UI Basics and Beyond Guide

Overview

Project Gorgon has a pretty spiffy User Interface (or at least, it does in the Steam release; we don’t talk about the earlier UIs) but there’s a lot of stuff for a new player to figure out. This guide will teach you lots of tips and tricks for using the Project Gorgon UI so you can totally wipe the floor with all the UI nubs out there (note: will not actually allow you to wipe the floor with UI nubs even in a figurative sense, this isn’t how this actually works). Even veterans might pick up a pointer or two.

Changing combat skills

To switch combat skills – e.g. archery, psychology, fire magic – right-click on one of your bottom skill bars, the one with the skill you want to replace. From the menu that pops up, hover over “Change Skill,” then choose your new skill from that submenu.

Now you can drag-and-drop the abilities on that bar to rearrange them; you can also right-click the bar again and select “Choose Archery Abilities” or “Choose Psychology Abilities” or whatever, which brings up the Abilities tab for that skill.

Don’t see the combat skill you want listed? You need to learn it first. You don’t necessarily know how to shoot a bow just because you bought that bow from a vendor and equipped it.

Hotbars and you

Combat abilities can only go on the bottom two hotbars, and each of those two hotbars can only accept abilities from one combat skill. Both bars can be set to the same combat skill, but this is largely pointless to do because those two bars will automatically change to match one another (once you learn more than 6 abilities in a skill, you need to pick and choose which abilities to keep on your bar and which to go without).

Special Abilities – the abilities under the first entry on your Skills and Abilities list – can only go on your sidebar. Many of these abilities are powered by items in your inventory – spore bombs, first aid kits, et cetera – but you need to put the ability on the sidebar, not the item. To get to your Special Abilities, open Skills and Abilities (the wand/staff icon on the right side of the screen), Special Abilities will be at the top.

Items from your inventory can go on any of your hotbars. Selecting an inventory item on your hotbar uses it, as if you’d double-clicked it in the inventory (see “Double-clicking” below). This is most useful for stuff like potions and bacon. Don’t try it with stuff like first aid kits and spore bombs, you need to use the ability instead (see above).

Double-clicking inventory items

Double-left-click items in your inventory to use them.

Double-click equipment to wear it or remove it. Double-click food to eat it. Double-click drinks and potions to drink them. Double-click coin purses to open them. Double-click books and recipes to read or learn them. Double-click seeds and seedlings to plant them. Double-click goblin calling cards to translate them. Double-click perfect wood to break it down. Double-click survey maps and treasure maps to consult them. Double-click unidentified art to appraise it. And so on.

There’s no need to right-click and select from a menu every time.

Right-clicking inventory items

You probably already know about right-clicking on items in your inventory, but if you don’t you definitely need to. You can split stacks of items, drop items, share them in chat, and bring up the almighty and largely self-explanatory More Info window. You can also empty out bottles without having to drink them. (As you’ll probably discover, empty bottles are a valuable resource in this game.)

You can also right-click on the ingredients and outputs on recipes and get More Info from there, even if you don’t actually have those items! Find out if you have an ingredient in storage somewhere. See if the recipe result is a good gift for somebody, or what other recipes it’s used in.

You can also “use” inventory items from the right-click menu, but that’s completely unnecessary because you can double-click instead. If I catch you right-clicking to use an item I’m going to HIT you. I’m going to hit you with a rolled-up newspaper and yell “NO” (I won’t actually do this).

Vulnerable Enemies

Enemies will briefly become “vulnerable” at random moments during combat. When a sword in a red circle appears over an enemy’s head, that means they’re in the Vulnerable state. (They’ll also emit pink smoke, and a weird sound effect will play.) Vulnerability only lasts for a couple of seconds!

During this brief period, some abilities – not most – will do far greater damage to the enemy than they usually do. In longer fights you may want to hold back on using these abilities until the time is right, so you get the best punch for your precious power! It can end the fight much faster too.

Combat Refresh goes “bonk”

Wondering about that “bonk” sound you hear during or shortly after combat? It means your combat refresh is ready. You’ll probably see blue flashing wings on your combat hotbars at the same time. Those flashing abilities are your Basic Attacks.

Using a Basic Attack when a combat refresh is ready will restore some of your health, armor, and power. You probably already knew that if you’ve run out of power during a fight, though.

“Use Selected” hotkey

You can press the “Use Selected” key to take action on whatever object you have selected in-world. Talk to NPCs, examine players, enter portals, search corpses, et cetera.

It’s bound to “U” by default but I prefer to remap it: click the gear icon on the right side of the screen and go to the “Keys” tab. There you can also find other useful keys you can bind like “Select Next Non-combatant” (cycles through items and corpses as well as NPCs) and “Auto Move Forward”.

See when a vendor’s funds replenish

Hover your mouse over a vendor’s remaining cash to see when they’ll restock their money. (If you don’t want to wait that long, and you want them to have more money for you when they do restock, raise your favor level with the vendor. Favor is everything.)

Glance at names

Hold down the Alt key to see the names of everything and everyone in view, Diablo-style. Good for finding obscured stuff on the ground or locating weird entrances and exits.

Notepad

Yes, there’s an in-game notepad. Click the crown icon on the right side of the screen and then click the Notepad tab. Write whatever you want (or need) to remember. No, the notepad will not enter things into itself automatically, this isn’t that sort of game.

Mess with your chat

Open your chat window if it’s not open already (shift-C, or click the talk bubble icon on the right side of the screen) and right-click on the tabs at the top. Close tabs, move tabs around. Make a new tab that’s like the All tab but better (read: no annoying NPC chatter). Make your tabs whatever you want.

Mess with your whole UI

Click and drag your character info display to move it to anywhere on the screen. Drag your status icon display around and resize it with the edges. Drag your sidebar and bottom bars around. Drag your chat around by the tabs and resize it with the edges. Drag your minimap around by the title and resize it with the edges.

Click the gear icon on the right side of the screen and go to the GUI tab. Hover over the entries to get more info on what they all do. Tinker with everything. Completely ruin your interface. Panic. Painstakingly put everything back how it was (or delete the config file). Do it all again. (Unfortunately “Reset” doesn’t revert to default, it reverts to last saved.)

Slash commands

Type /help into the chat window for a big list of non-graphical (but very useful) commands.