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.
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.
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.
For detailed information on how to cast spells, go to the section on magic (Section 7.3).
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. You will then ask the person about that thing. 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.’ asking her about ‘information’ 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
interchangably. Sometimes, however, the thing to say to buy something may be
tricky to figure out.
The Buy and Sell Buttons: Pressing the Buy button in the corner of the talk
window has you ask about the most common things people sell, fist asking about
'buy', then 'heal', then 'train', and so on. If the person has nothing to sell, you
will get the standard I Don't Understand response. The Sell button works the
same.
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.
Hitting the left and right arrow has you scroll through your party. However,
when you leave one PC's page, you can no longer cancel changes you made on
that page.
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, it will appear outside town.
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.
Saving Talking: Pressing the 'Save' button saves whatever the person you're
talking to just said in the file Exile Talk. This provides handy automatic
note-taking.
Get (Hand picking up scroll. ‘g’): When you see an item on the ground, to get it, move your party on top of it and click this button. You will be given a list of PCs who have space in their inventories, and then told what the item is and asked if you want it.
Bash (A boot, ‘b’): This is the hard way to open locked doors. Stand adjacent to the door, click this button, pick a strong PC to do the deed, and click on the door to kick. If you succeed, the door will become unlocked. If you fail, damage is your reward.
In general, the odds of a bash attempt succeeding are not too good.
Alchemy (Blue bottle, ‘A’): Should you have the right ingredients, the right recipe, and a PC with sufficient alchemy skill, click on this button to try to make a potion. 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.
Pick Locks (Keyhole, ‘P’): The easy way to unlock locked doors. Stand adjacent to the door in question, click this button, select a PC, and click on the door. The PC attempting to pick the lock must have lockpicks equipped. Should the attempt fail, the lockpick may break. Also, some doors have locks which can’t be picked.
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. Spaces you haven't seen are marked by dots.
Also, you can leave the map window up while you play. It will keep updating itself as you travel.
Finally, you can have your map saved with your saved game. To do so, select Save Maps from the Options menu. The maps will be saved from then on.
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 lots of items are strewn about the floor, there is another useful shortcut:
Mass Get (‘G’): If there are no monsters in sight, hitting ‘G’ has you pick up all items within several spaces.
There are other useful shortcuts...
Wait 40 times ('w'): Waiting a while causes your health and spell points to return, albeit somewhat slowly. Hitting 'w' while in town has you wait 40 times, restoring some of your health. You stop waiting when someone takes damage or a hostile monster comes into view. Don't do this too often in hostile territory - wandering monsters will keep appearing.
Recast Mage Spell ('M'), Recast Priest Spell ('P'): This has the last person who cast a mage (or priest) spell attempt to cast it again, on the same person (if it is a spell you cast on a PC).
When you leave town (or go into combat) the buttons will change. The next two sections say what the new buttons do.
