Command Descriptions¶

The following command descriptions are listed as the command name plus the default key to use it. For those who prefer the original “roguelike” keyset, the name and key of the roguelike command is also shown if it is different. Then comes a brief description of the command, including information about alternative methods of specifying the command in each keyset, when needed.

Some commands use the “repeat count” to automatically repeat the command several times, while others use the “repeat count” to specify a “quantity” for the command, and still others use it as an “argument” of some kind.

Most commands take no “energy” to perform, while other commands only take energy when they cause the world to change in some way. For example, attempting to read a scroll while blind does not use any energy.

The following command is very useful for beginners,

Command lists (‘Enter’): This brings up a little window in the middle of the screen, in which you can select what command you would like to use by browsing. If you wish to begin playing immediately, you can use this option to navigate the commands and refer to this guide when you need more details about specific commands.

Inventory Commands¶

Inventory list (i): Displays a list of objects being carried but not equipped. You can carry up to 23 different items, not counting those in your equipment. Often, many identical objects can be “stacked” into a “pile” which will count as a single item. Each object has a weight, and if you carry more objects than your strength permits, you will begin to slow down. The amount of weight you can still carry without being overencumbered, or the amount of extra weight you are currently carrying is displayed at the top of the screen.
Equipment list (e): Use this command to display a list of the objects currently being used by your character. The standard body (which all races currently have) has 12 slots for equipment. Every equipment slot corresponds to a different location on the body, and each of which may contain only one object at a time, and each of which may only contain objects of the proper “type”. For the standard body these are WEAPON (weapon), BOW (missile launcher), RING (ring) (two of these), AMULET (amulet), LIGHT (light source), BODY_ARMOR (armor), CLOAK (cloak), SHIELD (shield), HAT (helmet), GLOVES (gloves), BOOTS (boots). You must be wielding/wearing certain objects to take advantage of their special powers.
Quiver list (|): Missiles that you carry will automatically be put in your quiver. The quiver has 10 slots; it also takes up inventory space, so every 40 missiles will reduce your number of inventory slots by 1.
Drop an item (d): This drops an item from your inventory or equipment onto the dungeon floor. If the floor spot you are standing on already has an object in it, Angband will attempt to drop the item onto an adjacent space. Doors and traps are considered objects for the purpose of determining if the space is occupied. This command may take a quantity, and takes some energy.
Ignore an item (k) or Ignore an item (‘^d’): This ignores an item in your inventory or on the dungeon floor. If the selected pile contains multiple objects, you may specify a quantity. When ignored, the game will sometimes prompt you whether to ignore only this item or all others like it. If the second option is chosen, all similar items on the floor and in your inventory will be ignored. To view all items regardless of whether they are ignored, you can use K to toggle the ignore setting on and off.
Wear/Wield equipment (w): To wear or wield an object in your inventory, use this command. Since only one object can be in each slot at a time, if you wear or wield an item into a slot which is already occupied, the old item will be first be taken off, and may in fact be dropped if there is no room for it in your inventory. This command takes some energy.
Take off equipment (t) or Take off equipment (T): Use this command to take off a piece of equipment and return it to your inventory. Occasionally, you will run into a cursed item which cannot be removed. These items normally penalize you in some way and cannot be taken off until the curse is removed. If there is no room in your inventory for the item, your pack will overflow and you will drop the item after taking it off. You may also remove ammunition from your quiver with this command. This command takes some energy.

