Some may scold me for this, but games like 'Nethack'. I find it interesting that a game that has close to zip graphics, still manages to capture the minds of people today. I showed it to a few friends, and they're still playing it, months after I showed it to them. I kinda miss that feeling in some of the newer "rp's"...
anyone else out there feel like me? Or know of another old (or maybe new) RP that fits the bill and has managed to capture the 'magic' of the old block busters?
― Sordid Runt, Friday, 28 April 2006 20:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― a.b. (alanbanana), Friday, 28 April 2006 22:21 (seventeen years ago) link
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.
― Sordid Runt, Friday, 28 April 2006 22:26 (seventeen years ago) link
― When I Open Up My Mouth All Bullets Spit Out: Bang! (noodle vague), Saturday, 29 April 2006 00:07 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dan I. (Dan I.), Saturday, 29 April 2006 04:19 (seventeen years ago) link
anyone on ilx ever ascend on this thing? best i can do is like floor/level 10ish.
― Mordy, Sunday, 1 July 2012 15:54 (eleven years ago) link
~nervously puts his hand up~
― manditory fun. day (Ówen P.), Sunday, 1 July 2012 16:22 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― manditory fun. day (Ówen P.), Sunday, 1 July 2012 16:32 (eleven years ago) link
i have reached the hell levels and given up rather than face defeat by attrition
― thomp, Sunday, 1 July 2012 20:43 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― bamcquern, Sunday, 1 July 2012 20:58 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― manditory fun. day (Ówen P.), Sunday, 1 July 2012 21:05 (eleven years ago) link
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
― put a fillyjonk on it (a passing spacecadet), Monday, 2 July 2012 18:42 (eleven years ago) link
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
― "Holy crap," I mutter, as he gently taps my area (silby), Monday, 2 July 2012 19:04 (eleven years ago) link
I've ascended once, mostly spoiler-free. I think I was either a Priest or a Valkyrie.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Monday, 2 July 2012 19:36 (eleven years ago) link
First: working that hard on a single game will take over your life and change you permanently.
Living the dream.
― Mordy, Monday, 2 July 2012 19:43 (eleven years ago) link
Just checked the scores, I ascended with a Valkyrie, I died on the last stage with a Priest. That sucked.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Monday, 2 July 2012 20:35 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Monday, 2 July 2012 20:40 (eleven years ago) link
I downloaded this today! Looking forward to many deaths.
― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Monday, 2 July 2012 20:41 (eleven years ago) link
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
― manditory fun. day (Ówen P.), Monday, 2 July 2012 20:57 (eleven years ago) link
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
― Mordy, Monday, 2 July 2012 21:04 (eleven years ago) link
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
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Monday, 2 July 2012 21:49 (eleven years ago) link
bc it's more fun? i'm really enjoying nethack atm - i keep seeing / unlocking new things (gnome mines, that sobokon puzzle place...)
― Mordy, Monday, 2 July 2012 21:58 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Monday, 2 July 2012 22:35 (eleven years ago) link
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), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 03:20 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 03:26 (eleven years ago) link
got 15,000 pts or thereabouts
― 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
― "Holy crap," I mutter, as he gently taps my area (silby), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 03:28 (eleven years ago) link
ZS, try NethackCocoa. it has a tileset, the controls are more normalized, etc. i really love it.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 03:30 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 04:34 (eleven years ago) link
'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.
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 04:35 (eleven years ago) link
hjklyubn or gtfo imo
― "Holy crap," I mutter, as he gently taps my area (silby), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 05:05 (eleven years ago) link
I'm anti-tilesets too, I think the ASCII art is the Nethack "look"
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 05:38 (eleven years ago) link
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"?
― put a fillyjonk on it (a passing spacecadet), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 08:46 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― thomp, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 09:43 (eleven years ago) link
p.s. i really like the nethack 3.x default tiles. i know i shouldn't.
― thomp, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 09:47 (eleven years ago) link
i like the tilesets. i used them for dwarf fortress too.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 12:29 (eleven years ago) link
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"
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 13:57 (eleven years ago) link
OH GOD, ALL I HAD TO DO WAS EAT A FIRE ANT CORPSE
― thomp, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 13:58 (eleven years ago) link
i feel like there ought to be a german word for this feeling
― thomp, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 13:59 (eleven years ago) link
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?
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 15:39 (eleven years ago) link
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
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 17:03 (eleven years ago) link
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
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 17:07 (eleven years ago) link
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!
― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 17:23 (eleven years ago) link
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
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 17:51 (eleven years ago) link
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
― thomp, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 17:53 (eleven years ago) link
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
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 18:50 (eleven years ago) link
are either of the iphone nethacks - NetHack and iNetHack - any good? They're both free.
― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 19:15 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 21:48 (eleven years ago) link
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!
― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 22:24 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 22:43 (eleven years ago) link
Is permadeath actual permadeath or can you back up your save file? Seem to recall doing that back when I played this at school, but also the game seems to have moved on a whole lot since then. Then being nearly 25 YEARS AGO.
― ledge, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 22:46 (eleven years ago) link
Think I was probably playing a pre 3.0 variant.
― ledge, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 22:51 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, I'm up to Lvl 4 now, finally found a shop. newbquestion - I understand that I have to stand on the objects in order for the shopkeeper to give me a price and tell me what it is. Is there any way to avoid picking it up automatically, other than to turn Autopickup off? I'm going one tile at a time, picking up whatever he tries to sell me and then dropping it immediately.
― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 23:13 (eleven years ago) link
Wow Mordy you're going fast it took me months to get to the quest
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 23:14 (eleven years ago) link
i've played a few roguelike games before (most recently last year's hybrid zelda/roguelike binding of isaac which was so good) so i kinda have a feeling for them i think, even tho i've never actually played nethack before.
xxp game deletes save when u die, and a lot of ppl (including me) consider circumventing that like cheating (and unsatisfying)
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 23:23 (eleven years ago) link
i think save state finality makes so many games better. i played a MOO until 2010 (!) primarily bc it had full looting and permanent death. all good roguelikes. civilization becomes such a better game when you don't save/reload. it commits you so much more to your decisions (and disappointment/triumph).
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 23:24 (eleven years ago) link
nethack has cast a spell on me btw. there's something so mechanistically satisfying about playing it, btw - i understand why u remember it as the numbers + letters instead of actual characters, but even with a tileset it's clear how close it is to being just a complex sort of logic problem. u have to tease out what all the monsters/pieces do, you have to pick up strategies on developing your character. make sure to upgrade your AC in lvls 5-9, u can get good armor off gnomes, dwarves, elves, etc, have identification system worked out, have good religious system worked out, make sure you're consistently getting better + finding more solutions for different pieces of the problem.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 23:31 (eleven years ago) link
i just find that i like to see something somewhat interesting while i'm doing this (tileset) and it helps my memory to distinguish between u W p AA nn creatures.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 3 July 2012 23:32 (eleven years ago) link
Is there any way to avoid picking it up automatically, other than to turn Autopickup off?
Nope, but just turn off Autopickup when you go into the stores and turn it back on when you leave.
In your defaults you can set what things Autopickup will pick up, though. Like for my default I told it to never autopickup Weapons, Armor, Chests, Rocks, or Corpses/Food.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Wednesday, 4 July 2012 03:08 (eleven years ago) link
fucking tengu
― Mordy, Wednesday, 4 July 2012 03:38 (eleven years ago) link
+ his fucking summon monster buddies scroll
i finally got a unicorn horn too. meh. i think i'm done for tnite or my wife is going to kill me. now off to dream of dragging corpses up three flights of dungeon to sacrifice them at an altar to try to convert the altar, win favor with my deity, and hopeful get a weapon that'll be effective. or finding some gloves so i can pick up that cockatrice corpse and swing it around my head
― Mordy, Wednesday, 4 July 2012 03:44 (eleven years ago) link
My favorite roguelike is Brogue. It's really different from the kitchen-sink approach to populating the world and creating characters that DCSS uses. Basically almost every monster in the game has a specific niche and tactics, the dungeon has environmental hazards like swamp gas and deep water, and your character's abilities depend entirely on the equipment you find and the choices you make with your scrolls of enchantment. Sort of a middle ground between the evil-DM-simulation of Nethack and the puzzle-dungeon approach of Desktop Dungeons.
Anyway just go try it it's fun and shiny.
― "Holy crap," I mutter, as he gently taps my area (silby), Wednesday, 4 July 2012 19:44 (eleven years ago) link
Do shops ever restock inventory?
― Mordy, Wednesday, 4 July 2012 20:00 (eleven years ago) link
No
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Wednesday, 4 July 2012 20:22 (eleven years ago) link
Thx. Re mobile nethack, too tedious for me. Might be better if you're willing to learn all commands thru swipes
― Mordy, Wednesday, 4 July 2012 20:35 (eleven years ago) link
i wish there was a good android roguelike, i would never have to worry about a book for the bus again. yes that would be sad.
did you find the shortcut for autopickup on/off? it's less of a big deal once you realise it's one key maybe? though i thought only noobs used autopickup anyway etc etc
fighting temptation to start playing this again
― thomp, Thursday, 5 July 2012 09:33 (eleven years ago) link
shift+@, but i've gotta hit it whenever i start a new game. essential tho.
― Mordy, Thursday, 5 July 2012 14:16 (eleven years ago) link
still don't get why you would play nethack in 2012 when dungeon crawl exists. much better game imo
― ciderpress, Thursday, 5 July 2012 14:21 (eleven years ago) link
maybe its just because i could never beat nethack though, whereas i've won DCSS a few times
― ciderpress, Thursday, 5 July 2012 14:23 (eleven years ago) link
anyone else been messing with the xbox version of semi-roguelike platformer spelunky? i know it came out for pc a zillion years ago (for free) but it feels way more fun with a controller. (tho i'm not sure if the pc version has controller support, it probably does).
― adam, Thursday, 5 July 2012 14:41 (eleven years ago) link
nethack is a lot of fun specifically bc of how challenging it is
― Mordy, Thursday, 5 July 2012 14:52 (eleven years ago) link
that said, i've never played dungeon crawl so idk it might very well be better + more fun in every way!
― Mordy, Thursday, 5 July 2012 14:53 (eleven years ago) link
despite what people say, i think DCSS is no harder than nethack, or at least it's better at rewarding logical thinking and caution. (this is also why i think it's a better game). i've had a lot of nethack deaths that seemed completely unavoidable (enemy randomly has a wand of death or whatever) whereas every time i've died in the mid-to-late game in DCSS, it was immediately obvious what i did wrong.
also, the hell levels in DCSS are a way more terrifying experience than should be possible in a game with ascii graphics.
― ciderpress, Thursday, 5 July 2012 14:58 (eleven years ago) link
both games are pretty similar in structure though, in that the early game is about survival, then once you get over that hump you can kind of just cruise through the midgame except for some challenging 'boss' maps, then the final sequence is beyond insane
― ciderpress, Thursday, 5 July 2012 15:01 (eleven years ago) link
here's a general strategy question about nethack:
i've found that if i take the early levels really slowly i can level up earlier on. i know the monsters that appear are something like dungeon level + character level / 2, so has anyone found whether it's good to move slower to build up character levels (and hp) while keeping a low dungeon level, or if you do want to move with some speed so that you can get better equipment before your character level alone throws you against more difficult monsters?
