Dycedarg's Academy

Location & Access

Where: Shop. Location: villagename capital (default, configurable via the academyloc setting).

Prerequisites: None. Available immediately.

One-Time Purchase: Once hired, the Squire is permanent (barring your own death). You cannot hire a second one.

Hiring Your Squire

The Pitch: Dycedarg Beoulve — a tall knight with a lion on his cape and a well-groomed beard — offers to indoctrinate you a protégé for a price in gems (setting cost, default 10). Pay up, and the Squire is yours until death (yours, not his).

Initial Setup:

• Name is assigned automatically, drawn at random from the module's configured name list (default pool: Sirius Menitiroso, Galahad Gallant, Tim Jones, John Smith, Brogarh Romthor). You don't choose it — you can only pay to change it later.
• Squire starts at level 0, class 0 (Squire rank).
• Base damage and accuracy start at the module defaults (see Combat Mechanics below).

Companion Progression System

Leveling Is Earned in the Training Ground, Not by Playing the Game

Forget "levels up automatically every few player levels" — that isn't how it works. Your Squire's level is completely decoupled from your own. Instead, every time you win a fight at the training grounds, your Squire's readiness counter (lsl) ticks up by one, capped at the level setting (default: 5). Regular forest fights, PvP, and the graveyard don't move this counter — only training-ground victories do.

Once that counter hits the threshold, the game tells you your Squire "should be able to level up now," and a new nav option appears back at the Academy Hall: Train [Class]. Clicking it doesn't trigger a real fight with a win/loss roll — it's a short scripted vignette in which your Squire always beats Dycedarg in a sparring match, and the Squire's level increases by 1. Any counter progress beyond the threshold carries over toward the next level.

In short: level ups are gated behind training-ground grinding plus a manual visit to the Academy — there is no way to level a Squire purely by leveling yourself.

The Three Ranks

Rank is a separate track from level — it's the class pref (0 = Squire, 1 = Knight, 2 = Warlord). A Squire caps out at the knight setting (default level 10), a Knight caps at the warlord setting (default level 20), and a Warlord caps at the max setting (default level 50).

When your Squire's level reaches its class cap, an Advance Class option appears at the Academy Hall. This, too, is a nav click rather than a fight — accepting it promotes the class by one tier and resets both level and the training-victory counter back to 0. Warlord is the final tier; a maxed-out Warlord has nowhere left to advance and Dycedarg tells you so.

Combat Mechanics

How the Squire Fights

Buff System: The Squire is implemented as a minion buff (battle-academy). It's (re)applied at the start of a fight and stripped again on victory, so it has to reapply every combat.

Coverage: The Squire sits out of PvP unless the pvp setting is enabled. Training-ground fights are a different story: the code checks a setting named train, but the module never actually defines a setting by that name (only training exists in its settings list, and nothing ever reads it). That lookup always comes back empty, which the code treats as "off" — so the Squire sits out of every training-ground bout, permanently, no matter what an admin sets. There is no working toggle for this; it's a naming mismatch in the code, not a configuration choice. Which means, ironically, your Squire never fights in the very training bouts that level it up.

Round Message: "`%[name] `6strikes `${badguy} `6for `^{damage}`6 damage!" — Warlord-class Squires get two of these per round (dual wield).

Damage Formula

The base damage range comes from the mindmg/maxdmg settings (defaults 1/3), each with the current Squire level added on top:

• Minimum damage is mindmg + level — full stop, regardless of class. Neither the Knight nor the Warlord multiplier ever touches the floor of the damage range.
• Maximum damage depends on class:
  • Squire: maxdmg + level (no multiplier).
  • Knight: round((maxdmg + level) × boost-knight%) (default multiplier 115%).
  • Warlord: round((maxdmg + level) × boost-warlord%) (default multiplier 115%), plus a second simultaneous attack (dual wield).

So the class bonus only ever inflates the top of the damage range (and, for Warlords, the number of swings) — it never scales the minimum roll.

