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DEPTHS OF PERIL

User Manual

Copyright (c) Soldak Entertainment, Inc. 2007

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Overview
--------
Thank you for purchasing Depths of Peril.

Depths of Peril is a single player action role-playing game (RPG) with strong 
strategy elements. You play as a faction leader protecting the barbarian city, 
Jorvik, by destroying threatening monsters and completing quests. At the same 
time, you compete with rival factions to see who will rule the city. Barbarians 
choose their leaders by fighting to the death!

As a faction leader, you must deal with rival factions through diplomacy, trade, 
and in time, war. Between battles and raids against other barbarian factions, 
you build the most powerful faction possible, to withstand your enemies. 
Building the power of a faction involves exploring a fantasy world, slaying 
dangerous monsters, solving quests for the city, avoiding deadly traps, and 
plundering loot to share within your faction.

But in this world, actions actually have consequences, so take care. Annoying 
the powerful and aggressive Legion of Fear faction will cause them to declare 
war and destroy you. Ignored orc uprisings in the Black Forest will cause even 
more trouble. Protect ally covenants that are being raided, because friends 
are hard to come by.


System Requirements
-------------------
Minimum specs:
  Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista
  1.2 GHz Pentium 4 (or other equivalent)
  128MB RAM
  GeForce 2 (or other equivalent)
  150MB of hard drive space

Recommended specs:
  2.0 GHz Pentium 4 (or other equivalent)
  256MB RAM
  GeForce 3 or better (or other equivalent)


Getting Started
---------------
To start a new character choose Play Game and then choose New Character.

Choose the class you want this character to be.  You can choose to be a 
warrior (male), a rogue (female), a priest (female), or a mage (male).  The 
description for each class is below:

I am a warrior. With legendary strength, I heft the heaviest of armor and 
massive weapons.  Using brute force, I overrun small armies and push back the 
monstrous hordes, as long as my pack carries plenty of healing potions.  Magic?
That’s for wimps.  Ever notice mages tend to be lushes?  Man up!  Pick me.

I am a rogue, stealthy and sleek.  My skill in a variety of short blades 
complements my ability to hide in the shadows.  I am a dark huntress, looking 
for a fresh pulse to claim.  Take me. After all, muscles aren’t everything.

I am a priest, wielding the power of the gods.  The symmetry between my deadly 
art and healing capabilities make me an exotic champion.  Maintaining this 
combination requires a steadfast faith, renewed through prayer.  Choose me.  I 
walk in the light.

I am a mage, the greatest wielder of magic there is.  My elemental magic is 
frightening to behold, and I enjoy watching most of an attacking horde fall 
before they get too close.  My claim to magic prevents me from any but the 
simplest of armor, but the magic is worth this meager price.  My ability to 
survive depends on concentration, often promoted by the drinks I carry in my 
satchel.  The others can’t hold a candle to my power!  Select me, and have a 
drink.

Name your character whatever you like.  You can also use the random name 
generator to generate barbarian names or just to give you some ideas.

Name your covenant.  Each covenant is a group of barbarians vying for control 
of the city.  It consists of one hero (the leader of the covenant) and up to 
5 recruits.  Each covenant lives together in their covenant house.

After naming your character, naming your covenant, and choosing a class, click 
the Ok button to continue.

On this next screen, you select some basic options on how difficult you want
the game to be.

Select the enemy covenant power.  This is the starting level of the enemy 
covenants and is equivalent to your characters level.  This will default to
a level near what your current character level is.  If you want a harder game,
choose a higher value than the default.  If you want an easier game, choose a 
lower value.

Select the enemy covenants aggression.  You can choose easy, normal, or hard.
The higher their aggression, the more the enemy covenants adventure, the 
quicker they are to go to war and raid other covenants, and the less effect 
diplomacy has.  This initially defaults to easy but will save the last setting 
you used.

Select the world difficulty.  This is the difficulty of the world itself.  The 
higher difficulty levels are only unlocked when your character reaches the
appropriate levels.

Choose the number of enemy covenants you want to face in the game.  This can
be anywhere from 3 to 6 enemy covenants.  You can also choose Random if you
want the game to choose.

When you are done selecting these options, click Create New World to start the
game.


