Old School - Nethack

Besides, the game is/was challenging, and simple.

Anyways, it's a free net, have your oppinion. Some say tomato others say tomato... well.. you know what I mean.

anyone on ilx ever ascend on this thing? best i can do is like floor/level 10ish.

~nervously puts his hand up~

I did Nethack ascension once and ADOM completion twice.

First: working that hard on a single game will take over your life and change you permanently. I wouldn't recommend getting into rogue-likes unless you're bedridden sick, turn back, give up now, etc.

That said, yeah, Nethack is possible to beat, but I haven't done so without huge spoilers and terrible grinding. I typically would use the pet to shoplift, make quick money at XP lv. one, and sacrifice for early bonuses. I ascended a priest? It was many years ago.

ADOM is in my experience a far richer and more immersive experience, much better balanced... every level 7+ character I had in that game died b/c of my own hubris. I normal ascended a priest and ultra ascended a monk.

i have reached the hell levels and given up rather than face defeat by attrition

Yeah, the hall is overwhelming. Sometimes you get there and you're just a tank, though, plowing through guys, but it's the weird enemies that end up killing you or getting you killed. Your tactics have to change and slow down by the time you get that deep.

It gets soooo boring. Apparently it's shorter and better in Slash'Em but I never tried it. The ending ending, the final planes is so harrowing and insane, I would've never gotten anywhere without some hand-holding.

Spent a fair few hours on this at one point and made it as far as Gehennom a few times but never beyond. I thought I'd got pretty far but now I look at a spoilers page it's nowhere near the end. The idea of beating the thing is completely beyond me.

I've played Dungeon Crawl/Stone Soup a hell of a lot more than Nethack and again I don't understand how anyone can ever beat that thing (but they do). Playing normally there's just always a point where my spellcasting makes me hungry faster than I can find anything edible.

I even severely cheated at Crawl SS once (edited my save file until I had a bunch of good mutations and no bad ones, saved and edited my save game to restore hp/fullness repeatedly) and played my way through until the last level. The damage I was taking was just ridiculous, absolutely NO idea how anyone can play through that for real, and even then I don't think I actually "won".

PS I am bad at games

Have never gotten past floor 6 I think in nethack; have also never really used wiki or spoilers or even beginner strategy advice

Other than being a dwarf valkyrie I think that was a tip I read somewhere for noobs.

DCSS is even more impossible

I've ascended once, mostly spoiler-free. I think I was either a Priest or a Valkyrie.

First: working that hard on a single game will take over your life and change you permanently.

Living the dream.

Just checked the scores, I ascended with a Valkyrie, I died on the last stage with a Priest. That sucked.

got further than i've ever gotten today. i found a bunch of killer AC equip in the Gnomish Mines that brought my AC down to -7, made it all the way down to the town at the bottom of the mines and chilled there for awhile - sac'd a bunch of corpses at the altar and got the Cleaver artifact. fought a cockatrice and killed it! got all excited to have my very own cockatrice corpse and picked it up.

so i'm dead now. time to restart.

I downloaded this today! Looking forward to many deaths.

Wielding a cockatrice is a cornerstone of my early-mid-game strategy.

@ Mordy "changed me forever" entails having little or no patience or interest in 'playing' games any more, for better or worse

Did you find that you just got incrementally better at it over long periods of time until one day you could beat it? Bc that's generally my experience w roguelikes and with this so far

It was like that period everybody went through where they play Tetris all day. It starts to become a mind-hand exercise and feels like you're surfing on a wave of code.

I think you should try out ADOM

bc it's more fun? i'm really enjoying nethack atm - i keep seeing / unlocking new things (gnome mines, that sobokon puzzle place...)

It's waaay more balanced. I have only two issues. First, there's a mid-to-late-game bug that causes your character to die 25% of the time (Khelavaster bug). Second, healing is slower than it ought to be. You have to "build" your healing ability by gaining levels and it makes the early game sometimes too difficult. (Most players will play "Candle-born" characters as they have faster healing, to compensate.)

Also, there's a story, there are tonnes of interesting dungeon features, there are lots of interesting artifacts, interesting non-random levels, a good balance of classes (only the monk is somewhat overpowered). It's actually the best game I've ever played.

