................................................................
About the game, basic gameplay
................................................................

It's one of the multiple Angband variants, the latest successor of Zangband.
Vanilla -> Zangband -> Hengband -> Chengband + Posband -> PosChengband
Your goal is to dive to 100th level of Angband and to kill The Serpent of Chaos (you should kill Oberon on 99th level first).

The game has a huge overworld (overworld mode is accessed with '<' when you are outdoors) with multiple dungeons of different difficulty. The level near the dungeon on the overworld map means the dungeon level (or rather danger level) at what you enter it, i.e. Angband is level 1 despite being 127 floors deep (yes, not 100, it's for post-game stuff), because you enter it at level 1, while, say, Icky caves are level 10, so you enter them at DL10, but they end on DL35. As in any *band you can represent levels with depth in feet (lvl 1 is 50', 2 is 100' etc), it may have more sense that some dungeons begin deeper than others and that the deeper you go the more dangerous stuff you meet. The dungeon levels are persistent till you leave the dungeon. You cannot stairscum like in Vanilla, but you can reset a floor, if you don't like something, recalling back and forth. Stairscumming from wilderness (i.e. leaving and re-entering) is limited too, because there is always a chance that the stairs which you used may collapse trapping you in the dungeon till you find another one or use some means of recall.

Dungeons in PosChengband are quite different and unique in layouts and monster population depending on their theme. Some of them are mountain based, some are forest based, some are ordinary tunnels, pit-like arena rooms etc, they may have additional mechanics too, like anti-magic caves prevent magic, anti-melee caves prevent melee etc. Dungeons have a fair share of traps, those traps may be deadly, especially early game, they can poison, paralyze or teleport you, summon a lot of monsters (including uniques) around you, drop you a floor deeper or even (those are rare) invoke an ancient foul curse (at least some of its aspects). Most of the dungeons have a strong unique at the bottom, defeating which gives you an additional stat increase of your choice.

Wilderness is a dangerous place by itself too, you can meet a lot of monsters (including some uniques) there, from relatively harmless to very deadly, and you can be ambushed during your overworld trips too. The kind of monster which you can meet depends on the kind of wilderness. Ordinary forests and fields have some weak animals and humans, groups of orcs and packs of hounds. Swamps have some weak animals and nagas and (apart those swamps near Icky caves) lizardfolk, packs of water hounds, hydras, ogres and water trolls. Mountains have eagles and dragons, and deep sea has some deadly monsters like seahorses and even krakens. Generally you should have teleport scrolls, food and light (to read those scrolls and generally to see around) when you travel wilderness.

Towns in PosChengband have a few shops, access to your home (your stash), inn (a place to eat unless you are of those races which don't eat ordinary food, to wait for the end of day/night and to teleport to another town), museum (a place to ditch items which you don't need and don't want to sell/throw away), places to take quests and some services (not every town has them) - to restore your drained stats, to recharge your devices, to enchant your armor and weapon (depends on your level, also better service for guild members i.e. warriors and such), to enchant your shooter and ammo (same as with armor and weapon, depends on your level, better service for archers and such), to teleport you to a known dungeon, to remove a random mutation (Chaos tower in Zul only), to fight monsters on arena for consumables (Telmora only), even to gamble. You can both buy and sell items in shops, shopkeepers buy them significantly cheaper than sell and there is a maximum pay too, you can see it in the parentheses next to the shop name, that limit is random but it's not higher than 30000. Shop inventory is limited and if the shopkeeper doesn't have a place he won't buy your item. Shops restock from time to time.

Like any *band, PosChengband has a lot of elements and other factors which do damage and/or otherwise debuff you and as a general rule, mid game you should get all elemental resistances and preferably poison one too, later you should be resistant to almost all of them (except Time which resistance is hard to come by, monsters with time attack are rather rare though, well, and some attacks like mana storm are irresistible). Of damage elements, nexus is especially notable for its side effects, because it can swap your stats permanently and there is no way to restore it back (imagine a warrior whose strength and intellect were swapped), chaos can permanently mutate you, but most of mutations are beneficial and you can remove them in Zul anyway, disenchantment can permanently disenchant your gear or yourself if you play a death-sword. Generally, when you choose your gear, having a resistance is more important than having a somehow better damage or AC and, sometimes, even than having more speed. Resistances mostly come from your equipment (but some are innate), you can check them pressing 'n' on your 'C'haracter screen. They are shown how much they protect you in per cent (actually it's +/- ~5%). Different sources of the same resistance stack with diminishing returns, one source gives 50% protection, 2 sources add 65%, 3 sources add 72%, 4 add 75% etc. Free action basically works as immunity, while resit fear and confusion somehow reduce the chance to be feared or confused.