Movement Commands¶

Moving (arrow keys, number keys) or (arrow keys, number keys, ‘yuhjklbn’): This causes you to move one step in a given direction. If the square you wish to move into is occupied by a monster, you will attack it. If the square is occupied by a door or a trap you may attempt to open or disarm it if the appropriate option is set. Preceding this command with CTRL will cause you to attack in the appropriate direction, but will not move your character if no monster is there. These commands take some energy.
Walk (W): The walk command lets you willingly walk into a trap or a closed door, without trying to open or disarm it. This command may take a count, requires a direction, and takes some energy.
Run (.) or Run (,): This command will move in the given direction, following any bends in the corridor, until you either have to make a “choice” between two directions or you are disturbed. You can configure what will disturb you by setting the disturbance options. You may also use shift plus the “roguelike” direction keys (roguelike keyset), or shift plus the “original” direction keys on the keypad (both keysets, some machines) to run in a direction. This command may take an argument, requires a direction, and takes some energy.
Go up staircase (<): Climbs up an up staircase you are standing on. There is always at least one staircase going up on every level except for the town level (this doesn’t mean it’s easy to find). Going up a staircase will take you to a new dungeon level unless you are at 50 feet (dungeon level 1), in which case you will return to the town level. Note that whenever you leave a level (not the town), you will never find it again. This means that for all intents and purposes, any objects on that level are destroyed. This includes artifacts unless the “Lose artifacts when leaving level” option was turned off when your character was created, in which case the artifacts may show up again later. The option to lose artifacts is off in the default configuration. This command takes some energy.
Go down staircase (>): Descends a down staircase you are standing on. There are always at least one staircase going down on each level, except for the town which has only one, and “quest” levels, which have none until the quest monster is killed. Going down a staircase will take you to a new dungeon level. See “Go Up Staircase” for more info. This command takes some energy.

Resting Commands¶

Stay still (with pickup) (,) or Stay still (with pickup) (.): Stays in the same square for one move. If you normally pick up objects you encounter, you will pick up whatever you are standing on. You may also use the 5 key (both keysets). This command may take a count, and takes some energy.
Get objects (g): Pick up objects and gold on the floor beneath you. Picking up gold takes no time, and objects take 1/10th of a normal turn each (maximum time cost is a full turn). You may pick up objects until the floor is empty or your backpack is full.
Rest (R): Resting is better for you than repeatedly staying still, and can be told to automatically stop after a certain amount of time, or when various conditions are met. In any case, you always wake up when anything disturbing happens, or when you press any key. To rest, enter the Rest command, followed by the number of turns you want to rest, or * to rest until your hitpoints and mana are restored, or & to rest until you are fully “healed”. This command may take an argument (used for the number of turns to rest), and takes some energy.

Alter Commands¶

Tunnel (T) or Tunnel (‘^t’): Tunnelling or mining is a very useful art. There are many kinds of rock, with varying hardness, including permanent rock (permanent), granite (very hard), quartz veins (hard), magma veins (soft), and rubble (very soft). Quartz and Magma veins may be displayed in a special way, and may sometimes contain treasure, in which case they will be displayed in a different way. Rubble sometimes covers an object but is easy to tunnel through, even with your bare hands. Tunnelling ability increases with strength and weapon weight. If you have a digging tool in your pack, the game will automatically use this to dig. This command may take a count, requires a direction, and takes some energy.
Open a door or chest (o): To open an object such as a door or chest, you must use this command. If the object is locked, you will attempt to pick the lock based on your disarming ability. If you open a trapped chest without disarming the traps first, the trap will be set off. Opening will automatically attempt to pick any door locks. You may need several tries to open a door or chest. This command may take a count, requires a direction, and takes some energy.
Close a door (c): Non-intelligent and some other creatures cannot open doors, so shutting doors can be quite valuable. Furthermore, monsters cannot see you behind closed doors, so closing doors may allow you to buy some time without being attacked. Broken doors cannot be closed. This command may take a count, requires a direction, and takes some energy.
Disarm a trap or chest, or lock a door (D): You can attempt to disarm traps on the floor or on chests. If you fail, there is a chance that you will blunder and set it off. You can only disarm a trap after you have found it. The command can also be used to lock a closed door, which will create a hindrance for monsters. Even if many monsters will be able to pick the lock or bash the door down, it will often take them some time. This command may take a count, requires a direction, and takes some energy.
Alter (+): This special command allows the use of a single keypress to select any of the “obvious” commands above (attack, tunnel, bash, open, disarm), and, by using keymaps, to combine this keypress with directions. In general, this allows the use of the “control” key plus the appropriate “direction” key (including the roguelike direction keys in roguelike mode) as a kind of generic “alter the terrain feature of an adjacent grid” command. This command may take a count, requires a direction, and takes some energy.
Steal (s): This command is only available to rogues, and allows them to try and steal from a monster. Stealing works better when the player is stealthy and faster than the target monster, and best of all when the victim is asleep. A failed theft will wake the monster; if you really bungle the attempt, the monster may shout out in anger. This command requires a direction and takes some energy.

