Tips

For more advice, see Help.

For tips for editing, see Elona Wiki:Tips.

Survival

• Numerically, the best of the four starting pets offered to you in Vernis is the little girl, since she averages out to more stats, equipment slots, and speed than her immediate alternatives. However, all the starting pets are melee fighters, so if you're already competent at close ranges and need fire support, you can sell yours at the Slave master in Derphy and purchase a Yerles machine infantry or Wizard of Elea instead. You may also wish to sell it just to purchase another little girl, as the new one comes at level 4 with higher stats and speed.
• If you find equipment you can't use, your pets might be able to use them. Use the i key to interact with a pet, then choose 'Inventory' to give or take items.
• As a basic survival method, simply don't engage any enemy you can't defeat. Experience is not gained through combat alone, and a farmer or pianist will be better-served staying in town as much as possible. Use teleportation skills, spells, or items to run from enemies you can't face.
• The overall goal when starting is to just gain skills by getting platinum coins through quests until you can buy from trainers all the skills you need to become powerful in the long run; you can also spend platinum to make your skills train more quickly. Early on, you just need to be powerful enough to complete basic quests that get you more platinum (and pets can help with that). See the quests and skills sections below for details.
• You can have two party members, plus one more for every 5 Charisma you have over 10. Keep this in mind for escort quests, as the temporary allies count as party members.
• If your permanent pets and allies fall in combat, bartenders in town can bring them back to life for a price.
  • To prevent this, you can interact, talk to, and order any permanent, living pet to 'wait at the town' if it looks like they are at high risk of dying, even from the depths of a dungeon. They instantly disappear and can then be retrieved from a bartender for 100gp. If their stats were enchanted with a blessed potion of restore body or spirit the buff is lost in the process (but it will be lost if they die, anyway). This does not work on temporary allies assigned to you in escort quests.
  • In Elona+, the Call Familiar action can be used anywhere to summon or dismiss any permanent, living pet at any distance for a cost of 10SP instead of gold. It is learned by leveling up when Charisma is at 30 or higher.
• A stethoscope will show party members' health bars when used on them, and a leash will teleport them to your side if they are too far away from you. Both can occasionally be found in general stores and dungeons, and both effects are permanent effects that last even if you lose the item.
• Track the date on the clock in top left corner. Beware of Etherwind.
• You get additional skill points on level up based on your Learning stat. These can be used for increasing potential of skills with high Platinum coin cost to train. It would be wise at the start of the game to get Gardening and spend some time on The Harvest Time quests, low level monsters there would serve as good targets for Ambitious Scientist quest, which would award you with possibility to train Gene Engineering, though this is an expensive skill to train. You can look for items with the 'disturbs your growth' attribute (usually spawned on cursed items) for further increase in the time between level-ups.
• Make sure to identify everything you plan to wear, and avoid wearing cursed equipment. If you can't afford to identify it but can carry it with you, your character will slowly appraise the item on their own. Some unlucky items may cause regular misfortune like teleportation and blood loss, even if their curse is removed. If the item has been fully identified, you can check for these negative effects with the examine command from any inventory menu. Negative effects are printed in red.
• Weather can be dangerous; heavy storms can cause you to get briefly blinded or confused, delaying your travels, while the Etherwind is an unnatural wind that can cause those caught in it to mutate dangerously. To escape dangerous weather, you can ask innkeepers for shelter, hide in a dungeon, or stay in your own home.
  • Note that Etherwind is still dangerous while on any outdoor map (all towns are considered outdoors, even the interiors of buildings), but you might wish to risk a few turns in it to visit the innkeeper's shelter anyway just because it will have a textbook and training machine.
  • Equipment attributes that prevent status effects are not effective on the world map, but some items bear the ability 'negates the effect of being stranded by bad weather', which prevents weather-related confusion as well as the speed delay from snow. Most notably, aurora rings guarantee this ability.
• Items to keep: engagement jewelry is good for trading with adventurers, items with bonuses to skills you intend to use like crafting skills, negotiation, and literacy. If you stumble upon an item with good combat bonuses but bad material, you can generally change it later, unless it is a precious item. Godly-quality items (those with their name in {curly brackets}) and living weapons can be changed only with a material kit. Kits are very rare, so these items can gather a lot of dust in your house until they become usable.
• If you attack and kill a fellow adventurer, or steal from them and get caught often enough, they will become your foe. Any time you are in the same town, they will come after you immediately with new equipment and probably at a higher level. In some cases, this may be beneficial and even add an extra element of surprise and fun in towns, but be sure not to make too many enemies. You can use a disguise and talk to them to reset aggressiveness. Killing or failing to steal from them lowers relationship. See that page for methods to recover it.
• Of the available feats, the direct-damage and status-inflicting ability feats can be useful at the start for dealing with evasive, fragile enemies, like Bats and Quicklings, since they never miss. Most can be replaced with items later; for example, you can replace the poison touch by throwing common dye. Fire breath can destroy items, and drain blood deals nether damage -- nearly all high-level monsters have high resistance to this damage type, limiting its utility
• Always keep a rod or scrolls of teleportation on you, and consider learning the Dimensional Move feat. If you run into a dire situation, you can teleport yourself away, hopefully closer to the exit or map border and escape before you or your pets take any significant damage.