So, I'm playing the Mac version. Do people just use the ASCII art or do they usually use some sort of mod for the graphics. I'm actually cool with the ASCII, I'm just wondering. Also, the default movement controls are j to move up, h to move down, g to move left and k to move right. I find this horribly stupid - is this the normal control scheme?

it's funny. now that i got to the gnomish city once or twice, i can get to it every time. i love how you just keep playing and you just keep getting better and better. also beat the first level of sobokon, but second was wayyy too hard and i gave up. ended up dying bc i offered a corpse in the city's temple and i guess the priest freaked the fuck out and beat the shit out of me. i prayed for help to my god but he was all - "uh, here u go - priest can't attack you for a turn" and then i died.

got 15,000 pts or thereabouts

So, I'm playing the Mac version. Do people just use the ASCII art or do they usually use some sort of mod for the graphics. I'm actually cool with the ASCII, I'm just wondering. Also, the default movement controls are j to move up, h to move down, g to move left and k to move right. I find this horribly stupid - is this the normal control scheme?

― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Monday, July 2, 2012 11:20 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally natural control scheme for vi users

ZS, try NethackCocoa. it has a tileset, the controls are more normalized, etc. i really love it.

I can't stand a tileset. You're fighting letters and punctuation, not actual creatures. A little bitmap of a red dragon is missing the point: you are actually fighting a red D.

'No keypad' on my MacBook too means I learned to dance around the cursor buttons + 1, 3, 7, 9 for diagonal movement. It's not a FPS, you get used to it in 10 minutes.

hjklyubn or gtfo imo

I'm anti-tilesets too, I think the ASCII art is the Nethack "look"

I downloaded a modern remake of Larn and they'd taken out the hjkl keys! It was an offence to roguelikes and also quite annoying on my numpad-less laptop

they also seemed to have made the random number generator less vengeful, it just wasn't right

made it as far as Gehennom a few times but never beyond

apparently the last half of the dungeon (levels 25-50) is all Gehennom? I only made it to the first few levels about three times and promptly died as there was nothing fresh to eat any more and wraiths/vampires kept draining me. Is this another case of "oh well, you just need to have had all the good mutations and none of the bad ones, and more artefacts than you can carry for the other resistances"?

i made it much of the way through gehennom because i had a character near-invincible but for fire resistance and finding traps and then losing 1-3 max hp per fire trap was killing me and then i decided i would try and finish my degree instead

according to the wiki apparently going in without fire resistance was an instadeath. righto.

p.s. i really like the nethack 3.x default tiles. i know i shouldn't.

i like the tilesets. i used them for dwarf fortress too.

I like ASCII play, I had a teenage fixation with Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association" and like the idea of a game with lots of statistics and minimal visual signifiers.

The thrill of encountering your first h or a M or a V, pretty fantastic.

Also: the scroll of genocide is a terrifying concept! Useful to find in-game but there's a nasty feeling that goes along with "genocide all mind flayers"

OH GOD, ALL I HAD TO DO WAS EAT A FIRE ANT CORPSE

i feel like there ought to be a german word for this feeling

so i can pretty much get down to the gnomish town consistently but i keep trying to make an offering on the altar there and the priest gets pissed and kills me. will he always get angry if his alignment is different than my own?

Yes. You can donate small amounts to unguarded altars to gradually change your own alignment. Or give the priest gold until you're LN iirc

how do you give things? i also can't figure out how to feed cats/dogs/ponies. it won't let me throw the food at them, and when i drop it, they don't come and eat it. i'm assuming there's a command i don't know

so far i've only gotten a chance to play 10 minutes, total. here's what happened:

5 minutes looking up basic commands and learning how to walk HJKL style.
2 minutes chasing around my cat trying to pick it up, and then chasing it again after i dropped it again.
2 minutes of exploration
1 minute of accidentally going up the stairs and ending the game.

^NEWB

really looking forward to sinking more time into this and figuring out what to do!

Talking to priests will give a better indication of what you can or can't do for them. There should be a "give" command? Dropping a corpse for a pet and they will eat it, unless the corpse is cursed, in which case they won't step on it... this is a good U/C/B (uncursed/cursed/blessed) test for objects, whether pets will pick them up; also, drop objects on altars and see what happens

mordy: there's no 'give' command but if you talk to a priest you get the option. cats, dogs, ponies will only eat when hungry, but they will go find corpses and such so they're pretty hard to starve. (wait, do ponies? i forget.)

i so do not want to ever start playing this again.

oh, xpost

wandered into a throne room on L9 (i was also L9) and got screwed by some quantum mechanic summoning a giant elephant looking dude and died. my best performance to date tho: 17683

are either of the iphone nethacks - NetHack and iNetHack - any good? They're both free.

update: got to the Quest for the first time - got instantly killed by a swarm of ogres. Level 11 Barbarian - 32,167 points and 3,680 gold, after 10273 moves.

just had my first real experience. died in a really pathetic battle with a coyote, level 2. posting this for the lols, pretty much.

