Welcome to Underspire! This is meant to be a guide to help you get started with playing your character. As the game is in an alpha state, gameplay is frequently and rapidly evolving, so expect the info on this page to change as well.
Syntax Notes
Many commands in Underspire begin with the @ symbol (for example, @xp) while others don’t (for example, use handset). Commands that begin with a @ are OOC commands - i.e., they’re something the PLAYER is doing. Commands without a @ are IC - something your character is doing.
Basic Useful Commands
Help [topic]: Read the in-game helpfiles on a topic. Not every command or topic has a helpfile, so be sure to check out the wiki/forums too if you don’t find info on what you need.
@bug: This is how you report any bugs you encounter along the way. The alpha experience!
xgame: This is the game-wide OOC help channel. If you don’t see it in your Channels pane by default (on the webclient), type @channelsub xgame to get it added. Note questions you ask in xgame get crossposted to the discord in the game-help channel so even people who aren’t online right now can help answer!
who/@who: How you see who’s connected to the game right now. Who is the IC version (showing IC aliases of people online right now + some VNPC handles) and @who the OOC version (showing player accounts currently connected).
Setting Up Your Character
Check out the guide on Making a Character for info on important tasks like designing your starter eq, writing your descriptions, etc.
Navigating the World
Currently, floors 1-18 are accessible in the city of Deshret. Most floors are built around a general 5x5 square pattern, with businesses and interesting areas accessible off to the sides. You’ll start on Floor 7. Check Floor Directory for an up-to-date guide of where to find most things.
Note: The surface is accessible from Floor 1, but be very careful! It is highly dangerous to explore alone.
To traverse between Floors 9-10, characters must ride the Panopticon, the elevator that cuts through Deshret. Current Panopticon stops include floors 2, 9, 10, and 18.
Roleplaying
Recognizing Others
By default, other characters will appear to you by their short description, which is automatically generated from their height, weight, gender (though this is changeable by player choice), and effective Presence.
You can assign a name to a person by typing recognize [keyword] as [name]. This name can be anything you like - it doesn’t have to be correct! If you need to remove a recog, you can use forget .
Emoting/Posing
Underspire supports two different systems for writing IC actions - the second-person ‘pose’ system and the third-person ‘emote’ system. Either are perfectly appropriate to use depending on your own personal preference.
In both systems you can target any named object or character simply by including their name in the post you write; for a character, you will need to have recognized them first.
Also, by default all posts begin with your name. However, you can change that by including a comma after the verb - i.e., pose , [text here] or emote , [text here].
Pose:
For pose, you can use either the word pose or a period to begin the pose. Write the pose as if you were writing in first person, and include a period before any verb that you want the parser to change to 2nd person for your target.
For an example, let’s say a PC named Bean is interacting with a PC named Dice. A third party, Andros, is hanging out in the room; he has Dice recognized as Dude, for some funny reason.
Bean’s player types:
.wave at Dice and .give them a nudge.
Bean sees:
You wave at Dice and give them a nudge.
Andros sees:
Bean waves at Dude and gives them a nudge.
Dice sees:
Bean waves at you and gives you a nudge.
Alternatively, Bean could type:
pose , Waving at Dice, Bean .give them a nudge.
In this case, Bean sees: “Waving at Dice, you give them a nudge”, while Dice sees, “Waving at you, Bean gives you a nudge.”
Note that if you want to include ‘I’ in a post, it needs to be prefixed with a dot as well. Me/my/mine will be automatically conjugated as stand-alone words, however.
Let’s try a more complicated example! If Dice types…
pose ,Laughing, .I .give Prismodal my best flirtatious wink. .I .point both fingerguns like .I've never heard of trigger discipline and .ask her, "How you doin', sweet thang?"
Dice sees:
Laughing, I give Prismodal my best flirtatious wink. I point both fingerguns like I've never heard of trigger discipline and ask her, "How you doin', sweet thang?"
Prismodal sees:
Laughing, Dice gives you his best flirtatious wink. He points both fingerguns like he's never heard of trigger discipline and asks you, "How you doin', sweet thang?"
Emote:
Emote is both written and read in third person, so it’s a little simpler. Repeating the same interaction as above with Bean, Dice, and Andros…
Bean’s player types:
emote waves at Dice and gives them a nudge.