Defeating Enemies

Ultimately, being able to survive is not enough; to advance the game, you must be capable of defeating threats that stand in your way. Several combat skills require training through use to be of much effect, and training adds to your attributes, as well. Remember, however, that combat skills are trained per swing, not per kill. Punching a golem ineffectually for hours trains your skills more than slaying hundreds of high-level monsters in one hit. As of Elona+ 1.14, the following are important factors to consider for monster slaying. Damage is determined by type of attack, equipped weapon, attributes, and skills.

• Speed is the most universally crucial attribute. It doesn't matter what you are doing in combat, doing it faster is doing it better. Some enemies like bells can run away, regenerate all wounds, and attack multiple times in the single turn you move towards them. A fast character has a massive advantage in battle.
• No matter how much damage your stat sheet says you'll deal with a physical attack, it doesn't matter if you can't hit the target. Depending on the weapon you use, your attributes will affect the hit rate. Strength affects Long Sword, Axe, Martial Arts, and Scythe. Constitution affects Blunt, Polearm, and Stave. Dexterity affects Short Sword, Bow, Crossbow, and Throwing. Perception affects Firearm. Wearing armors will decrease your hit rate. That is, when training or just starting the game it may better to fight lightly armored. To increase hit rate while wearing armor, improve the skills and respective attributes: Heavy Armor (CON), Medium Armor (CON), or Light Armor (DEX). Dual Wield is necessary if you want to reliably hit while wielding multiple weapons. Eye of Mind can aid accuracy by improving critical hit rate, as critical hits cannot miss. Some neck- and arm-slot armors can also improve hit rate.
• The second part is damaging the monster.
  • Strength adds to the base damage to Long Sword, Axe, Martial Arts, and Scythe weapons. Constitution adds to the base damage of Blunt, Polearm, and Stave weapons. Weapon skill adds to the damage multiplier and hit rate. Tactics skill applies to all melee attacks and thrown weapons, and Two Hand skill only applies to weapons that are heavy and only when wielded with two hands (i.e. no equipment in the second hand slot). Damage, dependent on weapon type, is calculated as follows: (Base Damage + Weapon Damage + Equipment Damage) * Skill Multiplier
  • Dexterity adds to the base damage to Short Sword, Bow, Crossbow, and Throwing. Arrows and bolts are treated as an additional damage roll as follows: (Base Damage + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage + Equipment Damage) * Skill Multiplier
  • Perception only adds to the base damage of Firearm. Marksman skill increases the damage multiplier if using a ranged weapon. Bullets and energy cells are treated as a separate roll as follows: (Base Damage + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage + Equipment Damage) * Skill Multiplier
• The third part is surviving the monster's retaliation. Later in the game, Protection OR Evasion becomes important. Improve Constitution and the respective armor skill to reduce damage. Improve Dexterity and Evasion to avoid attacks. Greater Evasion further reduces the chance of 'lucky' hits only if the attack is avoided. Fighting naked helps a lot in dodging attacks if respective armor skill is too low, but any hits that get through will hurt. Do so at your own risk.
• The fourth part is delivering killing blows as fast as possible. Later in the game monsters will mob you in the dungeons like a pack of gaming-deficient gamers finding Starcraft, and walls will not always be available. For either melee or ranged attacks, Perception and Luck add to critical hit chance. Eye of Mind increases the probability of delivering a critical hit further.
• The fifth part is casting magic for support and crowd control. In normal Elona, dedicated spellcasters are only recommended for those players who love to grind. In Elona+ versions 1.19 and later, the viability of spellcasters has been increased greatly with several changes to how spells are improved and used up. Regardless, characters in any version can derive benefits from dabbling in magic. For more general information, see the Spellcasting section.
  • The best support spells include the best form of cure you can cast for self heals, Healing Rain for party heals, Hero for buffs, and all forms of Teleport for running away. Each of these spells' effectiveness and chance are determined by their respective attributes and your Casting skill.
  • Willpower improves healing and buff magic. The magic stat improves combat magic. The skills that have the most practical use are Casting to reduce failures, Meditation to increase mana regeneration, Control Magic to prevent friendly fire, Literacy to read high-level spellbooks, and Memorization to stock more spells from each book. The only way to improve spell effectiveness is to cast them. Playing as a combat caster is difficult late in the game unless you are over-leveled or have a pet that can provoke enemies (e.g. the servant Defender).

Interface

• The status bar at the bottom of the screen displays, from left to right, your current strength, constitution, dexterity, perception, learning, will, magic, charisma, speed, and PV/DV. It's useful to keep an eye on this display, since stats that have been drained or that are reduced below their baseline for some other reason will be displayed in red.
• Read your in-game help by pressing ?, and read certain books with red covers found lying around (especially the "Beginner's Guide" in your starting home) for various helpful information.
• You can review your current quests, the time remaining on them, your titles (and when they will decay), your pay and taxes and so forth in your journal.
• Using * for targeting has several features beyond letting you decide who the victim of your ranged attacks will be. When a monster is targeted, the path that a bolt spell will follow on its way to that monster will be highlighted, and since you can move the cursor around with complete freedom you can use this to easily review the parts of a dungeon level that you have revealed. Used on the world map, it allows you to examine the landscape: handy for finding dungeons to delve or identifying landmarks in treasure maps.

