POWDER is a roguelike in which the player descends through 25 semi-randomly generated levels to reach and destroy the demon Baezl'bub, then return to the surface in one piece. The experience, abilities, rare items, and favor from the gods that the player earns during their descent prepare the player for the appearance of increasingly challenging enemies as game time progresses.
As a grid-based, turn-based adventure game, there is significant strategy that goes into a successful iteration. One must, of course, first learn the basics through trial and error - when it's safe to quaff a mysterious potion, for example, or which enemies to avoid until one's strong enough to confront them. There is also a significant amount of luck involved - the effectiveness of weapons is highly dependent on chance, as are the qualities of items encountered during one's exploration. However, given some learning rounds and a bit of said luck on the first ten levels, one can become powerful and sly enough to deal with pretty much anything the dungeon churns out.
Sam's Protip: It's important to track what one's weaknesses are and know how to avoid them - all the health and damage in the world won't stop a sudden "ignoble death" due to petrification or strangulation.
v117.0 [May 7, 2013]
True aim is now in the book of blades, so you can learn it without an extra skill book. (Robert Barber)
Forgetting a spell while wielding a staff that imbues it will now properly fail. (Paul Strickland)
Failing to forget no longer uses a turn.
Unenchanted weapons and armor which you have found the enchantment of now report +0. (Mike Ratzlaff)
Objects collapsing into meatballs now properly state if the result is multiple meatballs. (Nathan Bogue)
Tutorial for signpost for kiwis now mentions the hostile tag on the look description. (Claudio)
Signpost added to surace world. (SilverAnalyst)
Someone to greet you on the surface world. (Andrew Walker)
Unequippable item slots say No Item slot rather than Empty slot. Empty body slots report the appendage name (left hand, radula, etc)
+ and * by the god reports when praying lets you know how much they like your fashion sense. (hotpoo)
Frogs have a bonus to attack vs insects. (Robert Barber)
Silver and gold weapons will occasionally dull if used against non-vulnerable targets.
Finally added the cute and cuddly triceratops!
If you id the enchantment of an item by throwing it, now the stack you threw it from wil also be ided. (Mike Ratzlaff)
Sleeping creatures have a visual indication. (Mike Ratzlaff)
Swapping worn armour with wielded sword no longer causes you to wear the sword. (Mike Ratzlaff)
Rolling boulder works on some monsters.
Fix minor spelling errors (Gurkan Sengun)
Full AI state was being cleared when nothing was edible rather than just the single edible bit. (Don Collins)
Dipping nothing into a potion no longer crashes, provided you figured a way to do that in the first place. (Richard Quirk)
Two or more equipped items with extra attacks now properly stack the chance of invoking the attacks, rather than jumping straight to a 99% chance. (Richard Quirk)
One new room type.
Mountain and Hills in Ibson The Grey's tileset are now in their correct positions.