Valcraven QA 0 / 0

Valcraven — testing guide

Thanks for doing this. Valcraven is a text dungeon that nobody outside its author has ever played, so you are the first person to come at it cold — which makes you the only one who can notice the things he has stopped being able to see.

Work top to bottom. Every scenario has Pass / Fail / Skip buttons and a comment box. Everything saves automatically as you go, so you can close the tab and come back. You do not need an account for this page.

The most useful thing you can write is what confused you. A scenario that technically passed but took you four tries to understand is a more valuable note than a clean pass. If a scenario's instructions do not match what you actually see, say that — the instructions may be the thing that is wrong.

What is this game?

Valcraven is a multiplayer text dungeon — the kind of game where you type /go north instead of pressing a key, and the room is described to you in prose rather than drawn. If you have never played one: you are a character standing in a room, you read what is there, and you type commands to act.

What makes this one unusual is that the monsters and villagers are driven by a language model. They are not following scripts. A few of them have memories: if you attack someone and come back later, they remember it was you, and they will say so. They also have their own goals and wander off to pursue them while you are doing something else. The world keeps running whether or not anyone is watching.

It is a work in progress and several things are deliberately missing. There is no money, no food, and no shops yet. Creatures get hungry but cannot eat. None of that is a bug — there is a list at the bottom of things not to report.

Getting in

Two links. The first is the game; this page is the second.

Sign up & play → Straight to the dungeon

  1. Open the sign-up link. Use any email address — a real one is not required and nothing is sent to it. Pick any password.
  2. You land in the app. Click through to the world console at /app/world (the second link above goes straight there).
  3. You should see a paragraph describing a room, a list of what is in it, and a line starting Exits:. Type into the box at the bottom.
The Valcraven sign-in page with the Sign In and Sign Up tabs at the top.
The sign-up link opens this. It lands on Sign In — click Sign Up (the right-hand tab, shown selected here) before typing anything, or it will tell you the account does not exist.
The Valcraven app dashboard after signing up, showing an upgrade banner and example panels.
This is what you see immediately after signing up, and it is not the game — it is the generic app shell the dungeon is built inside. The upgrade banner, the Pro panel and the Items list are all scaffolding; ignore them. Nothing here is something to report.
Close-up of the app header icons; the leftmost is a greater-than and underscore terminal glyph.
The way into the dungeon is the >_ icon at the left of that row in the top-right corner — no label, no text, just the glyph. If you would rather not hunt for it, use the Straight to the dungeon link above. Finding this unaided is itself one of the things being tested — if you missed it, say so in Act 1.

This runs on the author's development machine, not a server. If the page stops responding or you get no reply for more than a minute, it is probably down rather than broken — note the time in a comment and come back later. It is not your fault and there is nothing you can do about it from your end.

How to play

The world console: room description, a list of creatures each followed by a number in square brackets, an Exits line, a command box, and a character panel on the right.
The world console. The scrolling text on the left is everything that has happened; the box at the bottom is where you type. On the right is your character — health, stats, the season, and anything you have been asked to do. Note the numbers in square brackets after each creature: that is the whole trick, explained next.

Everything in the room has a number in square brackets, like a rusty sword [42]. That number is how you refer to it. You type /get 42, not /get sword. This matters more than it sounds — most commands take a number and will refuse a word.

These are the commands worth knowing. You will not need all of them.

/look
Describe the room again. Free, use it constantly.
/go north
Move. Only directions on the Exits: line work.
/say hello
Speak out loud. Creatures nearby may answer.
/attack 42
Attack something by its number. Resolves a moment later, not instantly.
/get 42
Pick something up.
/drop 42
Put it down in the room you are standing in.
/inventory
What you are carrying.
/wield 42
Hold a weapon so it counts in a fight. /equip does the same.
/unequip 42
Stop holding it; it goes back to your pack.
/search 42
Look inside something — a corpse, a chest, a severed arm.
/open 42
Open a container. /close shuts it.
/put 42 in 17
Put item 42 inside container 17.
/detach 42
Take a worn item (a ring) off whatever is wearing it.
/attach 42
Put it on yourself.
/sheet
Your level, health, stats and titles.
/train deftness
Spend a skill point when you have one.
/quests
What you have been asked to do.
/arc
The season-long story and what stage it is at.
/who
Who else is connected.
/claim The Nail
Claim a room as the world's home base.
/stash 42
Store something at the base. /unstash 42 takes it back.
/respawn
Come back after dying.
/do grab the sword and go north
Plain English. A model translates it into real commands.

