Help

Controls

Arrows / WASD

Walk — hold to keep walking, tap for a single step

Q E Z C

Walk diagonally

Shift+direction

Turn to face that way without stepping

Numpad

Walk in all eight directions

Click monster

Attack — it becomes your preferred target, outlined in red, and you chase it from that first click. Click it again to let it go. Moving yourself cancels the chase but keeps the target, fought from where you stand; click it again to chase again. The Statuses line says whether you are chasing

Click player

Follow — you walk after them wherever they go, into the temple included, until you stop. Unless they are outlined red when clicked: with PvP on, or once they have attacked you, they are attacked like a monster instead, chased from that first click

Right-click player

A menu of what can be done with them — Look, Follow (or Stop following), Attack, Trade — on a long press too. Attack is greyed, with the reason, while they are not yours to fight: PvP off and no blow from them

Trade

Ask another player, from the menu on them, standing within two tiles. They see the ask and accept it or let it lapse. The window then shows both offers side by side: click a square in your bag to put one of it on the table, right-click for the pile, click a square in your offer to take one back. Both of you press Accept, and only then does everything change hands at once — or nothing does. Any change to either offer takes every accept back, and the window says so in words. Walking apart, or Cancel, ends it

Skulls

Attack a player who is wearing no skull and you get one, over your name for anybody to see. It lasts a minute from your last such attack, and while it is up no protection zone will take you: you are turned back at the line, and a click inside finds no way. Attacking somebody who already has a skull earns none, so hitting back at whoever started a fight costs you nothing. It survives a logout; dying takes it off, since the dead wake in the temple

PvP

Toggle whether clicking a player attacks them. Off, you follow players instead. Either way, anyone who attacks you is fair game to hit back at for a minute after their last swing — by clicking them, which is the only way a blow ever lands on a person

Chase

Whether picking a fight walks you after it. On — the way it has always been — a click starts you after the thing you picked. Off, what you pick is fought from where you stand: hit whenever it comes into reach, shot at if you have a bow, and never followed, which is what you want holding a gate or shooting across open ground. It is remembered with your character, and it takes hold of the fight in front of you the moment you press it. Following a player is not governed by it, following being nothing but the walking

Tab / Next target

Target the next monster — or player you may fight — nearest first. Landing on the one you already have counts as picking it again. The button is there for touch screens, which have no Tab

Esc / Stop

Drop the target and stop attacking, chasing, following, and any walk in progress. Any move of your own also cancels a chase at once: a chased monster stays targeted and is fought from where you stand, a followed player is dropped

Click ground

Walk there; click an adjacent item, or one you are standing on, to pick it up

Right-click

On another player, the menu above. Otherwise pick up what lies on an adjacent tile, or under you; anywhere else, look at the tile. On a bag slot it drops one of what is in it — everything stacks, so a slot is a pile — and shift+right-click drops the lot. A long press does the same as a right-click on a touchscreen, dropping one

Shift+click

Look at a tile, whatever is on it. Looking at a player names their level and the gear in use: the weapon wielded, the armor worn, the helm on their head, the shield held

Long-press

On a touch screen, holding a finger down is the right-click: the menu on a player, pick up, look, drop, store

Click minimap

Walk to that spot, or drag it to look around — the map goes with your hand, and your next step puts it back on you. The map is a window on the world that follows you rather than the whole of it at once, so the ground around you is drawn big enough to read; the − and + in the panel’s title change how much of the world it shows, down to the whole of it, and the choice is remembered. Creatures within nine tiles of you show as dots — monsters red, other players cyan, and the white one is you — and nothing further off, unless a clairvoyance is running, which opens the whole map for a minute. Only the floor being looked at is drawn: flipping the map to another level shows who is walking that one and nobody else. A dot is only a dot — nothing a level away can be hit or followed, and which monster it is stays unknown until it is on screen. The arrows in the panel’s title change which floor is drawn, and the floor is named beside them — in the accent colour while it is not the one you are standing on

Inventory

Click to use, right-click to drop. Clicking a weapon wields it. While a trade is open, a click offers one of the thing instead and a right-click the pile

Enter

Chat — Enter again to send, Esc to cancel. Everyone online hears you; the words also hang over the spot you said them from, fitted into the three tiles by two above your head — say a little and it reads large, say a lot and it reads small

F1 / ?