Quests

• The quests found on the job boards in town offer a number of ways to gain money and platinum pieces, and are highly recommended to new players.
• In earlier versions of Elona, death in quest areas results in no penalty to the player other than failure of the quest. In later versions and all versions of Elona+, it causes loss of stats.
• Hunting quests, even ones whose difficulty is only a single green dollar sign, can be deadly when you're just starting out; if kobolds are still a threat to you, think twice before accepting one and be ready to run if you do.
• You will be attacked by weak monsters during "The Harvest Time" quests, making them about as dangerous as the lowest level of hunting quests. Once you're over that hurdle, however, pulling up crops trains strength, constitution, and will, as well as getting platinum and magical items from the quest reward. If you learn the Gardening skill from the trainer, you can train Learning as well.
  • Having a few pets to preemptively kill off monsters, as well as high speed, will help you in completing these quests.
• Escort quests, especially "Beauty and the Beast" quests, can be especially nasty early on, since they couple the opportunity to lose Karma (10- per failure) with the danger of the other combat-oriented quests. Since losing Karma can result in guards attacking you, make sure you're very confident that you can handle an escort quest before taking one.
• If you have a batch of items on hand that you would otherwise sell, consider looking for "I want it!" quests - you will be given the opportunity to trade items with the NPC holding the desired item, and with any luck you can exchange some junk that you'd just sell for less gold than it's worth for some more items, gold, and a platinum piece. Note that there is no correlation between the listed difficulty and any actual challenge posed by an "I want it!" quest. Difficulty 4 or 5 quests where the desired item is something like a junk stone will show up, with rewards of several thousand gold, and you will be able to fulfill the quest with minimal effort. Once you have learned Pickpocket, be on the lookout for quests whose object is an item lying around in town -- simply teleport any NPCs away from it (or be very good and very lucky) to steal it, and then hand it in.
  • If you're aiming for higher fame, watch out for "I want it" quests where the desired item is furniture. It might be of a superior material, and hence would trade for much more than the reward is worth. May be worth the loss of fame.
• Birthday quests, on the other hand, do not do anything to supply the desired item; you must find or buy it yourself. With that caveat, it is well worth paying attention to these quests -- many of them are for items that can be simply picked up in any wilderness tile, and there's always a chance that there's one up for something you're carrying or can immediately buy (or steal).
  • You can keep on hand rarer kinds of 'junk' items such as skeletons, lots of bottles, empty bowls, bowls, washings, fire wood, flags, and straw. When the quest comes up on the bulletin board, simply warp over and hand the needed item over. Most other kinds of junk are common occurrences on the wilderness local map. You can also pickpocket the item right back afterward and hand it in to the next person to request it, if you're feeling sneaky and confident.
• If you have a moderate amount of the Performer skill, you can make money AND lose fame at the same time by failing Party Time! quests.
• Delivery quests have no special dangers except for possibly handing you a furniture item made of very heavy material to carry. Just make sure that you hold onto the item and that can get to the destination on time, as failing these quests result in Karma loss. Note that when the item is a spellbook, you may identify and use every charge except the last and still complete the quest.
• For big money early on, look for "Before It's Too Late" quests between Palmia and Yowyn. Even if it has a short 2-day deadline you can easily make the walk in time unless you get caught in heavy rain.
• Always look to combine quests when the have the same destination. Three cheap quests that can be done at the same time are often better than one with a bigger reward since you get platinum and items for each quest regardless of the gold promised.
• Wishing for seven league boots will make nearly any Escort or Before It's Too Late quest easy for the entire game, and make quests to Noyel far more viable for huge payoffs.