― Mordy, Thursday, 5 July 2012 15:03 (eleven years ago) link
i always used to check each level as thoroughly as possible but that's more a general personality issue than a strategy
there's one early-game strategy specifically that involves reaching gnometown at level one, it sounds kind of lame though
― thomp, Thursday, 5 July 2012 15:40 (eleven years ago) link
i've also found that i greatly prefer being neutral or chaotic so that i can kill all those gnomes. good xp, decent early equipment from the dwarves, etc.
― Mordy, Thursday, 5 July 2012 15:41 (eleven years ago) link
the gnome equipment is the sort of stuff you find yourself annoyed if you're still hanging on to it through the midgame i think? also i swear i remember doing a great deal of gnome murder with lawful characters. gnome and dwarf characters they're friendly too. i thought. i don't know.
― thomp, Thursday, 5 July 2012 16:05 (eleven years ago) link
i think u do need a decent set of armor for the midgame, AC around 0 or less from armor, boots, helm, cloak, gloves, shield, etc can be good.
― Mordy, Thursday, 5 July 2012 16:08 (eleven years ago) link
nethack AC drops to way less than you might be thinking if you're still thinking in terms of d&d fyi
― thomp, Thursday, 5 July 2012 16:24 (eleven years ago) link
like a 'good' ac is ~ -20, if it is the focus of a strategy ppl will go for ~ -40
I'd definitely recommend the patient approach, assuming you have enough food that hunger's not a concern. Having enough hit-points is what lets you go toe-to-toe with the monsters.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Thursday, 5 July 2012 17:54 (eleven years ago) link
+1 on Brogue. The prettiest ASCII game out there, super easy Levels 1-3, impossible Levels 8+. The auto play function is one of the coolest things ever
Gonna give Binding of Isaac a shot, Mordy try ADOM one day
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Friday, 6 July 2012 01:45 (eleven years ago) link
Oh yah and relate heroic tragedies I love that shit
― is capybara gay? (Ówen P.), Friday, 6 July 2012 01:48 (eleven years ago) link
Best I ever did. Made it back down to the quest, mostly because early on I rubbed a lamp, got a wish, and asked for gray dragon scale mail (someone suggested it). Did blazingly well. Finally, tho, got down to a floor just filled with monsters. I made it passed them once, but I kept tempting fate by going back into the room/floor (I wanted to backtrack a bit) and ultimately they killed me. I think a leocrotta did the actual kill.
I ended up piously aligned, poison resistant (Barbarian), magic-protected (from the armor), telepathic (from an amulet), invisible (desperately quaffing potions to stave off death), fast (idk), fixed abilities (idk), lucky (not lucky enough apparently), and dead. I killed 242 creatures including a chickatrice (had gloves but it didn't leave a corpse), a doppelganger (that was weird), a long worm (got his tooth, but never got an enchant weapon scroll - I was actually backtracking to hit up a scroll store so I could enchant it), and a gelatinous cube (yeah, I ate it, so what?).
I used 1 wish, and didn't wish for any artifacts.
I would tell you my score, but every other game my application crashes before displaying my score and so. Ya know. Too bad.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 10 July 2012 23:22 (eleven years ago) link
in the beginning you care about the names u give your characters. in case this is the one that makes it to the end, u want to remember them w/ an appropriately heroic name. but tonight, the shopkeeper shouted out to my dwarven valkyrie: "Velkommen, Lawfucker! Welcome to Ymla's hardware store!"
― Mordy, Sunday, 15 July 2012 23:22 (eleven years ago) link
Lawfucker is pretty good. Chickum McMagnets was mine for a while
― Ówen P., Monday, 16 July 2012 00:42 (eleven years ago) link
so i played a bunch last night. had a few very disappointing encounters, but my final one of the night (which began at 10ish and which I saved and quit at 1 since i had to sleep) has been a smashing success. so successful in fact that i'm worried about playing more w/out devoting my full attention bc i don't want to lose my char.
anyway, L13 dwarven valkyrie.
a couple early things went right that made a big difference. i got Excalibur from dipping my longsword the moment i hit L5, and shortly thereafter found a magic marker, a cloak of displacement (which is tremendous), +2 pair of gauntlets of dexterity, picked up an amulet of reflection from Soboken (which i solved for the first time), a bag of holding just lying on the dungeon floor, and TWO unicorn horns. now i'm a few floors past the Quest (got to level that had tons of water before I quit for the night), though I haven't been able to play the Quest yet bc it says I'm not high enough level. i think at L14 i can do it, tho, and the valkyrie quest item looks tremendous.
i'm pretty much strong enough at this point that i can solo dragons (i actually got some red dragon mail that i'm wondering if i should enchant since i'm not sure if i have fire protection yet - obv w/ amulet of reflection what i really want is grey dragon mail for the magic protection). a couple concerns tho: the only altar i've ever found was in minetown and it was no coaligned so i couldn't sacrifice on it. not a huge biggie (esp since i already have an endgame weapon) but it has come up as a problem a few times - particular re blessing water to get holy water (so i can dip some stuff - including a cursed tanning kit i got off bones). i did briefly find another unprotected altar, but i got to it by hitting a level teleport and then once i saw it, my very next step hit another level teleport and i haven't seen it again.
also - practically no stores! i've got something like 20k gold sitting in my bag of holding (along with a slew of identified wands and scrolls) and i've only run into 2 stores outside Minetown, and all the Minetown stores and those stores had basically nothing worth buying. i wonder if i can possibly run into anymore stores this far down in the dungeon. if not, maybe i should just stash all my gold somewhere. idk. i've never gotten this far, so if you guys have any advice, i'm very receptive. i'd hate for my char to die, but i know that i'm not ready for Gehinnim and below (for one, i should probably find a ring of levitation in the very near future).