Show this help

Changes

What has changed in the game, newest first. Anything that landed since you were last in the world is marked, and you are told how much on the way in

Online

The count in the stat panel is a button: click it for the names and levels of everybody in the world right now, tallest first, with your own row picked out. It is asked for when you click, so it is who is there at that moment rather than who was there when the panel last drew

Highscores

The top ten characters by level, by the gold they are sitting on — bag and depot box together — by each skill, and by deaths and kills: everyone ever made, online or not. Your own row is picked out. The login screen has a link to the same boards, so they can be read without making a character

Log out

Leave the game. Only from a protection zone, or with nothing chasing you and no monster on screen

How things work

Hitpoints

What you can take is 50 at level 1 and 10 more for every level after. It is little on purpose: a wolf’s worst bite is a sixth of a new character and a troll’s a third, so the first few levels are what buy you room to be careless. The bar under a name in the world is drawn as wide as that creature is tough, yours included: a rat wears a stub of a bar and a dragon a long one, so you can see what you are walking up to before you touch it. It is the square root of the number rather than the number itself, or a rat’s bar would be invisible next to a dragon’s; the colour is still the fraction left

Food

You heal over time only while fed, in quicker ticks as you level — and an empty stomach costs 1 HP every 10 seconds, down to your last hitpoint, except on the temple floor. Eat meat to fill the food bar — it fills nothing on the spot, and drains only while closing wounds, so full health costs none. Potions still heal at once

Auto-attack

Toggle whether you swing at monsters you did not pick. On, whatever is in reach gets hit — see Monsters in reach below. Off, the only thing you ever hit is the target you chose, so you can stand beside something without starting on it. The choice is remembered with your character

Damage debug

The Debug button writes every swing you are either end of into the log as the sum behind it: what is being swung and what skill makes of it, the roll and the range it came from, then what armor, shield and parry soaked. Off by default, and remembered with your character. Nobody else sees your sums, and the numbers are the ones the fight actually used — the log is reading the calculation, not repeating it

Monsters in reach

With auto-attack on, whenever your preferred target is not a monster within reach — none picked, still being chased, or a player being followed — you swing at whatever monster is: beside you with a melee weapon, the closest one in sight and range with a bow, the one attacking you first. Never another player, whoever started it: a person is only hit while you have them picked. That never changes your target. A creature you swing at by reflex — one you never picked — is outlined in yellow; the target you chose keeps its red outline, or green for a player being followed. The Statuses line says Attacking, Chasing or Following

Out of sight

A target that leaves the screen is lost, so you are never marched across the map after it

Depot

Two storage boxes against the keep’s west wall, the sign hanging between them. Stand beside a box to see your depot: right-click a bag item to store it, a stored item to take it out. Stored goods survive death — and dying spills all the gold you carry, so bank it

A protection zone

Costs nothing to stand in: your wounds close at the ordinary rate without spending a meal, and an empty stomach costs you nothing at all while you are on it. A zone is the ground where nothing can be done to you, and starving in one would make that a lie told by your own body

The temple floor

Stand on it and your wounds close at 10 a tick, fed or not, and nobody starves on it — so an empty bag is never a dead end. The number shows over your head each tick, the way a troll's and a dragon's healing does. The shrine in the middle of it heals nothing at all: it used to close every wound the instant you clicked it, which made it a button that ended the subject and left the floor doing nothing anybody noticed

Protection zone

The whole of the keep’s inside is safe ground: monsters keep out of it — they cannot walk in, spawn in, rise in or be summoned in — and nothing may be fought there, other players included. The walls and the gateways through them are not in the zone, so a fight at a gate is a fight; each gate is three tiles wide, so nobody can hold one alone. There are two, north and south, each over its own drawbridge