As in most of roguelikes, you need food to survive, but, unlike the most, food in *bands is usually easy to get. You can buy ordinary food in a general store or you can get a lot of nutrition eating in an inn. Most of races cannot eat corpses of their enemies, so *band food system is overall more realistic than most of roguelikes have, it's plenty of food and no cannibalism. Potions give some nutrition too and it can save your life if you forgot to bring food and ventured far away from any town. Starving will make you faint and eventually die, while engorging is a huge speed debuff, so if you drink a lot of potions fighting some strong monster, be careful not to engorge yourself. Some of those monsters can suck nutrition from your belly too (eww), so fighting those you should be careful both not to starve and not to engorge. Some of races don't eat ordinary food but feed on device charges, or corpses of humans, or oil, or something else, read the help for details.

When you pick an item you have a so-called 'pseudo-ID' of it i.e. sensing the quality of the item, the speed and power of which depends on your class. Classes with 'strong' pseudo-ID, like warrior, archer or rogue can feel if the item is cursed [bad], uncursed [average], enchanted [good], uncursed ego [excellent], cursed ego [awful], uncursed artifact [special] or cursed artifact [terrible], auto-destroyer knows it either and it will destroy [bad], [average] and [good] items (depending on your level and settings) before they are even identified. Classes with weak pseudo-ID like priests, monks or mages can feel if the item is enchanted, ego or artifact - [enchanted] or cursed, cursed ego or cursed artifact - [cursed]. The help files have a table of some classes and the type and speed of their pseudo-ID, but it's rather outdated.

There are 3 kinds of curse in PosChengband - an item can be cursed, strongly cursed or have an ancient foul curse. Curse and strongly curse prevent you from removing the item (unless you are a berserker who can tear cursed items from themselves by force) and have some random additional negative effects too, some kind of aggravation, vulnerability to fear, slowing your regeneration etc. Also some monsters can curse items on you. These kinds of curse can be lifted, an appropriate scroll removes it from all worn cursed items at once. Cursed ammo can get the curse removed with sufficient enchanting. Ancient foul curse is irremovable but it doesn't prevent you from removing the item so you can wear it freely. Its effects may be quite nasty but they hit rarely. Also when I say quite nasty I mean quite nasty - you can be affected by amnesia, teleported, paralyzed (even with free action, AFAIK, at least death curse of amberite uniques which invoke the same effects definitely can paralyze you through free action if you don't have an anti-magic item) and surrounded with multiple nasty monsters at once, so items with ancient and foul curse are not advised to be used except as rare and risky swaps.

When you kill dungeon bosses, you get a stat increase and also it increases your fame. Completing quests and killing uniques increases your fame either (while failing quests greatly decreases it). The only use for your fame it's artifact reforges, they are useful for everybody but they are especially important for some monster races so playing those you should try not to fail quests ever. Artifact reforges are done in the fighter guild of Morivant, you should have an artifact, enough fame to reforge it (you will see your limit and the power of artifact too) and a blank item of the type of what you want to have a new artifact (i.e. for instance an artifact sword and a blank ring to make an artifact ring). Oh, and a lot of gold too, the cheapest shitty reforge will cost like 400k but you should aim for reforges which cost 1m and higher, so reforges it's rather end game stuff. The new artifact will not have the same properties as the old one, it will be slightly weaker overall and its properties will be random, so it's not guaranteed if you like the result.

Most of PosChengband equipment are rather standard for *bands and generally roguelikes - rings, amulets, helmets, armors, shields, cloaks, boots, weapon. Many of those have Japanese names as it comes from the older versions which were made when that Japanese stuff was trendy, so you should learn that 'jingasa' is equipped into the head slot while 'haramakido' is a kind of armor. Most of stuff has ordinary European names though. There is some unusual items, of which I want to mention some: poison needle, a weapon with an unique mechanic, it always does 1 damage but it has a low chance to instantly kill a non-unique monster, it may be useful to fight some monsters like the metal babble; wizardstaff, a weapon which decreases mana consumption of your spells, useful for mages; fishingpole, a weak weapon which can be activated to fish for weak water monsters when you stay near a water tile (romantics!).

................................................................
Some of game options, stats, commands, inscriptions and macros
................................................................

When you create a character you get a menu with birth options. Some of those can make the game harder or easier or significantly change the way how it's played. Generally it's better not to touch them for a while till you know what you are doing. The default way to create a character it's to use auto-roller, setting minimal limits for all or for more desirable stats. If you set more than 2 limits to their caps, the auto-roller probably cannot roll such a character for you. Every character randomly gets some hidden (till you find them in-game) stats as well, it's life rating, an additional coefficient which affects how much life you get per level, it's shown as a ratio to 100 i.e. 100/100 means your hp will not be changed while 105/100 means you get x1.05 hp more etc, and attribute limits i.e. how high you can raise your attributes naturally. To know that info and to change those stats you should use some relatively rare potions, see the 'Consumables' chapter. A bit about attributes, i.e. strength, dexterity etc, you can read their general description in the help files, note that they are listed in a rather weird non-linear format where all attributes higher than 18 are shown as a ratio past 18, the format is described in the help files as well. To quickly recreate a dead character without choosing the race and class and rolling for stats again, you may simply open its save file, if it's dead the game will offer you to create it again.