Spell Commands¶

Browse a book (b) or Peruse a book (P): Each class has books it can read and books it cannot; except for warriors, who cannot read any books. When this command is used, all of the spells contained in the selected book are displayed, along with information such as their level, the amount of mana required to cast them, and whether or not you know the spell.
Gain new spells (G): Use this command to actually learn new spells. When you are able to learn new spells, the word “Study” will appear on the status line at the bottom of the screen. If you have a book in your possession, containing spells which you may learn, then you may choose to study that book. Most classes may actually choose which spell to study, but if you are a priest or paladin, your gods will choose a prayer for you. There are five books of each realm, but hybrid classes - paladins, rogues, rangers and blackguards - can only cast from two or three of these. Higher level books are normally found only in the dungeon. This command takes some energy.
Cast a spell (m in both keysets): To cast a spell, you must have previously learned the spell and must have in your inventory a book from which the spell can be read. Each spell has a chance of failure which starts out fairly large but decreases as you gain levels. If you don’t have enough mana to cast a spell, you will be prompted for confirmation. If you decide to go ahead, the chance of failure is greatly increased, and you may wind up paralyzed for several turns. Since you must read the spell from a book, you cannot be blind or confused while casting, and there must be some light present. This command takes some energy: the higher your level, the less it takes, but the higher the spell level, the more it takes.

Object Manipulation Commands¶

Eat some food (E)

You must eat regularly to prevent starvation. There is a hunger meter at the bottom of the screen, which says “Fed” and gives a percentage in most circumstances. If you go hungry long enough, you will become weak, then start fainting, and eventually, you may well die of starvation (accompanied by increasingly alarming messages on your hunger meter). It is also possible to be “Full”, which will make you move slowly; more slowly the fuller you get. You may use this command to eat food in your inventory. Note that you can sometimes find food in the dungeon, but it is not always wise to eat strange food. This command takes some energy.

Fuel your lantern/torch (F)

If you are using a lantern and have flasks of oil in your pack, then you can “refuel” them with this command. Torches and Lanterns are limited in their maximal fuel. In general, two flasks will fully fuel a lantern. This command takes some energy.

Quaff a potion (q)

Use this command to drink a potion. Potions affect the player in various ways, but the effects are not always immediately obvious. This command takes some energy.

Read a scroll (r)

Use this command to read a scroll. Scroll spells usually have an area effect, except for a few cases where they act on other objects. Reading a scroll causes the parchment to disintegrate as the scroll takes effect. Most scrolls which prompt for more information can be aborted (by pressing escape), which will stop reading the scroll before it disintegrates. This command takes some energy.

Inscribe an object ({)

This command inscribes a string on an object. The inscription is displayed inside curly braces after the object description. The inscription is limited to the particular object (or pile) and is not automatically transferred to all similar objects. Under certain circumstances, Angband will display “fake” inscriptions on certain objects (‘tried’, ‘empty’) when appropriate. These “fake” inscriptions remain all the time, even if the player chooses to add a “real” inscription on top of it later.

In addition, Angband will place the inscription ‘??’ on an object for you if the object has a property (or “rune”) that you have not learned yet. This inscription will remain until you know all the runes on the object.

An item labeled as ‘{empty}’ was found to be out of charges, and an item labeled as ‘{tried}’ is a “flavored” item which the character has used, but whose effects are unknown. Certain inscriptions have a meaning to the game, see ‘@#’, ‘@x#’, ‘!*’, and ‘!x’, in the section on inventory object selection.

Uninscribe an object (})

This command removes the inscription on an object. This command will have no effect on “fake” inscriptions added by the game itself.

Toggle ignore (K) or Toggle ignore (O)

This command will toggle ignore settings. If on, all ignored items will be hidden from view. If off, all items will be shown regardless of their ignore setting. See the customize section for more info.

