Characters
The player begins the game by creating a new character from one of seven classes: knight, fighter, sage, wizard, alchemist, jeweler, and jones. Each class has a different set of attributes, parameterized similarly to Dungeons & Dragons. Each attribute affects the character's abilities in a number of ways, many of which are undocumented. Characters with a high intelligence attribute, for example, have a higher probability of success when casting magic spells from a scroll, as well as an improved ability to map the dungeon. In addition, each class has an increased likelihood of being able to identify a certain type of item. Characters can improve their ability scores throughout the game, both temporarily and permanently, through the use of potions and scrolls.
Each class, with the exception of "Jones", also has the unique ability to assess one type of object. Alchemists, for example, can accurately identify the potions they find in the dungeon, and therefore avoid drinking those with harmful effects, wizards wield wands more effectively, and so forth. All classes can reach the highest levels in each ability by obtaining a variety of scrolls and potions that raise strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma. Strength controls a character's ability to attack, intelligence and wisdom, the ability to read and understand scrolls successfully, dexterity, the ability to wield weapons and throw objects, constitution the ability to withstand attack, and charisma, the ability to increase the odds a defeated monster will leave behind a useful item.
The main objective of the game is to retrieve the orb of Carnos, located on the 40th level and guarded by a powerful boss monster called "The Dark Wizard". The 40th level also contains an ersatz orb, made of plastic, which can only be identified using an "identify scroll".
Read more about this topic: The Dungeon Revealed
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Of the other characters in the book there is, likewise, little to say. The most endearing one is obviously the old Captain Maksim Maksimich, stolid, gruff, naively poetical, matter-of- fact, simple-hearted, and completely neurotic.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)