Bean and Dice both see:
Bean waves at Dice and gives them a nudge.
Andros sees:
Bean waves at Dude and gives them a nudge.
Alternatively, Bean could type:
emote , Waving at Dice, Bean gives them a nudge.
In this case, Bean and Dice both see: "Waving at Dice, Bean gives them a nudge."
Note that for both pose and emote, somebody who doesn’t know Dice at all would see Dice’s short, for example:
Bean waves at an average man and gives them a nudge.
Technological Communication
All Deshreti citizens have a Tessera, a small chip implanted in their brains. This connects them to the NOUS network, a general infrastructure for digital communication that takes many forms and is referred to by many names. (For example, the game’s static pages similar to IRL webpages are hosted on what’s referred to as the grid or Matrix, another name for the Abzu that focuses more on its virtual content than its physical incarnation.)
The Tessera allows people to use an essentially-telepathic channel of communication that’s similarly often called NOUS or just ‘the network’. Type sm [message] to broadcast to the network.
Remember, this is a fully IC medium - don’t say things your character wouldn’t say! If what you’re talking about might reflect a bug or otherwise touch on OOC questions, use xgame instead to ask.
It is also a TELEPATHIC network - your character isn’t typing. So no symbols like emoticons, please!
Every person is assigned a base six-digit ID for your account that is how you’ll appear to others on the network, as a default. If you want to customize this, you can use the handset you should have received in chargen, which is how your character can access the network for more complicated tasks.
Specifically, type ‘use handset’ to access your account. You’ll see your ID listed in the header under NOUS ID.
If you want an alias, type s to enter the SET_ALIAS menu, and then your alias, MINUS the leading @. For example, if you wanted to show as @Prismodal, just type s and then Prismodal at the prompt. You can change your alias if you want, but there’s a lag period of an hour between changes, so be thoughtful!
Your handset can also be used for a lot of other social functions, accessible through the separate hs menu.
[A guide on this is forthcoming.]
Interacting with Shops
Most standard shops will use the list command to let you see what an NPC has on offer, and the buy command to purchase their wares.
At the moment, there’s no way to inspect items on sale more closely, but that functionality may come in the future.
To buy multiples of an item, you can type buy - for example, buy 15 2 will buy 2 of item #15 in a shop.
Bars and restaurants work a little different. Type menu to see what’s on offer, and you can order by using the to command to speak to the bartender. For example: if you’re in the Under Heaven bar…
to lissome One root-fibre tea, please. Thank you.
You [to a beautiful lissome woman wearing a straight sheath dress in peacock blue]: One root-fibre tea, please. Thank you.
a beautiful lissome woman wearing a straight sheath dress in peacock blue says, "Root-Fibre Tea runs 6 marks. Want me to set one up?"
a beautiful lissome woman wearing a straight sheath dress in peacock blue sets a glass on the bar.
to lissome Yes, please.
You [to a beautiful lissome woman wearing a straight sheath dress in peacock blue]: Yes, please.
a beautiful lissome woman wearing a straight sheath dress in peacock blue pours a glass of Root-Fibre Tea and passes it to you.
drink tea
You drink Root-Fibre Tea.
Bitter root-fibre tea, sweetened with an unholy amount of sweetener. An earthy aftertaste lingers for those who enjoy that sort of thing.
One successful bartender order down!
Currency and Income
Marks are the standard currency of Deshret. You’ll be able to rummage 3500 marks out of the Lost and Found for starter money, and then make more with jobs/salaries in play.
Most everything involving money requires that it be on your person, but you can also get a bank account started at Mammon Financial on Floor 11. That process is fairly straightforward - follow the terminal’s prompts to set it up. That’ll allow you to withdraw and deposit larger sums you don’t want to carry around.
Use count to see how much money you have on hand!
[More on jobs here as those systems expand.]
Character Progression
Your character will start off with a lot of room to grow mechanically - in skills, stats, languages, etc. The general expected timeline is that a character will be fairly ‘maxed out’ after one year, though progression is always possible.
The metric for this kind of progress is XP.
Earning XP
XP is earned in two ways:
a) A base passive floor you gain just by being online;
b) Activity multipliers that reward active roleplay.