Magical Object Commands¶

Activate an object (A): You have heard rumors of special weapons and armor deep in the Pits, items that can let you breathe fire like a dragon or light rooms with just a thought. Should you ever be lucky enough to find such an item, this command will let you activate its special ability. Special abilities can only be used if you are wearing or wielding the item. This command takes some energy.
Aim a wand (a) or Zap a wand (z): Wands must be aimed in a direction to be used. Wands are magical devices, and therefore there is a chance you will not be able to figure out how to use them if you aren’t good with magical devices. They will fire a shot that affects the first object or creature encountered or fire a beam that affects anything in a given direction, depending on the wand. An obstruction such as a door or wall will generally stop the effects from traveling any farther. This command requires a direction and can use a target. This command takes some energy.
Use a staff (u) or Zap a staff (Z): This command will use a staff. A staff is normally very similar to a scroll, in that they normally either have an area effect or affect a specific object. Staves are magical devices, and there is a chance you will not be able to figure out how to use them. This command takes some energy.
Zap a rod (z) or Activate a rod (a): Rods are extremely powerful magical items, which cannot be burnt or shattered, and which can have either staff-like or wand-like effects, but unlike staves and wands, they don’t have charges. Instead, they draw on the ambient magical energy to recharge themselves, and therefore can only be activated once every few turns. The recharging time varies depending on the type of rod. This command may require a direction (depending on the type of rod, and whether you are aware of its type) and can use a target. This command takes some energy.

Throwing and Missile Weapons¶

Fire an item (f) or Fire an item (t): This command will allow you to fire a missile from either your quiver or your inventory provided it is the appropriate ammunition for the current missile weapon you have equipped. You may not fire an item without a missile weapon equipped. Fired ammunition has a chance of breaking. This command takes some energy.
Fire default ammo at nearest (h) or (‘TAB’): If you have a missile weapon equipped and the appropriate ammunition in your quiver, you can use this command to fire at the nearest visible enemy. This command will cancel itself if you lack a launcher, ammunition or a visible target that is in range. The first ammunition of the correct type found in the quiver is used. This command takes some energy.
Throw an item (v): You may throw any object carried by your character. Depending on the weight, it may travel across the room or drop down beside you. Only one object from a pile will be thrown at a time. Note that throwing an object will often cause it to break, so be careful! If you throw something at a creature, your chances of hitting it are determined by your plusses to hit, your ability at throwing, and the object’s plusses to hit. Some weapons are especially designed for throwing. Once the creature is hit, the object may or may not do any damage to it. Note that flasks of oil will do some fire damage to a monster on impact. If you are wielding a missile launcher compatible with the object you are throwing, then you automatically use the launcher to fire the missile with much higher range, accuracy, and damage, than you would get by just throwing the missile. Throw, like fire, requires a direction. Targeting mode (see the next command) can be invoked with * at the ‘Direction?’ prompt. This command takes some energy.
Targeting Mode (*): This will allow you to aim your ranged attacks at a specific monster or grid, so that you can point directly towards that monster or grid (even if this is not a “compass” direction) when you are asked for a direction. You can set a target using this command, or you can set a new target at the “Direction?” prompt when appropriate. At the targeting prompt, you have many options. First of all, targeting mode starts targeting nearby monsters which can be reached by “projectable” spells and thrown objects. In this mode, you can press t (or 5 or .) to select the current monster, space to advance to the next monster, - to back up to the previous monster, direction keys to advance to a monster more or less in that direction, r to “recall” the current monster, q to exit targeting mode, and p (or o) to stop targeting monsters and enter the mode for targeting a location on the floor or in a wall. Note that if there are no nearby monsters, you will automatically enter this mode. Note that hitting o is just like p, except that the location cursor starts on the last examined monster instead of on the player. In this mode, you use the “direction” keys to move around, and the q key to quit, and the t (or 5 or .) key to target the cursor location. Note that targeting a location is slightly “dangerous”, as the target is maintained even if you are far away. To cancel an old target, simply hit * and then ‘ESCAPE’ (or q). Note that when you cast a spell or throw an object at the target location, the path chosen is the “optimal” path towards that location, which may or may not be the path you want. Sometimes, by clever choice of a location on the floor for your target, you may be able to convince a thrown object or cast spell to squeeze through a hole or corridor that is blocking direct access to a different grid. Launching a ball spell or breath weapon at a location in the middle of a group of monsters can often improve the effects of that attack, since ball attacks are not stopped by interposed monsters if the ball is launched at a target.

