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~~~~~01|Help|Newbie help
#####R              The ToME Newbie Guide
Pat Gunn
Based loosely off of Chris Weisieger's Angband Newbie Guide.

        Welcome to ToME, a popular descendant of Moria/Angband.
ToME has many unique features that set it apart from other
Angband/Moria descendants, with a nice mix of races/classes available.
This guide will walk you, a player of ToME, through your first
game (or two), introducing you to basic features that will help your
character survive.

	After you start the game for the first time, you will be
prompted to create a new character. For this guide, we will start
out with simple, easy to play characters. Go through the prompts,
and select one of the following class/race combinations that will
make for a simple first character:
	Wood Elf (Normal) Archer
	Half-Troll (Zombie) Unbeliever
	Half-Ogre (Barbarian) Warrior

After class/race selection, you will roll your statistics. Roll a few times
until you get decent strength, constitution, and dexterity scores (the higher
the better). After naming your character, you will appear in the
town.

	The town is a (relatively) safe place for you to buy/sell equipment,
start quests, drop off items for storage, and various other things. Each store
is represented by a symbol (either a number or a '+') on the side of a
building. To enter a store, move over that symbol. You can also 'l'ook
around to see the identity of stores and other inhabitants of the town. At
this level, be wary of merchants and mercenaries -- they can probably kill you
with little difficulty. You will want to 'w'ield the weapons/armor you have
started with (if you chose the archer, wield the bow, and then wield the
arrows). You can check to see what you're wearing/wielding at any time by
pressing 'e'. Ideally, throughout the game you'll always have some kind of
missile weapon and a decent melee weapon. Initially, purchasing a short bow
and some plain arrows might be wise (archers start with a bow and some arrows,
but you'll probably want to buy more ammo). Choice of a melee weapon is much
more complex, but for now, unless you start with a good melee weapon
(unbelievers do), you might want to consider buying a whip from the weapon
store '3'. If available, purchase a lantern and 2 or 3 flasks of oil from the
general store '1'. You now should be ready to do some adventuring. 

        Just west of Bree are some steps into the first dungeon. Move on top
of these stairs and hit '>' to go down. You will notice that when you arrive 
in the dungeon, you will be on top of some stairs going back up, and in the 
lower right, you will see how deep in the dungeon you are. When you need to 
return to town, head upstairs from the top level of the dungeon (which you are 
in now). Other stairs down will take you deeper in the dungeon. For now, stay
on the first level of the dungeon, and fight some monsters to gain some
experience. Be careful only to fight one monster at a time -- avoid fighting
in open rooms when monsters can gang up on you. Also, avoid floating eyes
'e', and 'l'ook at monsters before getting involved in combat with them.
The 'C' button will bring up a screen telling you how many experience points
you need to go to next level, and 'l'ooking at monsters will tell you how
many experience points they are worth. 

	Once you go up a level, you'll want to invest some skill points so 
that your character improves. See the *****skills.txt*0[skills] help file for 
details.

	Grab treasure, and when you are carrying close to as much as you can 
carry, head back to Bree and sell your loot. After a few trips, and reaching 
level 3, try going deeper in the dungeon before coming up.

	Before you start going past the 8th or 9th level down, you will
want some means of detecting traps, as traps begin to be a problem around
that depth. Eventually, you'll want a rod of trap detection, but scrolls or
staves will do until you find a rod and a rod tip of the right kind. These
items, when used, will display all traps on the current screen. This means
that you'll want to use them again every time the screen scrolls onto a
screen you haven't tried for traps yet. Some kinds of items grant useful
resistances or powers. You can see your current resistances and other
stats by hitting 'C' and scrolling through the screens that come up. 
If you come across a Thunderlord coat early in the game, they make
a good choice, as they grant resistance to fire and cold. Resistances
reduce the damage attacks of certain kinds do, and often reduce the
effectiveness of side-effects they have. As you progress deeper in the
dungeon, you will want to start using scrolls of recall to move to and
from the dungeon. These scrolls, when read, schedule your return either
to the surface or to the dungeon level you were last at. They do, however,
take several turns to take effect, so reading them in an emergency will
do little good. 

	Eventually, once you are around level 13 or 14, you will be ready
to make trips to some of the other towns. The easiest town to get to is
northeast of Bree; the others are more difficult to find and reach. When
planning a trip, be sure to carry lots of food and/or scrolls of
satisfy hunger. Multiple light sources may also be wise, and a bow is
almost essential. To make long trips easier, ToME has a map mode
specifically designed for travel. To use it, hit '<' in the wilderness.
This will change the scale of the map, and make time go by at a much
faster rate per square of movement (each square being many normal grid
squares). Be sure to de-equip any exhaustible light sources before
the trip, and never allow yourself to get past hungry while in this mode --
drop down to the normal mode (with '>') if you get a message that you are
hungry. Eventually, you will also make surface trips to find new dungeons
to visit.

#####REquipment notation:
#####GA Weapon (3d4) (+3,+7)
	This weapon, when you attack an enemy, does base damage calculated
	by rolling a 4-sided die 3 times (adding the results up). It gets a
	+3 to hit, and +7 to damage. If the weapon is light enough and
	you are strong/dextrous enough, you can attack with it multiple times,
	getting the base and extra damage once for each attack.
#####GA Shield [5,+4]
	This is a piece of armour, with a base defence of 5 and a magical
	bonus of +4. If you wear it, your armour rating will increase by
	9. 

#####GA Weapon (Defender) (1d6) (+12,+5) [+6] (+2 to stealth)
	This is a special type of weapon, with special powers. The powers
	depend on the type (there are more types than just Defender),
	and some types can grant a variety of different powers. To get the
	full info on this kind of weapon, you can either 'x'amine it if it's
	being sold in a store, use certain kinds of magic (*Id*), or use
	the (very expensive) services of certain stores.

Many armours also have special powers.
Some very powerful items are unique, and are called artifacts. They are
normally indestructible, and will prove very useful in your quest.

