CF: Answers to Scott Yelich's questions

[Peter Mardahl <peterm@langmuir.EECS.Berkeley.EDU>]

------- Forwarded Message

To: "Scott D. Yelich" <scott@scottyelich.com>
Subject: Re: CF: stable crossfire ? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 17 Jan 1999 13:44:02 MST."
             <199901180106.14981.haey.ifi.uio.no@ifi.uio.no> 
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 17:53:35 -0800
From: peterm
X-Mts: smtp

> *sigh*
> 
> I'm trying to find a type of manual in the game... 
> for playing the game.  I've been playing this game since,
> I don't know, '93?  
> 
> (1) What is pray?  Holy word? Deities and gods? and Altars?

Praying is how you gain Grace, which is the "fuel" for priest
spells.  Praying on an altar consecrated to your god 
lets you gain grace above your
normal maximum.  Without praying, your grace will only
regenerate to half-maximum.

Priest spells are "prayers", which are different from praying.
Holy word is a priest spell, which causes damage to enemies
of your god and no one/nothing else, which means you can
kill monsters with it without touching their equipment.  Very nice.

> (2) How do I make my sp go up?  They seem so low
> that I can't kill things to get experience?  

sp?  You mean maxsp I suppose.
sp goes up with time, with quaffing magic potions, and by using
a power crystal.  sp regen is retarded by wearing armor.

maxsp depends on your Pow stat, and your level.

> (3) How do I apply a scroll of weapon bonus?
> It always says weapon not prepared?

You use the Prepare Weapon scroll first.  THEN you can apply the
other scrolls. 

> (4) Why do wands not give magic experience when 
> they are used to kill something?  Why can't
> spells such as fireball go over water?
> Why don't my pet monsters attack all enemies?

Basically, because someone at some point decided that players
shouldn't get magic experience for using wands/rods/scrolls:  they considered
it abusive.  A low-level player can gain rather a lot of experience with
little risk by using a wand of large fireball, for instance.

> (5) what is alchemy?

The conversion (using a cauldron, the alchemy spell and a recipe) of
raw materials into useful items.  You can make things like dusts which
act like wands:  they cast spells.  However, the advantage of alchemically
made stuff is that the spells don't have the MAGIC attacktype set.

So for example, if you used many dusts of conflagration on beholders,
you could kill them.  Beholders are immune to magic.  You can also
make arrows of slaying, or Assassination (which are instant killers
if they hit).

> (6) How do you search and disarm traps? 
> This I bound "s" to "search" and "d" to disarm
> and I hit "s" and then "." 50 to 100 times
> and then when I apply to open the chest, a
> trap goes off.

Hit s 50 to 100 times, not .  THat is what I do
and it works.  You won't find ALL traps:  some are too difficult
for your level.   Work your way up to hard traps by first finding/disarming
easy ones.  I think searching requires mental experience, and disarming
requires agility experience.

> (7) Does magic bullett do more damage as your
> level goes up?

yes.  Not a lot though:  it's a relatively ineffective spell.
Small lightning is much, much deadlier:  however it destroys items.

> I have a lot more... but these are just
> the ones that are getting on my nerves.

Want to get involved in documenting stuff?  Keep asking questions
and write the answers up.  Give what you have to Mark.  But first,
make sure your questions aren't answered in the existing documentation
someplace.  Look in the doc directory of the server distribution.

PeterM

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