Looking Commands¶

Full screen map (M): This command will show a map of the entire dungeon, reduced by a factor of nine, on the screen. Only the major dungeon features will be visible because of the scale, so even some important objects may not show up on the map. This is particularly useful in locating where the stairs are relative to your current position, or for identifying unexplored areas of the dungeon.
Locate player on map (L) or Where is the player (W): This command lets you scroll your map around, looking at all sectors of the current dungeon level, until you press escape, at which point the map will be re-centered on the player if necessary. To scroll the map around, simply press any of the “direction” keys. The top line will display the sector location, and the offset from your current sector.
Look around (l) or Examine things (x): This command is used to look around at nearby monsters (to determine their type and health) and objects (to determine their type). It is also used to find out if a monster is currently inside a wall, and what is under the player. When you are looking at something, you may hit space for more details, or to advance to the next interesting monster or object, or minus (-) to go back to the previous monster or object, or a direction key to advance to the nearest interesting monster or object (if any) in that general direction, or r to recall information about the current monster race, or q or escape to stop looking around. You always start out looking at “yourself”.
Inspect an item (I): This command lets you inspect an item. This will tell you things about the special powers of the object, as well as attack information for weapons. It will also tell you what resistances or abilities you have noticed for the item and if you have not yet completely identified all properties.
List visible monsters ([): This command lists all monsters that are visible to you, telling you how many there are of each kind. It also tells you whether they are asleep, and where they are (relative to you).
List visible items (]): This command lists all items that are visible to you, telling you how of each there are and where they are on the level relative to your current location.

Message Commands¶

Repeat level feeling (‘^f’): Repeats the feeling about the monsters in the dungeon level that you got when you first entered the level. If you have explored enough of the level, you will also get a feeling about how good the treasures are.
View previous messages (‘^p’): This command shows you all the recent messages. You can scroll through them, or exit with ESCAPE.
Take notes (:): This command allows you to take notes, which will then appear in your message list and your character history (prefixed with “Note:”).

Game Status Commands¶

Character Description (C)

Brings up a full description of your character, including your skill levels, your current and potential stats, and various other information. From this screen, you can change your name or use the file character description command to save your character status to a file. That command saves additional information, including your background, your inventory, and the contents of your house. The command to change the mode switches what’s displayed back and forth from the original view to one that shows how your current equipment and the player’s innate characteristics affect certain attributes. The default symbols used within that view are ‘.’ for nothing equipped or no known effect on the attribute, ‘?’ if your character does not know if there’s an effect on the attribute, ‘+’ if your character knows that there is a positive effect on the attribute, ‘-’ if your character knows that there is a negative effect on the attribute, ‘!’ if a timed effect positively affects the attribute, or ‘=’ if a timed effect negatively affects the attribute. For elemental resistances (the block of attributes on the far left), ‘*’, to indicate an immunity, and ‘~’ to indicate that something provides both a ‘+’ and ‘-’, are also possible. The color of the label for the attribute will indicate the sum of the different sources for your character. Those colors default to be: slate for when your character does not know the rune associated with that attribute, white if there is no combined effect (excluding timed effects) known to the character, light blue if the known combined effect (excluding timed effects) is positive, red if the known combined effect (excluding timed effects) is negative, and green if the known combined effect is an elemental immunity.

Check knowledge (~)

This command allows you to ask about the knowledge possessed by your character. Information that you can look up is:

