Section 6 - Getting Around Town:

           
FIGURE 3:  Town buttons. 

     When you begin the game, you will be in one of Exile’s many towns and forts. There are a variety of things you can and should do. 

Moving around:   To move, place the cursor on the terrain screen in the direction you want to move (it should turn into a little arrow) and click. You will take a step in the direction the arrow points. To move up, for example, move the cursor above the little person in the middle (you). The cursor should turn into an arrow pointing up. Click. You will move up a space.
      You can also move using the keypad. Hitting ‘5’ pauses your party, ‘8’ makes you move up, ‘2’ down, and so on.
      If you cannot move there, because of something in the way, the text screen will tell you so. If you’ve stepped on something unpleasant, like swamp, lava, or some sort of trapped square, you will be informed. There are several interesting things to know about moving around...

      Leaving Town: When you want to leave a town or dungeon, pick a direction and 

keep walking. Eventually, when you walk off the edge of the map, you will be 

outdoors. A handy way of telling how far you are from the edge of the map is to 

use the Map button, described below.

      Special Encounters:  You will occasionally see, both in town and outdoors, a 

white circle on the the nearby floor/ground/whatever. The white circle signifies 

a special encounter or occurrence of some sort. Step on it to find out what it is.

      Wall and Secret Doors:  Not all walls, man-made or otherwise, are as they 

appear. Some walls have secret doors and hidden tunnels. When you walk into a 

wall with one of these, you will pass through it. This may not always be a good 

thing.

      Locked Doors:  When you walk into a door, you will try to open it. However, 

some doors are guarded by locks, magical and non-magical. 

      To open a locked door, you can bash it or pick the lock. Bashing only rarely 

works, and failed attempts are punished by damage. Only strong characters 

should try to bash doors.

      Locks can be picked by a character who has a decent Pick Locks skill and has 

lockpicks equipped. When you fail, there is a chance that one of your picks will 

break.

It is rumored that you can find higher quality lockpicks.

Finally, some doors are magically locked. Bashing and lockpicking will not 

work; you will need to use the mage spell Unlock Doors. And every great once in a 

while, you will find a door on which none of these methods will work! You’ll need 

to find a key or lever or something else to open it.

      Boats:   Both outdoors and in town, you can find boats. To enter one, move onto it. 

To leave it, steer it onto ground. Boats are essential to get to certain interesting 

places, and may be able to travel over more things than water...

      Light:   Some areas are dark. To see beyond your nose, you will need a light 

source, be it a torch or spell. In certain unpleasant areas, even a torch or spell 

won’t get rid of the darkness.

Pausing:   Sometimes, you’ll want to just sit and watch the world go by. Click on 

your party or hit ‘5’ on the keypad to just wait.

Alchemy:   One of the things you can do in town is use ingredients you’ve found in your adventures to try to make potions. Should you have the right ingredients, the right recipe, and a PC with sufficient alchemy skill, select Do Alchemy from the Actions menu. You will be asked who is going to make it, and then given a list of potions you can make. Certain potions cannot be made by a character with low alchemy skill. The higher the alchemy skill, the better the odds of success.

For more information on the things you can make with alchemy, inside the game select Alchemy Info, under the Library menu.

The Town Guard:  Be careful! Damaging a friendly townsperson or stealing items can get the town guard after you! If this happens, you best flee town, before they destroy you.

Selecting Spaces Shortcut:   When you hit the ‘look’ button (or the ‘talk’ button), click on the space you want to look at to look at (talk to) it. A quicker way to look at something is to hit ‘l’ on the keyboard, and then the keypad key in the direction you want to look. This has you look at (or talk to) whatever is in the next space in that direction.

      Each of the many buttons at the bottom left corner of the screen has you do something. The appearance of the button is given in parenthesis. Several of them have keyboard equivalents. When they do, the key is given in the parenthesis:

Cast Mage (Fireball. ‘m’):   You will be asked to select one of your party members, who will then be given a chance to cast any mage spells he or she knows. Mage spells are described later.

Case Priest (Black ankh. ‘p’):   Same as cast mage, but for priest spells.

Look  (Eye. ‘l’):   Clicking on this button and then on a space in the Terrain Screen gives you a list of everything in the space you click. Terrain, monsters, and items will be identified.  Also...

      Looking Off screen:  When you look, if you click on the terrain border, the 

terrain you’re looking at will scroll in the direction you click on, so you can see 

the monsters before they’re right on top of you.

      Signs:  When your party is adjacent to a sign, you can read it by looking at it.