Money Making

• See the above section on Quests, which can be lucrative and very easy with some attention to detail.
• An important thing to note is that NPCs will pay very little for most items. At 0 Negotiation skill, NPCs will buy equipment (Rings, weapons, armor) for 0.5% of its value. At the same time, though, NPCs purchase other items (from spellbooks to ores) for 10% of its value. As such, never pick up extra equipment unless you're planning on using it.
• When you've just started out, some time spent bouncing back and forth between Vernis and the Puppy Cave can be a good way to get your character on his or her feet. Entering the first level of the Puppy Cave and grabbing anything you can before the monsters get to you will yield a supply of scrolls, rods, potions, spellbooks, and monster skin/bone/etc. Every so often, walk over to Vernis to sleep, buy food, and identify and sell things. Check the quests while you're there!
  • Don't spend too much time trying to fight monsters -- at the very beginning, even the weakest monsters can be deadly.
  • If you get monster parts, identify them first. Identifying one 'skin' item means that vendors will pay full price for all skin items from then on. Once all of the monster part types are identified in this way these objects will become a solid source of income.
  • Spellbooks can be identified by reading them, if your class has access to the Literacy skill. It is highly recommended that you do this, since you will also train your Literacy skill in the process, but see the Spellcasting section for warnings about what can happen if you fail to read a spellbook!
  • Rods can safely be identified by zapping them at an adjacent monster while you're standing on the stairs; the most dangerous rod effect you're likely to get is Summon Monster, and being on the stairs so that you can immediately flee negates that threat.
  • It is unsafe, however, to identify scrolls in this way; scrolls of curse are fairly common, and cursed equipment can be a fairly major headache at this point.
  • Once you've identified any scroll, rod, spellbook, or potion, all items of that specific subtype will remain identified for the life of your character; in other words, identifying a rod of magic arrow will allow you to immediately recognize the next one of the same type. Once you have a wide variety of items identified, selling magical consumables becomes profitable.
  • Oracle scrolls generally sell for upwards of 2,000 gold pieces and spawn approximately 1 in 3 times on generation of a level in the Puppy Cave. This is extremely lucrative for any beginner, and the scrolls can also be saved and stacked in order to trade for good gear found on adventurers, as the scrolls are practically useless.
  • Don't be too cautious! Remember that there is no death penalty until level 6, so take the opportunity to risk drinking sulfuric acid or fight it out with monsters that might kill you to learn your strengths.
• The main quest, at least up to the delivery of the letter to the King, will give you a good initial amount of money to have for equipping your character and starting off.
• Prostituting yourself is an extremely easy way to make money. Buy cheap alcohol from innkeepers, then give it to an NPC (preferably a store owner with plenty of money), then talk to them and choose the 'interested in a little tail t'night?' option. With around 25 charisma you should net about 2k at the cost of -1 karma and a few turns. A side bonus is the hilarious praise the NPCs will give you if you are 'good' and an increase in your relationship with that NPC (5~10 impress). Note that you will get tired after one or two sessions and require rest to recover stamina; if you lack the stamina to complete the act, there is no payout.
  • One danger of prostitution is that there is a small chance to contract a sickness, which has negative impacts on your statistics unless they are maintained via equipment. Sleep two or three times or use a blessed cure potion to eliminate the status.
• A ranch near Derphy can be moderately profitable, as long as you have enough charisma to have one party member remain as a breeder without compromising the slots you have left to do escort quests. Any creature at the ranch can join your party's empty slots (interact with it at the ranch), and then be sold in Derphy for cash.
• A ranch and a farm go well together if you worship Kumiromi. By killing ranched creatures and carrying their meat around until it rots, you may get seeds from the corpses. You can then plant the seeds at the farm. Doing so loses out on the benefits of eating the creature, however, as you cannot refine jerky from rotten corpses. In Elona+, however, you no longer get seeds this way.
  • Rotten corpses can, however, be cooked, so make sure to cook them before discarding them to increase Learning and your Cooking skill. Just don't forget and eat them afterward!
• Cargoes of traveler's rations are the cheapest way to buy food for a good portion of the game. Their price increases slowly as your fame increases, so it may be a good idea to buy all that you can at the start and just stack the mess outta them. They count as cargo and thus go to your cart, so they don't weigh you down while you're trying to carry loot. You should always have some for overland travel at least as a beginner; you will eat them automatically as you move on the map. Of important note, they cannot be eaten when in a dungeon.
  • Keep in mind that the more cargo you're carrying, the more often you will be set upon by bandits.
  • The wilderness is always full of api nuts, healthy leaves, and edible wild plants, and those first two are very light and won't rot, so you may quickly find you don't need cargoes of food anymore, especially if you have a portable cooking tool and the Cooking skill, or are of the Yerles or Juere races. Just beware of cursed ones!
  • Cooking other food (such as the fruit from fruit trees) will make it so it doesn't rot as fast and makes it more filling. You can cook a couple things before you leave for a dungeon and eat those before your imperishable food, so that you won't need to spend an hour stocking up on api nuts and healthy leaves.
  • Don't forget that there are 3 fruit trees in Vernis, and that you can eat anything on the ground in a pinch, even things in shops like the stick bread. It may be cursed, though.
• If identifying items is too expensive for you, the Negotiation skill (which is highly recommended for other uses as well) will reduce the price. The Fighters' Guild in Port Kapul also offers a discount to members. Bear in mind that once you've joined a guild, only trainers from your guild will visit your home.
• When you have more than one item to identify at a wizard, consider choosing the 'Identify all of my stuff' option instead of paying for each item separately as it seems that the former variant saves you 30% of gold required. However, this may not be as efficient if you're carrying large numbers of rods and spellbooks whose type is already known, but whose charge level is not. Junk is never identified as part of this option.
• When you clear lower level dungeons, don't open the bejeweled chests you get for beating them. Instead, just pick it up and take it to a higher level dungeon and then open it. The rewards will be better. This works the same for regular chests and treasure balls, but mind the weight of the container.
• Keep hold of any potions of poison or dye that you find. Throwing them at silver or gold bells usually results in an easy kill due to their high speed and low life; silver bells drop platinum coins and small medals, and gold bells drop large amounts of gold. Note that you must actually hit the bell with the throw; they float, so they'll never step in any puddles you make. This will also work on quicklings and, to a lesser extent, bats.
• You will on very rare occasion find material kits. Any item you use them on will change to the material specified. Do not waste these kits on normal items (especially furniture) as they are very rare and they are the ONLY way to reforge godly-quality items, which you will want to do if you find such an item with good bonuses but a bad material. Kits can, on rare occasion, be purchased from the souvenir vendor in Larna, but at rather massive prices.
• The easiest and earliest source of Potions of Cure Corruption (to cure ether disease, or trade with adventurers) is from blackjack at the casino. The first time you visit you will get 10 free casino chips to play with. The potion is one of the prize items when you play, but you will need to win at least four or five rounds without cashing out to get one. Get as much luck-boosting (mica) gear as you can, as it grants a chance to automatically discard cards that would make you bust. A high dexterity will also allow you to successfully cheat. However, it is only recommended to cheat during the first few rounds as odds of success go down the more rounds you've won in a row.
  • Some have noted that the potions are not awarded if you win too many games in a row, and that the best chances are at four and five wins in a row.
  • This is best postponed until a day you wake up with the 'Lucky Day' status effect from a dream, providing 777 bonus Luck for 1500 turns. Blessed food can rarely supply you with a lesser version of the buff worth 100 Luck. Make sure you can get to the casino in time before it wears off; the game itself takes no turns, so you can potentially play infinite hands with only one turn of the luck buff left without it running out.
  • The king's bed in Palmia's throne room, for example, is the penultimate bed in all of Elona and is a very short distance from the town's casino, so you may want to sleep there whenever you're nearby (there is no penalty for using it). You can also teleport NPCs away and steal lighter casino furniture once your strength is high enough, and keep it in your home.
• Trading cargo goods from the traders in adjacent cities is an excellent way to raise your Negotiation skill, which will allow you to sell items at a much higher price. By discovering which towns buy certain goods high, and which towns sell those goods low, you can establish profitable trade routes. See the cargo page for more information. In regular Elona versions 1.13 and later, if your home is near a town, you can head to a faraway town, buy way too many of the item they pay the most for to carry through the wilderness, and then use a spell or scroll of Return to whisk it across the map directly to your house next door; the trader will buy all of the items even if he appears to run out of money. Note that this does not work in Elona+: you cannot return when your cart is overloaded and traders will not pay out more than the money they carry openly.
• If you have a rod of teleportation and a fairly decent Performer skill (above 23 or so), you can make some decent money off of the pub-goers in Vernis. After zapping Loyter away with the rod, you can go over to the piano and start playing. If all goes well, you can make about 1-3k gold per performance; it's very possible to get 7k gold per trip, which easily makes it worth one charge of a teleportation rod. Also, if you want, you can kill the bard beforehand; he or she may drop his gold if you're lucky and you'll suffer no Karma penalty.
• Buy rods of identify you come across. Even if it only has 5-6 charges, it will be much cheaper than using scrolls or paying a wizard. Rods with a large number of charges can save you thousands of gold.
• If you have good strength, good speed, and the pickpocket skill, releasing <Ebon> the fire giant in Noyel makes a great distraction to rob the town blind. He is neutral to you. Just stay out of the way of the giant and get out before the entire town is in flames
  • In particular, you want to steal the 3 black crystals from the magic shop. These are superb for raising your house rank, more so when you change the material. Just make sure to dig a hole in the bottom left corner tile or the shopkeeper will be trapped and won't go out to fight Ebon. If you are really fast, daring, and have nothing flammable on you, you can try to take loot from everyone dying at the giant's hands.
  • Likewise, once you're confident in your survivability and have a rod of teleportation, you can intentionally fail at reading high-level spellbooks to summon high-level monsters, possibly even dragons and yith, in other towns and take loot from anyone they kill. Don't try this in Vernis, however, as <Whom dwell in the vanity> may cause the end of the world.