You should read the help for commands but some stuff still isn't very obvious, so, I will list some useful commands.
You can check damage output of your weapon with 'C' + 'w' and damage of your shooter with 'C' + 'b'. To check the monsters you encountered, use '~' menu, it's '~' + '4', use the same menu to check your mutations ('~' + 'Space' + 'b'), weapon skills ('~' + 'Space' + 'c') and other information related to your character. To turn on a very useful set of automatic commands to auto-id and auto-destroy stuff, more powerful than the basic auto-destroyer, press '_', and edit the file if needed (it's pretty obvious how to edit it). To change some in-game settings use '=' menu, for instance '=' + '4' + setting always_small_levels to 'Yes' may speed up your early-mid game generating small dungeon floors more often (it's dangerous later if you cannot find a safe place to teleport to, so it's wise to turn it off mid-late game). To remove a pile of rubble or to attempt to dig a wall use 'T' command, to fill a lantern with oil use 'F', to check the log use 'Ctrl' + 'p'.

Your inventory is very limited, you have a-z slots only, so use them wisely. You can leave items at home and it has a lot of space but it's limited too (240 items). It's the only way to have a stash since all items which you drop on the ground will disappear. The game constantly keeps your inventory in order, like magic books are always at the top, then go potions, then scrolls, then rods, then staves etc and therefore items constantly change their designated letters when you pick a new one, which may be rather inconvenient. You should use inscriptions and macros to speed up the game. Macros help to speed up to access to some abilities too.

To inscribe an item use '{' command. Your inscription, if you want it to use with macros, should have @ + command to use that item + the number or another symbol you gave to it. I.e., if it's ammo number 1 it should be '@f1' where 'f' is the command to shoot, if it's a spell book it should be '@m1' where 'm' is the command to cast etc. You now can shoot it both with macros and manually calling the item with the number 1 instead of its inventory letter.
To write a macro press '@' + '4' + enter the trigger + enter the series of commands. For instance to set a macro to 'F1' to fire ammo inscribed as '@f1' to the nearest target press '@' + '4' + 'F1' + '\e\e\e*tf1'
That '\e\e\e' was set there by default, it's simply several escapes, just in case, you don't really need them, '*t' chooses the nearest target and 'f1' shoots. The same way you write a macro to cast some stuff, like 'm1a', to cast spell 'a' from the book inscribed as '@m1' etc. Macros which deal with abilities work the same, except you shouldn't inscribe anything. For instance you play an android and want to set a macro to use your ray gun ability to shoot the nearest target, you make a macro '*tUa' i.e. the same commands which you would press manually, you just link them to a single button.
To save the macro for future use (i.e. when you restart the game) use '2' command in that '@' macro menu, each character name has its own file with macro configs.

................................................................
Consumables/devices and other stuff
................................................................

The game has a lot of consumables, I will briefly list the most important of them, but even the brief listing takes a lot of place and needs a separate chapter

Consumables it's potions (always work) and magical devices i.e. scrolls, wands, staves and rods (have a chance to fail depending on your stats and device skill). Potions and scrolls are one time use (usually); wands and staves have charges and may be recharged with a town service (Sorcery towers in Morivant and Angwil), scrolls or spells; rods have 1 charge and recharge themselves after several turns. Rods, at least better ones, are indestructible (or almost indestructible) while other consumables may be destroyed by monster attacks.

There are several kinds of healing potions, some of which you can buy in shops (mostly Cure Light Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds and Cure Critical Wounds), the first two have no use past early game. These basic potions, especially !CCW can heal multiple detrimental effects too, like poison, confuse and blindness. To heal hallucinations you need a potion of Curing (or a staff of Curing, staves of Curing, unlike potions of Curing, don't restore hp though), they are more rare than previous 3. More powerful potions, such as !Healing, !*Healing* and !Life (not !New Life!) should be found as loot (or rarely bought on the black market), they heal 300, 1000+ and several thousand+ hp respectively and (except !Life) the same detrimental effects like !CCW (so, not hallucinations). !Life heals everything. You need a good stack of them for the last fight. !CCW can be in a form of staves and !Healing can be in a form of staves or rods too, but those (especially Healing) are rare and aren't easy to use. Different kinds of healing may be in form of spells too, mostly those of Life magic realm.

There are two different kinds of identify (which is common for *bands), it's ordinary identify (comes with scrolls, staves of perception, wearing a stone of Lore, town services and a few other sources), which tells you some basic properties of the item - to-hit and damage enchants, ego, name, number of charges, basic effect for consumables etc and *identify* which tells you all its properties. *Identify* is rather expensive (libraries in towns offer cheaper *identify* than using scrolls), and is usually used on jewelry (ordinary identify is barely useful there), artifacts and some ego items. It's the only way to find what resistances an item has (unless you already *identified* that ego and know what resistances it always gives, but the item still may have hidden resistances and other stuff, even detrimental), so you must use it since mid game. Selling an item (but not dropping it in your home) *identifies* it either and all items which you buy are *identified*.

