Manual
For the instruction manual for Crawl itself, see this file.
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| Name | Manual of [Skill] |
| A valuable book which allows one to learn a certain skill faster. |
Manuals are rare books which boost a skill by providing a +4 bonus to its aptitude, effectively doubling your XP gain. You can study multiple manuals of different skills, but multiples of the same skill are used one at a time. Each manual generates with 2000-3000 skill points of XP; once consumed, the manual is destroyed.
Strategy
Manuals are essentially "free" bonus experience: as long as you train the skill with a manual, you get double XP. Unless you've hit the skill cap (level 27), you cannot waste them - you always get the full amount. Since manuals don't have a time limit, you can take as long as you want before actually training the skill.
Don't be compelled to train a skill just because you have the manual:
- Even if you have a manual, your character might not benefit from certain skills. A character committed to melee & heavy armour is unlikely to find a manual of Stealth useful, for instance.
- You don't have to train the manual right away - other skills may be more immediately important than the manual's skill. E.g. a caster may want to get their spells to a reasonable failure rate before training Dodging.
Still, manuals can be very nice to have. They can encourage you to train skills you otherwise wouldn't have trained, or boost the skills you were already training.
Settings
Users of manuals may want to add this to their Options file Init.txt (see options_guide.txt):
force_more_message = finished your manual
This will alert you when your manual's skill aptitude bonus has run out and allow you to readjust your training priorities should you desire.
History
- Prior to 0.27, manuals took up inventory slots.
- Prior to 0.13, you could only study one manual at a time, and you would activate or deactivate them by reading them.
- Prior to 0.9, manuals functioned very differently because the skill system was very different. They would allow you to assign stored up experience from your experience pool to a specific skill without actually using that skill, and would crumble to dust after sufficient uses.