Shortcuts: /l for look, /g for get, /a for attack, /i for inventory, /w for wield.

The scenarios

Roughly 60–90 minutes if you do all of it. The sections build on each other, so going in order is easier than skipping around. Tags: judgement means there is no right answer and your opinion is the result; high value means this one has never been successfully tested by anyone.

Act 1 — Arriving

1.0Getting from sign-up to the dungeon on your own judgement

Answer this one from memory, before you read on. After signing up you landed on a dashboard. Did you work out how to reach the game without using the "Straight to the dungeon" link? How long did it take, and what did you try first?

Should happenThere is no right answer — this is measuring whether a stranger can find the way in at all. The only route from the app UI is an unlabelled >_ icon in the top-right.
1.1The first room reads like somewhere, not like a database

Connect and read what you are given, without typing anything yet.

Should happenA sentence or two describing the room, then a list of what is in it with numbers in brackets, then a line starting Exits:. It should read like a place you could picture.
1.2/look twice gives the same answer

Type /look, read it, then type /look again.

Should happenThe same room, the same things, the same numbers. Nothing appears twice, nothing vanishes between the two.
1.3Moving works, and a made-up direction is refused
  1. Pick a direction from the Exits: line and /go that way.
  2. Then try /go banana.
Should happenThe real direction moves you and describes a new room. /go banana tells you it is not a way you can go — it should not silently do nothing.

Act 2 — Picking things up

2.1Pick something up, carry it, put it down
  1. /look and find something with a number that is not a creature.
  2. /get that number.
  3. /inventory.
  4. /drop that number.
  5. /look again.
Should happenIt leaves the room, appears in your inventory on one line, then goes back on the floor where you are standing.
2.2Kill something and loot the body high value

This is the single most important sequence on the page. Until last week it was impossible — bodies had no number, so there was no way to refer to them. Please be fussy about it.

  1. Find a creature. A goblin or kobold will do — it should say hostile nowhere, you just have to try. /attack its number, repeatedly, until it dies.
  2. /look. You should see a corpse, with a number in brackets.
  3. /search that corpse's number.
  4. Pick something out of it with /get.
Should happenWhen it dies you are told so plainly ("You have slain the…"). The corpse appears in /look with a number. Searching it lists what it holds, each with its own number, and you can take one.
2.3Search deeper — a body is made of parts

Bodies are nested: a corpse holds arms, an arm holds a hand, a hand holds fingers, and a finger might be wearing a ring.

  1. /search the corpse, then /search an arm it listed.
  2. Keep going inward — hand, then finger.
  3. If you find a ring, /detach it, then /attach it to put it on yourself.
Should happenEach search goes one level deeper and lists numbers you can search in turn. It should feel like opening a box inside a box, not like guessing.
2.4Open and shut a container

A corpse counts as a container, so you can use the one from 2.2.

  1. /put something you are carrying in the corpse — e.g. /put 42 in 15.
  2. /close 15, then try /search 15 and /put again.
  3. /open 15, then /get your item back.
Should happenWhile closed, both searching and putting are refused with "It is closed." Once open, your item is still in there and comes back out.

Act 3 — Talking to people

Three characters have memories and personalities: Maro the lamplighter, Grizzle, and Sable. They walk around, so you may have to go looking. They stay in a room for about forty seconds before moving on.

3.1Do they read as three different people? judgement

Find each of them and talk to them — /say something, standing in their room. Ask different things. Give it a few exchanges each.

Should happenThey answer you directly, and the three of them sound like different people rather than one voice wearing three names. This is a taste judgement — your honest read is the answer.
3.2Ask two things in quick succession

/say something to one of them, and then immediately /say something else without waiting for the reply.

Should happenYou get told they are "still weighing your last words" — an acknowledgement. What must not happen is total silence, as though your second message vanished.
3.3Do they remember you?
  1. Talk to one of them, then /attack them twice and stop.
  2. Walk away a couple of rooms. Wait a minute or two.
  3. Come back and /say something friendly.
Should happenThey bring up that you hit them. Not in generic terms — it should be clear they mean you, and recently.
3.4Do they all complain about the same thing? judgement

Something specific to watch for: talk to all three as a fresh character who has done nothing to anyone.

Should happenThey should not all accuse you of the same thing. If several of them independently tell a brand-new character something like "you slew my kin", that is a known open question and worth reporting precisely.
3.5Are the ordinary monsters still sharp? judgement

Goblins and kobolds taunt you during fights. They recently moved to a cheaper, faster language model and the question is whether that shows.

