The past year has been a frightening time for the people of the borderlands. A mysterious warlord has appeared from nowhere and begun massing an army amidst the mountains of the north and destroying everything in his path. The army is backed by a large number of otherplanar creatures: demons, devils, and chaos avatars reinforce his more mundane goblin troops. They pour out of Mount Delkeina, an ancient holy mountain, to replace any troops lost by the warlord. The major nations are squabbling amongst themselves and refuse to acknowledge the threat, so the borderland's only defense is its stock of hardy adventurers.
IN DARK DESIGNS I: GRELMINAR'S STAFF. . .
The warlord's reinforcements must be cut off before anything else can be done. The gate the monsters are pouring through must be closed. Unfortunately, the only one with the power to do this passed away several years ago. The great wizard Grelminar's castle has decayed to a ruin, and is populated by several bands of evil creatures who use it as a base for raiding, and other beings that had been magically caged by thre wizard. You must retrieve Grelminar's staff, which holds the power to close rifts in the continuum. It should lie in his private laboratory on the third floor of the castle, but getting it will not be easy.
HOW TO PLAY DARK DESIGNS
Dark Designs is a role-playing game in which you lead a party of four characters through a ruined castle. Since the castle is inhabited by many vicious evil monsters, you will be called upon to vanquish these creatures of chaos. You will gain riches and build up your experience, exploring the secret places in the castle, until you finally reach the Staff of Grelminar. Once you find it, you must return to the town of Taprobale!
When you run Dark Designs, you'll see a title screen. If you want to start with a completely fresh dungeon, press Control-R at this point. BUT DON'T DO THIS! When you first get this disk, you will not need to press Control-R, because we have four pre-made characters for you.
WARNING!
If you press Control-R, all characters that haven't completed
the quest for Grelminar's staff will be erased. This includes our
pre-made characters.
After the game is done "Loading data," you will see a growing/shrinking box. Every time you see this, it means the game is wait for you to press a key or click the mouse. After you press a key at the title screen, you will find yourself in the town of Taprobale, or, as we computer folks call it, the Main Menu.
Before we get into all the things you can do in town, let's see what happens if we use the pre-made characters and enter Grelminar's Castle. Press "G" (or click on the letter G) and you will go to the castle.
WANDERING AROUND
You will now see a different screen. Here's a description of each important area of the screen:
Adventurer's View: in the upper left corner is a representation of what the group is seeing. Ahead of you is the entrance to the castle. This window will also display the two parties in a combat situation, or a character when you choose to examine them. Instead of using the arrow keys to move, you can click in each of the four areas of the screen--clicking in the upper triangle moves you forward, clicking in the lower triangle turn you around, and clicking in the left and right triangles, obviously, turn you left and right.
Auto-Map: in the upper right, you will see a window with a small aqua arrow in it. That arrow is your party, and the direction it points is the direction you are facing. In almost all games, you must do this tedious mapping yourself. In Dark Designs, you can see where you have been, so you can figure out where you need to go. A square will be colored in if you have not explored it yet. A small square with a question mark in it means there is something special there. Mind you, "special" and "good" do not mean the same thing.
Message Window: across the center of the screen is the Message Window. Here you will see a description of the area you are walking through. When you are in combat, your options and the battle description will be shown in this window.
Character Status Window: this window displays the current characters in your party. Here's a description of the information presented on each line:
Number: the numbers 1-4 are used as a quick shorthand for each character. More on that later.
Name: your character's name.
Body: this is a representation of how healthy each character is. The first number is how many "body points" your character has. The second is the maximum your character would have at the peak of health. So, if you get hit by a monster, some of your body points will go away. If you go below zero, you will be knocked out. If you go way below zero, you will be dead. Healing (by a priest or in town) will raise your body points. You must pay careful attention to these, as a character can get hurt quickly in a fight, and resurrection is expensive. In many fights, your priest will spend all his or her time healing people rather than fighting. If your body points go below half, your current points will be highlighted, if you go below ten points, both your current and maximum points will be highlighted.
Status: this is what state each character is in. You can be "fine," "KO" (knocked out), "Dead," and a few other states you'll find out about.
Magic: this is much like body points, but it is magic points. You can see how many magic points you have, and how many you have at maximum strength. Watch these carefully, too, as getting stuck in a bad area with no healing or no offensive spell ability is a desperate situation. Magic points are restored when you resturn to town, as it is assumed you have rested.
Class: this shows what class each character is--fighter, priest, or wizard.
A fighter is the master at arms, whose superior strength, hardy constitution, and good dexterity give him or her the ability to stand the brunt of the onslaught and face the monsters "mano a mano." (hand to hand) They can use all weapons and armor.
A priest is a holy person that has taken to adventuring to vanquish the world of evil. Not content to sit at home and pray, he or she is determined to fight chaos on its own turns. Priests are also healers. Their beliefs prevent them from using pointed weapons, and they cannot wear armor that is too restrictive, for casting their spells requires movement. Certain items may only be used by priests.
Wizards have studied the arcane arts and have learned the magic if offense, of conjuring fires from nothingness. They can attack beings that mere weapons cannot touch. They also cannot wear very good armor at all, as the magic comes from them, and they need mobility to perform the spells. Certain items may be usable only by these characters.
Let's walk around a bit. Press the up-arrow key (or click at the top of the Adventurer's View window) SIX times. This will move you forward six times, and put you before the gate of the castle. If you go forward once more, you'll go through the door and have and encounter! This means some monsters have attacked your party, and it is time to fight or flee!
YOUR FIRST FIGHT
You will have the option to fight or run. If you run, you may not get away! Let's try to fight these monsters. Press F at the "Fight/Run" prompt to fight.
Now you will be able to choose the actions of each member of your party. Attack will allow any player in the front rank to attack any character in the monsters' front rank. There are other options, but for now, press A. All the monsters will have letters appear on them. This allows you to choose which monster to attack. Press "A" to attack monster A.
You will now get to choose actions for the second fighter. Press A, then B, to attack monster B.
Since the priest is in the back row, he cannot attack. Press F to move forward, up to the front rank.
The wizard may cast a spell. If you press S, you may choose which spell. A "Magic Missile" spell will shoot an energy missile at one of the monsters. Press A, then C, to shoot at m