FUN!

it's crazy how you just get consistently better over time until you're blowing through those early levels. if you keep playing, zs, u'll look back at that post and be shocked that a coyote killed u.

"The Amulet of Yendor named REAL" :D (I've done that when I also found the fake plastic one)

Very impressive, Mordy, and a well deserved joint I'd say. I'd say quite a speedy run as well, I've never ascended under 50k moves. Your inventory is something I've not even come close to since I started again in the last couple of weeks. Your abundance of live saving amulets would've been welcome. But like you I too enjoy the inventory juggling. Not about the destination but about the journey etc. Massive props to you, this is a very, very good Ascension. Can imagine how you felt at the moment you sacrificed the amulet.

One question: you say you kept writing charge scrolls for your wand of wishing. Doesn't it turn to dust after two charges? Oh, and how do you 'brute write' genocide?

i used the charge scrolls for the wand of wishing but also for the death wands and the magic markers so i got a lot of use out of my stuff. the thing is tho that i never found a charging scroll 'out in the wild' and i only found a genocide scroll in gehennom which, from experience, would've been too late for me. but even if you're not a wizard you can try writing unknown scrolls. you'll fail a bunch but you can 'brute force' the scroll eventually and once you know it, you can replicate it. so i kept trying to write charging and genocide scrolls until i figured it out (went thru a bunch of scrolls and magic marker charges but once i had charging i had a lot more magic marker and i found plenty of scrolls to blank). ended up genociding liches, mind flayers, master mind flayers (separately bc a blessed genocide of mind flayers would've killed all dwarves including me as well), sea monsters, and disenchanters. i couldn't even think of what else i cared about genociding at that point so i ended the game with a scroll or 2 of genocide i found in gehennom unused. you'll see that i used a ton of wishes. i got 5 out of the wand of wishing (found w/ one charge + 3 with recharging + wringing final wish from the wand), 2 out of magic lamps, and 1 out of sitting on the throne in vlad's. it was the first throne sit that did anything good for me the entire game and by that time i didn't even need it so iirc i wished for another wand of death.

i'm so happy that i still haven't closed the app. it's open to the final image.

any trips for playing as a wizard? i'm just so squishy at the beginning of the game. the furthest i've gotten is to around level 7.

What version? I've ascended with a wiz but relied HEAVILY on Elbereth, which has been very much nerfed in 3.6

I've never ascended as a wizard - I've not ascended with a lot of other types, but def tried (and died) the most with wizard. If you chose your alignment and aren't an atheist, it's key to sacrifice early on in the game to get Magicbane (and enchant it a couple of times once you have it). Also, since wizards are weak, keep your pet close, even if your pet does most of the killing for you, leading to you not being as exp as you could have been. I save the mines to rack up exp and strength usually when I'm confident I can take it on. Helm of brilliance also an absolute necessity, esp later on, for reading and spell-casting successfully.

But I feel your pain and I am yet to crack it myself. The wizard's dilemma continuously seems to be: keep exp low, so no tougher monsters are generated; or big up your exp, but that leads to tougher combat. You can reach the mid stages of the game having chosen either, but at some point you find yourself severely lacking because of the path you did not choose.

I love you are still playing this btw. I am too. It's "complicated", my relationship with nethack, but it's def my first love that I will forever reminisce about and play again and again. Looking forward to hearing on how you proceed.

I think the main reason I love playing as a wizard is that you encounter different spellbooks from run to run, so you're forced to adapt and be flexible, making the most of what you find (until you find a magic marker heheh)--better hope you don't just find, like, Knock, Wizard Lock, and Stone to Flesh!

Haham I get that! I started playing (net)hack on a unix machine, when I was 8 or 9 years old, and me and my buddy would *always* play wizard, hoping one sweet day we'd start with the ray of death. We had no clue, but that's how it started! Learning spells is quite the chore, even for the stasis nethack is as a game.

Dan, what 'route' did you choose on your successful ascension? Keep exp low to avoid stronger combat or just go all in

It never occurred to me to to try to keep xp low, unless you're trying to get protection from the priest in minetown without going broke!

Rather than trying to keep xp low, if you don't feel confident that you can handle more difficult monsters, stay in the upper levels longer.

I haven't played this since 3.6 tbh, I spammed Elbereth so hard that it'd be like a totally different game for me now

I’m playing 3.6 what was the nerf?