― Mordy, Tuesday, 17 July 2012 13:17 (eleven years ago) link
you're hitting the same 'remember these two things from spoilers' bit that i always did (dipping a longsword, wishing for gray scale mail) so probably beyond any point where i can offer actual advice
― thomp, Tuesday, 17 July 2012 14:00 (eleven years ago) link
My eyes are hazy and I read "ring of levitation" as "ring of television". Sounds like you've got lots of things to do before Gehennom?
― Ówen P., Tuesday, 17 July 2012 14:01 (eleven years ago) link
i guess- i'm at the point in the game where i don't know what happens next, and far down enough where the general netbook advice doesn't really help. i've killed 2 liches + a mind flayer (elbereth + wands of striking/fire/lightning), and i've got a ton of resistances, tho i'm not positive which ones i'm missing. i'm putting my ascension kit together tho!
q: is the best use for my blank scrolls + magic markers making enchant armor scrolls?
― Mordy, Tuesday, 17 July 2012 14:05 (eleven years ago) link
Ohhhh you're doing Elbereth? Oh my god Nethack is the cruelest. Make sure you bless that magic marker iirc
― Ówen P., Tuesday, 17 July 2012 14:07 (eleven years ago) link
elbereth is some straight up bullshit imo, one of the things i never liked about nethack was having 'cheats' built into the game like that which required spoilers
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 17 July 2012 14:10 (eleven years ago) link
especially since you pretty much have to use them to have a chance
I'd forgotten about Elbereth that is straight up irritating but yeah I used it on my winning character too
― Ówen P., Tuesday, 17 July 2012 14:14 (eleven years ago) link
i tried to resist using it until i learned about it in game somehow, but when facing off against a lich + mind slayer, having gotten farther along than ever before, i sac'd my principles on the altar of winning. i don't regret it.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 17 July 2012 14:20 (eleven years ago) link
and i'd love to bless my magic marker but i need to find an altar first so i can make some holy water!
― Mordy, Tuesday, 17 July 2012 14:21 (eleven years ago) link
you don't necessarily want to bless your magic marker because you wouldn't be able to write cursed scrolls (there are some benefits to them). best to keep it uncursed and bless/unbless blank scrolls as needed.
if you've hit a place where you can't spend your money anymore (no more shops), you should consider donating some to a temple. priests in temples look kindly on donations. there isn't much point in carrying it around after that, so stash it somewhere safe. it will weigh you down so that you can't carry other better stuff.
― wmlynch, Tuesday, 17 July 2012 20:06 (eleven years ago) link
level 15 dwarven valkyrie - in the end i had a cloak of displacement, an amulet of reflection, the quest orb, a bag of holding, an excalibur +4, some boots of speed, a ton of wands, scrolls, etc. i had everything! (almost) but no ring of levitation. which meant that after i used wand of digging to skip medusa, that meant i couldn't backtrack from that point, and then i quickly hit the Castle - fell through a trap door - and died fending out a million crazy lichs, dragons, mind eaters, vampires, disenchanters, etc in Gehennom 1: level 27.
Resistances: Fire, cold, sleep, shock, poison, level-drain. I was warned, automatic searching, infravision, stealthy, regenerated, very fast, reflection, lucky, extra luck, and good luck did not time out for me.
I vanquished 1580 creatures. I used no wishes.
gg, taking a break for a few days.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 18 July 2012 00:23 (eleven years ago) link
my lesson from this: ring of levitation is essential
that ring is worth a wish.
― wmlynch, Wednesday, 18 July 2012 03:22 (eleven years ago) link
trust me, if i had found a wish i would've used it on that ring!
― Mordy, Wednesday, 18 July 2012 03:46 (eleven years ago) link
ironically, isn't there a guaranteed wand of wishing in the castle if you hadn't fallen down the trapdoor?
― ciderpress, Wednesday, 18 July 2012 03:56 (eleven years ago) link
...yes
― Mordy, Wednesday, 18 July 2012 04:10 (eleven years ago) link
i'll lick this thing yet!
i'll lick lich this thing yet!
― Mordy, Wednesday, 18 July 2012 04:11 (eleven years ago) link
Mordy I'm not going to broken-record this on the Nethack thread but please try ADOM for a moment it's unbearable to read about the unfairness and insanity of Nethack, this is the last time I'll say it I promise.
― Ówen P., Wednesday, 18 July 2012 04:31 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, adom is good.
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 18 July 2012 04:45 (eleven years ago) link
i can't help but feel like moving on from nethack without beating it first is a huge copout, but i'll check out adom
― Mordy, Wednesday, 18 July 2012 12:16 (eleven years ago) link
drowned in a moat by a water eel
― Mordy, Thursday, 19 July 2012 00:28 (eleven years ago) link
sorry i have still not played ATOM but i would like to say
NETHACK IS THE MOST ADDICTIVE GREATEST FUCKING GAME OF ALL TIME
that is all thx for ur time etc
― Mordy, Thursday, 19 July 2012 21:59 (eleven years ago) link
i just got to level 11 in brogue before dying. gonna delete now, before life passes me by.
― baking (soda), Thursday, 19 July 2012 22:06 (eleven years ago) link
ring of slow digestion really changes the game -- suddenly you can backtrack all you want w/out fear of running out of food
― Mordy, Friday, 20 July 2012 19:05 (eleven years ago) link
hey soda that is probably way further than i got before i deleted. read some "i won!" accounts and you'll be glad you did, that game just gets harder and harder. pretty, tho!
yeah roguelikes are super-addictive, probably the most addictive. i'm playing skyrim an hour a day these days and it feels way addictive but it wouldn't keep me awake all night the way nethack/adom/moria has done
― Ignite the seven canons (Ówen P.), Friday, 20 July 2012 19:12 (eleven years ago) link
I always get killed by a swarm of monsters in the damn gnomish mines.