Things that lead to higher Xp awards include:
- Roleplaying with other characters.
- Roleplaying with new characters.
- Roleplaying in public rooms and established social hubs.
- Roleplaying in groups (the sweet spot is a localized crowd of 2–4; being in a room of 15 won’t add more).
- Roleplaying in social hubs you haven’t been to recently.
- Roleplaying with different people you haven’t logged RP time with recently.
These are strictly gated behind having at least one active, not idling, roleplay partner in the room with you.
There IS a cap on how much XP you can earn daily.
The @Xp Command
The @xp command is how you can actually spend your xp.
Let’s take a look at a sample @xp readout:
@xp
────────────────────── YOUR CHARACTER ──────────────────────
Milo · "Junior with Medicine"
Reserve 2.14 XP
SLOTS
Master ◇ open
Journeyman ◇ open ◇ open
Apprentice ◆ Cyber Surgery ◆ Alchemy ◆ Medicine ◇ open
[Attributes] · [Skills] · [Slots] · [Languages] · [Retraining]
@xp raise <skill or attr> [N] · slot <skill> · promote <skill>
To actually spend your XP, all you need to do is type @xp raise [skill or attribute] as listed there, and optionally specify an amount or just let the game choose.
But before you do that, let’s talk a bit about the system.
Slotting Skills
Notice how the main output talks about Slots?
Slots are how Underspire prevents long-established characters from becoming too overpowered. They limit just how high you can raise your skills - i.e., only skills in the Journeyman slots can be raised to the Journeyman level.
To put a skill in a slot, type @xp slot [skill name]. All skills will start at the Apprentice slot, and you’ll only be able to @xp promote them to a higher slot after you’ve raised them to the maximum of their current slot.
Your slots are not permanent; you can lower skills to free up slots if your PC’s trajectory changes. Note you won’t get a total XP refund, so don’t do this lightly!
Exploring Submenus
Beyond the main page that lists your skills, there’s many other pages of output to see here. Type @xp to get a sense of where you stand and how much XP it’ll cost to raise something. For example:
@xp skills
────────────────────────── SKILLS ──────────────────────────
Reserve 2.14 XP
Medicine [███████░░░░░] Junior Apprentice → 3.65 XP
Cyber Surgery [████░░░░░░░░] Oafish Apprentice → 2.71 XP
Alchemy [████░░░░░░░░] Nitwit Apprentice → 2.81 XP
Browse to learn
[ Combat ] [ Technical ] [ Craft ] [ Mind & Social ] [ Survival ]
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
@xp raise <skill or attr> [N|max] · slot <skill> · promote <skill>
help skills · what each skill covers
[Character]
This shows the current level of each skill this PC has and how much XP it’ll cost for the next level of improvement.
You can also dig deeper by typing commands like @xp skills to see the cost to learn skills you don’t know yet:
@xp skills combat
───────────────────── SKILLS · COMBAT ──────────────────────
Reserve 2.14 XP
Blades \[░░░░░░░░░░░░\] (untrained) (untrained) [→ 1.48 XP](https://underspire.net/webclient/#)
Bludgeons \[░░░░░░░░░░░░\] (untrained) (untrained) [→ 1.48 XP](https://underspire.net/webclient/#)
Unarmed \[░░░░░░░░░░░░\] (untrained) (untrained) [→ 1.48 XP](https://underspire.net/webclient/#)
Sidearms \[░░░░░░░░░░░░\] (untrained) (untrained) [→ 1.48 XP](https://underspire.net/webclient/#)
Longarms \[░░░░░░░░░░░░\] (untrained) (untrained) [→ 1.48 XP](https://underspire.net/webclient/#)
Gunnery \[░░░░░░░░░░░░\] (untrained) (untrained) [→ 1.48 XP](https://underspire.net/webclient/#)
Dodge \[░░░░░░░░░░░░\] (untrained) (untrained) [→ 1.48 XP](https://underspire.net/webclient/#)
Conditioning \[░░░░░░░░░░░░\] (untrained) (untrained) [→ 1.48 XP](https://underspire.net/webclient/#)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
help skills · what each skill covers
As you can see, this PC has no combat skills, so raising them to the initial level doesn’t take much XP at all.