HOW TO PLAY URTHFALL: CITADEL OF SALT ===================================== The Sapphire of the Sun has been stolen and carried into the salt mine beneath the town of Saltus. Your goal: descend ten levels, face what guards the gem, and bring it back to the light. Death is permanent — your save is deleted and your run goes on the scoreboard. This is Urth, under a dying sun. "Magic" here is older science nobody understands anymore; the monsters are beasts and people in roughly equal measure, and the people are usually worse. GETTING STARTED --------------- Browser: https://urthfall.net/ — register, log in, pick a calling. Registering needs the invite token (ask whoever runs the server). SSH: ssh urthfall@urthfall.net — the shared password is not published; ask the operator. Then log in to your game account. One active session per account. Over SSH, Ctrl-D disconnects (your game autosaves if hosting); Ctrl-C asks before quitting. On the web, the footer has a "quit to menu" link (saves first) and a display toggle. Phones get touch controls automatically: a d-pad (hold to repeat), an action grid (including look and far look — steer the far-look cursor with the d-pad), and an a-z row for menus. KEYS ---- move h j k l (left/down/up/right) y u b n (diagonals) or the arrow keys run shift + a movement key — go until something interesting autoexplore o — walk to unexplored areas until something happens travel _ — pick a tile and walk there (only stops for danger; > / < head for stairs) look : what's underfoot ; look around (move the cursor; shift+dir jumps 5 tiles). Far look tells you what a creature or item actually is. messages P — recent message history wait . or s pick up g or , stairs > down < up inventory i (a letter shows that item's description) help ? quaff q read a page r wield w wear/strap W throw t then a direction — line up your shot quiver Q ready ammo fire f the quivered ammo zap relic Z (gun-like energy relics) cast ritual z (thaumaturge) false memory F (guild-less) skills a — view/use your calling's arts (passives + actives) purchase p — buy new skills (a shop, for now your own gold) travel _ to a chosen tile (stairs keys pick stairs) save+exit S abandon X quit Ctrl-C (asks first; your game is saved) CALLINGS -------- Lochage An officer of the city guard. Most hit points, hits hard. At the armory you choose a kit: - spadroon + TRANSPARENT SHIELD: the shield turns blows aside, and arrows fare worse — nobody can see what stopped them. - halberd: strikes enemies TWO tiles away. Walk toward a foe at that distance and the blade does the rest; it gets a free hit as anything closes on you. Also carries two throwable aclyses. Guild-less No guild, no name, no questions. Triple damage against anyone who hasn't noticed you, throws knives, and gets harder to hit with experience. Two tricks of the trade: - DISGUISE: human enemies (grave robbers, peltasts, forest outlaws, Ascians...) take you for one of their own until you come within a few paces or draw blood. - FALSE MEMORY (F): lie so well a nearby human believes you belong. The mark stands down until someone hits it. You can manage this three times per run. Thaumaturge A seer of the Cumaean's line. Fragile, but commands rituals of the old machines, paid for in MEMORY (watch the Mem number — mnemonic salts restore it): needle of the sun (lvl 1) — aimed ray, pick a direction remembered winter (lvl 3) — aimed ray, freezes old sun's wrath (lvl 5) — pick a square; a 3x3 blast that does not spare friends devourer's hunger (lvl 7) — drains the nearest enemy and feeds you half READING THE SCREEN ------------------ @ you (teammates are cyan) letters monsters (capital = worse) # rock . gallery floor " brush (cover) ! phial ? page > < stairs / energy relic ) weapon ^ a trap you've discovered [ armor (bold = shield) $ gold " the Sapphire of the Sun Your last move's path glows blue. The bottom lines show your health, memory, depth, and gear. Red Pois / cyan Hast / green Regn flags show active effects. The first level is the surface above Saltus -- open green ground dotted with brush you can push into but not see through, so watch for ambushes among the foliage before you take the stairs down into the mine. DENIZENS OF THE MINE -------------------- Beasts: mursids and blood bats near the surface; tomb spiders and asps (poison); man-apes of the mines and their chieftains; notules — shadows that move too fast; smilodons, arctothers, uintathers — megafauna that hit like falling rock; amphisbaenas regenerate, finish them; mine shades and the catacomb witch permanently drain your maximum health; lamiae drink what they wound; salamanders