― windjammer voyage (blank), Friday, 20 July 2012 19:26 (eleven years ago) link
anybody have success running ADOM on osx/leopard?
― baking (soda), Friday, 20 July 2012 19:28 (eleven years ago) link
i'm taking a brief break from this game, so if you guys could give some feedback that would be good. i've got a magic lamp that i haven't used yet. i also have 7 holy water bottles so i can bless the lamp and then use it for a wish. normally at this point i'd wish for a grey dragon mail for the magic resistance (i got an amulet from sokoben), however i didn't get a bag of holding in gnomish mines (2 oilskin bags instead, bleh) and i could really use one. should i wish for a bag of holding instead? i'm only around level 7 or 8 in the main dungeon so i guess it's possible i could find one on the way down? i could also find more wishes... i do have a ring of levitation (and boots of levitation - when it rains...) so if i could manage my encumbrance and make it down to the castle (big if maybe?) there's a wand of wishing there and i could grab the bag. hitting the castle w/out some dragon mail armor concerns me tho.
advice? opinions?
― Mordy, Friday, 20 July 2012 19:28 (eleven years ago) link
yay, you guys all showed up while i was typing this, so plz give out teh advice
― Mordy, Friday, 20 July 2012 19:29 (eleven years ago) link
@ soda, I played ADOM twice to completion on OSX Snow Leopard. It seems to be working fine. Don't play Jade, by the way, it still in alpha and isn't any fun anyway.
@ Mordy I forget the priority sequence of items in Nethack at this point but I'd say just get the mail.
― Ignite the seven canons (Ówen P.), Friday, 20 July 2012 19:47 (eleven years ago) link
The good news is that I barely need any food bc of slow digestion. I do worry about managing my encumbrance otherwise... I hate leaving potentially useful scrolls/potions/wands behind.
― Mordy, Friday, 20 July 2012 19:51 (eleven years ago) link
iirc "potentially useful" is useless, "obviously necessary" is what you're looking for
― Ignite the seven canons (Ówen P.), Friday, 20 July 2012 20:02 (eleven years ago) link
woo! so i actually cleared the castle w/out even using the one wish, grabbed the wand, conjured up some recharge scrolls, and wished the mail, the bag of holding, the gauntlets of power, and now trying to figure out what to use the rest on. i've got the amulet of reflection, an uncursed hawaiian shirt +2, the uncursed small shield +3 valykrie starts with, normal helmet, rings of levitation, conflict, slow digestion, free action, (a cursed ring of polymorph control - in case i want to do something with that, i know where there's a polymorph trap handy), an uncursed luckstone, Mjollnir (which I guess I can throw now bc of the gauntlets), a few unicorn horns, a magic lamp...
def open to suggestions from experienced ppl. i haven't gone down into gehennim yet. oh, also i've blessed genocided all liches and eels. some wishes i was considering (my wand is at 1:1, which i think means i have one wish from it left, so that, plus 80% chance of a wish from my magic lamp):
speed boots/jumping boots? (seems like a waste - tho i haven't found them yet, they're not super uncommon + i've already blasted myself with a wand of speed and have valkyrie speed adv so i think i may be covered here?)uncursed magic marker for, i guess, enchant weapon and enchant armor scrolls (i actually have an uncursed magic marker already at 0:31, so this might be a mistake -- i think i can recharge it and i have two recharge scrolls left to use on it)Cloak of magic resistance -- i don't actually have a good cloak yet, and i know this is a popular combo w/ the mail and reflection amulet
um - blessed tinning kit? i have some intrinsics (poison, acid, cold) but not allcloak of displacement? i already have invisibility intrinsic somehow - not sure how i got it
― Mordy, Saturday, 21 July 2012 00:10 (eleven years ago) link
It might be time to check to see if you have been fired from your job whilst not paying attention
― where can i get a mcdonalds quesadilla tho (silby), Saturday, 21 July 2012 00:54 (eleven years ago) link
psh. it's Friday night.
― Mordy, Saturday, 21 July 2012 01:01 (eleven years ago) link
Why do you want a tinning kit? I never used them at all.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Saturday, 21 July 2012 02:13 (eleven years ago) link
i guess they can help get more intrinsics? what do i want before i go down into gehennim?
― Mordy, Saturday, 21 July 2012 02:15 (eleven years ago) link
Speed is very useful, I like speed boots, but if you're already very fast then I guess you don't need it.
I consider magic restistance an absolute - but you have gray dragon mail, right? So you already have it. Fire resistance is very nice too.
I like to get reflection via a shield and save the amulet spot for life-saving, personally.
A regeneration ring is always useful. A cloak of displacement is nice. I like to keep a couple scrolls of genocide around in case of emergencies.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Saturday, 21 July 2012 02:20 (eleven years ago) link
I don't know the spoilers, so maybe this is something I've never known, but I don't get what a tinning kit does for you vs just eating all the corpses you find. I mean I guess if you're already satiated it can save a corpse you want to eat for later, but that's not that common a situation really.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Saturday, 21 July 2012 02:21 (eleven years ago) link
intrinsics if you're satiated after killing like 3 dragons, tinning nurses for healing, to get rid of trolls... idk?
― Mordy, Saturday, 21 July 2012 02:25 (eleven years ago) link
you eat nurses? boy i don't think i've ever even killed a nurse, i just let them bump my HP until they vanish.
Have you genocided all liches or just the normal ones?
