Dragon Wars Amiga Reference Card Typed by Mictlantecuhtli ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Note to Interplay: You are really cool and we like all of your products very much and we have even bought this one. We also encourage all other pirates to buy this program if you like it. I will provide most of the docs but there are some key things that will be left out that you will only find in the docs that Interplay has made. GETTING STARTED Dragon Wars will run on Amiga models 500, 1000, 2000, and 2500. You need at least 512K to play. If your machine has only 512K, disconnect any external drives to free up memory. Before you begin, make a backup copy of your Dragon Wars master disks. Do not play off of your original disks. If you are going to be playing from disks, format a blank disk to use as a save disk. You can name the save disk anything that you wish but we suggest "DWSAVE". Only use this disk to save and load Dragon Wars games in progress. You can install Dragon Wars to HD by creating a subdir on your HD and copying all of the files from Dragon Wars disks 1 and 2 over to the newly created subdir. For maximum video and audio quality, use a RGB color monitor and use both audio connectors when hooking up your sound equipment. Dragon Wars is IN STEREO where available! LOADING INSTRUCTIONS If you are loading DW from HD, boot up CLI, enter the subdir with all of the Dragon Wars files and type "DW". To load from a non HD system: use your brain! Any moron should be able to do this! However, if you have one drive or 512K, turn off the sound effeccts and/or music to cut down on the memory usage. STARTING THE GAME After Dragon Wars has loaded, you will be left standing in Purgatory. You can play the game with the characters provided or you can create new characters. We suggest playing with the provided characters until you are comfortable playing with the Dragon Wars system or using them as guidelines for your characters. PLAYING DRAGON WARS Whenever prompted, you may enter a command by typing the first letter of the selection or clicking on the selection with your mouse. Throughout Dragon Wars, pressing the space bar is the same as pressing the esc key. The following are Movement Keys. Press the key for the party to move or turn towards the corresponding direction. I: forward J: turn left L: turn right K: kick forward through doors The "K" key will move your party through doors and secret doors (which appear as walls) directly in front of you. Nothing bad will happen if there isn't a secret door in front of you but your characters may get a little embarrassed. You may also use the arrow keys to navigate around. The left and right arrows turn you to the left or the right, the up arrow key does a "kick forward" and the down key makes you do an about face. You can also use the mouse for movement by clicking the mouse button when the pointer towards the desired direction of travel. COMMAND KEYS The following are command keys. Press the key to do the corresponding action. (Note: to use the commands outlined with the brackets '[]', press the Open-Amiga key and the command key at the same time.) C Cast spell D Dismiss Character O New Party order U Use item/skill X Experience [L] Load game [M] Music toggle [N] New game [Q] Quit [R] Rename character [S] Save game [T] Transfer Bard's Tale character [X] Sound-fx toggle [Z] Create new character / Automap Cast spell: The program will prompt you for who should cast the spell, what class of magic you wish to cast, what type of spell, and finally, the spell name. If the particular spell lets you invest variable amounts of power in the casting, you'll be prompted for a number of power points. Dragon Wars will then tell you how it went--whether you successfully cast the spell or if the casting failed for some reason. Dismiss character: If you want to get rid of a character, pick this option. It will work on both player characters and NPC's. Warning: if you dismiss a character, that character will be gone forever, along with all itmes, spells, and abilities! New party order: This option lets you pick a new marching order for your characters. You'll want to put the characters with the best AV, DV, and AC in the first four character slots, because only the first four slots can hit opponents with weapons or be hit by opponents. Magic and missile weapons can be used from any slot. Use: This multipurpose command lets you use an item, skill, or attribute. After selecting this option, you will be prompted for which character and whether an item, skill, or attribute is being used. If you pick Skill, you'll be further asked whether the skill is a Lore skill, Knowledge skill (including the Magic skills and Bureaucracy), or an Ability (most other skills). Then you will be asked what you want to do from a final list of skills or items. After picking what you want to do, you may be asked for a target (for example, with Bandage skill, you'll be asked which character you want to bandage). When you find a spell scroll, USE the scroll to read it. If you have the appropriate magic skill, you will then remember that spell forever. Experience: This command brings up the skill point allocation window (see Creating Characters). If you're notified that a character gains a level, you may wish to go the Experience screen so you can use the newly gained skill points to learn some skills immediately. Load game: yeah, use this to load a damn game. Select the name of the saved game by clicking on it then click on the LOAD button. Music toggle: turns