Secrets
Spoiler Warning: This page contains spoilers which may affect your IVAN experience negatively
This page is for listing all secrets, easter eggs and less obvious features in IVAN.
Needless to say, this page is full of SPOILERS! Discovering these secrets for yourself will always be more rewarding!
If you accept the risks of reading this page, read on... otherwise now is a good time to hit that back button. I've included some blank space to make sure you don't accidentally read anything you don't want to.
NOTE: This is not a page for listing cheats or exploits - this is for intentional features that are difficult to discover through normal gameplay.
Spoilers incoming!
Contents
Better Resting
The natural way to regain health in IVAN is to rest using the h key, which allows you to slowly regain health as you take a nap on the dungeon floor.
However, resting while your character is on top of certain world items will cause you to heal at an accelerated pace.
These items are:
- Bed (5x healing rate)
- Couch (2x healing rate)
Eating Bone
As a lowly human in the world of IVAN, you are sadly relegated to consuming only meat, vegetables, fruit, liquids and grain.
While this means that you can happily eat a wide variety of foods including most ommel materials, you cannot even attempt to eat rocks, metals, bone, plant matter, plastics, gasses or fibrous materials such as nymph hair.
Now that might not sound like much of a problem, but there's a significant stat boost that can be gained specifically by consuming ommel bone or ommel tooth, much like how consuming any other ommel material (hair excluded) will give you a boost to certain stats.
But humans cannot eat bone! What a tragedy!
However, there's a specific category of monster that can eat bones... and that would be canines.
What does this mean? Well for one, it means that you can feed any friendly canines ommel bone items and watch as they become hulking beefcakes who can actually fend for themselves!
Alternatively, if you yourself have been polymorphed into a canine, you can eat ommel bone or ommel tooth items and benefit from it too!
Monsters classified as canines are:
Eating ommel bone will produce a unique message in the game log.
Note: If you're polymorphed into a canine you can, of course, eat regular bones too. They are at least a little nutritious but are unlikely to stave off hunger for long.
Feeding Huang Ming Pong
Being a big fatty, Huang Ming Pong cannot resist eating any food within his sight.
If you feel like it, you can lure Huang Ming Pong out of his house by leaving a trail of food for him.
While he is distracted and as long as he cannot see you, you can sneak into the sumo arena.
Alternatively, you can lure him out of his house onto broken glass or banana peels in order to hurt him - this will not deter him from seeking out and eating any food item in sight.
NOTE: Huang Ming Pong is smart enough to not eat dangerous or rotten food items. However he will eat beneficial food items such as ommel fluids and holy bananas.
Fountains
Fountains are primarily a decorative feature - or they would be if this wasn't a roguelike.
While the most likely outcome of drinking from a fountain is simply quenching your thirst, fountains in IVAN can produce a number of different effects, ranging from granting free items to stat buffs to summoning hordes of hostile monsters around you.
For more information, check the fountains page.
Hidden Items Inside Objects
Certain objects in the world will drop unexpected items when destroyed.
While usually the result of applying a pickax to something, destroying an object via explosions or magic works just as well.
The objects that have a chance to drop valuable items are:
- Couches
- Random, earthen dungeon walls
Secret Rooms
Within the Gloomy Cave, up to two separate secret rooms with no entryways may spawn on any floor.
Secret rooms will always contain a chest full of valuable items, and at least one nasty trap - either land mines or bear traps made of strong materials.
It is highly recommended to make liberal use of the search function while entering these rooms, unless you have levitation active.
For more information on locating and accessing these rooms, check the main page for secret rooms.
Sneaking into the Sumo Arena
If you want to access the sumo arena without challenging Huang Ming Pong to mortal combat, you'll need to sneak in when he isn't looking - or can't see you.
There are two ways to achieve this:
- Lure Huang Ming Pong a significant distance away from his house, far enough to break his line of sight with the stairwell.
- Have some means of invisibility.
Once you've snuck in... there's actually not a lot you can do really. Damaging any of the structures within the sumo arena or placing a trap will draw the ire of the town, and any items left in the arena will be cleared out when you go back upstairs.
Perhaps you could find some way to give you an advantage in the sumo fight without leaving items behind in the arena...?
Although that would be better classed as an exploit...
Taming Canines
If you've played at least a little IVAN before reading this page, you should be quite familiar with the ability to throw items.
While usually used for throwing items in order to damage an opponent from afar, there is another, less obvious use which also takes advantage of any bones you might have encountered on your journey.
Throwing a bone at any canine creature will cause it to catch it in its mouth, eat it, and become friendly instantly.
With enough bones you can lead an absurdly large army of dogs, wolves and other creatures.
Monsters that can be tamed this way are as follows:
NOTE: This only works using bones specifically, and those bones must be made of a bone material. Items that are simply made of bone will not work - that includes skulls.
Unique Messages
While (usually) not practical or useful per se, certain actions will cause unique and sometimes humorous messages to be printed to the game log.
Try:
- Applying a stethoscope to various things and people.
- Using various commands without any relevant objects nearby (e.g. using open without having a door present)
- Chatting with literally anything.
- See also: Science Talking, a hidden feature used to raise your INT and WIS.
- Interacting with altars in various ways other than Offering items to them.
- Sitting (_ key) on various objects.
- Trying this at an altar will actually increase your standing with that god by a small amount.
- Zapping a banana.