Phase door (short range) and teleport (long range) are very useful escape tools and come mostly as scrolls, but also staves of teleport, some item active abilities, spells and even mutations. There is also teleport level, useful for escape from especially mean floors. The teleport is instant but always uncontrollable. Some monsters have a chance to follow your teleport (but not phase door or teleport level). There are wands and rods of teleport other which can be very useful to get rid of nasty enemies, but monsters can resist the attempt to teleport them away and some of them cannot be teleported at all. Word of recall comes as scrolls or rods (you get a rod of recall for defeating the boss of the Labyrinth) and allows you to quickly leave the dungeon (or to get back), they work after a few turns of waiting. Trump towers in Morivant and Angwil allow you to teleport back to dungeon too.

Detection comes in a form of scrolls (not really useful past early game), staves and rods, also spells and passive abilities. Detect monsters and detect stairs are especially useful, detect monsters finds even those who you cannot see with telepathy. A rod of detection detects everything - traps, items, monsters, stairs, but they are rare and take some time to recharge. You get a rod of monster detection for defeating an angel on arena in Telmora and a rod of detection as a reward for Vapor quest. Magic mapping comes as scrolls of magic mapping, staves of enlightenment and as a spell.

Potions and staves of speed (also some activatable items and spells) give one of the best buffs in the game - +10 speed. This speed buff from different sources doesn't stack.

Potions of Self Knowledge allow you to know your stat limits and your life rating and potions of New Life change those randomly (also they scramble all random abilities like mutations or wild abilities, but not chosen special abilities of humans and demigods).

Destruction comes as scrolls and staves of destruction, and spells, it can be very useful late game, especially when fighting tougher uniques. It attempts to remove everything and everybody which got into its range (and the range is huge) and also it changes the layout creating a lot of walls (it's supposed to be piles of debris, I think, but those aren't piles). Destructed uniques aren't considered dead, they are just teleported from the level so you can meet them again later, monsters can resist destruction too. Destruction is useful to get rid of summons both destructing them and creating a lot of tangled corridors where you can hide (destructing an area before the fight is a common strategy to fight some end game summoners). You should be careful not to destruct quest monsters like Oberon or Serpent, if you succeed to destruct them they will be created again on the floor with full HP (!) so you will waste all your effort. Also using destruction blinds you unless you resist it.

There is a few wands, rods and staves which you can use to do direct damage, their names are self-explanatory. For many classes using such devices may be crucial on some stages of the game or even till the end. Mana storm and rockets are probably the best devices of this sort, but they are both rare and hard to use. You can get a staff of mana storm for killing the boss of Volcano.

Genocide and mass genocide comes as scrolls and spells, they are quite useful to fight summoners, genocide attempts to delete all non-unique monsters of a given symbol and mass genocide attempts to delete all non-unique monsters in an area around you. Note, that unlike destruction you cannot get rid of unique monsters this way and you take some damage for every genocided monster.

There is a lot of other consumables too, which restore your drained exp, remove curse and *remove curse* (but not remove ancient foul curse), restore your stats, permanently increase stats (desirable find!), temporary increase stats, temporary give you resistances, enchant your weapon/armor, give you a random item etc. Food is a consumable too and some types of food (mushrooms) have the same effect as potions, mushrooms of restoring, which restore all drained stats are especially useful ones. There are some detrimental consumables as well, including those which not only blind your or reduce your stats or something but can even destroy your precious artifacts, so don't use them not identified.

I should note one of nastier monster attacks directly related to magical devices here, it's charge draining. It's a very very annoying thing which both drains charges on some of your devices and heals the monster completely. Both of final bosses has that kind of attack so you preferably either dispatch them from distance, or use rune of protection (comes as a scroll and a spell of warding) which prevents monster from hitting you till it destroys the ward, or drop/leave home all wands, staves and rods, or have a resist to it (from having the corresponding human/demigod special ability, being a nibelung or device master).

................................................................
Races, classes and personalities
................................................................

There is a few different classes and races which you can choose from. The level cap for you character is level 50, as it's usual for *bands. Exp penalty is applied by multiplication i.e. if you play a race with 200% exp penalty and a class with 130% exp penalty your final penalty will be 2*1.3 = 2.6 i.e. 260% exp penalty. Generally when you pick your race and class you should open the help file, read it and then check the table which tell you exactly what stat and skill adjustments you will have.

