# Gates of Skeldal - fanmade English translation manual

Back to Installation & readme
Introduction
Game Interface
Control Groups
Inventory
Attributes
Item Attributes
Combat
Game Mechanics
Casting Spells
Controls
Spell List
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## Introduction

In Gates of Skeldal, you control a party of up to six adventurers. You have the freedom to go wherever you want. By fighting, using magic and solving logical puzzles, your party members become more experienced and better in combat. All this is connected with a storyline made out of various scrolls, hints and dialogues.

## Game Interface

You can exit from any screen by using the right-click.
The game screen consists of top panel, the viewport and the bottom panel. The top panel has four basic functions:
Exit - exits the game without saving
Settings - settings for the game and volume
Save - saves the current position
Load - loads a previous save
Fire symbol is used for resting. By resting, your party recovers health, mana and stamina. Your party can only sleep for up to 12 hours. Afterwards, your party needs to walk or fight to be able to sleep again.
Book symbol is your party's journal. Adventurers automatically write down texts from scrolls or dialogues. You can read through the journal by clicking on the left or right journal page respectively.
Stars symbol represent magic and allow you to use magic outside of combat.
Scroll symbol is a map. Adventurers automatically chart locations they have visited. You may also write down your own notes into the map. Once you acquire the big map, you will also be able to fast travel between locations.
Purse symbol and the number next to it shows how much gold your party has. Gold is shared by the whole party.
Compass always shows the cardinal direction of your currently selected group or party member.
The bottom panel shows portraits of your party members as well as the control pad. The portraits include the character's name, columns of Health (red), Stamina (green) and Mana (blue), and the group number of the character. Four different icons can appear on the portraits:
Shield with a plus sign means that a character has gained enough experience and you can spend attribute points.
Stars indicate that a character is affected by a spell or magical potion.
Bread or bottle means that a character is hungry or thirsty.
Clicking on the control pad turns and moves the currently selected character or group.

## Control Groups

Normally all characters move together as one, but you can split the party into multiple groups which will then move on their own.
Hold CTRL and click on the portrait of a character you wish to split from the group. Clicking on multiple portraits creates groups of multiple characters.
The currently selected group will have character names and group numbers colored white. Each group will use a different color.
If the currently selected group stands on a different tile than the rest of the party, the portraits of other party members will darken.
You can switch between different groups by simply clicking on the character portraits.
Combining characters together into a group is also done with CTRL + clicking on their portraits. Alternatively, pressing INSERT will combine all characters standing on the same tile into one group.

## Inventory

Clicking on a portrait will open the inventory. The panel on the left shows the paper doll of the character and the panel on the right shows the inventory slots of this character.
If you mouseover an item, it will show the item description in the bottom part of the screen. Most items can be used by clicking on them and dropping them on the character's paper doll. Character's inventory size depends on the bag your character is using.

## Attributes

Clicking on the character's name below the paper doll changes the right panel into a scroll with character statistics. You can also spend attribute points here once your character gains enough experience.
There are four main attributes for every character:
Strength raises your HP and Stamina, as well as the Food and Water values. Strength also affects combat.
Magic raises your Mana and affects which spells you can cast and at which level.
Mobility affects how many actions per round you can do. You have one action per round until 30 Mobility. At 30+, you get two actions per round. At 45+, you get three actions per round, and so on.
Dexterity raises your Stamina. Dexterity also affects combat.
Between the main attributes and the character's Level and Experience values, you can find Health, Stamina and Mana values. These three correspond to the columns shown on your character's portraits.
If Health drops to zero, the character dies.
Stamina represents the character's fatigue and is consumed by moving, attacking or using magic. When Stamina drops to zero, the character cannot fight, move or defend itself.
Mana the magical energy required to cast spells.
The Attack and Defense values show the combat strength of the character. Equipped Weapons and Armor modify these values.
Resistances are the defense against magical attacks and spells. The values are separate for every element: Fire, Water, Earth, Air and Mind. These resistances cannot be higher than 75.
Many enemies in the later stages of the game have a magical component included in their physical attacks. Resistances are applied against this magical part.
The bottom part of the attribute screen are weapon bonuses. These improve as the characters gets better with using weapons of a certain type. This bonus is then added to each successfull hit.
The Food and Water values represent your character's hunger and thirst. Hungry or thirsty characters cannot Rest and start slowly dying.
More detailed mechanics of attributes were not disclosed in the game manual.