Basics
------
Most of the tips in this manual also show up in the game in the form of help
topics.  To read a help topic click on the blinking question mark icons.  You
can also start the help topics again by Reseting the Help Topics in the Game 
Options.

Please also take some time to play through the tutorial in the game and read 
the tool tips.  Both of these make learning the game a lot easier.

Left clicking with the mouse is context sensitive and does the most common 
action (move, attack, pick up, etc.) whereas right click does the more rare 
actions like selecting a monster or using an item.

Hold the ALT key down to see all of the items on the ground at once.


Objective
---------
The objective of each game or new world is to become the leader of Jorvik and 
thus unifying the barbarian city. There are two ways to accomplish this.  The 
first way is by destroying all of the other covenants.  To destroy a covenant 
you must raid their house and destroy their lifestone.  The second way is by 
using diplomacy and war to eliminate all enemies and make the remaining 
covenants allies.  If you are the most powerful covenant and all of the 
remaining covenants are your allies then you will get a normal win.  If all of 
the remaining covenants are your allies but you are not the most powerful then 
you will have to make a choice.  You must either take a reduced Allied Win 
(less rewards) or fight it out.

When you have won the game, you can finish up whatever you need to and can then 
start a new game.  Make sure you open your reward chest in the center of town 
and next to any covenants you have recently destroyed.  Once you are done, you 
can start a new game by clicking on the blinking won game icon.  Don't worry, 
your characters, items, and recruits all carry over into the new game.


More Class Info
---------------
A warrior's power is called rage and starts at zero.  Warriors get rage each 
time they hit an enemy, an enemy hits them, or they successfully block or 
parry a blow.  Rage will slowly drain away if not used quickly.

A mage's power is called mana and starts full.  Each spell uses up some amount 
of mana and when too low, spells can no longer be cast.  There are many ways to 
replenish mana: it will slowly regenerate during combat, it will regenerate 
faster out of combat, drinking drinks will replenish it fairly quickly, and 
finally you can drink a mana potion which will instantly give back some mana 
based on the quality of the potion.

A rogue's power is called momentum and starts at zero.  A few skills build 
momentum up but most of the skills use up momentum; however all of the skills 
halt the momentum drain when used.  A rogue also gains momentum from each 
critical hit she performs and for each enemy she kills.  After a while if the 
momentum is not halted or raised, it will slowly drain away.

A priest's power is called faith and starts full.  Each spell uses up some 
amount of faith and when too low, spells can not be used.  Faith will slowly 
regenerate and there are no drinks or potions available but a priest can pray 
at any time to regenerate their faith fairly quickly.


Recruits
--------
You can recruit NPCs to your covenant in two ways.  The easiest, but rare way, 
is to find recruits out in the world.  These npcs will always join your 
covenant if you ask.  The other way is by competition.  Every once in a while 
an unaffiliated barbarian will announce that he or she is available to be 
recruited but he or she wants to go to the best covenant possible.  In order to 
prove your worth, you must solve the given quest before all of the other 
covenants can.  These potential recruits will show up in the center of town.

Recruits greatly add to the power of your covenant and make it much easier to 
destroy the other covenants.  You can only adventure around with one recruit at 
a time but you can have up to five recruits in your covenant.  Each recruit 
has a class and a level just like a normal character but they focus on 4 chosen 
skills.  So even recruits that are the same class usually are a little 
different.  You can see all of the recruit's information by left clicking on 
them and choosing the Display Info and Equipment option.  You can also give 
them better equipment in this way.  Also notice that when you highlight an 
item and it shows the item you already have equipped for comparison purposes, 
you can hit the left & right keys to cycle through your recruits' items to 
compare.


Covenant House
--------------
Your house layout is used to place your relics and guards.  Relics are magic 
items that effect everyone in your covenant at the same time, so they can be 
very powerful.  You can have four relics displayed at once.  Guards are 
monsters that you can buy to protect your house from covenant raids and town 
attacks.  You can buy guards from the beastmaster using crystals (covenant 
version of money).  You can only have four guards on guard duty at once.

