Zanovere Wizard Guide

Guide for Novice Wizards

At Birth

You are a newly-created character. Your level is zero. At age zero, you are too young to do any hunting. You should walk around town and listen to the various conversations. Ask questions. Try things.

The best way to get experience right after birth is through the use of the DIR verb. This gives you directions to various areas in the town you are in. Go to each and every place which the DIR verb tells you about, dir temple for example. Once in the location that you were directed to, try things. Go temple, go shop, go crevice, go pile, go curtain, go bank, go gate, go bridge, etc. Any noun you see in a room description, try to go there. Walk inside. Try walking through the gates or walking up to the counter in the place you end up. You will receive immediate experience if you try certain things.

Go to the local inn and look around. Behind a curtain in both Wehnimer Landing and Ice Mule Trace at the inn will be an elder proprietor who will lecture you about the rules of Elanthian society and who will test your knowledge. Use the answer verb (ans yes or ans no) to respond to the questions. A perfect slate of answers will score you some big experience.

Use the EXP verb to see how many experience you need to get to the next level. When the amount of experience needed to get to the next level becomes negative, it is time to train. Go to the front desk of the local inn and check in. Your trainer will visit you while you are there.

For silvers, go to town hall and ask the clerk for a job. He may give you a message to deliver. When you find the person whom the message is for, hold the message in your right hand and give it to the person. Go to the bank and visit the teller. Deposit the silvers in the bank. You can then check balance, and later withdraw the silvers as you need them. Carrying excess silvers around will weight you down. There are also thieves about.

Containers

You can purchase a sheath for your weapon and wear the sheath. You can also purchase a large sack and wear the sack. You can also purchase a pocketed cloak at some point in your life. The pocketed cloak, the backpack, the sack, the pouch, and the sheath all are containers which you wear in order to hold stuff you will use. You can have all of these containers in use at the same time.

In the town in which you are born, Wehnimer Landing or Ice Mule Trace, there is a town hall in which you have a locker. Using the locker costs silver. I suggest that you travel lightly, don't collect a lot of fluff, and don't use the lockers very often while you are young. Turn all that has value into deeds, that your years in Elanthia be plentiful.

When you get older you can join a House. A group house will provide you with a locker which holds more items. Wizards should join a house based primarily upon the house policy regarding the usage of their magical workshop. Workshops are used for enchanting. You will from time to time need exclusive use of a workshop for days on end if you are to ever do a high-level enchant.

I do not know much about houses. I am a member of Twilight Hall. There is an up-front fee for joining, but no monthly fees, free use of a locker, and I can garner exclusive use of the workshop for two weeks at a time if I win the periodic lottery, and then pay the 1-million silver fee. I've not yet taken advantage of that lottery, I've been making minor enchants in the house workshop during general-use times and at public workshops so that when I do sign up for the lottery I will have some nice big items for enchantments.

Check the scroll web for any house you are interested in joining. Visit, listen, and make an informed decision because you can only be a member of one house.

Preparing for the Hunt

At level 1, the fun begins. You have now trained a couple of times in edged weapons and in shield use. You are born wearing light leather for armor and with a reinforced shield, and with some sort of edged weapon. You probably also have a backpack. You can look into your backpack, and you can get things out of your backpack. There is probably a pouch in your backpack. You can get the pouch out and wear it.

In order to fight, you will have to hold your bladed weapon in your right hand, and hold your shield in your left hand. You put your sword away by putting it into the backpack, or into a sheath or other container. You put your shield away by wearing it or by putting it into a container. If you are holding a shield in your left hand, you are using that shield. Otherwise you are not.

If you wish to take off an item you are wearing and place it into your hand, you must remove that item. If you are wearing your shield and now want to use it, you remove your shield from over your shoulder.

If your hands are empty, the first item you get will go into your right hand, and the second item will go into your left. If your shield is in your right hand and your sword is in your left, you will want to swap hands. Always keep your shield in your left hand, regardless of what you are doing. I have probably died more deaths from forgetting to hold my shield than from all other reasons combined.

Groups

Entire groups of adventurers can move as one. Grouping also has added benefits such as the casting of mass spells and protection from certain directed attack spells.