Fighting players

Turn PvP on to attack a player with a click; it costs nothing and is remembered with your character. Nothing ever swings at a person by reflex: every blow on a player is one you picked, so they always wear the red outline while you fight them. Whoever you attack may fight back — by clicking you — whatever their toggle says, and neither of you may log out until a minute after the last swing, or until one of you dies. A player who dies loses experience and spills their gold, as ever; killing one earns no experience

Two at a time

Your shield and your weapon’s parry only meet two blows a second — they are held in hands, and you have two. A third attacker in the same second is taken on your armor alone, which is worn and always counts. So being surrounded costs something no amount of shielding skill answers, and your shield only learns from the blows it actually meets: not from swings that went wide, and not from the ones that arrived while both hands were busy. The Defense on your panel is still the full number, which is what a blow meets when there is a hand free for it. Dragon fire is outside all of this: nothing is put in its way at all

The best gear

Two pieces come off nothing else in the world: the tower shield, a slab of banded oak that blocks 10 where a steel shield blocks 6, from the dragon; and the carapace, a giant spider’s own back cut free and worn, which soaks 17 against plate’s 15. A quarter of dragons and a fifth of spiders leave one. Everything else can be bought, found, or taken from something sensible

Gear

The best weapon in your bag is wielded and the best armor, helm and shield worn; all four are outlined. Click a weapon, shield, armor or helm to use that one instead, even over a better one — that is how a sword and a bow are carried together, or a cheap shield saved from breaking — and it moves to the front of the bag. Clicking a piece you have already chosen puts it away again, and it stays away — the tooltip on each slot says which click it is about to be. A bow and an axe take both hands, so no shield is up while either is in hand, and they are carried across the body — or slung on the back when you are walking away from the camera — the axe near level, so its haft shows past one side of you and its head past the other, the bow upright over the shoulder. Everything you carry is drawn behind you then, so you cover it, and set out far enough that something of it still shows. A rock is thrown from one hand, so a shield stays up behind it. Every melee weapon parries as well as swings: its defense is added to yours, scaled by melee rather than shielding, and an axe parries most since it is holding the arm a shield would be on

Demon helmet

The one thing in the world that goes on a head, off the demon and nothing else. It soaks 6, worn like armor rather than held like a shield, so it counts against every blow — the third in a second included — and a fifth of whatever gets through it to you goes back into whoever struck you: as your own blow, in your colour, towards your experience, and it can kill. It answers blows only. The demon’s rift and bolt and a dragon’s fire are not blows and go through it unanswered, so it is no way of getting a demon to kill itself; and a blow that comes back off a helmet is never sent back again, so two of them cannot trade one blow until somebody dies

Mana and spells

A second pool under your health, five points a level, back a point every three seconds at magic level nothing — and free of food, since mana is not a wound closing. It buys the things gear cannot. A spell is cast by saying its words into the chat box: they are Latin, and everyone near you hears you say them. Type /spells to see what there is, or /cast name if the words have gone out of your head. Clairvoyance — oculus mundi, the eye of the world: 25 mana, one minute, and for that minute the map draws the whole world with every creature on it, instead of a window on it and what is within nine tiles — more mana than a character below level five can hold at all, so the first spell is something to climb towards. Find person — ubi es name, where are you: 20 mana, and it says which way that person lies, roughly how far, and how many floors up or down; nothing at all if there is nobody of that name in the world. Sanctification — requiescat, may it rest: cast on a thing rather than into the air, so click a stirring pile of bones beside you and the words are said over them for you. See Skeletons and wights below

Skills

Melee, ranged, shielding and fishing start at 0 and grow by use: every swing or shot, every blow taken behind a shield, every cast. Skill multiplies your gear, and a weapon is the whole of your swing rather than a bonus on your fists: a weapon is worth attack × (1 + skill/20) for melee or (1 + skill/10) for ranged, and a shield blocks its value × (1 + shielding/20). So gear is worth the number stamped on it untrained, twice that at melee 20 or ranged 10, and three times at melee 40. Armor is worn rather than handled and counts in full. Skills fade by a tenth of their uses for each day you are away, pro-rata, and you are told what it cost when you come back

Spear

The one melee weapon that reaches two tiles. It takes both hands, so no shield is up while it is out, and it trains melee like anything else you swing — it is thrust, not thrown, so nothing leaves your hand and nothing is drawn flying. Standing off a tile means a fight can have a second rank: you can hit what is on the person in front of you