They describe the changes here https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Elbereth and, like, https://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/4fq3u0/how_hard_was_elbereth_nerfed_in_360/d2bl1sd/ but the ones that would have the most effect on play, it seems to me, are:
-Elbereth now has a chance to erode whenever it scares a monster.
-Elbereth doesn't work in Gehennom or the endgame anymore.

I mainly used Elbereth when I was surrounded by monsters, and I counted on it remaining intact until I was prepared (healed up or whatever). Now, if I have 8 monsters around me and one of them gets scared away, that could obliterate Elbereth and the other 7 would kick my ass.

The experts would say that you should be prepared enough in the later game that you'd never have to use it, but I'm not an expert and I used it all the fucking time

Don't even get me started on the 3.6 changes to Magic Resistance! Basically, they made a very difficult game much, much more difficult in 3.6

oops, I meant magic cancellation

I'm having a really good game. I got a steady supply of holy water and found a bag of holding early so I've been able to do neat stuff like identify tons of rings (found slow digestion, a ring of protection +5!, levitation already, etc), wands (sadly no wishing wands yet), potions, found an altar and got a bunch of holy water (but haven't been able to sacrifice up my weapon yet so i'm still using this lousy quarterstaff +1 - if i die this will be the reason), wrote up and blessed a bunch of enchant armor scrolls so now my AC at lvl 10 is -10 (i could make it even higher but i only have two pieces of armor i plan to ascend w/ - boots of speed and cloak of magic resistance - so i don't want to waste the two magic markers i found). i really need to get ahold of that Magicbane athame tho so i can start training up my daggers. that actually makes me kinda nervous that i'll be starting daggers from scratch at some pt. still gotta hit up mine's end to find a luckstone. i'm sitting in sobokan right now trying to be extremely patient. my spellbook is decent but no healing spells - and also when you get overwhelmed w/ monsters you never have enough spell power. anyway i'm still a ways off from the castle so i'm not super close to ascending but this is def my best wizard game yet so... prepare for my update in 3 hours when i've died :p

You made me load up a quick game, got killed by a sewer rat - literally took all 12 of my hp in one move!

You have slow digestion and an altar, so why not just camp out and sacrifice until you get Magicbane?

Also, throwing daggers exercises the dagger skill, iirc, so you should be throwing them all the time (and it's a good range weapon against lower-level monsters for Wiz anyway; it lets you save your spells and wands for more difficult ones)

finished Sokoban, got the Magicbane (yay!), and just found a magic lamp. thinking i'll probably use it and pull up either silver dragon armor or a helm of brilliance. i did find the amulet of reflection in Soko which would make silver dragon armor somewhat redundant however i don't have poison resistance intrinsic yet (eesh, i know) so i could actually somewhat use my amulet of poison resistance atm. also the AC boost would be sweet. otoh i've never actually played w/ a helm of brilliance so for all i know it's insanely op. thoughts?

maybe i should mention my current body armor is studded leather armor +0 and my current head armor is an elf helm +0

as much as i'd like the helm right now to try it out i am kinda leaning silver armor bc a) i think my quest item uses the neck slot anyway, and b) i think the AC boost will probably make me hardier until i can get to the castle and complete my kit.

Impressive! I'd say you're pretty much as best underway as a wizard as you can be (I've certainly not made it to the point where you are now being so, 'all-round') I'd go for the silver armor at this point, too, you'll complete your attire at the castle.

What's your strength and hp at this point?

It's crazy how little I remember of this game except for the names of the demons

I played it every day for two years, but was always speed-running to the bottom of the dwarven area in order to get early, easy, low-level THAC0 reduction-- iirc

feeling really good about this run now. got down to the castle and completed my outfit so now i've got like -33 AC and still like 3 wishes left over. i have 3 uncharged magic markers, plenty of scrolls, basically the whole ascension kit. i'm about ready to do my quest (it was taking forever to level up so i reverse genocided some wraiths and that did it). i don't want to jinx myself but high level wizard really is super OP. i've already genocided all the sea creatures, liches and mind flayers. i found a wand of death with charges on it... i have an amulet of life saving.

do any of you guys have experience with polymorphing items? i have the spell and i have a ton of stuff to polymorph (rings, wands, unicorn horns).

The only prob necessary stuff I still need is maybe a ring of conflict and amulet of magic breathing but I figured I can wish for them when I need them and maybe I’ll find or poly them first. Also no tanning kit yet but same thing (and not a priority I have almost every resistance intrinsic now). Did they change the levels so that there are now mazes before the castle? I found two floors of mazes btwn Medusa and the castle and for some reason I don’t remember them being there before (tho I prob just don’t remember)

That sounds awesome! Do you have reflection (did you end up getting that sdsm)? How's your magic resistance and cancellation?

