Living

                        Living in Icesus

 Like any world, Icesus is a complex place. Explaining all
 facets of the world in one document is simply impossible,
 and part of the fun is learning and finding out for
 yourself. This document will, however, try to explain the
 things which a beginning adventurer needs to know about daily
 life in Icesus.

Gaining experience & money:

 This is the part which players usually are most interested
 in.  The most effective way of gaining experience and money
 is killing monsters. Read 'help newbie areas' for directions
 to places with monsters suitable for beginners. You can
 attack monsters with the 'kill'-command.  However, it is a
 VERY good idea to first use the 'consider'-command to get a
 rough idea about how powerful the monster is. A hint: do NOT
 try to kill any of the citizens on the streets of Vaerlon.

 Killing monsters is easier if you are a member of a party. A
 party is a group of adventurers who have teamed up so that
 they move and fight together. The members of the party can
 place themselves so that strong fighters stand in front taking
 the hits while mages and priests stand behind them and cast
 spells. Parties are formed and managed with the
 'party'-command.

 Some experience can be gained from exploring. The are
 certain rooms, some of them hidden, which give experience to
 an adventurer entering them for the first time. Also,
 Priests of Air gain small amounts of experience when healing
 other players with healing spells. Then there might also be
 quests of different kinds in some areas which will give you
 differing rewards. These you must find yourself, but as a
 hint: it can be worthwhile to talk to other persons and
 monsters and not just try to kill them.  Use the
 'ask'-command to ask about different things. To start with,
 try typing just 'ask <target>'. This will make you greet the
 person or monster. If it is at all interested in talking to
 anyone, it will then usually (but not always) will say
 something that will give you an idea what more you can ask
 about.

 After killing a monster, try 'get all from corpse' or 'loot'
 to take the monsters possessions from the corpse. Depending
 on the monster, it might have some coins on it, and maybe
 some equipment you can sell in the shops in the city if you
 don't want to use it yourself.

 If the killed monster was a animal, you can 'skin' the
 corpse to get skins. There is a fur trader in the city who
 buys skins for a fair price. Skinning is also a "talent"
 ('help talents'), ie a skill that you are not trained in a
 guild but from a teacher you will have to find
 yourself. Hint: try the obvious first.

Fighting monsters:

 The combat system in Icesus is based on dividing your time
 between attacking, defending and casting spells. You do this
 by assigning combat points to each of these 3 categories
 with the 'battle'-command, eg 'battle -a attack'. Read 'help
 battle' and also 'battle help assign' for a more thorough
 explanation. One of the things which most often confuse
 beginners is starting a battle and finding that they aren't
 hitting their opponent at all. This probably means you have
 assigned all points to defence and/or casting. Check it with
 'battle' and reassign some to attack, and you'll start
 hitting. You really should read 'help combat' for a detailed
 explanation of the combat-system in Icesus.

 If you are a spellcaster and want to use offensive spells to
 kill a monster, you will want to read 'help magic'. Spells
 are cast with the 'cast'-command. Other spellcaster than
 mages have mostly single-type spells, so they can cast them
 with 'cast <spell> at <target>'. Mages' spells consist of
 components which have to be studied separately, like
 "missile" and "fire". These are then combined to cast a
 spell, eg 'cast missile of fire at <target>'.

 Before you start a fight, it is a good idea to set your
 wimpy-level with the 'wimpy'-command. This will make you
 automatically flee from an opponent if you take too much
 damage. How much "too much" is depends on how high you have
 set you wimpy-level. Also, it helps to set monitoring on by
 typing 'mon on', so that you see when your hit points
 decrease in the fight. Read 'help mon' and 'help settings'
 if you want to know more about the command.

 During the fight, you will want to see how the monster's
 shape changes as you hit at it. Apart from looking at it,
 this can also be done with the 'shape'-command. Typing
 'shape monster' will show you briefly the shape of
 it. Typing just 'shape' shows you the shape of any monster
 you are currently fighting. You can also do 'shape all' to
 show all attackers' shape, if you are fighting several
 monsters. There is a global alias 'x' defined for the
 'shape'-command, meaning that typing 'x' has the same effect
 as typing 'shape'.

 If you win the fight, there will usually be a corpse left by
 the dead monster. After you have taken what you want from
 it, you should 'dig grave' to bury the corpse, unless you
 skin it. Corpses left on the ground can turn into undeads,
 which can be very dangerous.