Bow

Shoots your target from up to 4 tiles away with a clear line — over trees and water, but not through walls or rock — so you stop at range rather than walking up to it. The line is the same read from either end, so nothing can shoot you from where you cannot shoot back, and a corner you are standing beside can be leaned around: press yourself against the wall and you can shoot past it. With no target the reflex shoots the closest monster in range by itself

Fishing

Fish swim about in the lakes and the moat, and you can see them. Any fish you can see is fair game — click the fishing rod and the line goes out to the nearest one on screen, as long as nothing is in the way: walls and rock stop it, and so does anything standing on the tiles between, though a corner at your elbow can be leaned around the way an arrow can. A quarter of casts bite at first, more with skill, and the fish you catch is the one that was swimming there. Water with nothing in it gives you nothing, so it is worth walking the bank to find a shoal. Fish are food, and every death hands you a new rod

Levels

Wide stairs on the south face of each raised block out on the Plains of Havoc carry you up onto it — the dragons’ hill, and the shrine’s. Up north, walk into any corner tower of the orc camp and climb the ladder in it to reach the walk along the top of the wall; the hatch beside it comes back down. A dark hole in the wilderness drops into caves below, with a ladder beside each landing to climb home, and a deeper hole at each cave's far end — and there is a second shaft in the orc camp’s yard, three floors deep, with something at the bottom of it. Changing level takes two ordinary steps, so stairs cannot be hopped to shake off a fight. Stand at a passage and you can see down it: whoever is on the tile it lets out on shows in the mouth itself, down in the hole looking up. Levels see each other but never interact: no bite, arrow or pickup crosses between them, and monsters cannot climb. Every roof inside the castle walls is protected like the floor under it; the caves below are not, being underground, which is outside every law

Ping

The stats panel shows the last round trip to the world, taken every two seconds: not how long a packet takes to cross the room but how long the server takes to hear you and answer, through the very loop that moves you. Green under 100 ms, amber to 300, red past it — and a dash when nothing has come back, which is a connection gone rather than a fast one

Colours

Every character has a colour of their own: tunic, name, and the damage numbers they cause. Monster damage is always red, and no player colour is ever red-like. The eyes arrive at it slowly — plain dark at level 1, a twenty-fourth further with each level, wholly their own by 25 — so roughly what somebody is reads across a street before their name does

Announcements

Everyone online is told when a player enters or leaves the world, is slain, or advances a level

On a phone

The Fullscreen button fills the screen; the back gesture gives it back. Which way round you hold the phone is your own affair — the view fits either way. Better still, add the game to your home screen — it then opens with no browser around it at all without asking. Long-press stands in for right-click throughout: a press on the world looks at it, a press on a bag slot drops or stores it

Inside the walls

The whole of the castle is a protection zone — streets, temple, depot, smithy, the roofs over them, and the wall ring with its gateways. The edge of safety is the stonework, which is a line you can see. Nothing is attacked in it, no monster sets foot in it, and you may always log out there. So a chase across the bridge ends at the mouth of the gate: reach it and whatever was after you gives up, and the bridge outside is where it has to be met. A skull shuts the whole castle to you until it fades, which is most of what a skull costs

Somebody in your way

Walk into another player and they step aside — in a doorway, on a bridge, or on the tile a ladder lets out onto, where two people used to be a wall to each other. They go one tile, somewhere they could have walked themselves, and never onto a stair, a hole or a ladder. Nobody is pushed out of a protection zone, though: stand in the gateway and everyone going past shoves you further into the castle, never out onto the bridge. A monster in your way is not moved — it is there on purpose

The drawbridge

The moat rings the whole keep, and the one way over it is the west drawbridge, which is down: three tiles of timber across the water, with the moat showing under the ends of the planks. That span is the only place the moat is crossed — the water either side of it is as good as a wall, and looks it. The east gateway’s bridge is up, which is why nobody goes that way