## Item Attributes

In general, there are four types of items: Equipment that you can wear/wield, Consumables like food and potions, Quest Items that allow you to progress in the story and Other items that can have various uses.
The item description can have up to three lines. The first line is always the item's name.
The second line says how will the item change your character. Weapons add to Attack, Armor adds to Defense, some items can increase attributes like Strength or Magic. A special stat called regeneration will affect how fast a character sleeps while Resting.
Some weapons can also have multiple values, for example Attack 10-12, Fire 11-15 which means that your attack will apply both physical and magical damage, so the combined total damage could be as high as 27.
If an item says Fire 25% instead, it means that this item will raise your Resistance to the Fire element by 25.
The third line is usually present on equipment, and shows the minimum attribute requirements your character needs to have in order to use this equipment.

## Combat

Whenever a combat starts, the control pad changes into a circle of buttons. These are used for planning the next round of combat. Gates of Skeldal uses a turn-based combat system, where each party member and each enemy can perform a limited amount of actions every round.
First comes the planning phase, where you assign actions to all of your characters, then you can start the round.
Going counter-clockwise from the top button, you have these actions:
Attack - character will attack with the weapon they are holding. Ranged weapons need ammo to attack. When unarmed, characters will try attacking barehanded.
Magic - character will cast any known spell, you will be prompted to select which spell and spell rank you want to cast.
Stay - your character does nothing this turn. There's a chance they will recover a small amount of stamina.
Rearm - allows you to switch equipment or drink potions while in combat.
Run - allows the character to move multiple steps, but your character cannot do anything else after running until the end of this round. Costs a moderate amount of stamina. Turning doesn't cost a step.
Cancel - cancels any actions you had planned so you can select new ones.
Move - allows the character to move one or more steps, depending on how many actions your character has left. Your character can still do other actions after moving. Turning doesn't cost a step.
If you enabled "Automatic attack" in the game settings, then any characters that don't have any actions planned will automatically perform one Attack action. If you left this setting disabled, then characters without any actions planned will automatically perform Stay.
You are planning actions for the character which currently has a white border around its portrait.
The combat starts when you click on the skull in the middle of these buttons.
All characters and enemies will "roll for initiative" and perform their actions in this order. Characters with multiple actions roll separately for each action.
The amount of damage dealt to your characters is shown on their portraits. The amount of damage dealt to the enemy is shown on the skull button used to start the combat.
If any of your characters is attacked and the character's stamina is above zero, the character automatically tries to defend itself. With less characters standing on a tile, each character gets better at defending. When fighting against a strong enemy, it might be a good idea to spread your characters.
If one of your characters dies from an attack, but another character casts a Healing Touch on them in the same round, the character gets "saved at the last moment" and survives.
If any of your characters planned the Move or Run actions, when their turn comes, the combat gets paused and the combat buttons change back to the control pad, allowing you to move this character.
When all characters performed their actions, a new round begins and you can plan actions again.
Once all enemies in combat have been defeated, the combat will automatically end.
If you ambush an enemy from the side or from behind, you can enter combat by "bumping" into them and effectively get a free round. Similarly, if an enemy ambushes you, all your characters will automatically perform the Stay action in the first round of combat.
If an NPC doesn't attack you on sight, you can enter combat by casting an attack spell on them or by pressing ENTER when standing next to them.

