W A S D / arrows — move (facing follows your mouse or your feet)
Click a creature to engage it — that commits you, and your blade keeps its own time on that one target while you face it. When it falls, the fight is over: the next one needs your hand again. Esc or slot 1 breaks off.
Right-click a creature to send your pet — "sic!" — and it fights that one on its own, even if you walk away. Right-click open ground and it comes to heel. One command is one fight; when the target falls, the next needs your word again.
1–6 — your belt: engage, weapon special, guard, draughts, a meal
Shift — raise your shield. Held, it turns most of a blow aside. Raised in the instant the blow lands, it turns all of it aside and staggers whoever swung.
Every blow you land charges your weapon's special. It waits until you spend it — slot 2 — and it will sit there charged all day if you let it. Space is only ever an ordinary swing.
Anything about to hit you winds up first: a ring closes on it and the ground shows its reach. Step out and it hits nothing at all.
E — interact: mine, chop, pick, enter caves, use village stations
Q — drink a Healing Draught   I — inventory   K — skills   H — help

The mouth of the Old Mine gapes on the ridge to the north — the veins are all inside, in the dark. Every vein looks alike, and each holds only so many cracks before it is spent. Most carry common copper; a few hold better, if your skill can draw it out. An unskilled pick still finds copper in a rich vein — but wastes what lies beneath. Even a master's crack sometimes comes up copper.

Raw things must be refined before they are useful: ore wants the Furnace, logs want the Sawmill, herbs want the Still, and an uncut gem tells you nothing until the Jeweler's bench — or a clumsy cut ruins it.

Time passes only while you play — a full day is twenty real minutes, and nothing, not even sleep, moves the clock. Sleep grants a gift instead. Till the plot south of the plaza, plant in season, water daily; unwatered crops pause, they never die. Every 7th day is Market Day. Some herbs only show their true bloom after dark.

They say something rules the deep chamber. They say it wears a crown.

New diggings: the Town Delve east of the square — patrolled, common ore, and yet miners whisper of impossible strikes there. And the Deepworks, down from the ridge — two levels of rich veins and rich danger. Slaying what rules a place quiets it for a time; watch the reading at every entrance. The furnace will attempt ANY ore at any skill — the odds are shown, they can fall to almost nothing, and a bad smelt slags half the ore. Digging and smelting are one craft; the market sells raw ore for those who would rather learn at the furnace than in the dark. And skills only grow near their edge — mastered work teaches nothing.

The wild has grown friendlier, for those with patient hands: hounds in the herb meadows, mules by the farm lanes, and a red-shelled thing in the mine that carries its own fire. What you tame eats from your fields, walks at your side or works your land — and everything you carry now has weight; raw ore is heavy, ingots are light, and a loaded back moves slowly. The smith sells no safety, but builds it: trap-works, set at a mine mouth, keep the dark quieter for a while.

Some things in this world are never announced. Craft with curiosity.