Your bag

Twenty squares, the same twenty for everybody. Everything stacks, so a square is a pile and twenty squares is twenty kinds of thing: forty rocks are one of them. A bag is only full for something it is not already carrying — the twenty-first sword fits where a twenty-first kind of thing would not. The depot is its own 20

Gold

Coins go straight into your purse when something dies. If your bag is full they fall on the ground instead

Experience

What you earn floats up over your head in white, for your eyes only. Kills that land together are added into one number rather than stacking up one at a time

Monster attention

Anything already beside you shifts its feet every few seconds, to another tile square on to you — never to a corner, and never out of reach — so a fight moves about a bit instead of two things standing still and trading blows. A monster reconsiders who it is chasing every ten seconds or so, picking by lot among whoever is in range, so a pack spreads over a party instead of all mobbing one person. It also changes its mind the moment it cannot find a way to its target, so walling yourself off sends it after somebody it can reach

Crowded stairs

Somebody standing where a passage comes out does not bar it: arriving pushes them a tile aside, and if they are hemmed in, whoever is hemming them in is pushed first, and so on until there is room — everyone in the chain moving one tile, and only onto ground they could have walked to. Only when nobody can move at all does the way refuse, and the log says who is in it. Something heavy lying there, a depot box or a chest, cannot be pushed and closes the passage until it is gone

Shuffling

Something already beside you shifts its feet every few seconds instead of standing still, working its way around you a square at a time. Every one of those steps is a straight one — never a diagonal slide, which would cost it two and a half times as much — and it never steps out of reach, so waiting for one to wander off you is not a plan

Clank

Gear makes noise, and noise is what monsters notice you by. Your clank is on the stats panel under the Speed: the four pieces actually in use added up — the weapon in hand, the shield held, the armor worn and the helm on your head — and it is added to every monster’s own keenness before it decides whether it has heard you. A rat hears a silent person at 4 tiles and an orc at 7; in plate (3) with a tower shield (2) and a sword (1) they hear you at 10 and 13. What is only in the bag is silent: a suit of plate carried is not a suit of plate walked in. A new character’s kit — a club and a fishing rod — is 0, so nothing about the world is different until you put something on. The spidersilk cloak is the only piece that goes the other way, and it goes a long way: −6, so a cloak and a bow and nothing else is −6 and a rat, a kobold, a troll and a bear never hear you at all. An orc has you at one tile; a giant spider, a dragon and a demon at three. Every tooltip says what a piece costs you

Losing a monster

You can run from a fight. A monster follows you four tiles past the distance it would have noticed you from — for a silent person, 8 for a rat and 13 for a dragon, and your clank moves both ends of that together — and then gives up and drifts home. Fighting it suspends that: anything you swing at it, landed or turned aside, keeps it after you at any distance until 30 seconds have passed with nothing more from you. So you can leave a fight, but not by hitting something and walking off mid-swing

Trolls

A troll knits back together as you fight it: two hitpoints every couple of seconds, wounded or not. On its fifty that is worth about a bite of whatever you are doing to it, so a troll is finished in one go or not at all — chipping at one with rocks and coming back later gets you nowhere

Monster speed

How fast a monster moves is set as the player level that moves at the same pace, so it can be read against the Speed on your own stats: a bat or a winter wolf runs like a level 20 character, a dragon like a level 10, and a rat, a troll or a cyclops like a level 1 — a rat can be walked away from, which is part of it being the first thing anybody fights. Anything above your own level outruns you on open ground

Armed monsters

Anything that fights with a weapon is drawn holding it: a kobold’s club, an orc’s sword, a skeleton’s bow, a troll’s stick, a cyclops’ great axe, a barrow wight’s bright sword. A weapon that takes both hands lies across the body and goes on the back when the thing is walking away from you, the same as on you. A kobold carries a buckler on its other arm as well, and leaves it behind about a third of the time: the cheapest shield there is, and the first one most characters ever hold. What a monster holds is what it fights with rather than a promise of loot — most of their gear is too battered to be worth taking — and a shield on a monster's arm is for show: what it turns aside is its own hide. Each kind carries its weapon at its own size — a kobold’s club is four fifths of the one you would swing and a cyclops’ great axe a third again, because the sprites are drawn to a person’s hand and neither of those is a person