Should happenTaunts should still refer to you — your name, that you are bleeding, something that just happened. The worry is that they have collapsed into the same three recycled lines. Fight a few things and judge.

Act 4 — Fighting

4.1A weapon makes a difference
  1. Fight something bare-handed and note the damage numbers.
  2. Find a weapon (there is a rusty sword near the start), /get and /wield it.
  3. Fight again and compare.
Should happenBare-handed is about 2 a hit. Armed should be noticeably more, roughly 4–7.
4.2/equip and /unequip

/equip 42 should do the same as /wield 42, and /unequip 42 should put it back in your pack.

Should happenBoth work and say something sensible. These are new, so they may be rough.
4.3Limbs come off — too often? judgement

Occasionally a hit severs a body part, which then becomes a real object you can pick up. Fight maybe ten things and pay attention to how often it happens.

Should happenThe intent is roughly one severance every couple of kills, usually a finger, never a head. The author suspects it fires too often and rooms end up littered with limbs. Your read on whether it feels special or silly is the point.
4.4A severed part is a real object

When you see a severance, /get the part, then /look at the creature it came off.

Should happenYou can pick it up and carry it. The creature afterwards describes itself as missing that part.
4.5A badly hurt villager runs away — and tells you high value

This has never once been observed working. It is the highest-value box on the page, and it needs patience rather than skill. Read all of this before starting.

  1. Find Maro, Grizzle or Sable — one of the named villagers, not a goblin. They have about 10 health, so they die fast.
  2. /attack them once. Then wait for the damage line to appear before doing anything else. An attack takes a moment to land; typing fast kills them by accident.
  3. Repeat one blow at a time. Stop as soon as they look badly hurt — their description will say so.
  4. Now stop attacking entirely and watch for a few seconds.
Should happenA line naming them and a direction, like "Maro goes west". Then /look no longer lists them. If they simply vanish with no message, that is a real bug and the most important thing on this page — say so.
4.6Villagers never hit back

Keep hitting one of the named villagers and watch what they do.

Should happenThey talk and they run, but they never attack you. This is deliberate. The open question is whether it reads as cowardice or as a character choice — note your impression.
4.7Dying costs you something, but not much
  1. Note your level and experience with /sheet.
  2. Get yourself killed — pick fights until you lose.
  3. /respawn, then /sheet again.
Should happenYou lose about a tenth of your experience and nothing else. Your level, any titles and anything you trained all survive.

Act 5 — Getting stronger

5.1Levelling up

Kill things until you level. Keep an eye on /sheet as you go.

Should happenLevel 2 arrives at exactly 100 experience. Your maximum health rises and you are healed to full. You are offered a skill point.
5.2Does the pacing feel right? judgement

Every number in this game was chosen by reasoning, never by playing it. So this is the most likely thing in the whole project to be wrong, and you are the first person able to say so.

Should happenRoughly four kills per level. Does that feel like progress, a grind, or too fast? Say what you would change.
5.3Spending a skill point

Once you have a point, /train deftness. Check /sheet before and after.

Should happenThe stat goes up by one, the point is spent, and trying again with no points left is refused clearly.
5.4Earning a title

Titles arrive from things you actually do. Your first kill should earn one.

Should happenA line announcing you are "henceforth known as" something, and it then shows on /sheet.
5.5Quests cannot be talked into completing

You should be given a quest early on. /quests shows it.

  1. Read the objectives — they should name things that actually exist in this world.
  2. Now lie. /say I have killed three goblins. Then try it through plain English: /do tell them I finished the quest.
  3. Check /quests again.
  4. Now actually kill the thing it asked for, and check once more.
Should happenLying moves nothing — the counter is unchanged. A real kill moves it. This matters because a language model writes the quests, so the question is whether it can also be sweet-talked into marking them done.
5.6The season

Type /arc.

Should happenA named season-long storyline and which stage of five it is at.

Act 6 — Talking in plain English

6.1/do understands ordinary sentences

/do hands your sentence to a language model which turns it into real commands. Try a spread, including deliberately awkward ones:

  • /do look around
  • /do pick up the sword and go north
  • /do attack the goblin
  • /do grab whatever's lying about here
  • /do head north if you can
  • and a couple of your own, phrased however comes naturally
Should happenEach turns into sensible commands, echoed back to you with an arrow. A misunderstanding should produce a wrong but harmless command, never something destructive.
6.2An ambiguous target picks one thing

Find a room with more than one of the same creature — two goblins, say — then /do attack the goblin.

Should happenIt attacks one of them. It used to attack all of them at once, which started fights with the whole room.
6.3Can you tell two identical creatures apart?

