Alpha:Races

Regular Races

There are seven regular races, each of which can convert glyphs (magic spells/skills) into a different permanent bonus.

Race	Converts glyphs to...	Unlock	Strategy
Human	+10% Damage Bonus	Start	Great for beginners and Rogues/Berserkers
Elf	+2 Maximum Mana	Start	Amazing Wizards.
Dwarf	+1 Max Health per level*	Start
Hafling	+1 Healing Potion	Start	Great for many challenge missions.
Gnome	+1 Mana Potion	Start
Goblin	+10 gold	Defeat the Crypt challenge with any race.	Natural fit for tinkers. Goblin Wizards are useful for farming gold.
Orc	+5 experience	Defeat the Library challenge with any race.	Extra experience at will makes leveling up to heal much easier. Good for Assassins.

• Health Powerups and the Dwarf's Glyph Conversion increase your total percentage of Max Health: you immediately gain +1 per level when converting the glyph, but you also get an additional +1 when you gain future levels as well. Overall, this amounts to a 10% increase to your Max Health, no matter when you convert the glyph.

Special races

In addition, 3 special races exist as unlockables, that are a both a race and class together. Each of these three cause significant changes to the core mechanics of the game.

Gorgon

• Starts with ENDISWAL Glyph
• -50% Damage Bonus at start
• 50% Physical Resist
• Poison Attack (can poison Undead)
• Immune to Death Gaze
• +2 Mana per kill
• Every enemy killed in any manner will become a wall
• 10% Death Gaze, gains an additional 5% for every glyph converted

Once the enemy's HP is below your Death Gaze percentage, attacking them with melee will cause your damage to be exactly the HP required to instantly kill them. The Death Gaze percentage and resulting damage is unaffected by resistances. This damage may be lower than your actual current Attack, so keep this in mind for increasing the Damage score in Ranked games -- though this often won't matter so much with the Gorgon's low Damage Bonus.

You do not have First Strike, unlike enemy Gorgons. The petrification on kill counts towards the Earthmother's reward, but it does not count towards any Score rewards. However, since all enemies you kill will be petrified, you may have to use ENDISWAL a lot: plan for this extra mana cost requirement, and note that the Earthmother will punish you for using it if you choose her. And remember that the Gorgon only starts with Physical Resistance: Dragonspawn, Warlocks and Wraiths will still do full damage to you.

Half Dragon

• 200% Max Health at start
• Magical Attack
• Increased Sight Radius (same effect as Scouting Orb, all tiles touching an explored tile will be partially uncovered, allowing you to see what type of object lies there)
• BURNDAYRAZ glyph costs 99 Mana, preventing its use
• 20% Knockback, gains an additional 20% for every glyph converted

Knockback causes enemies to go flying in the direction you hit them when you use a melee attack, unless another enemy is in the way. If they hit a wall, they will destroy it. Knockback is calculated from your Base Damage and applies damage when an enemy destroys a wall or hits another enemy. When knocked back into another enemy, Knockback damage is halved and applied to both enemies. Finally, the enemy you knocked your target into will never die from the Knockback: they will be left at 1 HP minimum and lose a level of Death Protection if they have one.

Since they can't use BURNDAYRAZ, it's best converted as soon as you see it. Knockback is a good way of breaking walls past high-level enemies or even dealing early damage to them by knocking enemies into them. Knockback damage is also left unaffected by Mystera's restriction and is not affected by damage resists. Be wary of enemies with Magical Resist, as Knockback is the only solid way you have of dealing damage to them. And note that if you deal more damage to a particular enemy if you knock them into a wall instead of another enemy. Finally, although they have high max health, remember that they still have the same health regeneration as standard classes.

Vampire

• 30 Max Health at start, instead of 10
• 3 Health Potions at start, instead of 1
• Gains 7 Base Damage per level, instead of 5
• No Health Regen - you lose 1 HP per tile explored instead
• First Strike
• Immune to Poison
• Immune to Mana Burn
• Can sense the locations of all monsters of equal or lower level
• Spells cost Health instead of Mana
• Restores 10% of Max Health from blood pools
• 25% Life Steal, gains an additional 5% for every glyph converted

Life Steal causes you to get back a percentage of your Total Damage you dealt as Health when you use a melee attack. So if you hit a monster for 50 damage, you'd recover 12 Health with 25% Life Steal.

Vampire is tricky at the start since you're reliant on enemies you can kill being close-by. You can only explore 30 tiles before you need to drink a Health Potion or steal some life. Once you've gained a couple of levels though, your increased Health and Damage makes taking on almost any enemy a breeze. Do note that the extra Max Health to begin with is simply an increase of 20: unlike the Half-Dragon, you will still only get an additional 10 HP per level barring Health Powerup bonuses. Also, First Strike does not let you go before other enemies with First Strike, and the lack of regen means that Gorgons can pose a minor threat if you're not careful. The increased Base Damage means that effects that increase your Damage Bonus are even more potent as well.