40d:Adventurer mode

In adventurer mode, you pick a race (elf, dwarf or human) and start out in either a town of your race or in a previous fortress you played on. You can receive quests, venture into the wilderness to find caves, abandoned towers and other villages. You can even visit your old fortresses and find whatever riches were left to be guarded by the creatures that fated your fortress.

Your first adventure

Picking a race

When it comes to picking a race, there is difference in skills. Dwarves cannot wear human sized armor, and are somewhat limited in the weapons they can wield due to their size. Elves have a slightly different set of skills. Humans are generally fairly well-balanced, and are the easiest to acquire quests from. Each race fares differently in combat; you may wish to look at the races' pages for the finer details.

Choosing skills

Basically, if you want to start with a weapon, you need to avoid having the most points spent in unarmored/wrestling. If you, for example, choose to start out with most points in swordsman, you will start out with a sword. When you have chosen your preferred set of skills, you can press Enter to embark.

Setting out

If you chose human, you will start out inside the mayors house. You will see the mayor (purple) and probably several drunks. Press k and talk to the mayor. Press 'services' for a quest. You can talk to the drunks and recruit them to your party for some additional combat aid. Be sure to read the Adventure Mode quick reference or use the help files for more information on the commands in Adventure mode.

Trading

In towns you can find merchants inside some buildings. Talk to them to trade with them. After buying an item, you must pick it up manually from somewhere in the shop.

Equipping your adventurer

After acquiring armor from one source or another, you'll most likely want to equip it. To do this, first make sure it is in your possession--not on the ground. You can then put it on, granted you don't already have too much on that equipment slot already. You can remove or drop inferior equipment as necessary.

Travelling the world

How-to

You can walk around the whole world tile by tile if you wish, but given the size of the world, you might want to consider using another method. Pressing T will let see a very zoomed out map of the surrounding area. Moving about on this map is much faster, as well as it heals your adventurer, keeps him from starving, dehydrating, or getting tired. To exit this screen and explore the area you've reached, press '>'.

Finding quest locations

After receiving a quest, you will be able to track its location using the Quest log. Initially it will just give you the location on the Travel map, though a lesser-known feature is its use in finding the cave entry (or other such target) once you're already in the local map. Bring up the quest log again, highlight the quest objective you're after, and zoom to it. It should then provide you with a local map of your current area, complete with a 3x3 box of flashing squares. This box indicates the general location of the cave's mouth. You'll still have to do some searching, but at least it's narrowed down for you. You can bring up this map at any time that you're in the local area of a quest objective.

Visiting abandoned fortresses

If you start an adventure in a world with one or more abandoned fortresses, you can take your adventurer to see the sites of your previous endeavours. When you find one of your old fortresses, you will find that everything is a mess. Items are scattered about, things are smashed up and there are probably new hostile inhabitants that you will need to fend off. Visiting your old fortresses might prove to be rewarding, since you can find armor and weapons you made (if you made any). The best thing to be found in your fortress would probably be any left behind artifact weapon or armor. This is also probably the best (and only?) way to get artifact-quality weapons and armor.

Also remember to check out any engravings you made while in fortress mode. When checking out engravings in adventure mode, they reveal alot more specific information about the event that is engraved.

Combat

Fighting is extremely detailed in adventure mode! This adds alot of fun in the battle, since there are so many ways to injure your opponents/victims.

Ranged

If you have a bow or crossbow, you can shoot arrows or bolts at enemies. You can also throw anything you can carry at enemies. Ranged attacks are highly efficient when you hit. To fire your bow or crossbow, press f, and move the marker to the enemy you wish to fire upon, and press Enter. Same with throwing stuff, only press t and choose wich item to throw, then choose the victim. Note: Throwing is slightly bugged, but in a good and fun way. You can throw captured flies, socks and even vomit if you want, with lethal effects. (Water piercing lungs, flies piercing hearts etc..)

Close combat

To fight a creature by hitting it, you just need to walk towards the creature. Alternatively, you can press A and choose your target. After you've pressed A and are given the list of targets to attack, you can use Enter to choose between a normal attack and wrestling before selecting which opponent you wish to target. A normal attack will make the adventurer hit the target with whatever weapon he holds. If he is holding no weapon, he will bash with his shield. If he has neither a weapon nor a shield, he will either punch his target or grab a random appendage. In wrestling, you must spend a few rounds locking the target's limbs to be able to break and splinter them (good times). Alternately, you could try gouging, pinching, or strangling them instead.