One of the most prominent features of PosChengband it's monster races, whose idea was borrowed from Posband. Those races don't choose a class but instead they are a race and a class at once, so their exp penalties are higher than of most other races because they have both race and class penalties. Some of monster races are very unique or very hard to play or both. One of the main problems of many monster races it's their limited equipment slots, it makes them hard to cover all resistances which is absolutely needful for mid-late game. Those monsters should use artifact reforges which means keeping fame high and grinding for a lot of gold. Monster races evolve to more powerful forms with experience which gives them new stats and abilities. Some of monster races have multiple subraces or ways to evolve. This is the complete list of monster races:

Angel - great spellset, rather squishy till CL40-45 evolutions, relatively decent but not stellar in melee/ranged, high exp penalty
Demon - several very different subraces including rocket shooting cyberdemons and multi-armed mariliches (who start weak), good at melee, cannot eat ordinary food and should eat corpses of humans, high exp penalty
Giant - several different subraces, good at melee, bad at devices, have some innate ranged spells like boulder throwing or breathing their element
Hydra - good at melee, fast regeneration, limited equipment, grow more attacking heads with evolutions, can wear multiple helmets and amulets, can breath fire at higher levels
Lich - mages who don't need books but have a few innate spells which they gain with levels, mostly offensive ones, high exp penalty
Quylthulg - hard to play, no physical attacks, summoning only (actually it's the only way to play a pure summoner in PosChengband), low hp, limited equipment
Troll - several different subraces including two-headed (can wear two helmets) ettins or wall-passing spirit trolls, fast regeneration, good at melee
Beholder - attack by gazing, their gaze can confuse and paralyze, have a set of offensive spells, limited slots, rather weak and hard to play
Dragon - many different subraces, good at melee, breath their element, can choose a realm (area of specialization) - breathing, lore, melee etc, limited equipment slots, high exp penalty
Golem - several different subraces including almost immune to magic spellwarp automaton, slow moving, good at melee but have 1 blow per round only, high exp penalty on some subraces
Jelly - get more item slots when evolve, can set any item into any slot (except pseudopod which holds weapon only), but have only one pseudopod for fighting, can see in the dark, eat by destroying weapon and armor
Mimic - can mimic any monster and sometimes learn that form to use it forever, mimicing the monster they get their innate abilities, speed, resistances and slots, they aren't weak in the native form either, high exp penalty
Ring - use humanoid monsters as their pets to ride them, cannot move by themselves, use magic as their only own means to attack, don't have equipment but absorbs jewelry to get resists, very hard to play
Vampire - vulnerable to sun, see in the dark, rather squishy, decent at melee, use vampiric bite to feed themselves and to turn humans into vampires killing them with it, have some utility and offensive spells, high exp penalty
Death-Sword - just a magic sword who flies by itself, feeds on wand charges and absorbs weapon for resistances and other stuff, they are squishy and weak at the beginning, but powerful later, also they are prone to disenchantment
Elemental - prone to destroying some of their possessions depending on their type, earth elementals (destroy potions) are probably the most annoying late game, while water elementals (corrode armor) seem as the least annoying
Hound - like weaker dragons, except they don't have levitation and bonus realms, have more equipment slots and don't have mana so their breath is hp based only, they cannot choose their evolution either
Leprechaun - hard to play, squishy, bad at melee, find better loot, some attributes are related to having money, they start the game with like 50000 gold too
Possessor - like mimic it's one of the most versatile and fun races, can possess any corpse and to get its innate abilities, slots, resistances, speed etc, they are weak in their native form, high exp penalty
Spider - evolve to either an aranea with paralyzing bite or a phase spider with some teleport abilities, can see in the dark, limited equipment slots
Xorn - can move through rock, hold up to 4 weapons later in the game, limited equipment slots

I will not list all ordinary races, especially since most of them aren't unique for PosChengband, you can check their descriptions and stat/skill adjustments in the help too. I list some of IMO more notable ones:

Human - low exp penalty, can choose a very useful special ability at CL30 (it may be, for instance, ability to move very quickly or to take significantly less damage from breathing attacks, check Chengband wiki for the list)
Demigod - high exp penalty but can choose 2 of those special abilities at CL20 and CL40, have better stats than humans and some special advantages depending on their god parent
Android - a powerful race which has an unique way to gain exp, their level directly depends on the gear which they wear (so it decreases if you remove some of it) and doesn't depend on killed monsters, they eat oil
Half-titan - a sturdy race which is very good for both melee and magic classes
Kobold - low exp penalty race with quite useful poison resistance which is decent for melee classes
Imp - yet another low exp penalty race which is decent for many classes
Mindflayer - a race with high sustained intellect and wisdom, good for magic classes, have innate see invisible and telepathy
Draconian - they are good overall, gain elemental resistances with levels, have breath wepon which depends on their class and level, also they have innate levitation
Spectre - can pass through walls which is especially helpful for berserkers
Klackon - good fighters, innate confuse resistance (and acid resistance too, but it's less important), get additional speed with levels

Also note that some of monster races and ordinary races double or nearly double themselves. You can play ordinary vampire of any class or monster vampire which doesn't choose a class but has some innate spells, monster angel or archon, monster balrog (one of most powerful demons' subraces) or ordinary balrog, monster titan (one of giants' subraces), giant or troll, or ordinary half-titan, half-giant or half-troll.