Archers

Anything seen holding a bow shoots with it from up to 3 tiles and keeps its distance — shorter than the 4 the same bow gives you, so there is a tile you can shoot it from that it cannot answer. A rooftop is out of its reach. Every skeleton is an archer: the bow is what a skeleton is, and none of them will let you walk up to it. A bow comes off about one skeleton in four, which is the ordinary loot rate rather than a promise — a bow is 50 gold over Wenna’s counter, and one off every body would bury the caves in them. Three orcs in ten carry one instead of their sword, and that one is settled when the orc appears rather than when it dies, so the orc you saw with a bow always leaves it behind — and looking at an orc tells you which sort it is, there being two sorts of orc and only one sort of skeleton

Magic

A skill like melee or shielding, and the only one nothing is swung, shot or cast into the water for: what trains it is the mana, one use to the point spent, whatever it was spent on. So every spell in the world trains it and the dear ones train it most, and there is nothing to seek out — a clairvoyance is worth exactly the first level of it. What it is worth back is the pool itself: mana returns faster the higher it goes, twice as fast at magic 20 as at none. It scales no gear, there being no wand in this world, so the loop closes on itself — spending mana teaches you how to have more of it

Skeletons and wights

They throw bone chips when struck, but crumble rather than pooling when killed — and they always get back up. Every one leaves a red-eyed pile of bones and climbs out of it about ten seconds later, where it fell. To stop it, stand beside the pile and click it: that casts sanctification and lays the remains to rest for 5 mana (a skeleton) or 15 (a barrow wight). Looking at a pile names its price. The kind is not gone from the world — its spawn goes back to waiting its ordinary turn elsewhere — and bones with nothing left in them are a mark like any other, so a click reaches past them for whatever is underneath

Rocks

Rocks stack in the bag, being carried by the handful and thrown one at a time. A rock that comes apart is gone, the same as anything else that gives out: one off the stack, and the log says how many are left. Nothing in the world goes as fast as a thrown stone

Outfitter

Wenna keeps a counter in the smithy and sells the plain end of everything: health potions, meat, a fishing rod, rocks by the handful, a club, a sword, a bow, a wooden shield and leather armor. Stand beside the counter and click it to see the list; a click on a line buys it, and anything you cannot afford is greyed rather than hidden. The list opens over the map alone, so your bag and your stats stay in sight and in reach while you spend — you can eat, wield or drop something without shutting it. Escape or Close puts it away. She does not sell what the wilderness pays out — the axe, the bright sword, the steel shield, the mail and the plate are all still out there to be earned

When gear gives out

It is gone. Nothing stays in your bag and nothing mends it — the forge is cold. The pieces fly where everyone can see them, the log says what you are down to, and the next best thing in the bag takes over by itself; a stack loses one and the log says how many are left

Kills

Killing another player is counted on you for good, and has a board of its own at the end of the highscores beside the deaths. Monsters do not count — that is what experience is for

Deaths

Every death is counted against your character for good. It shows on the highscores and to anyone who looks at you. Dying itself is read out in figures: a tenth of your experience with what is left of it, any level lost and the hitpoints that go with it, the coins that spill where you fell, and the tally so far. Your gear and your skills come back with you — skill fades with time away, not with dying — and you wake in the temple with a fishing rod — after a moment: for six seconds the view stays where you fell, on your own skull and whatever killed you, with “You are dead” across the screen, and then the temple takes you. You are sent the world’s announcement of your own death as well, which is the one thing said about you that you also get to read

Dragon fire

A dragon breathes as well as bites: a wave of fire along the way it is facing, one tile at its mouth and three abreast beyond, five deep — further than anything else in the game reaches, a bow included. Everyone in it burns at once, for 30 to 60 each — sixty is a whole new character and there is no roll small enough to stand in. It comes every eight seconds or so on a clock of its own, so it never costs the dragon a bite, and it reaches far further than teeth do — backing off is a walk, not a step. The wave runs north, east, south or west and never on the diagonal, so the corners are the safe ground: stand corner-on to a dragon and the fire goes past you on one side or the other. The tiles it covered stay alight for a couple of seconds so you can see exactly what to step out of before the next one. Nothing you wear or carry takes any of it off — armor is for edges and a shield goes between you and a thing, and fire is the air you are standing in, so it goes through every defence in the game. What does stop it is a wall, like an arrow, and the tiles it misses: fight one where there is something to put between you, and stand corner-on