Monsters

• Monsters with names in <> are champions and have better stats and generally equipment; however, chess pieces are spawned with brackets in their name normally (e.g. <Rook>), with the champions bearing two brackets (<<Rook>>). Monsters with names in {} are bosses and are even more powerful.
• Quicklings and bells are very fast and will easily out-heal any damage you can do early on. A high-level magic dart (level 30+) will be able to out-damage them, and a potion of poison tends to result in a next-turn kill. Note that, in Elona+, you won't get AP for poisoning them to death.
• Mind resistance tempers insanity-related attacks, and sound resistance helps prevent dim status.
• At higher levels, monsters that cause damage and status effects via special action can take down any warrior despite high levels of PV. There is no way to prevent the damage from those special actions, but equipment with attributes that resist the status effect can keep you fighting so you can take care of these monsters quickly.
• Don't bother trying to fight cubes, unless you can kill them in one hit or afflict them with status effects until they die (or are a golem, but they're still dangerous to one). Cubes are one of the few monsters that will easily take down high-level NPCs like the king. Use a rod of change creature or run away. Likewise with the somewhat weaker but stat-draining mass monster (and in Elona+, any higher-level NPC that splits).
• Melee will only get you so far before you run into teleporting monsters. You will need to train magic or ranged at some point. In Elona+, you may train Stealth instead; once it reaches skill level 30, leveling up once will get you the Shadow Step special action that teleports you to your target. This consumes stamina, however.
• Spellcasting monsters have problems casting when confused, the same as you. They will still attempt to, resulting in the same penalties you suffer for doing so (teleportation, loss of all MP, summoning). While they regenerate MP quickly enough that the MP sap rarely causes them to suffer magic reaction, the teleportation can be useful, and it appears that monsters summoned specifically by confused casters are spawned hostile to them but neutral to you.