      Searching Stuff:    When your party looks at something it is standing adjacent 

to, you will search the crate/desk/bookshelf/whatever for interesting things. If 

there is something there, you will have a special encounter.

      Opening Chests:   When you find a treasure chest, standing adjacent to it and 

looking at it has you try to open it. You will be asked to select a party member to 

disarm the trap. 

Picking someone with decent Trap skill is well advised.

Talk  (Lips, ‘t’):   You can talk to any living creature which is not actually trying to kill you. To do so, click on this button, and then the thing you want to talk to.  You will then be presented with a window with the description of the person.
      To talk to a person, type something in the text box at the top of the window, and hit return. Ask one words questions, like ‘crown’ or ‘demon.’ Everybody responds to ‘look’,’name’ and ‘job.’ Beyond that, you can figure out what the person knows things about by reading what they tell you. For example, if you ask someone her work and she says ‘I sell information about swords.’ asking her about ‘information’  or ‘swords’ would be a good idea.

      Special Information:   Occasionally, someone will tell you something that will 

help you do something else, such as a password or the location of a hidden item. 

When this happens, you will be told something along the lines of “You take note 

of this.” If you die later without saving, be sure to go back to get this 

information again.

      Stores:   Most of the towns have a store of some sort in them. To buy something, 

talk to the person behind the counter. If there is something to be bought, or if 

you can sell things, you can then find out what. In general (but not always), the 

thing to ask about to purchase something is ‘buy.’ ‘Purchase’ and ‘Buy’ are used 

interchangeably. Sometimes, however, the thing to say to buy something may be 

tricky to figure out.

      There are many sorts of stores. The more important ones are:

      Shops:  There are many sorts of shops. Some sell weapons, some armor, some 

potions, some strange things. Many will also buy things, generally for half what 

you paid.

      Training:   You can spend your experience to gain valuable skills at the 

occasional training center. This works exactly the same as when you created your

character, but you also have to pay gold. Each level in a skill costs the amount 

after the slash in the cost column.

Should you buy some skills and then decide you don’t want them, press the Cancel 

button to restore your character. Press the Keep button to keep the training.

      Sages:  Occasionally, you will find a learned soul who can teach you how to cast 

new spells and make alchemical delights. Other people can identify your items 

for you, so you can know if that potion is poison before you drink it.

When you buy a spell for a character, only that character knows it. On the other 

hand, you only need to buy an alchemical recipe once for the entire party. The 

person selling it to you will tell you which special plant you need to make it.

      Docks:  A few towns sell sturdy boats to navigate the lake and rivers of the 

underworld. When you buy a boat, one of the boats at a nearby dock will become

yours, and you will be able to enter it.

      Healers:  A few towns have people skilled in the healing arts. For a fee, they will 

cure all damage the selected PC has taken, up to and including being turned to 

dust. Paying a healer will also have the curses removed from all the PC’s 

equipped items.

     Weapon Improvement:  Every once in a while, you will meet someone who can 

improve your non-magical weapons, for a large fee. When this happens, click by 

the weapon to have it changed.

Get   (Hand picking up scroll. ‘g’):   When you see items nearby, click on this button to get them. If hostile monsters are in sight, you will only be able to get adjacent items. If not, you will be able to get all items nearby.

When the item getting window comes up, click on an item to get it. To have a new PC get items, click the button by their picture.

Finally, some items in towns are not your property. Getting these items puts you in danger of being attacked by the town guard!

Use   (‘Use’, ‘u’):  This all-purpose command has you do something to an adjacent space. Using an open door closes it, and vise versa. Using a space with webs has you clear the webs away. Perhaps this action has other uses...

Map   (A Scroll, ‘a’):   As you wander around the town or dungeon, you will automatically keep track of the terrain you see. When you click this button, you will see a map of the area you’re in. Your party will be represented by a solid green square. Walls are solid black, water is solid blue, lava is red, swamp is green, and obstructions are black-outlined squares. 
      Also, you can leave the map window up while you play. It will keep updating itself as you travel.

Enter Combat Mode   (Sword. ‘f’):   As you wander around, someone or something might decide to attack you. When in town mode, you travel in a tight-knit, awkward group. Thus, you can’t fight back, and the monsters move and act faster than you.
      To deal with this unpleasant situation, click on this button to enter combat mode. Your group will split up into its individual members, and you will be able to fight back.

      When you leave town (or go into combat) the buttons will change. The next two sections say what the new buttons do.