Dark Law: Meaning of Death/Town

Pub (Lackadack Pub)
This is where you change your party. This facility is unavailable during some scenarios. The process is self-evident: one icon lets you remove members, the other lets you add them. Note that you don't have a fixed 'player character' in this game. You can take any combination of the characters you create, which need not include your initial character.

Arms (Gregor's Armoury), Shop (Seriss' Item Shop)
The only difference between these two is the range of goods on sale. You can buy, sell, or identify items which fall into their range - the armoury obviously deals with weapons and armour, while the item shop sells the various medicines (and cloth-based armour).

An interesting feature is the ability to haggle when buying. If you refuse the list price, you may be offered the item at a slight discount. Repeat for even lower prices. If you take it too far they'll stop offering the item and you'll have to start again from the list price. The likelihood of a discount being offered is probably increased by the Discount ability.

Finally, you'll note that their ranges are pretty limited at the start of the game. You can build them up, though: if you sell them something they don't have in stock, it'll be added to the list. Note that you can only do this with certain items; in general, the more exotic an item, the less likely it is to be duplicable. In such cases you can still buy them back if you sell them, but the entry will then be removed from the list.

Park (Centoria Park)
Read the town noticeboard, or chat with anyone who happens to be around. A good place to keep up-to-date on the plot.

Also, if you come here when you have less than 5 gold, you can find 5 gold by selecting the "talk" function - useful if your party was wiped out and you can't afford to heal at the inn. Unfortunately it seems that doing this causes your Luck to decrease by one point each time, which is a Bad Thing.

M.Guild (Rosasor Magic Guild)
As you might guess, this is where you learn magic. Don't bother trying to use the facilities here until at least one of your characters knows the 'Scroll' ability. When that's done, you have two options: you can research spells (see 3.5) or buy them.

Inn (Chris' Inn)
Back in the realm of convention, you can rest or save your game here. Actually you can save your game anywhere in Shanoah just by going to the main menu, so that feature is rather redundant, isn't it? Note that resting here won't heal status ailments - for that, you'll have to go to the temple.

Also, you'll wake up here whenever your party is annihilated. The game seems to pretend in such cases that you were just "having a bad dream"...

Castle (Reynard Castle)
You'll find King Reynard here, a good source of background info to the plot. A king you can just walk in from the streets and chat with - now there's a good example for that nice Windsor lady, eh?

Temple (Saviour Temple)
Even the atheists among you will quickly grow to love this place. The first option in here will remove status ailments - and it doesn't cost a penny! The second option allows you to make a donation; it's expensive, but well worth the money: & 80 gold: increase your characters' max MP
 * 10 gold: restore HP and MP (don't bother, the inn is cheaper)
 * 40 gold: raise your characters' Luck
 * 70 gold: raise several stats for each character
 * 80 gold: increase your characters' max HP

Guild (Tacs' Guild)
This is where you go to change jobs. If you don't read kanji, you could try the visual conversion chart available from my site.

Researching spells
When you have the "Scroll" ability, go to the Magic Guild and select the first option. This is the centre of the game's magic system; unless you master research, you're stuck with the basic four spells, and you'll have to pay a fortune for them. (For example, if you buy Wind Cutter, it'll set you back 160 gold. If you research it, it costs just 12 gold, and the buying price will drop to 112!)

You're presented with a grid of 18 stones (initially 15 - see below), and you can create a formula of up to five glyphs (you can use the same one more than once). When you've done so, select "OK", and Kofu will research the spell which they represent. Here, for reference, is the grid: Glyph name                     | Price, glyph class --+ Earth        Water         Fire            Wind      | 2: genso (elemental) Liquefaction Vaporisation  Solidification  Division  | 4: jotai (phase change) Sword        Armour        Shield          Feather   | 6: baitai (medium) Horn         Blood         Bone            Flesh     | 6: baitai Thunder      Heaven                                  |10: kaosu (chaos) The fee for the research is based on the glyphs you use. It's done by the row they appear in (see numbers). Just add up the values for each glyph. Of course, you can just try it, and he'll tell you what the price will be, but I thought you might like to know how it works...

I mentioned above that there are initially only 15 stones to choose from. The other three are missing, but if you find them and bring them back to the guild Kofu will put them in the grid. Here's where to find them. There's one other thing. You're probably thinking, "Great! But what formulae do I use?" That's where the spell list (4.6) becomes rather useful. Thanks to the complete decipherment of the "strange poems", plus a considerable amount of trial and error (mostly by others), the formulae for all spells are now known. You too can be a deadly warrior-mage... for a price, of course.
 * Medium: Shield - Masaki Head (during "Ed and Karon")
 * Chaos: Thunder - Toras Forest (during "Death-Creature" only)
 * Chaos: Heaven - Sealed Cave (see 5.1 2F, note)