Living

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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 objects 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 pages newbie, character creation and starting. You should probably read also pages newbie areas and newbie hints next, if you haven't already.