Skills

• New skills can be learned and your learning rate at existing ones improved by paying platinum coins to trainers in the cities. Platinum is earned by completing quests, finding buried treasure, or defeating dungeon bosses. Unless you opt to start as one of the classes with an unusual skill-set, there are a number of skills that can be acquired in this way that are extremely useful:
  • Anatomy will cause monsters to turn into corpses more often, making problems with staying fed while deep in a dungeon less of an issue.
  • Cooking will let you increase the food value of anything edible you have and improve its shelf life, further ameliorating food supply issues.
  • Negotiation gets you more favorable prices on goods and services, including selling items, buying expensive deeds, and identifying items.
  • Sense Quality will allow you to find out how good equipment you've found is on your own just by carrying it, allowing you to waste less time carrying items that turn out to be junk.
  • Weight Lifting will increase the amount of weight you can carry, allowing you to spend less time Burdened, carry more loot back, and wear heavier equipment.
• Since it can take a long time to accumulate the platinum needed to learn new skills, it's helpful to plan out the order in which you want to learn the skills in advance. Learn skills that gain experience semi-automatically and can't be trained easily, but which will be useful throughout the game early on -- examples include Anatomy and Sense Quality. Skills that will help out everyday actions like Cooking and Negotiation are also good to learn early. Note that the item production skills like Alchemy and Tailoring will be fairly useless without fairly high levels in their related material-gathering skills, so you may want to wait on those until you have a large stock of materials to train with or the related skillbook.
• Several useful skills that are otherwise available only to certain classes or not at all at game start (Greater Evasion, Marksman, Eye of Mind, Memorization, and others) can only be learned from trainers inside the three guilds found in various cities. You can do the quests to gain entrance to these guilds, or you can just teleport the watchman off of the stairs, enter, and then use a scroll of incognito or disguise kit to fool the trainers into believing that you are a member.
• Once you have both Sense Quality and Weight Lifting, it's efficient to find a dungeon where you can spare 10% of your speed and burden yourself with unidentified weapons and armor. This is a great way to train both skills and their related stats on low-level characters.
• Lock Picking is another skill you will want early, regardless of class. Nothing worse than going through one of the special dungeons and not being able to open the chests at the end.
• Crafting skills in regular Elona are somewhat underwhelming and will likely remain so as Noa has stopped development, but Jeweler is worth picking up. Despite the name, it actually produces scrolls, including the amazing scrolls of change material which can improve most of your gear tremendously. Materials to train with are pretty common, and equipment that boosts your Jeweler skill can get you making these scrolls faster. Other crafting skills either make nothing worth mentioning (Tailoring and Carpentry) or have material shortages for even the most basic items (Alchemy).
  • In Elona+, the other crafting skills have been given a significant update and can now make valuable equipment. Alchemy materials are still quite rare, but the skill can be trained by drinking potions or using certain pot for fusion formulas, to save materials for the most valuable alchemy recipes.
• As you advance levels in a skill, your potential for that skill goes down, meaning that you learn less from the same experiences. You can raise the potential by spending platinum coins with trainers.

Spellcasting

• Spellcasting in Elona is like few other games; the general procedure is that you find a spellbook and read it. Each spellbook has a finite number of charges, and reading it (successful or not) consumes one charge. If you succeed at reading it, you gain 'stock' of that spell; each time you cast it, that stock will diminish, and when the stock is depleted you will need to read a spellbook once again. Leveling up your spells through use will allow you to use less stock for each cast, but you need stock to train the spell. Unleveled spells deplete their stocks swiftly. In practical terms, unless you are willing to expend a great deal of resources in acquiring every spellbook you see, you are well-advised to plan on using mostly the commonest types of support magic and little else.
• Reading a spellbook when you already have a stock of a spell will grant you more stock of that spell, but some diminishing returns apply -- the more you already have, the less you will get. However, in Elona and versions of Elona+ before 1.19, gaining any stock also raises the potential of the spell, making it easier to train.
• Failure at reading a spellbook still raises your Literacy skill; however, skill gains are based on the number of turns spent reading, and failing in the middle of reading is potentially hazardous and immediately halts the skill gain (wasting the book charge). You could intentionally read difficult spell books to raise literacy, but it may not be advisable if the spells within are valuable. Instead, focus on spellbooks that are tough but succeed reliably.
• If you fail to read a spellbook, one of five things will happen in addition to wasting the book charge:
  • Nothing.
  • You are confused. Can be prevented by the relevant equipment attribute.
  • You lose MP equal to your maximum MP. If you were not at full MP, this will cause damage as if you tried to cast a spell without sufficient MP; this can be deadly without the Magic Capacity skill.
  • You can be teleported to a random location on the current map, an effect similar to the Teleport spell. Preventable with any equipment that stops teleport, or by reading on a no-teleport map.
  • Monsters can be summoned. The level of the monsters appears to be somewhat random but based mainly on your character's level and the difficulty of reading the spellbook; books for powerful spells can summon up exceptionally deadly monsters.
• Avoid reading spellbooks in town or in your home until you're experienced. As indicated above, monsters may spawn from an unsuccessful reading. If you leave, they will remain, and you may not be able to re-enter the location until you're more powerful. More importantly, the monsters you summon may be able to breathe fire and cause your house and possessions to burn. Read spellbooks on the border of a wilderness map or on the up stairs of a dungeon, so you can make an easy getaway if monsters spawn. Completed arena matches or hunting quests are also safe, temporary maps that can be exited quickly. In later versions of Elona+, however, they will disappear after a few days.
  • Be sure to take appropriate precautions when reading any spellbook, regardless of how easy it is. It is extremely unlikely that a highly-literate spellcaster will botch reading a spellbook of magic arrow, but it will occasionally happen, and having it happen in the middle of a dungeon can be very dangerous!
• Exercise extreme caution when using spellbook malfunction to kill NPCs. Guards are not always successful in killing the monsters, and if aliens, summoners, or splitters are created, the town could be rendered unusable for a very long time (a few days, in later versions of Elona+).
• If you find yourself running out of spells, the Puppy Cave is a great place to find lots of low-level spellbooks. The levels regenerate each time you go up or down stairs in the Puppy Cave, so you can get a steady supply of spellbooks (and possibly other things) there.
• Wearing a shield reduces your chance to cast any spell successfully. Wearing medium or heavy armor has similar effects. Removing equipment (after teleporting away if necessary) and then trying to cast critical spells can be a useful tactic.

