Basic Commands and Topics

Like the heading says, these are basic commands. The commands listed here should help you get started playing HolyQuest. To see a complete list of all commands use this command: show commands. Part of playing HolyQuest is figuring things out for yourself. There is no manual for the game, read the help files to learn how to use the commands. It may require reading more than one help entry to figure something out.

Terminology

A room is a place, and could refer to an actual room, like a room in a house or a street or a field or another place in the world.

An object is an item, weapon, armor, food, drink, etc such as a spear, a helmet, a date cake, a waterskin, etc.

An NPC is a non-player character, such as guards, rats, snakes, Philistines, lions, lambs, etc.

A PC is a player character like you.

Color

When you enter the game for the first time, all text will be displayed in one color only. Turning color on will cause some information to be displayed in different colors. To turn the color on, type: color on. If you turn color on and your client does not support color, you will see strange character sequences. Simply turn color off by typing color off and the strange characters should go away.

Look

Typing the look command allows you to 'see' what is around you. Look shows you the room name, room description, and room exits. Each place in the game is called a room. Even though the place might be a town square, a street, a field, or a cave, it is still referred to as a room. In addition to the standard room name, description, and exits, look will show you other players, NPCs, and objects in the room.

Help

Typing help will give you a list of some of commonly used commands. Type help followed by a command to get more information about the command. For example, typing help look will display information about the look command. The help files also contain information on topics, for example 'newbie'. Newbie is not a command, it is a topic about which you can get some information by typing help newbie.

Talking

To 'speak' to another player, use the say command. Typing say Hi everyone! will cause other players who are close to you to 'hear' you say 'Hi everyone!'.

Moving

To explore the world of HolyQuest, you need to 'move'. Each room has 'exits', like North, South, East, West. To move in any of these directions, just type the abbreviation for the direction. For example, if you want to go north, you would type n. Standard directions and abbreviations are:

Go

The go command is used when you need to move, but the exit you want to use is NOT one of the standard exits listed above. If you saw an exit labeled 'ArmorShop', you would type go ArmorShop to enter the shop.

Socials

Socials allow your character to express emotions and interact with other characters. Many, but not all, socials allow the social to be directed at another character. For example, bow, if Ixaka enters this command by itself, other characters in the same area see a message saying 'Ixaka bows deeply'. Entering bow Jethro results in a message saying 'Ixaka bows before Jethro'.

Status

To see information about your character use the status command. Here's what the information displayed means:

Name	Your characters name
Sex	The sex of your character
Level	Current level
Experience	Total experience gained
Next Level	Amount of experience needed to reach the next level
Armor Class	Ranges from 0, no armor, to 300, fully armored
Color	'on' you should be seeing output in several colors, 'off' all output is the same color
Allow Group	'on' means you are accepting invitations to group, 'off' means you will reject invitations to group
Allow Assist	'on' means you will accept other players assistance during a fight, 'off' means that no other player can assist you during a fight
Position	You can be in 1 of 3 positions, standing, sitting, and sleeping
Silver	How much silver you have
Hunger	Ranges from 0, not hungry at all, to 100, extremely hungry
Thirst	Ranges from 0, not thirsty at all, to 100, extremely thirsty

Grouping

Use the group command to form a group of players. Grouping allows players to take on opponents that a single player could not defeat. To form a group, pick a leader and have the them invite each member of the group by typing group followed by the name of the player to be invited.

Training

Use the train command to check your current weapon skills. To increase your weapon skill, type train followed by weapon type you wish to train. For example, train axe will increase your skill with axes by 1 skill point. You accumulate 3 skill points for each level you gain. You should select one type weapon and stick with that weapon type until you have mastered it. Weapon skills range from 0, very little skill, to 100, master of that weapon type.

Equipment

Use the equipment command to check your equipment. Equipment is your armor, jewelry, and weapon wielded. You start with NO equipment, but should be able to being acquiring equipment soon after starting. There are level 1 NPCs, just your match, that you can kill with your bare hands. Sell the items you get from these NPCs and buy yourself some equipment. You use the wear to put on your equipment and use the remove command to take it off. Some equipment items, like jewelry require you to specify 'left' or 'right' when wearing them, like earrings.

Weapons

To use a weapon, you use the wield command. To stop using a weapon, use the remove command. For example, to use that axe you just acquired, type wield axe. To stop using the axe, type remove axe.

Shops

Shops can be found in many of towns and carry a wide variety of items. To trade with the shopkeepers use the list, buy, and sell commands. When selling items you can use the generic version of the sell command. For example, say you have 10 rat ears, 5 rat tails, and 17 rat whiskers in your inventory. You can use the 'sell rat all' command three times and you are done, all rat stuff has been sold.

Objects

Objects and items are just two different words for the same thing. There are many commands that can be used with objects. The key thing to understand about objects is how to refer to them. Let's use the get command in some examples. Assume you enter a room and see a message indicating that a pair of goatskin gloves, a pair of goatskin sandals, and a pair of leather gloves is laying on the ground. If you 'get gloves', you will get the first pair of gloves the game finds. If you 'get sandals, you will definitely get the goatskin sandals because they are the only sandals available. To ensure that you get the exact item you want, use the fully qualified name. For example, 'get goatskingloves'. Note that 'goatskingloves' is all run together, this is the correct syntax. Remember, if there are only goatskin gloves laying on the ground, you can get them by using 'get gloves'. The item description for the gloves is 'a pair of goatskin gloves' and 'goatskingloves' is the fully qualified name of the item. Object related commands are: get, give, drop, destroy, buy, sell, and examine.

Inventory

To see your inventory, use the inventory command. You inventory is all the the items that you have which are not being worn or wielded.

Life

Your life force is indicated on the prompt, look for a line like this '31H 25M >'. The '31H' indicates that you have 31 'hitpoints'. Hitpoints are a measure of how much damage you can take before dying. When you are in a fight, and your hitpoints fall to zero, you are dead. Your hitpoints are automatically restored, but you can restore hitpoints faster by sitting and even faster if you sleep. Reducing hunger and thirst will increase the rate at which your hitpoints are restored. Use the 'sit', 'sleep', 'wake', and 'stand' commands to vary the rate of hitpoint restoration. Use the 'eat' and 'drink' commands to reduce hunger and thirst. Your current hunger and thirst can be seen using the status command. Hunger and thirst range from 0, which means not hungry or thirsty, to 100, which means extremely hungry or thirsty.

Fighting

Start a fight using the kill command. For example, to kill a small rat, type kill smallrat. During the fight you will see a pair of lines, the first is your opponent and the second is you. This pair of lines repeat until one of you is dead or flees. There is a number at the beginning of each line that represents the percentage of life left. Watch the second line, if your percentage of life starts getting close to zero, you should flee because you are almost dead! Flee from a fight by using the flee command. Check the help files in-game for more about fleeing.

Death

Ok, so you picked on someone bigger than you and paid the price, DEATH! Upon your death you and all of your equipment and inventory are returned to a safe place so you can recover and rethink your strategy. After you attain level 5, you will also loose experience.