Anyway, I think you're pretty much set.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Saturday, 21 July 2012 02:29 (eleven years ago) link
i genocided all the liches, i think
― Mordy, Saturday, 21 July 2012 02:30 (eleven years ago) link
Nethack's tinning kit is not considered a magical tool for purposes of polymorphing, but it is hard to say what kind of non-magical object(s) in the real world it is meant to correspond to. Home canning of meats is a fairly laborious process that involves cutting the meat into appropriate pieces, usually salting and partially cooking it, packing it into containers and then boiling the containers in a pressure cooker for over an hour. The pressure cooker is needed to raise the cooking temperature above 100 degrees C (212 degrees F), in order to eliminate dangerous microbes. This corresponds to the concept in NetHack of tinned food not rotting away. Home canning uses screw-top glass jars, but the NetHack tinning kit obviously uses tin cans, which further adds to the complexity, as the cans must be sealed. This is probably done by soldering the top onto the base, as was originally done with tin cans in our world. Canning guidelines from the United States Department of Agriculture are here. So, we can assume that the NetHack tinning kit includes the following:A large number of tin cans.Soldering supplies (presumably).A knife or knives for preparing the meat.A pressure canner.Water.A good heat source, such as a propane burner, and fuel.Tongs, silicone gloves, or some other implements for handling the hot containers.(Maybe) salt.(Maybe) a frying pan, or some other implement for pre-cooking the meat.The length of turn in NetHack is fairly abstract and flexible, and attempts to work this out will yield different results based on what kinds of activities (movement, combat, etc.) are used to calculate it. But, in light of the above, tinning a corpse is clearly one of the most action-packed turns a player will ever experience.
A large number of tin cans.Soldering supplies (presumably).A knife or knives for preparing the meat.A pressure canner.Water.A good heat source, such as a propane burner, and fuel.Tongs, silicone gloves, or some other implements for handling the hot containers.(Maybe) salt.(Maybe) a frying pan, or some other implement for pre-cooking the meat.
The length of turn in NetHack is fairly abstract and flexible, and attempts to work this out will yield different results based on what kinds of activities (movement, combat, etc.) are used to calculate it. But, in light of the above, tinning a corpse is clearly one of the most action-packed turns a player will ever experience.
― Mordy, Saturday, 21 July 2012 02:31 (eleven years ago) link
Although there are no special in-game penalties for doing so, some players consider it extremely poor form to kill this particular shopkeeper. The NetHack community itself is somewhat divided on this issue - in #nethack, hardly anybody cares; in RGRN, at least several vocal regulars will usually reprimand any transgressions; and the wiki itself sees a broad mix of editors' opinions. For extinctionist games, it is considered acceptable to leave Izchak alive.
I think this is really sweet.
― Mordy, Saturday, 21 July 2012 03:23 (eleven years ago) link
Oh, I forgot - teleport control can be very useful with the Valkyrie artifact.
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Saturday, 21 July 2012 04:31 (eleven years ago) link
so i haven't played a ton since clearing the castle, but i did do a few things to get ready for gehennim. i have grabbed my quest orb (and the bell for the ceremony) and dumped my luckstone. i made a bunch of blessed enchant weapon scrolls, donated to priest, and brought my AC up to -36 (also enchanted my weapon to +5). i used my last wish on a greased, blessed, fireproof cloak of displacement +2. i found some jumping boots, i made a bunch of holy waters, found a tinning machine + blessed it (tinned a nurse!), dropped all the dead weight i had (any wands/scrolls/food/etc i don't plan to need - so goodbye boots of levitation that just replicate ring functionality), bought my 7 candles from Izchak for final ceremony, grabbed fire resistance intrinsic (i think i have them all now except disintegration - haven't seen any black dragons - and i'm not 100% sure about sleep/shock). um... that's all. i guess i'm ready to go.
― Mordy, Sunday, 22 July 2012 00:59 (eleven years ago) link
mordy, i played this game for a few days and sucked and the farthest i've gotten is level 6 and about 6 levels down, and i still don't even know how to use a lamp. but i will tell you this.
you are doomed. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED
― your friend, (Z S), Sunday, 22 July 2012 01:04 (eleven years ago) link
You die from your illness.
FML. Didn't even know I was sick or I would've used my blessed unicorn horn.
Ok. Now I'm taking a long break. That was heartbreaking.
― Mordy, Sunday, 22 July 2012 02:17 (eleven years ago) link
Apparently a Juiblex made me sick, but I missed the message. Sigh.
― Mordy, Sunday, 22 July 2012 02:18 (eleven years ago) link
not sure if these updates are interesting for anyone else but after a number of early deaths i'm on a fairly promising run. it was going pretty good (knock on wood) for awhile - i found gray dragon scale mail and an amulet of reflection (after sokoban produced a redundant bag of holding) on a bones file and dipped them both in fountains to uncurse them. then, i found a wand around level 15 that turned out to be an almost fully charged wand of wishing (!!). first two wishes were for gloves of power (25 str great for valkyrie) and a scroll of recharging. i still have 3 wishes from it (4 if you count wresting the final one), and i haven't even hit the castle and the wand there. gonna take a quick break while i think on what i want to use the last 3/4 wishes on (i have a ring of levitation, but no rings of conflict, free action, or slow digestion - some combo of those might be useful - also could use boots of speed, um, a cloak of displacement, a magic marker!, etc). i'm feeling pretty good tho! maybe this'll be the run.
― Mordy, Thursday, 26 July 2012 05:13 (eleven years ago) link
lol at "a Juiblex", btw. He's one of the toughest demons! And 6 wishes? That is crazy, you should maybe save a few for emergencies
― Ówen P., Thursday, 26 July 2012 05:46 (eleven years ago) link
Ring of free action is the most necessary imo but not worth a wish (?)
