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Text File | 1996-02-14 | 14.3 KB | 345 lines

Hints for beginner HACKERS -------------------------- Hack Lite is a Dungeons and Dragons like game where the object is to descend into a dungeon to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor and return to the surface with it. The Amulet is harder to retrieve in Hack Lite than in some other versions of Hack, but it's not impossible! Your character You can be one of several character classes when you start the game. Each character starts with different attributes (strength, hit points) and a different inventory of items (armor, weapons, etc). You should try the different classes to see which is best for you. The class most likely to survive the first few dungeon levels is probably the cave-person. However, each class has its strong and weak points so you should try them all. The status line At the bottom of the screen is displayed information about your state of being. You see the dungeon level you are on, how many hit points you have now (and will have when fully recovered), what your armor class is (the lower the better), your strength, experience level and the state of your stomach. If you have the "time" option ON, you will also see the number of moves you have taken. The little dog You start Hack Lite accompanied by a little dog (nameable with the 'C' command) who can be very useful to you -- try not to kill him! Your dog will follow you -- if you carry tripe rations, he will follow you even better. Sometimes he gets in your way. Either move around him, or wait (with the '.' command) until he moves. If you want him to follow you to the next dungeon level, he must be on a square next to you when you descend or ascend the stairs. Sometimes he gets hungry and confused and hits you. You can feed him by throwing food at him with the 't' command. Your dog may get mad at you if you move to a different dungeon level without taking him with you. Although he may not hit you, he won't help you either. You'll have to appease him somehow. Your dog is useful for his ability to fight and to pick up and carry objects. Of course, your dog might be a female, so change all "he" and "him" to "she" and "her". The dungeon The dungeon is a set of levels connected through stairways and trapdoors. Each level is an interconnected system of rooms and corridors. The rooms have doors that lead to the corridors. You must walk straight through a door -- no diagonals allowed. Some doors (and some corridors) are hidden and you must search for them (with the 's' command). Usually you must search several times, so use a repeat count (eg '5s'). Some rooms are special and have no doors or connecting corridors. There is a way to get in, though, but you will have to experiment. The Wizard resides below the normal dungeon levels and can't be reached by only taking the stairs. Some rooms have special contents -- some are shops (but be aware that the shopkeeper expects payment (the 'p' command) for the items you get there) and some are zoos, full of interesting monsters. Some rooms are lit and you can see the entire room, and some rooms are dark so you can see only the floor near you. Monsters To fight monsters, move to occupy the same square they are in. You can also throw things at them, or zap them with wands. It is best to leave some monsters alone. Objects The objects you find may be enchanted (that's good) or cursed (that's bad) or normal. Cursed items are generally less effective than normal and also, once you have them on your body they are impossible to remove unless you remove their curse. You use different objects in different ways: ) WEAPONS are wielded ('w') or thrown ('t') Some weapons are more effective when used together. For example, you get more effect by wielding a bow before throwing arrows. 'w-' means to wield nothing; ie. be barehanded [ ARMOR is worn ('W') and taken off ('T') You can wear more than 1 piece of armor, but there are some restrictions on the combinations. For example, you can only wear 1 SUIT of armor, but you can always wear an elven cloak. ! POTIONS are quaffed ('q') = RINGS are put on ('P') and removed ('R') You only can only wear 2 rings at a time, one on each hand. Also, wearing rings makes you to use up more food, so use them sparingly. / WANDS are zapped ('z') Some wands need a direction to be zapped in, but others do not. ? SCROLLS are read ('r') ( TOOLS are applied ('a') For example, to use a whistle, you apply it. Initially you will not know what the potions, rings, wands or scrolls do until you use them. They will have names like "XIXIXI". Some of these objects are identified as soon as you use them (for example, a scroll of light causes a dark room to be lit). Other objects have no noticeable effect. If it's not immediately obvious what a scroll or potion does the first time you use it, you may be asked to give it a name. Hack Lite does this so that if you have an idea about what the object does you can name it something appropriate so the next time you find it you will know something about it. Whenever Hack Lite asks for a name it is possible to use the backspace or backarrow key to back up, or <Esc> to quit without supplying a name. Using some objects gives a message like "You have a strange feeling for a moment, but it passes". This means the object would have done something but couldn't do it now (for example, some scrolls affect your weapon, but if you're not wielding a weapon you'll get this message). The call command 'c' can be used to name individual objects, or all objects of a certain type. When you do a 'c', Hack Lite asks if you want to name an individual object. Answer 'y' if you do and 'n' if you want to name all objects of the same type. Then Hack Lite will prompt you for the inventory letter of the object you want to name. For example, if you put on a silver ring that has inventory letter 's' and notice your strength increases by two then you do: 'c' 'n' 's' 'strength<return>' (call all objects with the same type as item 's' "strength"). then 'c' 'y' 's' '+2<return>' (call individual inventory item 's' "+2") When you do an inventory you will see s) a ring called strength named +2 The next time you pick up a silver ring it will be called strength so you will know what it does. However, you will not know if it will increase or decrease your strength! You will have to put it on to find out or you will have to identify it. Enchanting objects If you enchant an object, it will be better than it was before. Enchanting armor changes your armor class by 1 (eg. you could go from class 7 to class 6 -- the less positive the number, the better the armor class, as in Dungeons and Dragons). For weapons, the more positive the number, the better. Thus a +2 mace is better than a +1 mace. Some armor is better than others -- normal plate mail is better than normal ring mail. Some weapons are better than others, but factors such as experience and luck determine whether you can effectively use the better weapons. Identifying objects The scroll of identify will help you to identify many objects, but generally you just have to use them and see what happens. Occasionally a scroll of identify will have the ability to identify several objects. So it is to your advantage to have several unidentified objects before you use an identify scroll. When you read a scroll of identify Hack Lite will ask you which classes of objects you want identified. If, for example, you answer '=/' then for each ring in your pack you will be asked if you want to identify it. After going through all rings, you will be asked about the wands. If you do not identify any of these objects you will get back to the question about which classes of objects you want identified. The effect of rings may not be obvious, and cursed rings can't be removed unless you remove their curse. Thus scrolls of identify are probably best used to identify rings. Scoring When the game ends, either by your death, when you quit, or if you escape from the caves, Hack Lite will give you (a fragment of) the list of top scorers. The scoring is based on many aspects of your behavior but a rough estimate is obtained by taking the amount of gold you've found in the cave plus four times your (real) experience. Precious gems may be worth a lot of gold when brought to the exit. There is a 10% penalty for dying. What is "--More--"? Whenever there is a lot of information for you to see, Hack Lite waits for you to read it all by giving you a "--More--". If the "--More--" is displayed on the normal response line (the top line that most messages are shown on), then Hack Lite is waiting for you to enter ' ' (the space character) or <return>. If Hack Lite has printed out a list of information (eg. you did an 'i' command), then it will accept ' ' or <return> as well as the inventory letter of anything in the list. Where is this useful? An example is when you want to quaff a potion but you can't remember the letter of the potion you want. You do 'q' then '?' and Hack Lite gives you the list of all your potions followed by a "--More--" message. If you type ' ' or <return> you get back to the prompt about which potion you want to quaff. If you type the inventory letter of the potion, you immediately quaff that potion. If the screen is completely cleared to give you information (eg. you're looking at the help documentation with the '?' command), then there will be more than one screen full of information. In this case, ' ' or <return> mean "show the next screen" and 'q' or ESC mean "stop". Getting Help Of course, there is much about Hack Lite to discover yourself. The RUMORS file provides helpful clues for playing. (Of course, since these are only RUMORS, you can't trust everything you read.) You can also use the '?' command to get help during play, and you can find out what a monster or object you don't recognize is by moving the mouse to it, and clicking while pressing the shift key. Playing on the Amiga Hack Lite takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the Amiga to make the game even easier to play. For instance, monsters and objects are displayed graphically, not just as letters and special characters. But each monster and kind of object still has an associated character as well as an icon. Sometimes, you will need to reply to Hack Lite messages with these letters. You can use shift-click to find out the letter in this case. (For a monster, the letter is usually the same as the first letter of the monster's name. For instance, the symbol for an acid blob is 'a'.) You can use the HackIconII program to change the graphics for all the monsters and objects. This program is documented in another file. Most of the Hack Lite commands can be given using the Amiga's pull-down menus. Just use the right mouse button to see what menus are available, and then select the command you want. When you use the menus, Hack Lite will always show you the part of your inventory that the command could use (for example, if you do a READ, it will show you all your scrolls). You can select an item using the mouse rather than by typing a letter, if you prefer. You can also use the mouse to indicate the direction you want to move. The mouse position only defines the direction of movement, not the exact spot to move to. What's New In Hack Lite? Hack Lite has a number of features that are not in previous versions of Hack. Some of them are surprises that you will have to find for yourself. The ones you need to know about in advance are: You will sometimes find magic fountains in the dungeon. You can drink from a fountain using the QUAFF command. Sometimes, fountains will be good for you, sometimes not, and sometimes it will be very difficult to tell. There is a new #pray command that you can use to ask the gods to help you. But don't ask too often, or they'll get annoyed, and the game may become very unpleasant for you. Also, try to avoid evil acts, or the next time you pray, the gods might punish you. You might even end up in Hell! Ctrl-a is now defined as the "again" command, which executes the previous command again. It's very handy when you're using throw or zap to defend yourself, since you don't have to enter the object or direction a second time. You can use a count with again, for instance, 40^a says "do the previous command again 40 times". This version of Hack Lite does not have -D (WIZARD mode), which is useful mainly for debugging the program. Instead, when you start Hack Lite up, you can use the -I (IMMORTAL) option. With this option, you can come back from the dead, if you don't die too often. This is good for "training missions", since it lets you get deeper in the dungeon than you otherwise would. Of course, every time you die, your score is substantially lowered. Note that you are only mostly immortal. If you walk naked into a swarm of bees, you're probably not going to survive, no matter what. There are some new monsters in Hack Lite. Keystone Kops are created if you succeed in robbing a store. There are several kinds of Kops in this version, and some are more dangerous than others. Rock moles are new pests that eat gold and rock, and dig new tunnels in the dungeon. Giant spiders (which spin webs to trap the careless) and deep worms (which are like mimics, only worse) have also been added. There are some new scrolls, rings and artifacts as well. But it would spoil the fun to tell you what they are! This version of Hack Lite lets you keep level files on RAM, to make going from one level to the next faster. Just put a RAMDISK line in your HACKLITE.CNF file, as in the example, to tell the program how much RAM disk it can use. Enjoy!