The Dungeon
Although the game 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 [a]).
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
. Floor * A Mirror
. A trap (hidden) ; A glyph of warding
^ A trap (known) ; A explosive rune
. Dirt * Section of the Pattern
. Patch of grass * Section of the Pattern
: Flower 1 General Store
: Brake 2 Armoury
. Swamp 3 Weapon Smiths
~ Shallow Water 4 Temple
~ Deep Water 5 Alchemy Shop
~ Shallow Lava 6 Magic Shop
~ Deep Lava 7 Black Market
# Dark pit 8 Home
' An open door 9 Bookstore
' A broken door 0 Museum
< A staircase up + Other building
> A staircase down + Other building
< A shaft up
> A shaft down
> An entrance to dungeon
> quest entrance
Features that block line of sight
# A granite wall # A Tree
% A magma vein # Mountain chain
% A quartz vein + A door
# A secret door : A pile of rubble
* Treasure in wall
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 sources 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. 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 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 objects is found elsewhere in the
documentation (see [b]).
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.
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.
Doors can be broken down by bashing them. 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 [c])). 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 the game, 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!'
If your personality is 'Lucky' or you have the mutation of 'white
aura', the prompts will be changed as follows:
'What a boring place...'
'This level can't be all bad...'
'You like the look of this place...'
'You feel your luck is turning...'
'You feel strangely lucky...'
'You have a good feeling...'
'You have a very good feeling...'
'You have an excellent feeling...'
'You have a superb feeling about this level.'
There are also 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
Every character will encounter a fixed number of random quests in the
dungeon of Angband. By default, each quest is to kill a certain out of
depth unique monster, though you may change this to kill a certain
number of a random type of monster with a birth option [d]. Be warned:
unique monsters are generally powerful for their native depths, so
fighting them out of depth is especially difficult!
Random quests appear on level 6, 13, 21, 30, 39, 48, 57, 66, 76, and
87. On entering a random quest level you will be told what the quest
monster is (for example, 'Beware, this level is protected by The
Borshin.').
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 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.
If the quest monster is too strong for you, simply run away using up
staircase or recall. In such case, the quest will be treated as
'failed' and you cannot challenge that quest never again.
Original : (??)
Updated : (??)
Updated : Zangband DevTeam
Updated : Hengband 1.0.11
Updated : PosChengband 4.0.0