Your lifestone is the health of your covenant.  Your character and all of your 
recruits are soul bound to the lifestone.  This is what allows you to resurrect 
when you die.  Until the lifestone health gets really low, it uses some of its 
own health to resurrect you or your killed recruits.  The last small amount of 
health can only be drained by melee or magic attacks.  If your lifestone is 
destroyed, then you and your recruits will die and you will lose this game.  
Don't worry, you can always start a new game where your character, items, and 
recruits will carry over.  There is only one way for a lifestone to regain 
health it has lost, time.  All lifestones will regenerate health slowly if they 
are damaged.  Also, using your lifestone will heal your character.  This does 
not harm your lifestone in any way.

Your bookshelf is there to hold your collection of tomes.  Each tome that you 
have on your bookshelf gives you a small attribute bonus, so collect as many as 
you can.  However, you can only have one of each tome on your bookshelf and 
each tome has a specific slot that it goes into.  If you drop a book anywhere 
on the bookshelf, it will automatically go to the correct slot.

The stash is your extra inventory space where you can store whatever items you 
want.  Note: only bags can go directly into the stash.  Any type of item can 
go into these bags though.

Your shared stash is shared by all of your players that you have created.  
Note: only bags can go directly into the stash.  Any type of item can go into 
these bags though.

Your covenant gate allows you to quickly teleport to places around the world 
where you have found gates.  To activate a gate in the world, you simply use 
it by left clicking on it.  Once it is activated you can return to it from your 
covenant gate whenever you want. You can also use your gate to teleport to the 
other covenants and a spot on the other side of town.  When looking at the 
world map use the scrollbars or hold down the left mouse button and move the 
mouse to move the map around.  Note: if you start a new game/world only the 
gates in the zones that are straight north of town will carry over.


Influence/Crystals
------------------
Influence is a measure of how much influence you have within the barbarian 
city and it directly impacts how much taxes you collect.  You gain influence 
for killing monsters, solving quests, and destroying covenants.  You can also 
trade influence (give away or get).

Crystals is the form of money that a covenant uses.  Each covenant collects 
crystals from taxes from the city and spends them on things like guards, 
starting rumors, and trade with other covenants.  The higher your influence 
with the town the more crystals you will get from taxes. However, most guards 
cost some taxes each tax period.  You can see how many crystals you have on 
the house layout, when trading with the beastmaster, and when trading with 
another covenant.  You can see how many crystals you collect per tax period 
on the house layout, when trading with the beastmaster, and on the relations 
screen.


Diplomacy
---------
Going to war with all of the other covenants at the same time is basically 
suicide, so you need to keep them peaceful until you are ready to crush them.  
You can do this by using diplomacy, primarily through trade.  You can trade 
many things with the other covenants including items, money, influence, 
crystals (covenant version of money), treaties (non-aggression, mutual 
protection, alliance), declare war on someone, and trade routes (5 different 
sizes).  In general, the more you trade with a covenant the more they will 
like you.

Be careful when your relations gets too low with the other covenants.  The 
lower your relations get with a covenant, the more likely they are to declare 
war and/or raid your house.  The easiest ways to improve your relations are to 
trade with the other covenant or even give them gifts.  They also appreciate 
when you kill recruits from enemy covenants and any monsters that are 
attacking their house.


War/Raids
---------
To destroy an enemy covenant you need to raid their house and destroy their 
lifestone.  To start a raid, go to the relation screen, left click on the 
covenant you wish to raid and then pick the raid option.

During a raid you can take as many of your recruits as you wish.  Also, expect 
to die many times in a raid, this is normal.  Luckily there is no xp debt 
penalty when dying in raids.  However, each time you or one of your recruits 
dies, your lifestone takes some damage until its health is very low.  This is 
true of your enemy's lifestone also.  A lifestone's last bit of life can only 
be damaged by direct attack by melee or magic attacks.


Main UI Screens
---------------
Here is a quick list of the main UI screens with their default hotkeys.  
Character - C
Quests - Q
Skills - S
Inventory - I
Covenant Relations - R
House Layout - L
Map - M
Journal - J
Main menu - Esc
Minimap - Tab
All of these also have small buttons at the bottom of the screen.

The character screen shows the basic stats of your character.  Place the mouse 
cursor over anything that you want more information about.

The skill screen shows all of the skills available for your character class.  
A gold border around the skill icon means that you have that skill.  Notice 
that there are multiple tabs.  Each class has 3 tabs for class specific skills, 
1 tab for bonus skills that are available to any class, and 1 tab to show what 
basic skills the class starts with.

