README

Welcome to Sanctuary, a Novella Rogue-like in Common Lisp.

This is the help screen. Press F2 to if you wish to return to playing
the game or press N and P (for "next" and "previous", respectively) to
scroll through this help document.

You are an archer and initiate monk of the Sanctuary Order. Humanity
and the four continents of the Known World have fallen into a dark
age, where undead horrors from the deeps of the earth have scoured the
land of its people and polluted its very soil. The third Aentis Oscori
(literally "Dark Age") is predicted by ancient tablets to last 100,000
years, and the warrior-monks of the Sanctuary Order are charged with
protecting the few lands still fertile and the few people still living
in the Known World. In their libraries they preserve the knowledge of
ages past in the hope that a distant future generation may retake the
Earth and restore Humanity to its rightful place.

You live in a time nearly 1,000 years after the falling of the Dark
Age. Armed lightly with bow and arrow, wool clothing, and leather
armor, you set out from Nothbess town heading south through the
wilderness toward your destination, Valisade Monastery. You've been
summoned to Valisade for unknown reasons, and commanded to make haste
through the mountains instead of the safer route to the southwest.

Your monk and his surroundings are viewed from a top-down perspective,
with North at the top of the screen. You can move in any of the eight
directions (north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west,
and northwest) by pressing the corresponding key in one of the two
options below: 
                                             
  Q  W  E        7  8  9                       North
   \ | /          \ | /                          |     
  A -+- D   or   4 -+- 6      with        West  -+-  East     
   / | \          / | \                          |     
  Z  X  C        1  2  3                       South                       

Other keyboard layouts are supported, including German QWERTZ, French
AZERTY, and DVORAK. Nethack compatibility keys (HJKL for orthogonal,
YUBN for diagonal) are also available.

Putting a line like one of these in a file called ~/.xe2rc will
configure your layout:
 
 (setf xe2:*user-keyboard-layout* :qwerty) 
 (setf xe2:*user-keyboard-layout* :qwertz)
 (setf xe2:*user-keyboard-layout* :azerty)
 (setf xe2:*user-keyboard-layout* :dvorak)
 (setf xe2:*user-keyboard-layout* :roguelike)

In QWERTZ, controls are as with QWERTY above, but Y and Z are
interchanged. 

The DVORAK layout is as follows: 

  G  C  R  
   \ | /   
  H -+- N  
   / | \   
  M  W  V  
                                                                                      
There are four inventory slots, activated by pressing 1, 2, 3, or 4.
One may equip items such as a bow and arrows, or consume healing herbs
and user other items, by pressing the corresponding digit for the
item's inventory slot. Firing the bow is accomplished with
SHIFT-direction.

STAYING ALIVE

Your monk must eat every so often; he carries bread rations for this
purpose. You can eat a ration with CONTROL-E. When your monk becomes
hungry, he'll say so; if you don't find food to eat, you will
eventually die. All progress is lost when a character dies, and a new
game is generated for the next play. Press ESCAPE to restart after
dying.

You have a long distance to travel, and a limited amount of food and
ammunition. Don't fight everything you see if you need to conserve
arrows. Use your map (by default, inventory slot 1) to orient yourself
toward the path to the Monastery.

Your measure of health is the red HIT POINTS bar at the top of the
screen; when this reaches zero, you die. Use healing herbs, scattered
around the forest and scavenged from victims of the undead, to restore
your hit points.

Your monk must also rest, and carries a bedroll for this purpose. In
order to rest you must build a campfire using gathered wood. Among
your basic magical abilities is the Spark incantation, which can
ignite even wet firewood by heating it from within. To camp, press
CONTROL-C when you have at least 5 pieces of firewood. Resting
recovers some hit points, but not as many as a healing herb.

In this cold mountain environment, you must remain dry. Although your
wool clothing and treated leather armor are resistant to wind and
light rain, you will start to freeze if your clothes become
soaked. Tread in water as little as possible.

If you do become soaked, you must stop traveling and build a fire
immediately. If you don't have enough firewood to build a fire, you'll
slowly keep taking damage until you either find enough firewood to
build a campfire, or eventually freeze to death.