## Casting spells

Both in and out of combat, your characters can try to cast spells. When outside of combat, first click the Stars icon in the top panel on your screen. The cursor will change to one with a question mark. Select who will cast the spell by clicking on their portrait.
Selecting a spell consists of three phases. First pick the element. If the element you want is already picked, you don't have to pick it again. Next, select the rune of the spell you want to use, and finally, select the spell rank.
Higher spell rank usually represents the spell intensity, but some spells have different effects with different spell ranks.
To cast the spell, the caster needs a certain amount of Magic attribute and Mana. The color of the gem near the spell ranks depicts this:
Green gem means the caster has both enough Magic and Mana to cast the spell.
Orange gem means the caster has enough Mana, but doesn't have high enough Magic. They can attempt to cast the spell, but the spell may backfire.
Dark gem means the caster doesn't have enough Mana and Magic to cast the spell.
Spells usually affect the whole tile (unless stated otherwise). If a spell hits a wall or a door, it will affect the tile directly in front of that wall or door. Casting a fireball into a wall or door will hurt your characters standing on that tile.
Some spells may sound like they would only work something with a physical body (like Bleeding), but all spells will also work on incorporeal enemies. This is because all spells have both Physical and Magical parts, so even if the Physical won't work, the Magical part will.
Sometimes a spell may fail in specific locations due to magical shielding.
Some enemies have resistances against certain elements of magic. When choosing your spell, remember that and pick the correct element.

## Game Mechanics

There are some other mechanics in this game which weren't described yet.
Dropping & Throwing
All items can be dropped on the ground, simply click them in your inventory, then go back to the viewport and place them into the lower part of the viewport. Placing them into the upper part of the viewport will throw them. Depending on how high you place them in the viewport, your character will throw them farther.
You can also do this in combat - doing this will assign the Throw action to your character. Some items will be destroyed if thrown (bottles).
Thrown items will fly past enemies (except Throwing Daggers). You can retrieve Throwing Daggers from enemies after they die.
Projectile & Targets
When attacking with ranged weapons or with projectile spells, the projectile will hit whichever comes in its path first: any enemy, a randomly selected target on any tile with more than two party members at once or the first wall.
This means that one or two characters can fight in melee and your support characters can cast spells and fire arrows over them. But if a third character moves into the melee tile, you would hit your own people.
The same rules apply for enemies too. Enemy ranged attacks will fly through 2 Enemy NPCs on the same tile, but will always hit first character in its path, even if the character stands alone.
Enemies will only stack up to 2 NPCs per tile. If an attack hits a tile with two enemies, the target is selected randomly for each attack. So if an enemy is wounded and another joins him on his tile, you can get unlucky and only hit the healthy one.
Falling & Swimming
Your party can fall into holes or drop items into holes, but they cannot throw items upwards. Everything will drop down to the lowest level. If your party falls through a hole, they will take damage from the fall.
There is no swimming in this game. Walking through rivers is possible, but it will drain your stamina VERY FAST. Any character who runs out of stamina while in a water tile dies instantly.
Because of the previous mechanic, it would seem logical to avoid walking into water. Except there is one underwater level. Being in this underwater level won't drain your stamina at all. You'll know when you get there, because..
The game won't let you walk into obvious death, like walking into lava pools or into the ocean. But if you decide to walk off a cliff, that's another story...
Blocking & Dual Wielding
There is no blocking. Shields only add the Defense (and any other effects) listed on them.
You can dual wield one-handed weapons. The requirements of both weapons are added together, then reduced by 11/15. So if you want your character to hold the Axe with Enekr's Blessing and the Thor's Hammer, they will require:
(42 + 45) * (11 / 15) = 64 Str
(24 + 25) * (11 / 15) = 36 Mob
(28 + 20) * (11 / 15) = 36 Dex
However, there is no clear description of which weapons are one-handed and which are two-handed. The only way to know is to actually test them on your character's paper doll. Basically, if the weapon model goes below the character's hand, it's a two-handed weapon.
You can dual wield shields too.
Corpses
If one of your characters dies and you leave the corpse and travel to another map, the corpse of that character will be lost forever.
You can "carry" corpses, by manually adding them to your group with CTRL + clicking. You cannot carry corpses during combat. If combat starts, the corpse will stay on the tile where the combat started and you will have to "pick it up" again afterwards.
Other Mechanics
You can press F1 to save screenshots in the game folder. Screenshots are saved as BMP.
"Small Pink Elephant" is the name of the spell cast when "Magic Resistance" spell backfires. This backfire causes the caster to temporarily gain 2000 health, but they cannot cast spells and their Attack value is zero. They can still deal damage with magical weapons. However, when this backfire effect ends, the caster will lose 2000 HP from their current HP. If your character had less than 2001 HP, they will die instantly.
You can use teleports (static blue balls of magic, not the spell) to telefrag - instantly kill an enemy standing on the tile where the teleport leads. Beware, the enemies can do the same to you.
Less intelligent enemies need to spend an action for turning. You can use that to your advantage.
You can press levers, buttons and open/close doors during the Move and Run actions in combat. Doing so will end your Move/Run action.