― Ówen P., Thursday, 26 July 2012 05:47 (eleven years ago) link
i killed Juiblex and if i hadn't combat-scrolled past the illness message (or been prepared for the fact that he makes u ill) i would've just healed it. once i get down into gehennim this run i'm taking everything uber slow + carefully. i'm ready to ascend + be done w/ nethack for awhile tbh.
― Mordy, Thursday, 26 July 2012 05:49 (eleven years ago) link
lol fuck this game forever
― Mordy, Thursday, 26 July 2012 13:50 (eleven years ago) link
now you got it
― Ówen P., Thursday, 26 July 2012 14:13 (eleven years ago) link
Dipping things in fountains uncurses them?
― Godzilla vs. Rodan Rodannadanna (The Yellow Kid), Friday, 27 July 2012 03:38 (eleven years ago) link
it can
― Mordy, Friday, 27 July 2012 03:51 (eleven years ago) link
― Mordy, Thursday, 26 July 2012 05:49 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Mordy, Thursday, 26 July 2012 13:50 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
does this mean you ascended, or
― thomp, Friday, 27 July 2012 09:16 (eleven years ago) link
I honestly find these updates fascinating and live vicariously through then since my history with nethack is just a series of brief and terribly obsessive failures, keep em coming mordy.
― Clay, Friday, 27 July 2012 10:35 (eleven years ago) link
personally i think the thing to do would be to write a script automatically posting your deaths to this thread
― thomp, Friday, 27 July 2012 11:37 (eleven years ago) link
some of them are really embarrassing
― Mordy, Friday, 27 July 2012 12:30 (eleven years ago) link
Mordy, do a monk run
― Ówen P., Friday, 27 July 2012 12:55 (eleven years ago) link
Switching to a monk after a period of "blarrgh weapons" or "ararrgh spellbooks" was amazing. By XL 17 you've got all intrinsic resistances (except disintegration) and teleport control... there's something about staying vegetarian than confers disintegration resistance, too, iirc
― Ówen P., Friday, 27 July 2012 12:56 (eleven years ago) link
i've never had to mess w/ weapons or spellbooks bc valkyrie gets artifact by L5 and can barely cast spells
― Mordy, Friday, 27 July 2012 13:11 (eleven years ago) link
just sacrificed a werejackal to my lawful god, he was pretty pissed off, sent the Angel of Death to sort me out. ah well, live and learn.
― Shrimpface Killah (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 July 2012 13:53 (eleven years ago) link
I remember valkyrie as being a good class for newbies but hard to ascend? You should diversify, seriously.The breakthrough moment for me was a class switch. I was playing priests and then wizards pretty exclusively. Switching to a monk brought my first ascension almost immediately
― Ówen P., Friday, 27 July 2012 14:29 (eleven years ago) link
bah, a soldier petrified me with a cockatrice corpse. i didn't realize i wouldn't have time to pull a lizard out of my bag. next time i'll just keep one in my inventory always. BLEH.
― Mordy, Friday, 27 July 2012 17:11 (eleven years ago) link
i did have a cool move earlier when i got into a mess - was clearing a zoo when a wand woke up all the trolls. i wasn't at a point where i could beat them, and my 2 scrolls of teleportation just bounced me around the zoo. i was going to die when i remembered i had a cursed potion of leveling... drank it, escaping up to the higher floor, recouped, then went back down and cleared it out.
― Mordy, Friday, 27 July 2012 17:12 (eleven years ago) link
i don't get upset when i die anymore. this is really good (or really lousy) at working out your patience.
― Mordy, Friday, 27 July 2012 17:14 (eleven years ago) link
update: just marked the vibrating square w/ a towel
― Mordy, Monday, 30 July 2012 22:16 (eleven years ago) link
Whoa
― Ówen P., Tuesday, 31 July 2012 05:55 (eleven years ago) link
that was a failure - but a close one. got the amulet stolen by the wizard and then accidentally killed him over a water tile and by the time i realized what i should do (wait on that floor until he comes - automatically grabs it - then go upstairs and kill him there) i had wiped all my scrolls + potions diving for the amulet and then got eaten up by loads of monsters (tho i was so annoyed at that point that i really let them kill me - by the time you're at that point in the game the regular monsters have a really really tough time bringing you down).
― Mordy, Monday, 13 August 2012 16:19 (eleven years ago) link
i feel like all gamers should be intimately familiar w/ this game. goat imho
Yeah, exactly. I don't have the time (or the rhetoric) to properly word this statement with all considerations. The whole "videogames are art!" "videogames are not art!" debate tends to measure gaming as a medium with the wrong yardsticks. i.e. games as literature, games as cinema. Basically an Ebert or a Kojima just need sit down with Nethack (or ADOM or Tetris for Christ's sake). The parsing of an artificial reality as being entirely statistics-based, teaching your mind and hands to navigate that reality, that is the unique experience, you know? I guess it's the same as chess, really
― Ówen P., Monday, 13 August 2012 16:32 (eleven years ago) link
Mordy and Owen totally otm. I hear the wailing of the banshee again... Usually happens every autumn when it starts to get cold and I feel pretty much only ok when it's dark and I'm alone inside. And in a way this game still reaches out to me when I'm in a pretty dark or severely placid place in my life?
I first played this game 28 (!) years ago, on an old xenix system at my dad's office. Then I was just learning English and was always a wizard because of the cool ascii graphics when zapping someone. It's been a questionable red thread throughout my life since then. I'll go four or five years without and then suddenly dive in deep again for a couple of weeks. I ascended twice, once as a wizard and once as a valkyrie.
The most beautiful thing about it is the ascii. As Owen said:
Owen said some ridiculously poetic and true things in this thread, but this is really otm:
As you guessed, I'm about to play this again. I think... (taking heed the many warnings signs itt and from my own experience). Shame it doesn't 'work' for me on iPhone or iPad but eh, will get the old laptop out.