The skills are not arranged in a skill tree.  All of the skills are available 
at the very beginning, but they each have a different point cost.  In general, 
the lower the skill is on the screen the more points they cost.  For each 
skill level, the point cost increases by one compared to the last skill level.  
Buying a skill also costs some amount of money based on the point cost.

There are two types of skills: passive and active.  Passive skills are skills 
that automatically work with no input needed from the player, assuming you have 
the skill of course.  Active skills only work when the player uses them in the 
appropriate way.  The easiest way to use a skill is add it to your hotkey bar 
and press the associated hotkey.


Town NPCs
---------
There are three main vendors in town: a small items vendor, an armorsmith, and 
a weapon smith.  They each carry different items but you can sell any item to 
any of the vendors for the same price.  To buy an item, just move the item from 
the vendor's inventory to your own or right click on the item.  To sell an 
item, just move the item from your inventory to the vendor's or hit the sell 
hotkey (defaults to space).  You can also identify all of your unidentified 
items here all at once for a price.

The gambler allows you to gamble on items.  To gamble, just buy the item like 
normal and if you are lucky it will be a magical item worth more than what you 
paid for.

The beastmaster sells magically enchanted guards.  All guards cost a certain 
amount of crystals (covenant version of money) and most cost an upkeep amount 
(crystals per tax period).  There is a small chance that a monster might break 
its enchantment.

There are three main quest givers in town: the warmaster, the steward, and the 
apothecary.  They each carry different types of quests.  Sometimes other NPCs 
will show up in town that will offer personal quests.


Items/Money
-----------
Items come in many different rarities or types: normal, common, rare, set, 
unique, and artifacts.  Normal items are just that, normal.  Common and rare
magic items have some random magical enhancements with rare items usually 
having more.  Set items belong to a group of items.  If you can find and equip 
all of the items from a set, you will get some bonus enhancements.  Many sets 
also have a partial bonus if you can equip part of the set.  Unique items are 
items that are named, have enchantments that are always the same, and usually 
are very powerful.  Artifact items are very similar to unique items but usually 
have at least one extra enhancement so they are even more powerful.

Money in the world of Aleria comes in the form of copper pieces (CP), silver 
pieces (SP), and gold pieces (GP).  

100 Copper Pieces = 1 Silver Piece
100 Silver Pieces = 1 Gold Piece


Staying Alive/Death
-------------------
There are many ways to regain health when your health gets too low.  Typically 
the easiest way is to eat some food.  Eating food will slowly regenerate your 
health and food is relatively cheap.  The fastest way to regain health is to 
drink a health potion.  Health potions instantly give you health but are 
relatively expensive.  The cheapest way to regain your health is to use your 
lifestone.  Using your lifestone regenerates your health fairly quickly and is 
free but you have to be in your house of course.  And last but not least, if 
you are a priest, you can eventually get some spells that can heal wounds.

There are also many ways to help one of your party members to regain health 
when their health gets too low.  You can feed them food by dropping food on 
their character or hitting the correct hotkey (F1 for first party member, F2 
for second, ...).  You can give them a health potion in the same way except 
the hotkeys start at F6.  You can also head back to your house where your 
recruit will automatically heal at your lifestone.  And finally, if you are a 
priest, you can heal your party members with any healing skills you might have.

Death is inevitable in Depths of Peril.  When you die you can always resurrect 
using the power of your covenant's lifestone.  This will use up some of your 
lifestone's health (until it is very low).  If killed by monsters you will also 
incur a small XP debt penalty.  This means you get less experience until you 
work off the XP debt.  If you go and retrieve your soulstone that dropped when 
you died, the XP debt will be decreased.


Other Useful Info
-----------------
Each time you increase in level you get more attribute and skill points to 
distribute however you want.  To use your attribute points, open up your 
character page (defaults to the C key), and press the + button next to the 
attribute you want to increase.  You get 5 attribute points each level.  To use 
your skills points, open your skill page (defaults to the S key), and press the 
+ button next to the skill you want to increase.  The higher your character's 
level the more skill points you get per level.  Also note, that skills cost 
more and more with each skill level and that they also cost a certain amount of 
money to increase.