## Spell List

Element | Spell | Description
--- | --- | ---
Fire | Fireball | Caster throws a ball of fire, hitting everything on the same tile. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Haste | Targeted character becomes faster. Rank 1 - +1 action per round Rank 2 - +2 actions per round Rank 3 - +3 actions per round
Magic Missile | Caster throws a magical missile, hitting everything on the same tile. Deals more damage than fireball. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Fiery Sword | A magic sword made of fire is conjured in the caster's hands. It exists for as long as the caster holds it. Higher ranks conjure better fiery sword.
Blind | Blinds the enemy, reducing his ability to defend (lowers Defense). Higher ranks provide stronger effect.
Berserker | Targeted character is thrown into battle frenzy. Raises Attack and Mobility, lowers Defense. Higher ranks provide stronger effect.
Inflammation | The ground bursts into flames. Usable on any ground type. Rank 1 - affects the tile in front of the caster Rank 2 - affects all tiles in a straight line in front of the caster (up to visibility range) Rank 3 - affects all tiles in all directions from the caster (up to visibility range)
Water | Conjure Water | Caster conjures a bottle of water. Rank equals amount of bottles.
Breath of Frost | Causes hypothermia. Magical attack at the tile in front of the caster. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Protection | Raises Defense of the targeted character. Higher ranks provide stronger effect.
Frozen Blood | Causes freezing of flesh and blood. Magical attack at the tile in front of the caster. Stronger than Breath of Frost. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Bleeding | Opens magical wounds and saps away life essence. Magical attack at the tile in front of the caster. Stronger than Frozen Blood. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Abyss | If an enemy kills the target of this spell, the enemy dies aswell. Rank 1 - affects the mage who cast the spell Rank 2 - affects one selected party member Rank 3 - affects all party members
Energy Drain | Caster drains enemy's life force. Half of the damage dealt to the enemy is returned as health to the caster. Rank 1 - targets an enemy Rank 2 - targets an enemy, has stronger effect Rank 3 - targets one friendly character, who gains the effect of this spell for all his attacks and spells
Earth | Bread | Caster conjures a loaf of bread. Rank equals amount of bread.
Healing Touch | Caster heals the target. Higher ranks provide stronger effect.
Eye for an Eye | All damage taken will be reflected back to the attacker. Rank 1 - affects the mage who cast the spell Rank 2 - affects one selected party member Rank 3 - affects all party members
Earthquake | Causes violent shaking on the tile in front of the caster. Deals damage and reduces Dexterity and Mobility of all targets standing on this tile. Higher ranks provide stronger effect.
Reincarnation | Brings a dead character back to life. Ressurected character's XP is lowered down to the last reached level. Rank 1 - Ressurected character returns with 1 HP, 0 Stamina and 0 Mana. Rank 2 - Ressurected character returns with full HP, 0 Stamina and 0 Mana.
Rank 3 - Ressurected character returns with full HP, full Stamina and full Mana.
Example: Character last gained a level at 40000 experience. Currently it has 45000 experience. After Reincarnation, the character will have only 40000 experience. Regardless of spell rank used.
Mana Source | Caster gains mana for the next round. The amount is twice the mana cost of this spell. Rank 1 - Mana cost: 30, Mana gained: 60 Rank 2 - Mana cost: 50, Mana gained: 100 Rank 3 - Mana cost: 75, Mana gained: 150
Turn the Cheek | All damage taken by the target is added as HP instead of being removed. Rank 1 - affects the mage who cast the spell Rank 2 - affects one selected party member Rank 3 - affects all party members Example: Enemy hits your character for 15 damage. Thanks to this spell, the character heals 15 health instead.
Note: if you combine this spell with Eye for an Eye, the affected party member will die instantly.