breathe fire; the undine is best not met at all. People: grave robbers, peltasts (kill one and its transparent shield may clatter down for you), cutpurses who snatch gold and vanish, forest outlaws ambushers, monomachists spoiling for a duel, dimarchi patrols, and Ascian soldiers who speak only in propaganda — you will hear them before you understand them. Zoanthrops were people once, before they paid to have their reason cut out; now they only run at you. The guild-less can talk their way past most of these. Everyone else fights. The thing at the bottom eats minds and speaks with the voices of the dead. Do not trust anything you hear on depth ten. THINGS TO KNOW -------------- - Phials of theriac are your lifeline; the vial of azoth is better. Quaff before you're nearly dead. - A COUNTERFEIT SAPPHIRE is a gambler's gem: most are fakes, and even a true one works only when it wills. Press it to your brow and hope. - Poison (asps, spiders, widows, some darts) drains you over time — a bitter antidote cures it. - Energy relics — tarnished pistols, frost projectors, fusils — give everyone a ranged attack. Charges are scarce and the relic crumbles when they're gone. - Artificers' and armorers' pages make gear permanently better. The page of the cosmography reveals the level. A shard of a black mirror teleports you somewhere random — escape or doom, mirror's choice. - Read an Ascian catechism aloud and most things flee from the words. - The avern is a weapon that is also a plant: pluck and throw its leaves (they shatter where they land), and mind your hands — ten percent of the time it cuts the wielder, and it is poisonous. - Traps are invisible until stepped on. Darts sting, pits hurt, teleporters relocate you somewhere random. - A natural 20 is a critical hit — double damage. The carnifex sword's mercury core crits on 19 too. Works for you, not for monsters. - Resting (.) heals slowly. There's no hunger; patience is free, but wandering monsters aren't. MULTIPLAYER (browser and SSH) ----------------------------- Host a shared descent with h on the menu; friends join with j and pick their own calling. Up to four players share one mine — and it doesn't matter how anyone connected: browser and SSH players join the same games and see each other live. How time works in co-op — this matters: - Monsters move whenever ANY player on their level acts. Stand still next to a busy teammate and the monsters get all of their turns while you get none. Stay engaged or stand somewhere safe. - Split up and each of you runs your own level's clock — a slow reader on depth 2 doesn't hold back a speedrunner on depth 5. - More players = more monsters (new levels spawn about 20% more per extra member), and monsters on a shared level act once per teammate action. The party hits harder, but the mine hits back faster. Walking into a teammate swaps places with them — use it in corridors. The old sun's wrath does not check team membership: the blast burns everyone in it, including the caster. Coordinate before you cast. If anyone takes the Sapphire, every living member wins. If you die, your gear and gold drop where you fell (your friends can loot you — that's roguelike mourning) and the others fight on. The host owns the save: the host pressing S (or disconnecting) saves the game and closes it for guests; the host can resume solo later and friends can re-join the live session. Guests who leave keep nothing. SKILLS ------ Gold buys more than bragging rights. Press p to see the four arts of your calling: each unlocks at a character level and costs gold to learn. Passives are always on once learned; the others are used from the same menu and then need time to recover. A lochage finds a second wind, a guild-less can simply vanish, a thaumaturge can wrap herself in the old sun's light. Spend early or save for the deep arts — the mine does not refund either choice. Fair warning: the first floors are leaner than they used to be. You start with less blood and fewer phials; respect the mursids. OPTIONS ------- Press o on the menu after logging in. The **Archaic Names** toggle (on by default) controls whether you see Urth's own words — mursid, phial of theriac, the Mnemophage — or plain roguelike names (rat, healing potion, the Devourer) for a more traditional feel. Autopickup toggles by item type (gold, phials, pages, relics, weapons, armor, quiver ammo) — walk over a thing and it goes in your pack. Settings stick to your account and apply the next time you enter a game. SCORING ------- gold + 50 per depth + 100 per level + 1000 for winning. The scoreboard is on the login page and at the menu (s).