======================= Defending Yourself from Attacks =======================

     Monsters have all sorts of ways to hinder, damage, reduce, annoy, or even 
kill your character.  As you move down deeper into the dungeon in search of 
better items, you will need to steadily improve your defences against pure
damage, wounds, cuts, and stunning, bolts, balls, and breaths of various kinds, 
reductions of exp and stats, theft, and a variety of miscellaneous magical 
attacks.  By deliberate policy, this file leaves a lot of information out.  
Half the fun is discovery...


-- Pure Damage --

     Virtually all monsters can lower your hit points, and if you lose too many, 
you die.  Fortunately, this is also the attack most easily guarded against.  
Your armor class (or AC) is a number that describes the amount and the quality 
of the armor you are wearing.  The higher your armor class, the less likely you 
are to be hit by any melee blow, and the fewer HPs any successful standard hit 
will cost you.  Armour class has no effect on magical attacks.

     Your Armor:
              Each piece of armour has a base armor value which, like the damage 
         from weapons, is assumed to be known by the player, and possibly a 
         magical bonus, which will not be displayed unless the armor has been 
         identified.  Add the two together, and you have the total protective 
         value of the item; for example, a Chain Mail (-2) [14, +6] increases 
         your armor class by 20.  Note the "(-2)".  It is a penalty to Skill.  
              Above a certain weight limit, all spellcasters lose mana for 
         wearing heavy armor, although the penalty falls less heavily on 
         Priests, less still on Rogues, Rangers, and Assassins, and least on 
         Paladins.  Unlike in Angband, this penalty is as important for high-
         level characters as it was when they first started adventuring.  In 
         addition, Mages and Necromancers lose a chunk of mana if they wear 
         gloves that do not provide free action or increase magic mastery skill.


-- Cuts, Poison, and Stunning --

     Many monsters can inflict special kinds of physical damage on you, such as
opening wounds, and poisoning or stunning you.  After you start earning a little
money, plow some of it back into potions of cure Serious and Critical Wounds, 
and keep one or the other handy at all times.  If a monster manages to Heavy 
Stun you, teleport away!


-- Bolt, Ball, and Breath attacks --

     Just as spellcasters can do damage to monsters using many different kinds 
of magic, so too can monsters get some of their own back.  In the course of a
complete game, you will face roughly a score of different ranged attack types, 
only a few of which you cannot resist.

     Fire, Acid, Electricity, and Cold are the basic elemental attacks.  Because 
the maximum damage they can do to you is very high, find and wear items that 
confer resistance as soon as possible.  Unlike with other attack types, you can 
resist, double resist, and be immune to the elements.  If you wear two pieces of 
armor with resist fire, you will not have double resistance to fire.  If you are 
wearing one (or more) pieces of armor that resist fire and have also cast a 
spell, quaffed a potion, or otherwise gained temporary fire resistance, you have 
temporary double resistance.  Immunity to any of the elements is hard to get.
     Poison is deadly, and not so easy to gain resistance to.  Fortunately, you 
can journey quite a way into the dungeon without meeting monsters that breath it 
powerfully.  You can double-resist poison.
     Darkness, Light, Shards, and Sound can be moderately dangerous if unresis-
ted, but monsters that breath any of them powerfully are rare enough that you 
can concentrate on more urgent issues.  Keep a eye open, though...
     A fair number of creatures deep in the dungeon breath Nether and Chaos, and 
both can do a great deal of damage, but you can eventually acquire resistance.

     Be warned:  Some kinds of attacks cannot be resisted!  Fortunately, they
have low damage limits.  See the help file "equip.txt" for details on resis-
tances and similar things.


-- Reductions of Experience and Stats --

    Even when your character is starting out, there are rare traps and monsters 
capable of lowering his stats and draining his exp.  In addition, a strong 
elemental attack can occasionally lower a stat.  Slowly, these dangers increase 
until it becomes very important that you find objects that provide hold life and 
sustain at least your critical stats.  Until you get to the abyssal depths, 
though, these attacks aren't too bad, because you can quaff a potion of Restore 
Life or restore a stat (you will not infrequently find all of these in town) 
when the loss become too serious to ignore.


-- Theft --

     Nobody is more annoying than a thief.  You've just found that cool spell-
book or nifty weapon, and now it's gone.  You can gain a significant degree of 
protection from theft by increasing your armour class and Dexterity, and can 
always collect your stuff from the thief's corpse.  Unfortunately, thieves are 
smart enough to stash away the money they take from you.


-- Miscellaneous magical attacks --

     There are many monsters capable of casting spells to blind, confuse, slow, 
and paralyze you, plus quite a few other nasty tricks I will not mention.  Find
some objects that give you Free Action and See Invisible somewhere between 1500' 
and 2000', and keep a sharp lookout for something that prevents blindness and 
confusion.  Your Saving throw protects against these and other attacks, and you
can raise this survival skill by increasing Wisdom.

It is rumoured that certain undead possess a very deadly touch...
The same rumors whisper that Athelas has remarkable curative properties...