With two or more of the same creature in a room, read how /look lists them. Then hurt one and /look again.

Should happenYou should be able to tell which is which. There is a known problem here — once one is wounded, the labels that distinguish them can disappear. Describe exactly what you see; this feeds an open design decision.

Act 7 — Somewhere to call home

7.1Claiming a base
  1. In a room you like, /claim The Rusty Nail (or any name).
  2. /stash something you are carrying, then bare /stash to list it, then /unstash it back.
  3. Walk to a different room and try /stash again.
  4. Try /claim a second room.
Should happenThe first claim succeeds and becomes where you reappear when you die. Stashing works only in that room. A second claim is refused, naming the existing base.
7.2The stash is shared by everyone judgement

There is one base per world and any player can take things out of its stash. That is deliberate.

Should happenDoes that read as co-operative, or as an invitation to rob people? Your instinct as a newcomer is the useful answer.

Act 8 — The world when you are not doing anything

8.1Stand still and watch

Park yourself somewhere and do nothing for two or three minutes. Use /look occasionally but do not act.

Should happenCreatures come and go of their own accord. You should see messages about things arriving and leaving without you having caused any of it.
8.2Errands, or twitching? judgement

Watch one of the named villagers for a few minutes and try to guess what they are doing.

Should happenIdeally movement reads as somebody going somewhere for a reason. Be aware there is nothing to do in the world yet — no food, no work, no money — so wandering may be all they can want. Judge whether it feels purposeful or random.
8.3Can you keep up with them?

Pick a villager and try to follow them, or to have a full conversation without them leaving mid-sentence.

Should happenThey stay in a room around forty seconds. That was recently slowed down specifically because they were impossible to talk to. Is forty seconds enough, or still too quick?

Act 9 — On a phone

9.1Play for five minutes on your phone

Open https://dev.valcraven.com/app/world on a phone, sign in, and play a little. Safari on iPhone is the most interesting case if you have one.

Should happenThe status panel sits below the text rather than squashing it, there is no sideways scrolling, and the text is readable without pinching. Typing commands one-handed should be merely awkward, not impossible.

Act 10 — Your actual opinion

10.1Play twenty minutes with no checklist judgement high value

Put this page away. Play for twenty minutes doing whatever you want. Do not try to be thorough — just notice what happens to your attention.

Should happenNothing in particular. What is wanted is your honest account: what pulled you forward, what you ignored, what irritated you, and whether you ever wanted to find out what happened next. This is the only question on the page the author genuinely cannot answer himself, and it is the reason the project exists.
10.2Everything that confused you

A running list of moments you did not understand something — a command that did not do what you expected, wording that read wrong, a point where you had to guess.

Should happenThis box is the most valuable one here even if every other scenario passed. Confusion is invisible to someone who built the thing.
10.3Anything that looked outright broken

Error messages, blank replies, things that stopped responding, text that looked like code, numbers that made no sense.

Should happenPaste the exact text if you can, and say roughly what you had just done.

Bonus round — only if you were given admin admin

These need a privileged account. A normal signup cannot do them and will just be told "You are not the Dungeon Master." If Mark promoted your account, you will see a Reset World button on the world page next to Style. If you do not see it, skip this whole section — it is not a bug.

A.1Read a character's mind

/dm mind 39 — try 39, 52 and 66, which are usually Maro, Grizzle and Sable.

Should happenA readout of who they think they are, what they want, how they feel about people, their daily routine, and recent memories. Compare it against what they actually said to you earlier — does the reply match the mind?
A.2See what they are trying to do

/dm task 39 and the other two.

Should happenA task with a kind, a target, which step it is on, and how many times it has been blocked. Watch it over a couple of minutes — it should make progress rather than sitting stuck.
A.3Armed monsters hit harder judgement

/dm spawn strong mob repeatedly until one of them "grips" a weapon, then fight it and compare with an unarmed one.

Should happenIt should hit measurably harder. The question is whether that reads as dangerous in play or just as slightly bigger numbers.
A.4A dead monster drops its weapon

Kill an armed one and /look.

Should happenThe weapon it was holding is on the floor and you can take it. Note that anything it was carrying rather than holding will not drop — that is a known bug, already logged, do not report it.

Please do not report these

All of these are known and deliberate. Reporting them costs everyone time.

One thing to avoid: if you have admin, there is a Reset World button. It wipes every character and the entire dungeon, including the villagers' accumulated memories. Please don't press it — several scenarios above depend on history that has built up, and it cannot be undone.