Items

• Safe places to store items:
  • Your home, storage houses, ranches, farms, and museums
  • Static dungeons such as the Ancient Castle, Pyramid, the Robber's Den in Vernis, the Cat House in Yowyn, the Basement in Vernis, and the Sewers in Lumiest can all be used as storehouses after the monsters are cleared out (assuming you can clear out the monsters, of course).
• Bad places to store items:
  • Normal, randomly-generated dungeons (King's Dungeon, Safe Dungeon, etc.). The items will be there when you return, but the entire dungeon occasionally disappears and it replaced with new ones. Unlucky adventurers may lose a stash if this happens while they're away.
  • Items in randomizing dungeons, most notably the Puppy Cave and The Void, will be lost forever when you leave the floor that you're on.
  • Items in towns will be cleaned up occasionally, so don't leave anything you want lying around.
  • Items you want to keep should also never be kept in your shop, as they will likely be sold. Cargo items, stolen items, and furniture may be safely stored in your shop, as they will never be sold.
  • Shelters, both portable and not, only save items while they're active, so items stored there will get destroyed either upon leaving (in the case of a town shelter), or upon picking the shelter up (in the case of a portable shelter). Each time you create a shelter, it increments the number of the shelter, so you can never create the same shelter map twice even if you use the same shelter item.
• Monsters that use fire- or ice-based attacks can destroy items in your inventory. Fireproof and coldproof blankets will absorb this, protecting the rest of your items, and are highly recommended.
  • Fireproof and coldproof blankets with zero charges will still protect your equipment from being destroyed, but the blankets themselves have a chance of being destroyed instead.
  • Fireproof/coldproof blankets can be recharged and have high maximum amount of charges, but can also explode when recharged, just like rods and books.
• Better tools give you better results for your skills. Better beds may give you more potential when sleeping in them. Blessing tools and beds is highly recommended.
• The eastern bed weighs less than a sleeping bag, but gives all the extra benefits of sleeping in a bed instead of a sleeping bag.
• Dipping your tools, beds, or other items in fireproof liquid protects them from being destroyed when you are hit with fire, even in the absence of a blanket.
• Having very high resistance to fire or ice seems to reduce the chance of items you're carrying being destroyed by these elements by a significant margin. With maximum resistance, you may not need to bother with blankets anymore.

Real Estate

• Once you hire a maid (you can probably afford one very quickly and should probably get one) always have at least four platinum coins on hand before you return home. Guild trainers may visit, and they will boost the potential of one of your attributes in exchange for them. The price is cut to three coins if you're a member of the guild, but the selection is narrower.
• Think twice about buying a shop for your first building. Its maintenance cost is 5,000 gold/month, and it has to rank up for months or years before you'll get a profit from the sales. You also need to leave one of your pets there to mind it, using up one of your party slots. Instead, start with a museum or a cozy house. Museums have a maintenance cost of 1,500 gold/month, and they start making a profit at rank 84 - which you can quickly reach just by saving the figures and cards monsters drop (though you could also murder named NPCs a lot if you don't care about karma). Cozy houses have a maintenance cost of 800 gold/month, but they start out at rank 84, so they already make an initial profit of 160 gold/month. All the furniture in your starting cave gets moved to it when you build it, so you can gain more ranks and more salary.
• Furniture will not improve your home's rank if it is stacked with other items. If you buy new property, remember to rearrange your furniture so each item is on its own tile. If you run a museum, figures and cards provide no value if stacked. In a shop, however, stacked items can be still be sold.
• Dumping raw ores in your home is a cheap way to make it climb ranks (netting you a better salary) when you're too poor to afford furniture.
• Scrolls of Inferior Material are invaluable for boosting home rank. They will give Furniture a material type, which always improves the value even if you roll rawwork. They can be produced by a level 1 Jeweler for even easier upgrading. It may even be worth using scrolls of Change Material on extremely high value furniture, like treasure machines or high quality beds, to jump dozens of ranks with one item. This can also be used to increase the value of stolen furniture before selling it.
• Your house board can be toted around with you and used to make changes in any building you own instead of using the register. If a monster is accidentally summoned in your building, it will be anchored to the tile it spawned on, and you can just wall that tile off with your house board until you can deal with it. If you lose your house board, you can buy a new one at the Embassy.