Join zanovere will make you a member of my group, provided that you and I are in the same room and my group status is open. I am the leader of my group. If you are a member of my group, you will follow me wherever I go until such time as you leave my group, or I disband my group.

Holding my hand, hold zanovere, you have made me become a member of your group. This is provided, again, that my group status is open. As a member of your group, I follow you around until I either leave or you disband your group. I can leave your group by simply walking off, or I can stay in the same place and merely leave.

Group open will leave you open for others to either join you or to make you a member of their group by holding your hand. Group close will prevent others from joining you or from taking you for a walk.

Getting Mass Spells

Set monsterbold from the keyboard. This will make nasties easier to see. Not everything which shows up bold will be a beastie. Merchants and the friendly wizard pets known as familiars will also stand out. Don't attack a wizard's critter.

If you are in Ice Mule Trace, go to Town Center. If you are in Wehnimer's Landing, go to Town Square Southwest, and then move south into the small park, sometimes called Southpark for unknown reasons.

At some point, someone will announce that they are casting mass blurs, or mass guards, or brillies, or colors, or hues. These are spells which affect everybody who is joined to the spell caster in a group. Guards and brillies are two names for the same spell. Colors and hues are also names for the same spell. Guards, blurs, and colors are the three types of mass spells.

Join the caster and wait until they complete casting the spells. They will cast somewhere between three and four hours of spells on you. Spells should not be cast for more than four hours, or they overflow and stop working.

Rats

Wearing your mass spells, make your way into the catacombs and explore around a bit. A nasty place, the catacombs. Giant rats infest the place. Most kind of you it would be to attack those things that the town be ridded of the menace. With your mass spells in place, rats cannot do you any damage. Set your stance to offensive, stance off.

You might walk into a room in which a giant rat is standing, or such a critter might walk in on you. Att rat will cause you to swing whatever weapon is in your right hand at the rat. You will see some numbers spit out. Keep swinging until you are notified that the critter has met it's untimely demise. At that point you try to skin the dead critter, skin rat and then search it, search rat.

If you are successful at skinning the rat, a pelt will be left on the floor. You can pick up the pelt by first putting your sword in your backpack, put sword in my backpack and picking up the pelt, get pelt. Then you put the pelt in your backpack, put pelt in my back, and grab your sword for your next attack, get sword from my back.

Skinning is a term which is used for obtaining any profitable body part from a creature. It might be a beard, or a scalp, a pelt, a skin, a snout, a finger, a toe... You just skin it and see what you turn up with. Sell the body parts at the furrier. You might not think that you could skin a skeleton, but you can. Your first aid skill helps you to skin.

Searching a dead critter will allow you to find any treasure which it might be carrying. It also causes the nasty to decay and it puts field experience in your head. If you don't search, the dead thing will decay in a few seconds anyway and you will get your experience for it. Searching a creature that someone else killed does not alter who the experience goes to, but if treasure is found on the beastie it is the searcher who would get it. Search your own kills.

If someone else is in the room with a nasty, move on to the next room. Do not fight the critter unless the fellow is stunned or asks for your assistance. To fight a beastie who someone else is fighting is called poaching, and it is frowned upon.

You're a wizard, right? Let's try a spell! Next rat you happen upon... Prep 901. It takes you ten seconds because you don't know that spell well yet, but it's worth the wait if you've been training in spell aiming like you're supposed to. Now cast rat. Ouch.

Death and Deeds

In Gemstone III, death is a tremendous inconvenience. One can do little more than speak while dead. Voln masters do have a few tricks up their sleeves even while dead. Still it is most embarrassing and most inconvenient to be smitten by a beastie. Your field experience is lost for good. The entire hunt is lost and in vain.

There is nearly always a kind empath to fix whatever ails you, and a compassionate cleric who will get you on your feet again. On rare occasion when nobody comes to your rescue, you will find yourself upon the altar of the goddess Lorminstra with a significant amount of permanent experience wrested from you. But walk again you will.

Permanent death comes when an adventurer runs out of deeds. Deeds are tributes or sacrifices made to Lorminstra which the dear lady has found to be acceptable in quantity. The younger you are, and the fewer deeds you have thus-far acquired, the easier it is to acquire a new deed. So start as quickly as you can.

Never allow your soul to be seized by the demonic. If you wish to begin life anew, your body deserves the dignity of a proper retirement.