the COOL music on and off. New game: This option will allow you to restart the game from the very beginning, with the further option of starting the game with the original party or your current party. Quit: You've had enough of this awesome game. This will return you to WB. Be sure that you have saved the progress of your game beforehand. Rename character: You can change the name of any of your characters when you select this option. You will be prompted to enter the new name of that character. Save game: You will probably not be able to complete Dragon Wars in a single session. Use this option to save your game so you can return to it later. A standard dialogue window will appear; select the location of the your save game disk by clicking on the drive button, type in the name of your save game file and click the save button. You can save to any standard Amiga file system but we suggest a stand-alone save game disk which will only be used to save Dragon Wars games. You can save to the RAM disk, if you have one, but you will lose all of your data when you turn off your computer. Transfer Bard's Tale characters: You can transfer in characters from the Bard's Tale series. When you select this option, a standard dialogue window will appear. Select the location of your Bard's Tale character disk by clicking on the proper disk drive button. Then click on the name of the character that you wish to transfer and select the load button. If you have less than three player characcters, the Bard's tale character will automatically take an empty slot. If you have four PC's, you must select a character slot to overwrite. Warning: if you overwrite a character, that character will be gone forever (as will all of his possessions and abilities). Sound-fx toggle: turns the fx on and off. Create new character: This command will let you create new characters in your fight against the odious Namtar. See the Creating Characters section. Automap: Pressing the question mark key will bring up the Automap. This shows an overhead view of where you have travelled on the present map. You may use the movement keys to to scroll the overhead view. Blank areas are places that you have not entered; you must actually walk through an area for it to appear on the automap. Number keys and arrow keys: You may press any number key to bring up View screens for a character. THe left and right arrow keys adjust the speed of message display during combat. Press ESC to pause the game. CREATING CHARACTERS You may create a character if there are 3 or fewer PC's in your current party (you can make room by dismissing some characters). After deciding on a name and sex for your character, you'll be presented with a list of skills and attributes. Use the proper key, your mouse or the up and down arrow keys to select a skill or attribute, then use the +/- keys or the left and right arrow keys to spend points or remove them on your abilites. The number under "Amount" shows your current level of that skill and the number under "Cost" shows how many points it will cost to increase that skill by one level. The other abilities are shown on the other two skill screens, which you can read by pressing the "Z" key. If you wish, you can spend all 50 points on skills and attributes at the beginning of the game or you can save some points to increase them later in the game. For explanations of the skills and attributes, see the manual. Press ESC when you are done creating your character. VIEWING CHARACTERS When viewing a character, either by typing the character's number or clicking on the character with the mouse, you'll be presented with a list of options. Choosing "General Overview" will give you a list of attributes and skills. AV is attack value, DV is defense value, and magic AV is magical attack value. Health shows that the amount of damage the character can currently take followed by their max. Stun and Power are also given by current/max. "Item Overview" shows your gold and what items that the character currently has. You can Pool Gold (all gold in the party goes to one character), Share Gold (divide all gold up equally among the party members), or Trade Gold (give some gold to another character). If you select an item by it's letter, you can Trade that item to another character, Drop the item for good, or Equip the item so you have it for use instead of just toting it around (you'll want to equip your armor and weapons). A minus sign means that you cannot equip that item and a plus sign means that the item is currently equipped. A number next to the "#" sign shows the number of items or charges left. Note that you can equip one each of armor, shield, gauntlets, boots, weapon and helm. You can equip any number of miscellaneous items. To equip a weapon that launches missiles, you must first equip the weapon then the missile. To view your spells, choose the proper class of magic. One final note about viewing characters: At almost any point, you can press another character's number to jump to that character, even when you're looking at spells or items. THE MAIN SCREEN Under each character's name will be two or three colored bars. The first (red) indicates the character's current health, the second (green) indicates stun and the third (blue) indicates magic power and will only listed if the character has a magic skill. If the bar is all the way to the right, the statistic is at 100% of its max value. And the Lord God did direct that man go forth and kill his brothers in His name that honor and glory may be bestowed unto Him.