As of classes, if you want to play melee the best classes it's warrior - powerful, versatile, straightforward and has no additional exp penalty, decent with ranged too, mauler and some of weaponmasters - have additional abilities over warriors, but (except shieldmasters who can either bash with a shield or fight with any weapon and a shield) are limited to the weapon which they should use.
If you want to play ranged it's archer - can make endgame quality ammo (seeker arrows/bolts, mithril shots) very early and so doesn't depend on their rare drops, very good with all shooters, decent at melee, better than warrior with magic devices, other archery classes like sniper, scout, ranger and ranged weaponmasters are lacking in ammo aspect and ranged weaponmasters are limited to the type of shooter too, it hurts them more than melee weaponmasters since decent shooters are quite rare.
If you want to play a melee + magic hybrid it's either rogue (warrior-mages suck because they have shittier melee in exchange for the second realm and they cannot even choose the first one, it's always crappy Arcane) or monk (especially if you want Life which rogue cannot choose, if you want both Life and being able to use weapon it's paladin).
If you want to play a mage it's mage - have two magic realms, high mage - have only one realm but cheaper and better spells, or mindcrafter - not really a mage but almost the same, they don't need books, can restore their own mana, have a great spell set but their damage is rather low.
If you want to play a stealthy class it's ninja or rogue.
Other classes are rather more tricky in one aspect or another, for instance berserkers have ridiculous offense and hp far surpassing warriors, but being unable to use magical devices (they can use potions only) makes their late game very hard and unpredictable, every recall back to the dungeon may place them near a couple of strong summoners and it will be their end, they should always look for stairs manually too; necromancers have all their attack spells touch based and cannot play pure summoners; duelists are limited to one blow per round and have -50 AC (+100AC vs chosen enemy) etc.

A bit about book magic. It's cast with books so you should have books in your inventory and should be able to read (i.e. shouldn't be blind/should have light). Most of book classes can choose their, ahem, magic realms whose descriptions you can read in the in-game help files. Consider that Arcane realm is a shittier one, and some of other realms like Trump or Life are used as additional help for some other way to actually do damage. Unlike innate spells/abilities, you should manually learn your spells from the book with 'G' command, some classes (mages and the like) can choose which spells they learn while others (priests and the like, that's one the main differences between them since they can choose the same realms) learn a random spell from the chosen book, also unlike with innate spells/abilities, you cannot read the description of book spells in-game and should use some other source like Chengband wiki.

A bit about the difference between melee and ranged combat (except obvious). When you melee you do all your blows (you usually do several blows per turn) at once and spend the turn at once too. When you shoot (if you are good at shooting you do several shots per turn too) you shoot each shot separately and spend a part of turn each time. It allows you to react sooner if the monster (especially if it's faster than you) make some nasty move. I.e. while shooting you are much less likely to be double-moved than while you melee or move.

Personalities are mostly self-explanatory, especially if you check the stat and skill tables in the help file. 'Mighty' or 'combat' are good for fighters, 'nimble' or 'combat' for archers, 'patient' is good for mages etc. Two of them are gender dependent, only females can be 'sexy' and only males can be 'lucky'. 'Sexy' personalty buffs your overall but it makes you aggravate monsters with your sexy attitude (even shadow fairies who normally resist aggravation aggravate monsters if they are sexy) which makes the game quite harder, so that personalty isn't popular. 'Lucky' personalty nerfs your stats but buffs all your skills and makes you find better loot too, that personality is quite popular despite nerfed stats make early-mid game harder. 'Lazy' personality nerfs you overall and is considering challenging, 'munchkin' personality buffs you overall and even divides your exp penalty by half, it's basically playing the game in borderline cheating easy mode.

................................................................
Quests
................................................................

Apart from the two main quests which you need to complete to win the game - to kill Oberon on 99th floor of Angband and the Serpent on 100th, there is a few of other random and non-random optional quests. You usually want to complete them for fame, loot (loot is main reason to do some of the quests) and quest rewards.

All random quests it's killing a random unique of appropriate (slightly out of depth) difficulty on some floors of Angband, those floors are 6th, 12th, 24th, 38th, 44th, 50th, 56th, 62nd, 76th and 88th.
Leaving a quest floor before killing the quest unique counts as failing the quest which directly affects your fame. There is no reward except the drops.

As for non-random quests, they should be taken manually from different places. Quests go in sequences and failing one will interrupt the corresponing sequence. All non-random optional quests, except Warg problem, are set on a special quest level which you enter with a yellow stairs near (sometimes several screens away) the place where you took the quest and which you shouldn't leave till completing the quest unless you want to fail it. Warg problem is set on 5th floor of Camelot dungeon, but unlike Angband random quests, you may leave the floor freely (so stairdancing is an option). The difficulty of quests (their level) is supposed to correlate with the difficulty of the corresponding dungeon depth, but in practice it's usually harder, like the worst situation you can meet at that depth. You generally should have a lot of teleport scrolls, healing/curing potions, means of detection, speed potions and other consumables when you enter them. Note that walls on quest levels are often indestructible and you cannot use destruction to change the layout too. Here is the list of all quests with some comments.

