Dungeon in space and other beginner oddities

[LawndartJedi]

Couldn't find any posts with beginner questions so here are mine.
0. Sounds crazy, but is the dungeon in space? Any time I try to go outside it is instant death.

1. Why do all the battle seam either easy or super hard, near impossible? You fight bats and worms then you get mobbed by a party of 4 to 6 fighters and wizards. To me it seams to have no balance. The critters are no problem but then the mob is impossible to beat. I have tried running away but they block you and then can't move and just wait for death.

2. How do you get weapons and armor before going into the dungeon? If an adventurer was going into a dungeon they would make sure to have weapons to use.

3. How do you go to the shop, or tavern, or what ever else there is? The tutorial shows how to use the shop but I can't find any why to get to any of them.

4. Is there any why to see the damage that is happening? All it shows is that you hit or you were hit.

5. What do the two HP bars (green and red) stand for? They don't seam to be linked to anything I can figure out.

6. Any way too see why you died? I'll be going thru a dungeon and then start taking hits from nothing and die.

7. How do you use a ring? Have gotten the cursed teleportation ring but can't figure out how to teleport with it after removing the curse. Even after I remove the curse it still only acts randomly. (I hate this item)

8. How do you add members to your party? I have only been able to play with one character.

[Pereza0]

Couldn't find any posts with beginner questions so here are mine.
0. Sounds crazy, but is the dungeon in space? Any time I try to go outside it is instant death.

You don't die, you leave the dungeon without winning

1. Why do all the battle seam either easy or super hard, near impossible? You fight bats and worms then you get mobbed by a party of 4 to 6 fighters and wizards. To me it seams to have no balance. The critters are no problem but then the mob is impossible to beat. I have tried running away but they block you and then can't move and just wait for death.

You should avoid fights you can't win before starting them, or halfway through it, not when you are <10% HP. You also have consumables that will help you get out of this situations. (scrolls and potions). You dont have to kill everything now...

2. How do you get weapons and armor before going into the dungeon? If an adventurer was going into a dungeon they would make sure to have weapons to use.

You get your equipment from your background, thats it. No stocking up if that is what you mean

3. How do you go to the shop, or tavern, or what ever else there is? The tutorial shows how to use the shop but I can't find any why to get to any of them.

There are no taverns. Shops show up as you go down the dungeon randomly. You also have a few guaranteed shops in a specific branch, but you are not probably going to get there yet.

4. Is there any why to see the damage that is happening? All it shows is that you hit or you were hit.

Top right bar. Small bar on the enemies. Are you playing with tiles or with console? I recommend the earlier, especially if you are new to the game.

5. What do the two HP bars (green and red) stand for? They don't seam to be linked to anything I can figure out.

Top bar is HP, bottom bar is MP. The red portion of the HP bar shows how much damage you took the previous turn

6. Any way too see why you died? I'll be going thru a dungeon and then start taking hits from nothing and die.

It shows up on top of the scoreboard

7. How do you use a ring? Have gotten the cursed teleportation ring but can't figure out how to teleport with it after removing the curse. Even after I remove the curse it still only acts randomly. [color=#337777]

Press "a" then the corresponding letter.
You should give the manual a read

[daggaz]

clever troll is clever.

[khalil]

8. How do you add members to your party?

You play a Hill orc priest and get your peity up. Then other orcs will just join you automaticly.

[Psieye]

1. Why do all the battle seam either easy or super hard, near impossible? You fight bats and worms then you get mobbed by a party of 4 to 6 fighters and wizards. To me it seams to have no balance. The critters are no problem but then the mob is impossible to beat. I have tried running away but they block you and then can't move and just wait for death.

You fail at Divide and Conquer. Split them up, kill the easier ones and don't bother fighting the harder ones until you're ready for them (after a few floors more of EXP). Incidentally, if you don't know how to invest your EXP right, you will never be ready for them.

8. How do you add members to your party? I have only been able to play with one character.

This ain't an RPG. You do not have a party. There are a couple exceptions to the previous statement, but they are EXCEPTIONS.

[omndra]

I love the cursed ring of teleportation...

[Sojiro]

0. Sounds crazy, but is the dungeon in space? Any time I try to go outside it is instant death.

If you go outside the Dungeon, your haracter will just go back home. If you do not have the Orb of Zot it counts as losing. Don't flee from the dungeon if you don't want to stop playing.

1. Why do all the battle seam either easy or super hard, near impossible?

Because the game was designed that way. Depending on your build the same monster can be a joke or a deadly threat, so you have to be able to recognize what you can deal with and what's dangerous to you. Also, some monsters are just too dangerous and should be avoided rather than fought (mostly out of Depths monsters and Uniques). Knowing when to avoid and flee a fight is possibly the number one most important skill in crawl. Also different situations call for different tactics, if you haven't learned how to deal with some threats they are going to look disproportionally hard. Those are the reason why there's such a difference between the difficulties of the fights.

You fight bats and worms then you get mobbed by a party of 4 to 6 fighters and wizards. The critters are no problem but then the mob is impossible to beat. I have tried running away but they block you and then can't move and just wait for death.

You need to learn how to handle groups. If you fight in a corridor, they can't surround you. If the monsters aren't too bright a doorway can do the trick, let one stop through and kill it when its friends can't back it up. Another very important trick is to divide and conquer, don't jump in the middle of the group, attract the attention of one of them from the very edge of your line of sight and drag it away from its pals (you can throw stones/darts to do that for example). Orc bands have priests and wizards who are way more dangerous than their pals, you need to learn how to handle them (try to kill priests as soon as possible, and if possible in close combat to reduce their use of smiting, wizards can kill you horribly so you need to confuse or kill them fast but unlike priests blocking their line of fire with other orcs works rather well).

2. How do you get weapons and armor before going into the dungeon? If an adventurer was going into a dungeon they would make sure to have weapons to use.

Each background has some starting inventory that's pretty much set in stone. That's what he made sure tohave to use.

3. How do you go to the shop, or tavern, or what ever else there is? The tutorial shows how to use the shop but I can't find any why to get to any of them.

I'm not sure I understand. If the question is 'how do I find a shop?' the answer is "keep exploring". You'll find some eventually.

4. Is there any why to see the damage that is happening? All it shows is that you hit or you were hit.

The number of '!' after the message saying that a hit just connected gives you an idea of the amount of damage dealt by that hit. Otherwise you need to cheat and activate Wizard Mode.

5. What do the two HP bars (green and red) stand for? They don't seam to be linked to anything I can figure out.

Green bat is your current HPs. Red bar is how much HPs you lost since your last action.

6. Any way too see why you died?

Yes, look in the morgue.

I'll be going thru a dungeon and then start taking hits from nothing and die.

It was probably an invisible critter (you received messages saying "It hits you.") or a trap.

7. How do you use a ring? Have gotten the cursed teleportation ring but can't figure out how to teleport with it after removing the curse.

You use the power of those items with 'a'. Use 'a?' to see a list of the powers you have available.

Even after I remove the curse it still only acts randomly.

The curse only prevents you from removing the ring. It teleports you randomly because that's what the ring does. On that note you can provoke a teleportation on purpose even if the ring is cursed.

8. How do you add members to your party? I have only been able to play with one character.

You only play a single character at a time. You can have allies, but you only give them very broad orders (basically "follow me" or "attack this monster"). Permanent allies are almost only for the followers of Beogh (orc god) and Yreledmul (god of undead slaves), but summoning and necromancy can make temporary allies too.