Accuracy Roll

Each attack rolls against the Squire's acc pref (starting default 65%). Miss and the swing still lands for something — the damage range collapses to 0 up to the module's flat maxdmg setting, not zero across the board.

Companion Death — Tied to Your Death, Not Random Combat Chance

The Squire does not have its own HP and cannot be killed by taking hits in a fight. It dies exactly once per life: when you die. The module listens for the game's own death hooks (shades and graveyard) and marks the Squire dead the moment your character does — with one carve-out: dying inside the Battle Arena module does not kill your Squire. Every other flavor of death does.

Effects of Squire death: the battle-academy buff is stripped, and the dead pref is set — the Squire stops fighting and stops rolling for the daily buff until revived.

Daily Buff — "Squire's Melody"

Trigger: On newday, if the Squire is active and alive, there's an ndchance% roll (default 25%) for a buff.

Buff Applied: internal id academy, display name "Squire's Melody".

• Effect: +10% attack, +10% defense (fixed 1.1× multipliers, not configurable per rank).
• Duration: a random 5–25 rounds.
• Message: "The tune of your Squire's melody empowers you." Wears off with "The tune of your Squire's melody slowly fades amongst the wind..."

Separately, every newday also resets your once-daily accuracy-training attempt (see below), whether or not the melody buff procs.

A Side Effect You Might Not Notice: Tougher Encounters

Having an active, living Squire also nudges forest encounters: a slice of the creature's EXP is diverted away from you and toward "training" (controlled by the exp setting, default 5%), and the creature's own attack and defense get bumped up — by roughly 5% for a Squire, or by the Knight/Warlord damage multiplier for higher ranks. In other words, the Squire isn't a pure free lunch: fights get somewhat harder and slightly less lucrative in EXP while it's around, in exchange for the extra damage it deals.

Academy Management Options

Rename Your Companion

Cost: re gold setting (default 1000 gold). No limit on how many times you can do this.

Train Accuracy — Free, Once a Day, RNG-Gated

There is no gold cost to accuracy training — none. Once per day (until tacc is reset at newday), you can send your Squire to the range. The roll is a 1-in-4 chance: three faces succeed (+1% accuracy, and today's attempt is used up), the fourth face fails outright with no gain — and critically, a failed roll does not consume the daily attempt, so you can keep retrying the same day until you either land a success or stop trying. Training is only offered while current accuracy is at or below the miss setting (default cap 85%); past that, Dycedarg tells you the Squire is "about as accurate as he is going to get."

Revive Dead Companion — At the Academy, Not the Graveyard

Location: Back at Dycedarg's Academy itself (Academy Hall → Revive nav), not the graveyard and not a Bellatrix's-favors option. The flavor text has Dycedarg "bargain with Bellatrix" on your behalf, but mechanically it's a straightforward Academy transaction.

Cost: the favor setting (default 25) deducted straight from your deathpower stat.

Process: visit the Academy Hall while your Squire is dead → click "Revive [Class] ([N] Favor)" → if you have enough deathpower, it's spent and the Squire is restored, retaining its level, class, accuracy, and name.

Strategy

Is It Worth Hiring?

Yes. A flat, cheap one-time gem cost for a companion that scales indefinitely (up to level 50) and only dies alongside you.

• Cost: a handful of gems, once, ever.
• Progression is grind-gated, not passive: you have to actively farm training-ground wins and click through the level-up flow — it won't happen just from playing normally elsewhere.
• Daily Buff: a modest chance at a free +10%/+10% buff each morning.

Training Priority

1. Attempt accuracy training daily. It's free, and failures don't cost you the attempt, so there's no reason not to try every day until you cap out.

2. Farm training-ground victories if you want your Squire to actually level — nothing else moves that counter.

3. Rename if desired. Purely cosmetic, costs real gold, low priority.

Death Management

Your Squire dies whenever you do (outside the Battle Arena). Keep a little deathpower in reserve if you want to revive it promptly rather than fighting shorthanded until you can afford the Academy's fee.

