per shot and per round. This information will only be displayed if you have the proper shooting weapon. (Your melee weapon's average damage is displayed on the info- screen.) The format of this is: An arrow (1d5) (+0, +0) (26/26) The first number is the average damage per shot, and the second is average damage per round. The two numbers can differ because the shooting weapons have different energy requirements per shot (unlike melee weapons.) === On Slays === Many weapons you find in the dungeon are considered to be particularly deadly against a type of creature. These qualities are collectively known as slays. They double, triple, or multiply by five *the damage done by the damage dice*. They DO NOT affect bonuses to damage. Thus, while slays may play an important part in the early game (especially if you find a weapon of Slay Orc), in the later part of the game, where magical bonuses to damage all but take over combat, slays play a very minor role. The rundown on slays: Slay (or *Slay*) Evil: x2 damage dice against evil monsters Slay (or *Slay*) Animal, Undead, Demon, Giant, Dragon: x2 damage dice against the relevant monster type The brands ("of Melting", "of Burning", "of Freezing", "of Shocking", and "of Poisoning") all do x2 damage dice to those monsters not resistant to the relevant element. There is also a "(Vampiric)" brand which will suck life from your foes and heal you at the same time and a "(Chaotic)" brand which can cause some unexpected results when using it! === On the Monster Memory === In many other games, you are required to take notes on monster's weaknesses, strengths, spells, et cetera. Hengband takes care of this for you, with the handy Monster Memory. Every time you find out something new about a monster, like that it can breathe fire, this is added to your knowledge of the monster. To look over this knowledge, type /, then the symbol of the monster. You may have to scroll through other monster memories to get to the one you're looking for. [Note: you can set a window to display the monster memory at the preferences screen (see below). This window will then automatically update as you fight monsters]. In the unpleasant event of your character's death, you can create a new character using your old character's file (instead of simply creating a new character, open the dead character's savefile, and the Creating a Character section will come up). This new character will have all of the old one's monster memories, and some special text for the monster that killed him. === On the Colors of Monsters === You can often determine some information about a monster based solely on it's color. This would be the color it is described as, like "a White Dragon," not the color of it's image on the screen (you can't rely on a white "p" to be a cold based monster! It will probably be a paladin or some such). In general, White monsters are cold-based, Red are fire-based, Blue are electrical, Black is acidic, and Yellow/Green are poisonous. A Multi-Hued monster is all of these. === On the Preferences === The preferences screen is reached by typing "=". It contains many different preferences that make Hengband more enjoyable. There are a few that I would recommend. Turn both stacking options ON. This maximizes your treasure collection. Turn the Low Hitpoint Warning ON, and place the warning percent at about 50%. You'll see the effects of this whenever you start to die :). The Delay Factor determines how long it takes for special effects to "move;" that is: balls exploding, bolts moving, missile weapons flying, et cetera. This is machine dependant; I usually set mine at about 3 or 4. The Window Flags screen allows you to set various windows (assuming your platform supports them) to show certain things. Using this, you can set some windows to always show monster memory, your character's inventory and/or equipment, a dungeon map, and others. === On Death === Death in Hengband is permanent. Saving in Hengband is meant only to let you pick up where you left off; if you die, your savefile is marked. The next time you try to use the savefile, you will get the new character dialogue. Ancestors of dead characters will retain their monster memory and preferences. Many people here have characters like "Yuppy XIV"; people die very often in Hengband. Some people make backup savefiles; if their character dies, they simply load the older character, and pick up where they left off. They lose what happened after making the backup, but they're alive. However, this is considered cheating of the highest degree. The only really legal reason to use savefile abuse ("savefile scumming") is if your computer crashed or some other external problem killed your character. There is an option in the Cheating menu in the preferences which allows you to cheat death. However, like all the other cheating options, it invalidates your high-score and makes it impossible to truly win the game. It also sets your Social Status to zero, so everyone knows what a scumbag you are. === On Hengband Time === If there is one feature of Hengband that tends to confuse people (especially veterans of other *band), it is how the speed system in Hengband works. As in other variants, the energy you and monsters get each turn depends on speed. Unlike in other variants, this value is only an average; be watchful for opportunities to get a double move on monsters, and be aware that they can do the same to you! This rule change has a lot of consequences; playing the game will teach them to you... Apart from this, things are pretty familiar. The amount of energy you can gain each game turn is 10 for an average-speed player or monster, can be almost 50 for very fast ones, and most actions you take cost 100 energy to perform. The biggest exception is weapons of Extra Shots; firing one of these takes less energy, making monsters appear to move in slow motion. Be aware that speeds increases above about +28 to +35 are much less useful. === Advanced techniques for killing monsters === Pillardancing. Not recommended in Hengband: monsters move at irregular speeds. Shoot'n Scoot. Requires a large room, Phase Door, and some type of missile weapon. Stand at one end of the room, your enemy at the other. Fire your missile weapon at him until he gets close, and then Phase Door. Fire again, until he gets close, and repeat. By the time you run out of ammunition, he should be dead or weak enough for you to finish him HTH (Hand to Hand). Wail'n Bail. Requires Teleport items. Fight the monster until you're almost dead, teleport out, find him, and resume fighting. This is dangerous, because you could teleport right next to some nasty that will kill you. Also, it is not generally useful for killing unique monsters, as they regenerate damage very quickly, and by the time you find them again, they may have healed the damage you did to them. The Anti-Summoning Corridor. Required a little time to set up. This can be done just about anywhere. Dig a twisting corridor into the rock, and station yourself at one end of it. When your opponent arrives, he won't be able to summon any monsters next to you. This is a very important technique for fighting many higher-end monsters which very quickly bring in a horde of other monsters. -- Original : Chris Weisiger (TANG version 1.6.2) Updated : Zangband DevTeam Updated : Hengband 1.0.11