Stoat Soup for NetHack players
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Linley's Dungeon Crawl was inspired by NetHack, and while the two
games have drifted apart, it won't be completely unfamiliar. One of
the main differences is that Crawl doesn't want information to be
hidden in spoilers - if you could know it by reading spoilers (eg "is
this monster's corpse good to eat?" "what's this weapon's base
damage?"), you're just told it. If you press ? you can read a huge
amount of help.

You need to identify items, but there aren't many shortcuts like
price-IDing, so a lot of the time you will identify items by wearing
or wielding them, or by reading unIDed scrolls or quaffing unIDed
potions. Scrolls of identify are pretty common, and it's safe to read
scrolls with nothing around, so it's normal to wait until you get
stacks of 2 scrolls and read them hoping to find identify. Potions
aren't so safe to identify by quaffing, but potions also have a decent
chance of saving you if things are desperate, so sometimes you'll
identify them by quaffing them when otherwise you're going to die.

There are cursed weapons, armour, rings, and amulets - but no blessed
items. Scrolls of remove curse uncurse everything in your inventory.
Hence, it's safe to wear or wield unknown items if you have some
scrolls of remove curse - not so much otherwise, but maybe the item is
so good you're willing to take the chance.

You can examine an item in the inventory by pressing its letter, and
Crawl tells you a lot more about items than NetHack does.

If an item looks plain - "a broadsword" - it is at _best_ uncursed +0.
"A broadsword of flaming" might still be cursed -2, but definitely
does bonus damage with its fiery blade. "A runed broadsword" (with a
blue name) might well be good - perhaps a +4 broadsword of flaming -
but if it's not, it could well be cursed with a negative
enchantment. "A fine broadsword" (with a white name, and if you
examine it it says "This ancient artefact cannot be changed by magic
or mundane means") is an artefact.

Artefacts are more like NetHack artefacts (but can also be armour or
jewellery), with a wide range of powers, but most of them are
"randarts", randomly generated. They're not all good, either! You'll
almost never identify weapons, armour, or jewellery which aren't
artefacts, but you might have enough of a surplus of scrolls to use on
artefacts. Unlike in NetHack, you won't always end the game wielding
an artefact - a +9 broadsword of flaming, say, might well do more
damage than any artefact you find.

You need to eat food to survive, and most of the time you'll eat
corpses - use 'c' to chop them up into chunks. Normally you can't eat
raw flesh until you are Hungry - but it's safe to hang onto chunks
until you are, your character throws them away when they are not safe
to eat. Some corpses are "mutagenic" - you can eat those any time, but
the effects may be exciting.

The dungeon branches, like in NetHack, but much more so. Important
early branches are the Temple, the Lair of Beasts, and the Orcish
Mines. The Temple contains many altars to the gods, and no monsters;
the Lair and the Orcish Mines are not _absurdly_ dangerous when you
encounter them. The help menu can tell you about all the branches (and
everything else) in the game.

Crawl does not like typo deaths. Your character will not walk into
lava just because you mistype; you will be warned before taking action
that angers your god. What makes Crawl hard to win is that the
monsters are much more dangerous, and particularly that they stay
dangerous all game. You almost always die by running out of hitpoints.

Items can't be destroyed in your inventory, and consumables are
important, so carry them around. You're not saving potions and scrolls
to dilute and blank, but to save your life when things get bad;
there's no prize for dying with 10 potions of heal wounds.

Most characters don't start with a god, and each of the Crawl gods is
very different - they grant different powers and impose different
restrictions. You'll have to work out what is best for your character,
and whether it's better to take the reasonable god whose altar you
have found early or to hold out for the one you really wanted.

Some species differ from humans only in stats and skill aptitudes, a
bit like NetHack's elves and dwarves, but others are much more
different - eg, ghouls crave flesh and heal when they eat it, felids
are sentient cats, and demonspawn gain demonic traits as they level
up. On the character selection screen, the species on the left are
more straightforward to play.

Background is just what you start with - unlike NetHack where your
class determines how much you can #enhance your skills, what
resistances you get when you level up, which Quest you do, and so
forth. Nothing is stopping you from starting a Fighter and learning
spells, or a Conjurer and hitting monsters with a stick - except
getting killed while you're learning the new skills.

Skills train up as you gain experience. You can either use automatic
skill training (which trains up what you are using) or manual
(complete control of where your XP goes). Automatic skill training
can't make too big a mess of things, but as a more experienced player
you may want complete control - for example if you're desperate to get
a particular spell working, you might dump all your XP into the
relevant skill. Your species determines your aptitude for each skill,
and it's easier to focus on what your species does well.

Items don't have weight; the only inventory pressure comes from the
inventory being limited to 52 slots. There are no bags to put things
in. The "encumbrance" listed on body armour affects how easy it is to
cast spells in it and how much it affects your evasion and ability to
hit things.

There are three stats. Strength reduces the downsides of heavy armour
and makes you do more damage with most weapons, especially maces and
flails. Intelligence makes you better at casting spells. Dexterity
makes you better at hitting and dodging attacks, and helps damage with
some light weapons like rapiers.

Crawl's levels are bigger than NetHack's (but not as big as you might
think); a useful command is 'o', autoexplore. Autoexplore isn't always
great at the start of a level - it may leave you far from the stairs
when you see the first monster - but it's very good at making sure
you've seen all the items and looked into every corner.

Autoexplore showed you all the items - and you can do Ctrl-F to find
where they are, so you don't have to stash everything just to be able
to find it later. Furthermore, you can hit Enter on an item in the
Ctrl-F search results to travel to the item you want.