Wyvern Handheld Client — Manual

Welcome to the Wyvern Handheld Client instruction manual.

We assume you've already figured out how to connect to the game and start moving around. If not, the Getting Started Manual will show you how to create your character and log in.

Contents

The Main Screen and Controls

Here's a diagram of the game window and controls:

Navigation Buttons

The buttons on the left are called Nav Buttons. The buttons, listed from top to bottom, are:

We'll talk more about each of these buttons later in the manual.

Although it's not a button, the red and blue box in the top-left corner shows your current Health and Mana. Your health is how much damage you've taken - as the red bar gets lower, your health is going down. Your mana is how many spell points you have available for casting spells. If you ever become poisoned, your health bar turns green until you're cured.

You can click on the health box to print your current stats to the Text View.

Views

The game provides several different views of your character. All of them appear in the main game window. If you accidentally move your game window so that it's partially offscreen, you can select Recenter Screen from the Game Menu to move it back onscreen.

The Map View

When you start, you see the Map View. It shows the game map, with your character always in the middle, and the text-output screen. The Map View looks like this:

The Text-Only View

The text screen shows messages from the server, including:

The text screen is really important, so there's a Text Only Nav Button (the bottom one) that lets you hide the map so you can read more text. When the text screen is expanded, it looks like this:

Notice that the Text-Only Nav Button (the bottom one) has changed to point down, meaning if you press it, it'll shrink the text view back to normal.

In the screenshot above, we're looking at the instructions for the Sokoban Quest in the city of Alaria. The text for signs shows up in green. Here are the meanings of the colors in the Text View:

Whenever new text appears on your screen, the Text View scrolls to the bottom so you can see it. If you're trying to read back through your messages, you can turn off the "Auto-Scroll Text" option in the Game Menu so you don't get interrupted.

The Inventory View

The next most important screen is the Inventory Screen. To open it, click on the Inventory Nav Button (second from the bottom). The Inventory Screen looks like this:

The screen starts out split in half, with your inventory on the right side, and what's on the ground on the left side. Each side has a button at the top, labeled "<>", that lets you expand that side to fill the whole screen. When expanded, it looks like this:

Each item has a little picture and a caption. You can tap on any item to get a menu of actions for that item, like this:

The action menu has most of the important actions you can do to an item. Here's a quickie tutorial:

Note that "buy", "sell" and "value" are only available in shops. You may see other commands appear in the menu, when appropriate, such as "read", "eat", "drink", "appraise", "light", "extinguish", and others as well.

Notice that the Inventory Nav Button (second from the bottom) has changed its picture, since tapping on the button will now bring the map view back.

Also notice that there's always a little bit of the Text View showing, so you can see if you're getting attacked, or if someone is talking to you.

The Map and Ground View

Sometimes you need to see the map view and the ground view at the same time. There's a special screen for this:

The left half shows a very narrow view of the map, and the right half shows what's on the ground where you're standing. This is particularly useful when you're shopping.

To get to the split map/ground view:

The Stat Screen

You can get a special display of some of your stats in the Stat View, which looks like this:

You also bring up this screen using the Change View dialog from the Game Menu.

You can also see your stats by sending the command score, which is available in the Built-In Commands Dialog.

You can see a very short (2-line) version of the Stat View by clicking on the red and blue Health Monitor in the upper-left corner of your screen. It'll print your status in short form to the Text View.

The Large Map View

There are actually two versions of the Map View: small and large. When you start the game, it shows the small view, which means you can see more text. However, if you need to get an expanded view, you can select it by doing this:

The Large Map looks like this:

Notice that you can only read a few lines of text in this view, instead of the usual number. (The actual numbers depend on the platform and font you're using). It's also slightly slower, since it takes more bandwidth, but you probably won't notice unless you're using a wireless modem.

Sending Commands

Many things you'll want to do require you to enter text commands. Here are some examples:

Wyvern has well over 100 commands. You can see them all in the Wyvern Command Reference. You don't have to learn them all right away - we'll teach you the most important ones later in this manual. If you want to become a great player and get on the Wyvern High Score List, you'll need to learn most of them. All in good time.

You have two options for sending commands to the server:

  1. You can type in the command yourself and send it. Tap on the Text View to bring up the "Enter a Command" dialog. It's the picture below, on the left.

  2. You can choose from a list of built-in commands. It's the picture below, on the right. Only some of the commands are available in this list - in particular, commands that don't require any other information. It also has a few very common extras, like tell fred hey - meet me in Minath Elion.

The Enter a Command dialog gives you three options:

We've tried to design the client so that you can do most things without having to enter text commands, but you still have to do it once in a while - the most common case being when you have to say/shout something, or tell someone something directly.

Learning to Play

OK, you've now familiarized yourself with the basic views and game controls. The next section of the manual covers basic gameplay.

Go to Gameplay Manual
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