[Outpost: Mayor]
Thieves Hideout [5] - most of characters can complete it since CL (character level) 1 or 2, you will get CL3-5 to the end of the quest and the reward it's a [good] item depending on your class
Warg problem [5] - most of characters can complete it as soon as they complete Thieves Hideout and it will move them to CL10-14 very fast
Haunted House [48] - has decent loot and a lot of undead
The Royal Crypt [70] - those drujes are very dangerous even for CL50 endgame characters, there is no real reason to complete it either

[Outpost: Inn]
Old Man Willow Quest [22] - you either want a no-teleport item and some ranged attack or free action to dispatch the boss
Dark Elven Lords Quest [25] - watch for dwellers on the threshold who are summoners and kill them ASAP
The Cloning Pits [45] - has a lot of copies of different uniques, most notably 3 copies of ant queen who is a crazy ant summoner, killing the queens is the top priority, levitation and stone to mud are very useful there, the reward is good artifact boots
The Old Castle [50] - has a lot of strong monsters including a monastic lich, dracolich, a couple of titans and stuff like that which will come at you from all sides, the reward is a good artifact suited for your class

[Telmora: Castle]
The Sewer [15] - can get surprisingly hard since it has 2 breeders, get confuse and blindness resistance or kill the blue icky thing ASAP, actually kill it and the gremlin ASAP anyway, acid resistance helps too
Logrus Master [25] - you should kill one caster with a strong chaos attack spell, so prepare to be hallucinated, drained and possibly mutated
The Vault [30] - 4 rooms with a sword in each, you should pick the correct sword placed randomly and get away, usually has a lot of strong monsters including uniques so you preferably should have high stealth (use stealth items), the sword which you pick it's your reward, the artifact sword 'Sting', a very good weapon with some useful resistances
The Barrow Downs [35] - has a lot of loot (including an artifact cloak) and wights, paralyze resistance is mandatory, watch for emperor wights or have nether resistance/reflection, your experience will probably be drained too
Killing Fields [50] - no loot, crappy reward, has a lot of warriors of dawn who are rather annoying (those guys respawn with a high chance, if you didn't read the book) than dangerous, at least when you are not surrounded by them
Eric's Stronghold [70] - dig to Eric and kill him ASAP otherwise you will fail the quest to a lot of summoners, that quest is rather hard even endgame and you have no real reason to complete it too

[Morivant: Castle]
Vapor Quest [25] - you should have see invisible and, preferably, nexus resistance, otherwise fumes can permanently swap your stats in a nasty way (they can it with the resistance too though), mutations are possible too, the reward is a rod of detection
The Rise and Fall of Micro$oft [50] - has a fun layout with 666 written in lava with shallow lava, but apart from that has shitty loot and rewards, it's easy too, at least if you are accurate with heavy trapped corridors
Doom Quest 2 [55] - a ranged attack may help, has some quite strong undead like iron liches, the reward is a scroll of artifact creation

[Morivant: Thieves Guild]
Tengu and Death Swords [25] - the swords don't move so the quest is easier if you pick a shooter and some ammo, watch for tengus don't teleport you adjacent to the swords, a no-teleport item is good but not mandatory
The Mimic's Treasure [25] - this quest may be quite deadly since chest mimics are summoners and can summon summoners... generally you want to have a speed buff and either to dispatch mimics from distance opening doors by one and attracting as less of them as possible (but you should kill a lurker and a door mimic before you can shoot a chest one) or to quickly reach and kill them, confusion resistance helps too

[Angwil: Manor]
Orc Camp [15] - one of the easier quests, just be careful and kill those orcs one by one
Doom Quest 1 [15] - easy quest with a lot of loot, but you preferably need to have see invisible (can be completed without) and fire resistance to take a couple of arch-viles sealed at the end
Spawning Pits [65] - yet another very hard and deadly quest which you have no reason to complete, has a lot of summoners

[Zul: Tower of Sorcery] |
Node of Sorcery [65]    |
                        |
[Zul: Chaos Tower]      | - these are quests for mages of the corresponding realm to get a grimoire of their realm
Node of Chaos [65]      |
                        |
[Zul: Nature Tower]     |
Node of Nature [65]     |

................................................................
Short walkthrough
................................................................