Other

• Pets do not seem to eat food off the ground if stacked with other items. Keep your non-rotting food stash safe by keeping more than one stack of items in your storage tile.
• Beware of giving your pets engagement jewelry, even if it has great bonuses. Your pet will get a relationship boost when you hand it to them, but will keep it forever -- if you try to take it back to wear it or give it to another pet, the pet will swallow it angrily, destroying the item and earning you an even larger penalty to your relationship.
  • On the other hand, if one of your pets is a permanent breeder at a ranch, giving them engagement jewelry until they want to marry you is an easy way to get good items as wedding gifts. Also, keep in mind that engagement items of the same material stack, so if you have Sense Quality, make sure the items are identified before giving them to your pet. Then, you can get rid of your new spouse (either at the Slave master, Womanizer, or by abandoning) and replace them with one of their children, starting the whole process over again.
  • If you want to farm the relationship boost of random engagement items, it's possible to hand them only flammable jewelry, then take away their other valuable gear and set their tile on fire, healing them until the jewelry is all burned up and they're empty-handed again. Be mindful that the fire doesn't spread and cause unintentional damage to you.
• The monsters summoned via spellbook malfunction can be much stronger than you; this also means they are capable of slaying NPCs you cannot. Grab those hard-to-read books and summon a few dragons near that guild watchman/fellow adventurer/special NPC, teleport away, and come back later once the guards are done to grab the poor fellow's equipment/figurine/card. The kill does not even count against you since it's just an accident... right?
• The game is saved before you walk through the moongate, so you can enter with a peace of mind; if you find yourself staring down a wave of monstrosity, just quit the game (you cannot save inside a player-created area) and restore.
• You earn regular pay based on your various titles and building ranks. You can collect it from the salary chest in your home.
  • You will also receive items, ranging from food to artifacts.
• Monthly taxes are paid at the tax box in the Embassy north of Palmia.
  • The tax box you get from trading medals at Miral and Garok's workshop also serves the same purpose as the one in the Embassy, and can be placed anywhere.
• Etherwind always arrives some time in the first 10 days of months 3, 6, 9, and 12 -- remember that! Once you become adept at avoiding it and slowing ether disease, surplus potions of cure corruption can be traded with fellow adventurers for good equipment.
• Fountains have long term benefits as well as disadvantages. While they can give negative as well as positive mutations and stat changes, they can also improve your character's potential for attributes. On rare occasions they grant wishes, which makes them extremely valuable. Pets (that have not been whipped, in Elona+) will also drink out of fountains and wells if they are hungry. If the pet manages to get a wish by drinking from a fountain/well, it will be considered yours. However, they have a chance to fall in and die unless they float.
• As of version 1.13, fame plays a huge part in the difficulty of jobs and random encounters. Ask the Informer in town for a list of adventurers. In the list you can see their level and fame compared to yours. If you have too much fame for your level, your life will be pretty hard. You can deliberately drop your fame by failing jobs like "Hunting", "The Harvest Time", "I Want It!", "Party Time!", and "Birthday". You won't get a karma penalty for these. Eventually you'll probably want to have at least 50000 fame so you can do certain quests, though.
  • An easy way to lose fame is to go to the pet arena and repeatedly quit battles there. Just press escape after the battle starts to be given the option to stop the battle. As pet battles aren't limited this is an easy method of removing your fame.
• Remember you can trade with adventurers, and with regular NPCs if they're the object of an "I Want It!" quest. It's a good way to obtain decent gear by exchanging scrolls of wonder or oracle, potions of cure corruption and other valuable items. It is recommended that you trade a light item so that you can steal it back afterward.
  • If you have good pickpocketing skill and the NPC is in an area all by himself, you can trade him expensive jewelry/equipment you wish to sell then steal it back easily, thus making the Thieves' Guild Quests even easier.
• A rod of alchemy is a very useful item. It can change an opened material box into a safe, a safe or chest into a material box, or a junk stone into ore. A rod with quite a few charges can be a good source of money, ore, materials and small medals. It can also be used to make the tutorial chest in your house into a lighter item in order to remove it. This does not work on opened wallets or suitcases, and in Elona+, these rods can no longer alter containers at all.
• Kill all beggars you see. They always drop any money they carry, and may rarely spawn with The Begger's Pendant, a useful necklace. If none of them drop the necklace, wait for them to respawn and try again, or look for more in Party Time! quests.
  • You can use a scroll of oracle (or just check the art.log file in your save folder) at the start of Part Time! quests missions to see if any artifact were created in that party room. There are at least 4 artifacts that can be created in those missions.
• Items with the 'protects you from thieves' attribute are worth having even if their bonuses are not the best, as they guard your gold from the Malicious Hand special action and from the random events that steal your gold.
• If you're having a hard time finding a good instrument, remember that instruments count as furniture and there are 2 furniture shops in the embassy. If you have or plan to get the Performer skill, investing in these shops might be a good idea.
  • After you obtain an instrument of high quality that you want to carry with you, consider using a scroll to change its material to net a lighter weight. For example, a platinumwork panflute weighs over 60s. Spirit cloth is a great material to aim for since it is high quality and very lightweight (a spirit cloth panflute weighs 12s). Note that this does not increase or decrease the quality of the rewards thrown at you -- only a higher skill and the Stradivarius have any effect on that.
• Flying scrolls can be used to lower the weight of objects, making it much easier to regularly carry things like happy beds.
• With a high enough evade chance, the sewer used for the Sewer Sweepage quest is a good place to train fighting skills against the bubbles. Just get rid of the pumpkin and green slimes that seem to spawn near the entrance and get a blue bubble to follow you.
• Cursed alcohol is capable of killing things by making them vomit too much. Just get a bunch of booze from an innkeeper and curse it with a scroll of curse after dropping all your other stuff. Every bottle that hits when thrown will cause your target to vomit. You can use this to slay high-level enemies. When your target gets anorexia is when they're close to being done in with another bottle or two. You can even kill things like Ebon and Utima with this trick if you can survive enough turns.
• When you have good shields and a lot of rods of healing and summon monsters, you can dedicate a storage house or a basement of your home to training, then use the rods to summon various levels of asura. They will be anchored to the spot they spawn and return there every time you return to the map, so you can build a wall around them with the house board. Once you have enough asura stored, equip the shields, pick up the rods, and use the house board to let them all out. As they beat on you, you will train both types of evasion and your shield skill, as well as the associated attributes. Heal when necessary, and teleport out or use the stairs when done. The asura will return to their tiles and can be walled away again until you need them.