I got the sdsm so I have reflection. I'm using the starting wizard cloak of magic resistance for MR and MC1. not sure how to go about getting better MC or if I need it? i have the helm of brilliance, speed boots, and some normal enchanting gauntlets. i'm wearing the amulet of life saving atm but i'm wondering what i'll do when i get the wizard quest artifact. swap the two depending on the circumstances?

oh u know what nm. i have a ring of protection +5 which is giving me the rest of the MC i need i think so i'm good.

i don't have great news. my nethack program has become super buggy and i've now lost 3 ascension worthy chars in a row to bugs and problems. i'm gonna find a new client to play in but it seems like pickings for mac are pretty slim.

Man, that blows. I never played nethack on a mac. In fact I've got an old netbook around here which is p much only used for playing nethack.

Does the program just quit with your game being lost?

No it ends the game bc of “trickery” aka the stop game it gives you when it detects you’ve been cheating by editing save files. I actually get a score and conduct report and everything.

Damn, that sucks. And quite frankly I am a bit upset! Your wizard quest was so full of promise. With an attire and inventory well up to speed. Better than I ever managed a wizard, that's for sure. Idk why, whenever I try playing this as a wizard it just never happens. No lucky breaks.

Bar-Hum-Mal-Cha

https://imgur.com/4ObyK03.jpeg

my final kit in case anyone is curious:

an uncursed amulet of reflection (being worn)
a +5 silver saber (wielded in other hand)
the cursed rustproof +6 Stormbringer (weapon in hand)
a blessed fireproof +5 pair of speed boots (being worn)
a blessed +4 robe (being worn)
an uncursed rustproof +4 helm of telepathy (being worn)
a blessed +5 T-shirt with text "Don't Panic" (being worn)
a blessed +5 pair of gauntlets of power (being worn)
an uncursed +5 gray dragon scale mail (being worn)
ring of conflict (being worn)
ring of free action (being worn)

Congratulations Dalialatte

I still have weird ASCII nightmares about those four bosses. Which is the one who saps your level? Pestilence?

And my internal monologue thinks about "blessed scroll of genocide" maybe once a month

Awesome! congratulations! 3.6.0?

yeah, 3.60. i got the cocoa compiler to fix the bugs i was running into and i rebuilt it on may 25th and it has been pretty smooth (ran into one fatal crash since then but otherwise okay)

i found an outrageous number if gain level potions and wraith corpses that game

congrats

it’s weird, since i got into the Michael Brough roguelikes i never really have the urge to play nethack. or any rogue like i can’t play on the bus i guess

Congrats Mordy, very nice kit you've got there (love the shirt). Didn't Stormbringer being cursed hamper you?

Nah happened near the very end. Didn’t even notice it until I ascended so either the Wizard cursed it while i was scaling the dungeon or maybe someone on the Astral Plane did.

Feel like such a n00b, having played Nethack for 30 years, but I'm playing 3.6 for the first time. Went down the Gnomish mines, and for some reason there are iron bars, barring me from entering the shop section? It's the # sign. How does one enter the shops?

https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Minetown#Orcish_Town

yeah it's the new minetown and there are no shopkeepers - you'll need to pickaxe your way in

the only plus side really is you're guaranteed an altar without a priest

Have a new laptop, just downloaded the new(est) Nethack and had no idea. Thanks guys!

No shopkeepers: this doesn't feel right. At all.

https://cohost.org/morayati/post/838182-there-s-also-code-in

That made me want to go look at the Nethack code on Github again. It's always a bit fun, because everything's quite explicit, not hidden behind layers of abstraction like it tends to be in enterprise software.
I still haven't really tried to get into this game, but the detail of this comment in the code really appeals to me:

                 * 3.7:  New moon is no longer overridden by carrying a
                 * lizard corpse.  Having the moon's impact on terrestrial
                 * activity be affected by carrying a dead critter felt
                 * silly.
                 *
                 * That behavior dated to when there were no corpse objects
                 * yet; "dead lizard" was a distinct item.  With a lizard
                 * corpse, hero can eat it to survive petrification and
                 * probably retain a partly eaten corpse for future use.
                 *
                 * Maintaining foodless conduct during a new moon might
                 * become a little harder.  Clearing out cockatrice nests
                 * could become quite a bit harder.