Admin Configuration

Settings:

• cost: Gem cost to hire a Squire (int, default: 10)
• re: Gold cost to rename the Squire (int, default: 1000)
• favor: Deathpower cost to revive a fallen Squire (int, default: 25)
• level: Training-ground victories needed per level-up (range 1-15, default: 5)
• knight: Squire level at which class advances to Knight (int, default: 10)
• warlord: Knight level at which class advances to Warlord (int, default: 20)
• max: Max level of an indoctrinated fighter (int, default: 50)
• exp: % of creature EXP diverted to Squire training in battle (range 0-100, default: 5)
• pvp: Does the Squire fight in PvP? (bool, default: off)
• training: Defined as a bool (default: off) but never actually read anywhere in the module — the training-fight check looks up a different, nonexistent setting name (train) instead, so this setting has no effect. The Squire cannot be made to fight in training-ground bouts at all, regardless of this value.
• academyloc: Location of the Academy (default: capital villagename)
• names: Comma-separated pool of names randomly assigned on hire
• miss: Max trainable accuracy % (range 0-100, default: 85)
• mindmg / maxdmg: Base damage range (defaults: 1 / 3)
• ndchance: Chance per newday of the "Squire's Melody" buff (range 1-100, default: 25)
• boost-knight / boost-warlord: Max-damage multiplier for Knight / Warlord class (range 100-200, default: 115%)

User Preferences:

• active: Has the user indoctrinated a Squire? (bool)
• dead: Is the Squire dead? (bool)
• name: Squire's name (text)
• lsl: Training-ground victories accrued since the last level-up (int)
• level: Squire's current level (int)
• acc: Current accuracy % (range 1-100, default: 65)
• tacc: Has the user trained accuracy today? (bool, resets at newday)
• class: Squire's class (enum: Squire/Knight/Warlord)

Technical Details

Hooks Used: creatureencounter, newday, battle, battle-victory, training-victory, village, changesetting, charstats, shades, graveyard, biostat.

Death is wired through the shades and graveyard hooks (with an explicit exemption for the Battle Arena module), not a random per-hit roll during combat. Leveling is wired through training-victory (a counter increment) plus a manual op in the module's own UI (the actual level-up), not any automatic formula tied to player level.

Lore & Flavor

Dycedarg: Master trainer. Runs the Academy for combat companions. Assigns Squires — sight unseen, name unchosen — to whoever pays up.

Squire Journey: Young trainee → experienced Knight → legendary Warlord, provided you're willing to grind training-ground victories and show up in person for each promotion. Nobody advances on autopilot here — Dycedarg insists on watching you (well, your proxy) beat him personally.

Companion Bond: Fights by your side (where enabled). Occasionally serenades you into competence at dawn. Shares your fate exactly — it does not fall in battle so much as it falls when you do, which is either touching or mildly alarming depending on how you look at it.

Common Questions

Q: Can I hire multiple squires?
A: No. One companion per character. You can pay to rename it, but not to duplicate it.

Q: Does my companion gain levels just from me playing normally?
A: No. Only training-ground victories advance the level counter, and even then you must manually visit the Academy to cash the counter in for a level.

Q: What happens if my companion dies?
A: It only dies when you do (except in the Battle Arena). Visit the Academy Hall, pay deathpower to revive — no graveyard trip needed.

Q: Does accuracy training cost gold?
A: No. It's free — a once-daily 75%-odds coin flip, and a failed flip doesn't even burn your daily attempt.

Q: Does the daily buff stack with other buffs?
A: Yes, "Squire's Melody" stacks with potions, spells, and equipment like any other buff.

Q: Does my companion fight in PvP or training?
A: PvP, only if the module's pvp setting is turned on (default off). Training-ground bouts, never — the code that's supposed to check the training setting actually checks a different, nonexistent setting name, so the toggle can't be turned on by anyone, admin included. Treat it as permanently off.