objects: Will display which objects your character is familiar with. For each type of object, allows you to change whether or not it is ignored, the representation of that type on the screen, or the inscription automatically applied to all objects of that type. Some types of objects your character will be familiar with from the start of the game. Others come in “flavors”, and your character must determine the effect of each “flavor” once for each such type of object. For a type of object with a known “flavor”, you be also be able to display a summary of what the object can do.
runes: Will display the “runes”, properties of enchanted objects, your character is familiar with. Allows you to change the inscription that is automatically appended to an object that has the rune. Once your character identifies a “rune” on one object, he or she will recognize that property on other objects.
artifacts: Will display all artifacts that your character has encountered. Normally, once an artifact is “generated” and “lost”, it can never again be found, and will become “known” to the player. With the “Lose artifacts when leaving level” option turned off, an artifact can never be “lost” until it is “known” to the player. In either case, any “known” artifacts not in the possession of the player will never again be “generated”.
ego items: Will display the “egos” your character has encountered. Each “ego” is a collection of enchantments that can appear on an object. “Egos” are often restricted to only a few specific types of objects.
monsters: Displays the kinds of monsters your current or previous characters have encountered. For each kind of monster, allows you to change its representation on the screen. Some monsters are “uniques” which can be only be killed once per game. For a “unique” that your current or previous characters have encountered, this will display whether that “unique” is still alive in this game.
features: Displays the types of map grids that can appear in the game. For each type, allows you to change its representation on the screen and how that representation changes depending on the amount of light present.
traps: Displays the types of traps that can appear in the game. For each type, allows you to change its representation on the screen and how that representation changes depending on the amount of light present.
shapechange effects: Provides a more detailed description of the “shapes”, magical effects from some spells and a few items which change the shape of your character’s body.
stores and home: Each of these will display the contents of the corresponding store or your player’s home at the time your character last visited the town. If your character is currently in town, what is displayed here will be the current contents.
hall of fame: Displays a list of current and past characters, sorted by how far they progressed.
character history: Displays a summary of what your current character has done.
equippable comparison: This displays a summary of the known properties of the equippable items your character has access to, whether they are currently equipped, in your character’s pack, on the floor at your character’s current location, or in a store. Near the top of the display is a line, beginning with “@”, which summarizes the state of your character given his or her current equipment. Every line after that corresponds to an item, sorted by which equipment slot it can fill. The first character on each of those lines is the representation of that item as it would appear in the map if it was on the floor. After that is single character, “e” for equipped, “p” for pack, “f” for floor, “h” for home, and “s” for store, which indicates where the item is. The remainder of the line summarizes the properties of the object, with one property per column. In the default view, those properties are the resistances, flags, and modifiers present on the item; they appear in the same order (left to right) as they appear (top to bottom and then left to right) in the second part of the character description. You can toggle back and forth between that view and one that displays the effect of each item on your character’s key statistics by pressing ‘v’. You can use ‘c’ to cycle through which items, based on their location, are included in the display. The default is to show only the items that are equipped, in the pack, on the floor at your character’s current location, and in the home. The other options are: show only the items in stores other than the home, show all items, or show only those that equipped or in the pack. There are some additional commands, notably for filtering which items are displayed based on a particular property and for displaying the details about one or two items. To see what those additional commands are, use the ‘?’ key to bring up the in-game help for the equippable comparison.

Saving and Exiting Commands¶

Save and Quit (‘Ctrl-x’): To save your game so that you can return to it later, use this command. Save files will also be generated (hopefully) if the game crashes due to a system error. After you die, you can use your savefile to play again with the same options and such.
Save (‘Ctrl-s’): This command saves the game but doesn’t exit Angband. Use this frequently if you are paranoid about having your computer crash (or your power go out) while you are playing.
Quit (Q): Kills your character and exits Angband. You will be prompted to make sure you really want to do this, and then asked to verify that choice. Note that dead characters are dead forever.

User Pref File Commands¶

Interact with options (=): Allow you to interact with options. Note that using the “cheat” options may mark your savefile as unsuitable for the high score list. The “window” options allow you to specify what should be drawn in any of the special sub-windows (not available on all platforms). See the help files ‘customize.txt’ and ‘options.txt’ for more info. You can also interact with keymaps under this menu.
Interact with keymaps - option submenu: Allow you to interact with keymaps. You may load or save keymaps from user pref files, or define keymaps. You must define a “current action”, shown at the bottom of the screen, before you attempt to use any of the “create macro” commands, which use that “current action” as their action.
Interact with visuals - option submenu: Allow you to interact with visuals. You may load or save visuals from user pref files, or modify the attr/char mappings for the monsters, objects, and terrain features. You must use the “redraw” command (‘^r’) to redraw the map after changing attr/char mappings. NOTE: It is generally easier to modify visuals via the “knowledge” menus.
Interact with colors - option submenu: Allow the user to interact with colors. This command only works on some systems. NOTE: It is commonly used to brighten the ‘Light Dark’ color (eg. Cave Spiders) on displays with bad alpha settings.

Help Commands¶

Help (?)

Brings up the Angband on-line help system. Note that the help files are just text files in a particular format, and that other help files may be available on the Net. In particular, there are a variety of spoiler files which do not come with the standard distribution. Check the place you got Angband from or ask on the Angband forums, angband.oook.cz , about them.