Dragon

One dragon keeps the far north-west of the map, as one giant spider keeps the far south-west. Nothing else is worth as much, and nothing else bites as often: twice for every swing anything else makes, up to 80 a time, which is more over a fight than the old single 120 and leaves no gap in it long enough to drink a potion in. It also knits back together, a hitpoint every couple of seconds. That is nothing while you are hitting it and everything once you stop, so a dragon is finished in one visit or not at all — come back an hour later and it is whole

Quest

Orcs carry a rusty key. It opens the iron chest in the ruins, once per life: dying lets you run it again

Changes

Your bag

Clicks

Click a slot

Use what is in it: drink a potion, eat a meal, wield a weapon, take up a shield, put on armor or a helmet, cast a fishing rod at the water beside you

Right-click a slot

Drop one of what is in it on the ground at your feet — or on the nearest tile with room on it, since a thing dropped looks for clean ground rather than landing in the blood

Shift+right-click

Drop the whole pile at once. A square is a pile, and a click that put all forty rocks on the floor is not a click to make by accident

Long press

A touchscreen's answer to the right-click: it opens a little menu on the item saying what it is and offering every way of letting go of it — one, or the whole pile. A finger has one gesture where a mouse has two, so it spends it on the choice rather than on half of it

At the depot

Standing on the depot floor, a right-click stores the item instead of dropping it, and a right-click in the Depot panel takes it back out

What is in it

Twenty squares

The same twenty for everybody, whatever your level. The depot is its own twenty, in a building rather than on your back

Stacks

Everything stacks, so a square is a pile and twenty squares is twenty kinds of thing: forty rocks are one square. The bag is only full for something it is not already carrying — the twenty-first sword fits where a twenty-first kind of thing would not

Outlined squares

What you are actually fighting with: the best weapon, shield, armor and helm in the bag are used without being equipped. A click pins one as your choice — it moves to the front of the bag — and a click on a pinned one puts it away and leaves you bare, which stays that way until you say otherwise

Tooltips

Hovering a square says what the piece does, what it weighs, how likely it is to break, and which click it is about to be

Weight

Everything you can carry weighs something, counted in coins (cn) — the weight of one gold coin, which is the unit a world with no scales and a great many coins in it would arrive at. A coin is 1 cn, a fire sword 115, a suit of plate 450. The line beside the panel’s title is what your bag comes to against what you can lift, and the tooltip on each square says the piece’s own and the pile’s. What you can lift grows with your level. The limit is set very high for the moment — the best of everything at once is a few hundred, and the allowance runs to six figures — so it is a thing to see rather than a thing to run into

The map

Hands

Click

Walk there. It is the same walk a click on the world is — the way is found for you, and anything in it is walked round — so the map is how you set off for somewhere you cannot see

Drag

Pan, to look at country you are not standing in. The map goes with your hand. Your next step of your own snaps it back to you, so it is a look rather than a place the map stays

− and +

How much of the world is shown, from a few tiles around you out to the whole map fitted in the square. The choice is remembered between sessions

▲ and ▼

Peek at the floor above or below — the walk along the camp wall, the caves under the ground. The level being shown is named beside the arrows, and a step of your own brings it back to yours

What is on it

The ground

Every tile in its own colour, whether or not you can see it from where you stand. The map is what is there, not what is in sight — the floor being shown, one floor at a time

You

A white dot, in the middle of the square until you drag the map off yourself, with a white box round the patch of world the screen is showing

Dots

Everything else alive within nine tiles of you: monsters red, other people cyan. They are blips and nothing more — a dot says where, never what — and only the ones standing on the floor you are looking at are drawn

Clairvoyance

While the spell runs, the map shows the whole world at once and every creature on it, however far off. It is the one thing that makes the map a radar, and it is what the spell is for

Highscores

In the world