One of many possible ways, you will find your own eventually. It ignores a lot of dungeons too.
Buy some teleport scrolls and cure serious/light wounds potions. If you still have some money, sell your torches and buy a lantern. Go to the Mayor's house and take Thieves Hideout quest. Usually you can complete it straight away (stay near the entrance and hit them as they come), but if you feel weak, you can get a level or even two in the Camelot first. The quest will move you to CL3-5 and you get some item, which may be useful (an enchanted sword, bow, ring, cloak etc depending on your character) or which you may identify and sell for money. Take Warg problem quest and complete it, it shouldn't be hard if you don't let them to swarm you, remember you can stairdance there, it will move you to CL10-14. Buy several teleport scrolls and healing potions. If you are rich enough and already have several teleport scrolls, buy a staff of perception to id items. Now, if you want quick and a bit risky leveling (if not go to Icky Caves south from Outpost), go to the wilderness north from Outpost to the border with swamps (don't forget teleport scrolls, food and oil for your lantern and don't go there at night! check that stuff every time when you go to the overworld map) and look for hounds. They are relatively easy to kill and give a lot of exp. They come at packs and have nasty breath with a huge range though, so be careful. You should be ready to teleport away from trolls, hydras, deep ones etc dudes who you cannot kill yet. Later you begin to kill trolls and hydras too. You can hit CL20-25 very fast there, but you still will be poor and will have shitty equipment, so it's time for some dungeon diving. So go to Morivant (you can find it and other towns and dungeons on the overworld map) visiting Orc Caves on the way to add them to your recall list. Morivant and Angwil, apart from ordinary shops, have services to recharge your staves/wands, to teleport you into the dungeon (you should use scrolls or rods of recall to teleport back from the dungeon), to enchant your weapon, ammo and armor, to recover stat drain etc. You can complete a couple of first Angband quests and then go to Angwil and to do a cople of quests there, or you can get the rod of monster detection fighting on arena in Telmora if you are strong enough, or you can go to the Orc Caves (bring a staff of detect stairs, possibly a wand of stone to mud too, and a scroll of recall too of course). Kill Azog, the boss of Orc Caves, it's not hard, especially if you use a potion of speed. Now conquer Labyrinth for the rod of recall and, possibly, conquer Icky Caves too, you need acid resistance on deep floors of the latter, but chances are you already found some item with it. Beware that the boss, Ubbo-Sathla, may have escort of his (hers?) spawns who are ridiculous breeders, if you spot them it's better to reset the floor. Now, if you have levitation you may go to the Lonely Mountain or Giant's Hall (you need levitation to pass mountains), otherwise go to the Castle dungeon, if you feel strong you can go straight to Anti-magic or Anti-melee caves, but it's quite risky. Don't go to the deepest floors of those dungeons (Lonely mountain and Giant's Hall, Castle is quite deep so it's obvious its boss is strong and Anti-magic/melee caves have no boss) for a while, their bosses are nasties who can 1-2 shot you even with corresponding resistances. As an alternative you may do some wilderness leveling killing dragons in mountains, you need to have levitation for that and you will lose most of the loot and arrows if you use them, so while it may be faster for some characters, at least to lvl 30+, doing dungeons will probably gain you better loot. Don't forget to take and complete quests when you feel ready, it gives nice loot. When you spent some time in one of those dungeons, consider to go into some harder dungeon like aforementioned Anti-magic or Anti-melee caves. Those caves don't have a boss but still you meet a few nasty uniques there so be careful. When you feel comfortable being on DL50 and killing even the nastiest stuff there you may go to Arena dungeon, it has a unique layout where you fight 1 strong enemy at once, some of enemies are very strong and should be avoided (for instance elder fire giants don't worth the risk, effort and consumables to kill them), as usually you may pick your fights with recall and teleport. You can relatively quickly hit CL50 there. If you need some stat increases you can clear easier dungeons. The better loot and consumables lay deeper, but you need to dive Angband anyway. Try to complete all quests but don't risk if the quest monster is too strong, like if you should kill the Tarrasque simply abandon the quest. Generally late game don't risk fighting too strong monsters when you can avoid that, you can get both exp and loot killing easier ones. For the end game fights, use destruction to set up the scene and then teleport/hide from stronger summons or genocide them, use the piles of consumables which you gather earlier, don't destruct Oberon and Serpent and watch for their charge draining which can heal them completely (check 'Consumables' chapter for more details on that).

................................................................
Useful links
................................................................

Full monster memory, actual for PosChengband 3.0.5, but fresher releases mostly didn't touch monsters, so you can use it for the latest release. There is a cheating option which turns off the full monster memory in-game but, I think, you need a special build with allowed cheating options, and using a separate text file feels less 'cheaty' :3
http://mikedebo.ca/files/mon-info.txt

Chengband wiki, both auto-spoilers and manual spoilers, lots of info about races, classes, different abilities, spells, etc, mostly actual for PosChengband too (some numbers may be off and PosChengband has more content overall, but still it's very useful):
https://code.google.com/p/chengband/w/list

The place where people dump their games with in-progress comments, may be quite useful to check how people build and play their characters:
http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-browse.php?v=PosChengband&r=&c=&n=&e=&s=1

Zangband info, partially outdated for PosChengband, but you still may find useful stuff for more basic aspects there:
http://www.zangband.org