You find yourself in an empty room. There are doors to the northwest and northeast. You may check your stats, map or inventory at any time.
To the northwest is a small room. You see a chest and a plaque on the wall, as well as the exit to the southeast. You may also check your stats, map or inventory at any time.
That's a good thought. Common sense dictates that there must be all kinds of imposterous dungeon-trappings to look out for in these sorts of settings. This looks like a normal chest though.
It's not immediately obvious how to open it, since you don't have arms or hands. Perhaps one of your utility menus will help.
You cannot use your extradiegetic emotive extremities to interact with physical objects!
You decide to open your first utility menu, your stats. You may hover over any stat to learn about it, switch to the map or inventory, or close the menu.
You decide to check all the stats on the left side of the screen, the side which holds your aptitudes.
So fucking awesome. This dungeon isn't ready for you.
I can't emphasize enough that this is the best possible use of your time.
You decide to open your third utility menu, your inventory. You may switch to your stats or map or close the menu.
DropShadow: A classy accessory that keeps you looking sharp against the background. Any distinguished spoob wouldn't consider themself fully dressed without it!
As is customary, your drop shadow is equipped to slot d, the bottom slot.
You don't really think this look would work for you.
Your trusty enchanted stats, map and inventory cards. Where would you be without them? Certainly not here, on the inventory screen.
You decide to go ahead and do the thing. Apparently the chest contains a stick, two points of αptitude, and 100 of whatever ® is.
You claim your loot and equip the stick. Your stat-based rewards don't stay in your inventory, but will be reflected in your stats menu.
You give your stick some experimental swings. You're prepared for anything this dungeon could throw at you, especially if it's a baseball.
You are confronted with a swarm of bats!
You have entered combat. Don't worry, this'll be simple!
The first move will go to the participant with the highest ωptitude, which is you. You use your move to attack [stick] the nearest bat, dealing damage equal to base damage (1) plus your αptitude (2) plus your weapon modifier (0), summing to 3. This sum is then divided by the sum of base resilience (0.5) and the bat's αptitude (0). Finally, the direction of damage is determined by coin flip. In this case, you got tails, so the damage is delivered in the flat direction. All told, you deliver your opponent -6¢ of damage.
The bat's error is now -6¢. This exceeds the just-noticeable difference of ±5¢. The bat dies.
The next move goes to one of the other bats. It attacks you, dealing damage equal to base damage (1) plus its αptitude and weapon modifier (both 0), divided by the sum of base resilience and your αptitude (2.5), in the sharp direction. Your error is now 0.4¢.
The next bat attacks for the same amount of damage, but it is applied in the flat direction, so your error is reduced back to 0¢!
You get the idea. It's easy to see how the rest of the battle will go. By the end, you have defeated all three bats and accrued -0.4¢ of error. You acquire three leathery hides and 15 ®, which are automatically added to your inventory.
Your inventory finally finished loading. It seems like something about the geometry of your newly acquired leathery hides was causing your inventory card to lag. After waiting for a while, you flipped your card face down and then back up, which seems to have done the trick.
You've found a puzzle! You put your stick away because now is not the time for that kind of thing. You think you have a pretty good idea of how this is meant to work, but it couldn't hurt to check out the plaque on the northwest wall.
You obviously can't read the other side of the plaque, since it's embedded in the wall. You slam your head against the plaque in frustration.
This causes the plaque to fall out of the wall and flip over, revealing its other side.
Oh ok!