About Grendel's Cave

Grendel's Cave is a Web, browser-based, multi-user adventure game. Its setting is the Old English text, Beowulf, Norse mythology, and the historical early, dark-ages period. Grendel's Cave has been online since 1998 and was one of the first on-line browser-based adventure games.

In Grendel's Cave, you create Thanes, the player characters in the game, kill monsters, primarily found in Grendel's Cave, increase value and stats and collect items. Your thanes obtain gold rings, the game's currency, by selling obtained items or Singing of Deeds before King Hrothgar and gain magical abilities by visiting the Witch or by acquiring items. Ultimately, this leads you to complete quests, earn amulets, by traveling to other worlds, trade in those earned amulets for the Yggdrasil amulet and thus obtain the ability to kill Grendel. Killing Grendel is the ultimate objective of the game. After killing Grendel there is a secondary objective, killing Grendel's Mother, and then a third objective, killing The Dragon.

There are many kingdoms in which to play, each with a Grendel, whom you can kill. There are several different kingdom types, ranging from Thrall, or beginner, to Jarl, or advanced, with increasing difficulty and requirements for killing Grendel. Occasionally the game has tournament style or championship kingdoms in which you can compete against expert players, or you can purchase personal kingdoms that you can custom configure to your liking. The less advanced kingdoms are generally non-PVP (player versus player) while the more advanced kingdoms allow PVP and player killing.

If you kill Grendel in any of the more advanced, PVP, kingdoms then you earn a place on the Hall of Fame.

Grendel's Cave's setting is the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. It is set in King Hrothgar's, king of the Danes, kingdom in the early 6th century. The kingdom is in the middle of its war with Grendel. Grendel is an AI monster, who performs many tasks, most of them nasty, involving killing or harassing Thanes in the game. The game contains many Norse mythology elements and encompasses Norse cosmology, with each of the nine worlds represented. Player's Thanes travel to these worlds and complete quests. Thanes can take on other than human characteristics, including Valkyrie, Berserkers, Tricksters, and Shape-Shifters, among others.