Item find, magic find, critical hit, crushing blow, and deep wounds bonuses are 
slightly misleading.  They represent the bonus compared to normal.  For 
example, a 100% bonus to critical hits means a 100% better chance than normal, 
not a 100% chance.  So if your normal critical hit chance is 5% and you have a 
100% bonus, the final value will be 10%.

Distracting a monster is very useful to the player, but mostly to a rogue since 
she can take advantage of their distraction.  Many skills can distract a 
monster to varying degrees (minor, decent, and major) and some skills need a 
monster to be distracted to some degree.  Be warned that any attack that uses 
the monsters distraction will remove the distraction effect.

Some skills require you or your enemy to be in a certain state or situation 
before that skill can be used.  Usually a skill is usable if any of the listed 
states or situations occur.


Credits
-------
Designer & Programmer
  Steven Peeler

Story & Writing
  Delilah Rehm

Lead artist
  Vasili Gaidukevic

Sound Effects
  Josh Martel
  Michael Huang
  Zak Belica

Music
 Zak Belica

Artists
  Alex McCusker
  Andy Arrondo
  Brian Jones (Bobo)
  Eric Young
  Ethan McCaughey
  Greg Tchjen
  Joe Eisma
  Joseph Mirabello
  Mark Morgan
  Patrick Boisvert
  Rebecca Smith
  Rich Fleider
  Stephen A Hornback


Special Thanks To
-----------------
Eric Fowler, Sandra Spears, Scotty Mitchell, Kris Mitchell, Stephen Hornback, 
Kassi Kolassa, Nathan Peugh, Roland Smith, Clare Bernier, Ross Patton, 
Asher Dial, and other testers.

Future Classic - http://www.future-classics.org/
North Texas Speculative Fiction Writers - http://www.ntsfw.com/index.html

All websites that have given us press coverage.
Many forum posters who have already contributed input from the demo.


Troubleshooting
---------------
First make sure you have the latest video and sound drivers installed for your
system.

If your graphics are flickering, especially if your mouse cursor is having 
issues, try turning off the hardware cursor in the graphics options menu.

If you are having any strange sound issues try setting the Sound Device to
DirectSound or MMSYSTEM in the sound options menu.  You will have to completely
get out of the game and restart the executable for this change to take effect
though.

If you are running Vista and the first time your run the game it doesn't even
get to asking about your name and security key, you might be having a dep issue.
Follow these instructions to turn DEP off for Depths of Peril:
  1) Go to Control Panel->System and Maintenance->System
  2) Select "Advanced system settings"
  3) On the "Advanced" tab under Performance, Click Settings.
  4) Then select the "Data Execution Prevention" tab.
  5) Add Depths of Peril to the list of apllications to not use DEP with
  6) Click Apply and OK's as needed
  7) Restart Vista.

AC 97 sound cards with old drivers have had problems with Depths of Peril.  If
you have one of these sounds cards, please make sure you have the latest 
drivers.

for AC97 (normal):
  http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=23&PFid=23&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#AC

for HD:
  http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#High%20Definition%20Audio%20Codecs

If you have a dual-core AMD computer and everything runs too fast like it is 
being fast forwarded, then you might have a timing issue. If you are having 
this issue, go to http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html 
and then download and install the AMD Dual-Core Optimizer utility.

If you are still having problems your best bet is to read the Depths of Peril 
forums at http://www.soldak.com/forums/ to see if anyone else is having this 
problem and if there is a known work around.  This is also the place to report 
any unsolved problems.


Support
-------
Forums - http://www.soldak.com/forums/
Website - http://www.soldak.com/


Updates/Patches
---------------
Please go to http://www.soldak.com/ to find out about the latest updates and
patches for Depths of Peril.


Mods
----
We encourage people to modify the game if they want as long as they don't sell
it in any way.  See the EULA for specifics.  

The pack files for the game are just normal zip files, most of the data is
in there somewhere, and it is usually in text file format.  So the game is
pretty easy to modify.  Also if you post questions on our forums about
modding the game, we will in general help out if we can.


More legal stuff
----------------
Depths of Peril and Soldak Entertainment are trademarks of 
Soldak Entertainment, Inc.

Copyright (c) Soldak Entertainment, Inc. 2007

All rights reserved.
