Exploring wilderness and dungeons

Once you venture out of your home town, you will find yourself in wilderness (unless you are playing in dungeon only mode). The region of Middle Earth you are in and the danger level (1 is the lowest outside towns) will be shown at the bottom of the screen. Take careful note of the danger level outside your town - some regions are very deadly. As a general rule, the closer to Morgoth's fortress of Angband you get, the more dangerous it is.
Look at the file "memap.txt" to get some idea of the layout of Middle Earth.

Each region will appear as a large rectangle with paths off some sides leading to other regions, and sometimes with stairs leading down into a dungeon. Each time you visit a region it will appear different, as there is a wide variety of paths through the wilderness. There are also different types of wilderness - plains which are mainly grass with sometimes a river running through, forests which are mainly trees, mountains with a maze of rocky paths, deserts full of rock and rubble, and pathless swamps of grass and water.

There are five dungeons (well, almost) to be explored, each of which has a guardian on its deepest level (well, actually there are deeper levels of Angband, but let's not be too ambitious yet). New specialist abilities become available after defeating your first and second dungeon guardians. The shallowest levels of the dungeons are 16 (for Amon Rudh), 30 (for Nargothrond and Tol-In-Gaurhoth) and 40 (for Angband). Nan Dungortheb is not a dungeon, but a spider-ridden valley which can only be descended and not ascended; it also has a guardian.

Dungeon Features, Light, Level Feelings, and Mining

Terrain: In FAangband, the following terrain types affect movement, combat, or both. Because they less frequently take advantage of terrain, monsters benefit more from favorable and suffer less from unfavorable terrain than the player does.

Rubble: Slows down the player (apart from all types of dwarves) and all monsters that cannot bore or pass through rock. Ends LOS, stops missiles, bolts, and beams, and reduces the radius of ball spells. Grants the player and monsters within it some protection from melee, ranged, or magical attacks. Rubble may dissolve to normal floor.

Water: Greatly slows players (apart from Maiar) with heavy burdens, and humanoid monstersor fiery, and is impassable to earthbound monsters. All melee or ranged attacks and most spells benefit when the target is in water, especially water-based spells. Fire-based spells become much less powerful, so find a lake if you battle Smaug. Water may evaporate.

Lava: Can be passed by any character, but inflicts substantial fire damage (less for players with feather fall - they're light on their feet). All monsters other than fiery or strong flying creatures will not cross.
Water and cold-based spells suffer and fire-based spells become more powerful against a target in lava. Lava may freeze to rubble or normal floor.

Trees: Slows down players not familiar with druidic techniques or elven, and all non-natural monsters that neither fly nor pass through rock.
Ends LOS, stops missiles, bolts, and beams, and reduces the radius of ball spells. Grants the player and monsters within it some protection from melee, ranged, or magical attacks. Trees can burn.

Grass: Just like open floors, but green.

Web: Woven by spiders. Does not block line of sight or the passage of missiles, but players and monsters other than spiders will need to take a turn to clear the web before they can move on (players using the 'T' command).

Abyss: Inhabitable only by flying monsters or players. Others venturing (or forced) into it will fall into the darkness.

Staircases, Secret Doors, and Traps: Paths lead from one region to another in wilderness. Staircases allow your character to ascend or descend from one dungeon level to another. Both are represented by "<" (up) and ">" (down), with paths being colour-coded and staircases white. Each wilderness area has at least two paths to any adjoining area, and each dungeon level has at least one up staircase, and two down staircases, unless it is the home of one of the dungeon guardians. In the four lesser dungeons the guardians appear on the lowest possible level; in Angband, Morgoth appears on level 100, and you must kill him before staircases will appear. Otherwise, the staircases are guaranteed, but they may be difficult to find. Staircases may sometimes allow you to ascend or descend more than one level at a time. Once you leave a level or wilderness area you can never return to it. Artifacts will be lost, even unidentified ones if you are not using the "preserve" startup option.

 Many secret doors exist in the dungeon, and may lead to anything 
 from a new section of the dungeon level to an empty closet.  As your 
 familiarity with the dungeon grows, you will know where many secret doors 
 are likely to be.  Secret doors always look like granite until found and, 
 for historical reasons, are never locked.  

 Traps also await you in the dungeon and wilderness.  They look like 
 normal floor or grass squares until found, too often by your getting 
 caught by one.  Both secret doors and traps may be found using the 
 's'earch once command, or by going into 'S'earching mode ('#', using the 
 roguelike keyset).  Many classes can also use magic, and everyone can use 
 the appropriate rod or staff.  Be warned: although magical disarming is 
 convenient, it is never a sure thing.

Light: Your character must have some source of light in order to see, unless the area around him is lit by sun or magic. In the wilderness, a light source is not needed during the day; if the sun sets, however, you will find yourself not only in need of illumination, but assailed by monsters that do not dare brave the sunlight. Depending on the items he has equipped, he may have a light radius of one (torches), two (a lantern), or more, up to a rarely-attained maximum of five.

 A torch or lantern burns fuel, and may be refilled (use the 'F'uel 
 command) with other torches or flasks of oil respectively.  It is 
 rumoured that other light sources exist which never need replenishing.

Level Feelings: After being on a level for a short while, you will get a message describing it. The more interesting the choice of adjectives, the more dangerous and lucrative the level is likely to be. If you have chosen Preserve mode when creating your character, you will occasionally get the message "you have a special feeling about this level", indicating the presence of a monster pit or nest (sometimes, only at shallow dungeon depths), a vault (more often in the dungeon), a player ghost, or an artifact.

Themed Levels: If you are in a dangerous enough area, and have spent a bit of time on the previous level, you may very rarely find a themed level, filled with monsters of a given type. Such levels only appear once in a lifetime, so don't leave them unless you really want to. Vision range is reduced on themed levels.

Mining: There is much treasure in the walls of the dungeon, mountains, and sometimes other places, just waiting for an industrious adventurer to come and dig it out. Once you can afford it, and if you can handle the weight, bring a shovel or pick along.

 As you get richer, the treasures in the wall won't seem so appealing 
 anymore, but keep an item or spell of tunnelling handy.  Not only do all 
 sorts of special vaults lie deep below the surface, some completely en-
 closed by solid rock, but smart adventurers deliberately alter the 
 dungeon to make the most dangerous breathers and summoners manageable.

 Dwarves are exceptionally good miners.