Air | Lightning | Caster throws lightning, hitting everything on the same tile. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Enemy Status | Displays health of your enemies. All enemies will show their current HP above their heads as numbers. Higher ranks increase duration.
Deadly Breath | Spreads death in the ranks of your enemies. Magical attack at the tile in front of the caster. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Teleport | Targeted character is teleported to the targeted tile on your map.There must be a free path leading towards the target tile. Rank 1 - affects the mage who cast the spell Rank 2 - affects one selected party member Rank 3 - affects the enemies at the tile in front of the caster
Crushing Pressure | Causes high pressure near your enemies. Magical attack at the tile in front of the caster. Stronger than Deadly Breath. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Holding | Lowers Mobility of enemy targets at the tile in front of the caster, temporarily lowering the amount of actions per round. Rank 1 - actions reduced by 1 Rank 2 - actions reduced by 2 Rank 3 - actions reduced by 3
Scales of Fate | This spell changes the health of all characters and all enemies in the fight to the lowest HP of all characters and enemies. Rank 1 - casting this spell sets the caster's mana to zero, stamina to zero and the caster's regeneration is temporarily lowered (you cannot Rest for some time)
Rank 2 - casting this spell sets the caster's stamina to zero and the caster's regeneration is temporarily lowered (you cannot Rest for some time)
Rank 3 - casting this spell sets the caster's stamina to zero
Example: You're fighting two enemies who have 300 and 250 HP. Your party has these HP values: 85, 90, 45, 64, 25, 71. After this spell, all enemies and all party members will have 25 HP.
Mind | Automapping | Reveals the area around the caster up to a certain distance and displays it on your map, regardless of walls. Higher ranks reveal bigger area.
Summoning | Targeted characters are summoned to the caster's tile. Rank 1 - summons one selected party member Rank 2 - summons the group standing on the same tile as the selected party member, up to three characters will be summoned Rank 3 - summons all party members
Mental Attack | Attacks the brain and nerves of your enemy. Magical attack at the tile in front of the caster. Higher ranks deal more damage.
Invisibility | Targeted character becomes invisible and won't be attacked by enemies (unless they can detect it magically). Rank 1 - affects the mage who cast the spell Rank 2 - affects one selected party member Rank 3 - affects all party members
True Sight | All illusory walls reveal their hidden path for the duration of this spell. Higher ranks increase duration.
Magic Resistance | Raises the target's Resistances against all elements. Higher ranks provide stronger effect.
Demon | Caster summons a demon from the astral plane and temporarily switches place with it. Demon then fights for the party until time runs out or until killed. The caster then returns in the same state as they left. Higher ranks summon stronger and faster demon.

## Controls

You can control everything with your mouse.
In the character selection screen, move the yellow dot from the middle of the chart to modify your starting attributes!
You can also use these keybinds:
Arrow keys or numpad keys to move
CTRL + arrow keys to move sideways
ENTER to start combat with a nearby monster
TAB or M shows local map
I opens up the inventory
You can split your party by pressing 123456 above the letter keys (or with CTRL + Left click on portraits)
Currently selected heroes have white names, unselected heroes have colored names (green, red, yellow...)
Numpad 0 will rejoin split party members standing on the same spot back into one group
Use the icons on the top bar of your screen to sleep, cast magic, open your journal or map
Don't forget to save your game!
Enjoy the game!
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Found a bug/wrong translation? Mail me!
Official Czech homepage of the Windows launcher and the Czech discussion for the game can be found at http://skeldal.vyletnici.net/