Identify Symbol (/)

Use this command to find out what a character stands for. For instance, by pressing ‘/.’, you can find out that the . symbol stands for a floor spot. When used with a symbol that represents creatures, the this command will tell you only what class of creature the symbol stands for, not give you specific information about a creature you can see. To get that, use the Look command.

There are three special symbols you can use with the Identify Symbol command to access specific parts of your monster memory. Typing ‘Ctrl-a’ when asked for a symbol will recall details about all monsters, typing ‘Ctrl-u’ will recall details about all unique monsters, and typing ‘Ctrl-n’ will recall details about all non-unique monsters.

If the character stands for a creature, you are asked if you want to recall details. If you answer yes, information about the creatures you have encountered with that symbol is shown in the Recall window if available, or on the screen if not. You can also answer k to see the list sorted by number of kills, or p to see the list sorted by dungeon level the monster is normally found on. Pressing ‘ESCAPE’ at any point will exit this command.

Game Version (V)

This command will tell you what version of Angband you are using. For more information, see the ‘version.txt’ help file.

Extra Commands¶

Toggle Choice Window (‘^e’)

Toggles the display in any sub-windows (if available) which are displaying your inventory or equipment.

Redraw Screen (‘^r’)

This command adapts to various changes in global options, and redraws all of the windows. It is normally only necessary in abnormal situations, such as after changing the visual attr/char mappings, or enabling “graphics” mode.

Save screen dump ())

This command dumps a “snap-shot” of the current screen to a file, including encoded color information. The command has two variants:

html, suitable for viewing in a web browser.
forum embedded html for vBulletin, suitable for pasting in web forums like http://angband.oook.cz/forums.

Special Keys¶

Certain special keys may be intercepted by the operating system or the host machine, causing unexpected results. In general, these special keys are control keys, and often, you can disable their special effects.

If you are playing on a UNIX or similar system, then Ctrl-c will interrupt Angband. The second and third interrupt will induce a warning bell, and the fourth will induce both a warning bell and a special message, since the fifth will either quit without saving (if Angband was compiled without the SETGID option which puts the save files in a shared location for all users) or kill your character (if Angband was compiled with the SETGID option). Also, ‘Ctrl-z’ will suspend the game, and return you to the original command shell, until you resume the game with the ‘fg’ command. The ‘Ctrl-\’ and ‘Ctrl-d’ and ‘Ctrl-s’ keys should not be intercepted.

It is often possible to specify “control-keys” without actually pressing the control key, by typing a caret (^) followed by the key. This is useful for specifying control-key commands which might be caught by the operating system as explained above.

Pressing backslash (\) before a command will bypass all keymaps, and the next keypress will be interpreted as an “underlying command” key, unless it is a caret (^), in which case the keypress after that will be turned into a control-key and interpreted as a command in the underlying angband keyset. For example, the sequence \ + . + 6 will always mean “run east”, even if the . key has been mapped to a different underlying command.

The 0 and ^ and \ keys all have special meaning when entered at the command prompt, and there is no “useful” way to specify any of them as an “underlying command”, which is okay, since they would have no effect.

For many input requests or queries, the special character ESCAPE will abort the command. The ‘[y/n]’ prompts may be answered with y or n, or ‘ESCAPE’. The ‘-more-’ message prompts may be cleared (after reading the displayed message) by pressing ‘ESCAPE’, ‘SPACE’, ‘RETURN’, ‘LINEFEED’, or by any keypress, if the “quick_messages” option is turned on.

Command Counts¶

Some commands can be executed a fixed number of times by preceding them with a count. Counted commands will execute until the count expires, until you type any character, or until something significant happens, such as being attacked. Thus, a counted command doesn’t work to attack another creature. While the command is being repeated, the number of times left to be repeated will flash by on the line at the bottom of the screen.

To give a count to a command, type 0, the repeat count, and then the command. If you want to give a movement command and you are using the original command set (where the movement commands are digits), press space after the count and you will be prompted for the command.

Counted commands are very useful for time consuming commands, as they automatically terminate on success, or if you are attacked. You may also terminate any counted command (or resting or running), by typing any character. This character is ignored, but it is safest to use a ‘SPACE’ or ‘ESCAPE’ which are always ignored as commands in case you type the command just after the count expires.

The Angband Manual