Gameplay Tips:
1. You start the game with 300 SS and can buy something with it of your choice. I recommend purchasing the 2nd level spell, Minor Blessing for 300 SS. It will increase your accuracy, dodge, spell resistance and spell penetration by +5 for 10 rounds, which is very handy for the early game.
2. You can view the commands accepted by the text parser by typing in "display info", and then typing in "commands". Otherwise, any text found within ( ), is input accepted by the text parser in specific situations.
3. Each monster is preceded by a specific word, that indicates the type of monster it is. Tough monsters do little damage, but are high on protection and health. Quick monsters do moderate damage, but are high on accuracy and dodge. Intelligent monsters cast spells, and thus target your spell resistance value and often do high damage and have high spell resistance of their own. Primal Chaos monsters are experience drainers, that drain experience with each hit and can drain your levels if you aren't careful or can insta-kill you by draining your experience below 0 when at level 1, however, drainers provide the highest experience points (other than bosses) and provide you with an elixir that raises an attribute by +3.
4. There is a powerful boss at LV 3 sewers and LV 6 ruins. Killing it grants a lot of loot, a lot of experience points, and a boss-specific artifact of immense power.
5. Don't forget that you can always flee from a fight you don't think you can win! Type "flee from target" (where target is the name of the creature) and if it is the first round of that encounter you can escape without being attacked.
6. Enchanting and enhancing your items have varying benefits based on your choice of play style. Enchantment is universally desired by all playstyles, but enhancement is not. Enhancement increases the base value of protection, which in turn makes performing sneak attacks much harder and increase the costs of combat-casted spells. Enhancement of a weapon increases its base damage, which in turn increases all mundane attacks, but also makes sneak attacks harder to do. Enhancement of items is cheaper (250 SS per kit compared to 500 SS per orb) and enhancing armor provides +2 enhancement levels per enhancement kit, whereas most items will only get +1 enhancement level per kit.
7. If you intend to cast spells a lot, then a staff is a must! The enchantment bonus on a staff will increase HP healed, damage dealt and increase the duration of spells by +1 per enchantment bonus. Think of it as a spellcaster using their staff as a focusing point, to boost their power.
8. Racial choice is important. Everyone starts at 10 in their racial score (ie dwarfs start at 10 in strength and vitality) and 5 in all other scores. Additionally, you only need 500 training experience to gain an increase in an attribute. Finally, race also determines the attributes and health/mana gained at level up of character levels. Thus, certain playstyles are easier to do as a specific race.
9. Performing actions provides experience points for training attributes. Once you earn sufficient XP (either 500 for racial attributes or 1000 for other attributes), you gain +1 attribute and your training XP is effectively reset. Failing at an action builds training experience faster than successes; ie missing a target builds perception faster than if you hit the target. You can also get training from Training Manuals found as loot, rare Tomes of Attribute, or by purchasing training from the Celestial.
10. There is a form of permadeath in the game. The game will end when you die, however, if your vitality attribute is high enough, you can alternatively get a Second Wind. A second wind will restore your health and mana to 50% of maximum values, but reduce all your attributes by -2 (and thus make successive second winds harder and harder). The deeper you are in the game, the harder it will be to have a second wind as well.
11. Killing primal chaos enemies will make all future primal chaos enemies stronger, based on the number of them you have killed. This will also increase the amount of rare items found on them and the amount of experience gained by killing them.
12. The greatsword is a powerful weapon, but also entails risks. It has the highest damage potential of all weapons in the game, provides double strength bonuses to attacks and has double luck bonuses as well. The risk however is that you cannot use it with a shield, meaning you will take far more damage and get hit far more often. However, enhancement kits provides +2 damage per kit, compared to +1 damage for most other weapons.
13. Shields are extremely useful in this game. They will provide both their base protection and enchantment value to your dodge bonus, armor total, and to help you resist enemy spells. However, shield protection value will increase the costs of combat spells and will make sneaking much harder.
