There are three sorts of possessions you can come across:
Gold: Well, this isn’t actually literal chunks of gold. Exile doesn’t use money quite as much as the surface world. The number of gold pieces you are said to have represents the various trade goods, valuable chunks of metal, furs, and other valuable, barterable items you carry around. Anyway, whatever it actually is, it’s what you buy stuff with. You start with a small amount.
Food: Preserved giant lizard steaks, dried mushrooms, yummy, tangy lichens, and all the other rich bounty of Exile. Every once in a while you will eat some of it, one unit for each active PC. Not having enough food results in starvation, damage, and bad things.
Items: Each PC can carry 16 objects, such as armor, helmets, tools, weapons, etc. You can do various things with these items:
Equip/Unequip: To bring an item to hand, click on it on the PC’s items page. To
unequip it, do the same. You only have two hands, and some weapons take up both
of them. You can only wear two rings, and one necklace (too many magic items
interfere with each other in bizarre ways). Beware. When you equip a cursed
item, you will need to find a healer to take the curse off.
Item Info: Clicking on the button with the ‘I’ brings up a window giving
information on the item.
Give: To do this, click on the ‘G’ button to the right of the item. You may then
select a PC to give the item to.
Use: Clicking on the ‘U’ button has you use the item, for better or worse. Most
usable items have a limited number of uses (the number in parenthesis after the
name of the item, should the item be equipped). When the last use is used, the
item disappears.
Drop: Clicking on the ‘D’ button leaves the item on the ground at your feet,
unless you’re outdoors. When you drop an item outdoors it’s gone forever.
9.2 Magic:
There are seven levels of spells. Your characters begin the game knowing most spells up to third level. They can cast a mage spell of a given level if they have that many spell points, and Intelligence and Mage Spells skill at that level (and the same goes for priest spells). Upon casting, the character loses a number of spell points equal to the level of the spell cast, and something happens.
Spell effects are cumulative, and build up quickly. If you bless a character twice, the effect will be much more than twice the effect of one bless. When you poison a monster twice, it will do well over twice the damage the first spell would have caused. If one fear spell doesn’t make a monster flee, the next one will have a much better chance of working. Casting two light spells makes the light last twice as long.
Mage spells require great delicacy of movement to cast. For this reason, they cannot be cast when bulky armor is being worn. Priest spells, consisting mainly of shouted prayers, do not have this limitation.
Mage Spells and Encumbrance: If you are wearing armor with a total encumbrance of greater than one, you cannot cast mage spells. However, high defense skill can counteract this. If your armor isn’t too bulky, sometimes defense skill will enable you to cast spells. If you fail, however, you lose your turn.
Multiple Target Spells: Some spells, such as the Arrow spells, have more than one target. When you cast such a spell, click on each target. Click on a target again to untarget it. Should you decide to cast the spell without using all your targets, hit space.
Magical barriers: Some spells create a two space with barrier of some sort of magical wall. You can rotate this before placing it. Do so by hitting space.
Dumbfounding: Being dumbfounded reduces the number of spells you can cast. Being a little dumbfounded prevents you from casting high level spells. The more dumbfounded you are, the more spells you lose access to. The priest spell Restore Mind and certain magic items can undo the effects of dumbfounding.
9.3 Magical Walls and Barriers
Both you and your foes have the capability to create a wide variety of magical fields and barriers, each with different effects and durations.
There are fire, force, ice, and blade walls, which damage anyone entering and fade with time. There are stinking clouds, which curse anyone entering and fade quickly, and antimagic clouds, which prevent any spell casting or targeting inside them, and fade slowly.
Webs cover anyone entering with goo, which slows the victim down. Pausing cleans off the goo.
Quickfire: The rarest and most deadly of the magical fields is quickfire. Once quickfire is created, it begins to spread, expanding until it fills the entire dungeon! Antimagic clouds slow it down, and dispel fields spells can hinder its progress, but once quickfire is loose, running is your only real option.
When a dungeon is overcome with quickfire, leave and return later. The flames will have died down.
Fire and Force Barriers: These barriers last until they are dispelled. The firmer damages anyone entering, and the latter prevents anyone from entering at all.
9.4 Summoned Monsters
Both you and your foes can magically bring forth creatures to aid you. These summoned monsters fight for a short time, and then disappear. If killed, they leave no treasure.
The most (potentially) powerful summoning spells are Capture Soul and Simulacrum. Should you obtain a Soul Crystal, casting Capture Soul on a monster stores a copy of it. Later, you can cast Simulacrum to bring a copy of the monster forth. Collect copies of the most powerful monsters and bring them to your aid! A Soul Crystal can hold 4 monsters.
Beware - when you Capture Soul a monster, its copy is stored in a random slot in the Soul Crystal. It may copy over a monster you already have.