Healing up:

 After one or several battles, your hitpoints will start to
 become so low that you should rest and heal before fighting
 more monsters. You can build a camp with the 'camp'-command,
 eg 'camp build'. This will take some time, so it might be
 wise to build a camp somewhere aside before you start
 fighting monsters, and return to it to heal every now and
 then.  How long it takes and how good the camp is is
 determined by how good you are in the skill "camping". In
 any case, once the camp is ready and the fire is burning,
 you can 'sleep' at the camp to regain hitpoints faster.

 Another way to regain hitpoints faster is to have another
 adventurer who belongs to the Priests of Air - guild cast
 healing spells on you.  Having a priest in a party with you
 might therefore be a good thing.

Death:

 Sooner or later an adventurer in Icesus faces an opponent or
 situation too hard for her and dies. Her soul will then be
 transported to the dreaded Nether Plane, from which it must
 escape by entering one of the portals available there. Dying
 will reduce the amount of experience you have and have
 various other bad effects. Read 'help death' or the more
 concise 'help death short' for more information.

 If you die often, that is, soon after you previously died,
 you character may come to suffer from "nether effects" when
 revived. These effects lower some of your statistics and are
 generally a nuisance, but will fade away after a
 while. Repeatedly dying often will increase the length and
 severity of the nether effects.

Food & drink:

 All the running around and fighting monsters will eventually
 make you hungry and thirsty. You will notice that you start
 getting messages like "You are hungry." or "You are
 thirsty." when this happens.  Water can be drunk directly
 from rivers in the outworld or from fountains.  One fountain
 is in the Central Square in Vaerlon, where Ereldon
 stands. You can also buy a water flask which you can fill
 with water and carry with you.  Water flask are sold in the
 bakery in Vaerlon, which is located above the General Shop.

 From the bakery you can also buy bread, which helps when you
 are getting hungry. Another source of food is pieces of meat
 that you might be able to extract from a corpse while you
 are skinning it. The talent "carving" helps with this.

Equipment:

 All adventurers need some equipment. In this context,
 "equipment" usually means weapons and armours. Although
 fighting without any weapon might actually be easiest in the
 very beginning, especially if you train the "natural"-skill,
 fighters will eventually need good weapons to fight
 with. Mages and priests might not need weapons, at least not
 the very best ones (and they aren't very good at using them,
 anyway). Armours protect you and make you take less damage
 from opponents' hits. Read 'help weapon types' and 'help
 armour types' to see what you can find.  You might notice
 that some armours and weapons are glowing in some colour.
 This means they have some magical property; 'help glow'
 explains about this.

 There are shops in the city where you can sell and buy
 armours and weapons. You can check once in a while if they
 have anything suitable for you. Note, however, that these
 shops are closed during the night.  Rumours have it that
 there are hidden, underground shops which stay open all
 night; if that is the case, you must find these yourself.

 Other sources of equipment are the monsters you kill. They
 might have some armours and weapons, sometimes even valuable
 or magic ones.  If the monster was of a very different size
 than you, any armour it was using will probably not fit
 you. You must resize it in the smithy which is in the
 northwestern part of Vaerlon. Go to the smith there and look
 around to find out how to get armours resized. Again, 'ask
 smith' will show you in the right direction.

 If you walk around the smithy, you will also find other
 smiths which can make armours and weapons for you. This can
 be rather expensive, however, especially for beginners.

Elements:

 The elements in Icesus, fire, air, water and earth, affects
 the life of everyone in various manners. Reading 'help
 elements' tells you more about this. You might especially
 want to know about blessings, which the Gods of the elements
 can give to their devout followers.

 Blessings can be gained with Divine Favours, which again are
 gained by sacrificing at an altar of a divinity. You can
 sacrifice almost anything, but it is said that the Gods
 especially like the hearts of slain enemies. Hearts and
 other object can be sacrificed on altars. There is one altar
 shared by all the elements in the city in the Monument of
 Stonement. Altars dedicated to just one deity are better to
 sacrifce at, but you must then find one belonging to the
 deity of the element you worship.  There are altars in the
 shrines located near the city in the outworld, with paths
 leading to each shrine. Read 'help divine favor' and 'help
 blessing' to learn more.

Staying informed:

 The immortals in Icesus are constantly improving and adding
 features to the game. It is essential to keep yourself
 up to date on these changes. The modifications are
 informed via 'gameinfo', a command that shows the latest
 changes. The same information is also available at our
 webpages, under the news section.

Further reading:

 Hopefully, you have already read 'help newbie',
 'help creation' and 'help starting'. You should probably
 read 'help newbie areas' and 'help newbie hints'  next,
 if you haven't already.