Mordy, and Owen, has any one of you played this after your previous posts here?
(I am investigating ADOM, but could only find a tiled, graphical version, which is unplayable for me)
― a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Friday, 7 November 2014 17:49 (nine years ago) link
(I was seven years old 28 years ago btw)
― a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Friday, 7 November 2014 17:50 (nine years ago) link
I am so terrible at this game but Mordy's liveblogging itt is one of my favorite things on ilx.
― cwkiii, Friday, 7 November 2014 18:01 (nine years ago) link
i may have continued to play a bit after my final post, but i haven't played since. still think it's one of the most amazing experiences ever.
― Mordy, Friday, 7 November 2014 18:20 (nine years ago) link
Hi Amory, this is Owen. You can switch ADOM to graphical in the menu.
I... actually played a lot of ADOM this past year. (I was suffering from depression and it was a terrific outlet! Recommended to all saddos.) The author ran a Kickstarter to get the game finished, with new features and classes and artifacts and quests and things. The re-balancing actually made the game terrific, it is deep and balanced and just altogether wonderful. I've won two ultra endings this year, once with a beastfighter and once with a duelist.
But also I got really good at Brogue. I started cheating with it. The game is not exactly randomly generated... it responds to a seed number and generates the dungeon with that number as its mitigating variable. As a result, if you enter in the same seed twice to generate the dungeon, you can replay that same dungeon over and over again. I found a seed that had a great collection of artifacts and some super powerful pets, and ran a character over and over again until I was able to get crazy weapons and mail and could bop a dragon in a second and I descended all the way to Lv 40 with pile of Lumenstones. Cheaty but worth it, that is one cruel mid-game. And late-game.
But it's true I don't have time for any other type of game. I played Pirates! for a bit a couple years ago, and half-heartedly zapped through The Last Of Us, but that's really it.
― fgti, Friday, 7 November 2014 19:22 (nine years ago) link
Also Amory we are the same age and the first game I remember playing obsessively was Moria on my dad's PC at age 6 or 7
― fgti, Friday, 7 November 2014 19:24 (nine years ago) link
fgti have you ever tried playing the demons/dark souls games? i know that kind of thing is an entirely different experience but there is a common thread
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 7 November 2014 19:33 (nine years ago) link
Yeah, I never played it but I had a neighbour who was really into it and I sat and watched it for hours. Looks like a killer timesuck
― fgti, Friday, 7 November 2014 20:02 (nine years ago) link
for sure, they are 60-80 hour games where you can get sucked into replaying through compulsively, designed so you can't do and see everything in one play. certainly i played the first couple over and over. the most fun is at the extremes too, the first time when you don't have a clue what's around the next corner and then when you have every inch to memory and you're trying to go thru perfectly or break it early. there is definitely an overlap in mentality with those games and the hardcore rogues. altho ADOM did make me want to jump out of a window eventually, so thanks for that.
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 7 November 2014 20:13 (nine years ago) link
Owen, thanks so much for your reply! Please do not hold it against me that my heart skipped a beat out of glee learning you are still playing this, after having read your previous experiences. Was afraid you'd became wise and left this behind you ;-)
I'm in "that place" rn, but because of what you said, will try either Brogue or ADOM this time around. Will dive in head first at Brogue though, no seed number business first, just to get acquainted.
Oh and I played Moria! On al old unix system in the same office, after the systems had switched from xenix to unix. Think that's why it later became Umoria actually, the U added because of unix!
― a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Friday, 7 November 2014 20:53 (nine years ago) link
I honestly find these updates fascinating and live vicariously through then since my history with nethack is just a series of brief and terribly obsessive failures, keep em coming
qft
I am apparently a year younger than you, Amory and fgti, and the earliest childhood games I recall seeming to be infinitely vast worlds to explore forever were 8-bit platformer Jet Set Willy and roguelike Caverns of Larn
(actually a p. short game to blast through as these things go, at least on the easier settings - the bosses are a gamble but there's not much buffing up to do in preparation: get the one good weapon and hope to find one of about 3 decent spells, but really just go and meet them and either you die or you don't, as far as I've yet worked out - but the way I played as a kid I somehow made each char last for days; the one time as a kid I reached the potion to save my daughter I had long outlived her. I really don't know how I spun it out so long, there are only 13 levels and once you mop up nothing particularly interesting respawns)
I used to be totally anti-tilesets, but I got into DCSS with tilesets this year for the first time after several previous phases of playing the ASCII version. It was kind of like a whole new game and yet also familiar. ascii is the only way for trv kvlt rogvelikeheads of course. also a little part of me dies inside every time I see a game described as roguelike which is, like, not ASCII, and not top-down, and not permadeathy, and not solo-dungeon-crawly, and etc
― club mate martyr (a passing spacecadet), Saturday, 8 November 2014 01:41 (nine years ago) link
I KNOW
I played Spelunky and was like "not a rl" and FTL and was like "NOT A RL". Love both of them tho
― fgti, Saturday, 8 November 2014 08:09 (nine years ago) link
this is such a good thread
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Saturday, 8 November 2014 16:21 (nine years ago) link
i only ever played the game intensively for one term as an undergraduate, and i played with the tileset, so obv i should be tarred and feathered, but anyway, i was listening to the first marnie stern album a bunch at the time and would be entering keypresses a lot of the time in sync with her sixteenth-note power-tapping stuff and now whenever i listen to that record i can't associate it with anything but nethack, it was a good and worthwhile thing to do, i was not that good, i only ever got to the hell levels was the best i managed
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Saturday, 8 November 2014 16:24 (nine years ago) link
The amount of time-investment I've thrown into Moria, ADOM and Brogue has made me extremely, extremely hesitant to fully embrace any other permadeath style games. I played DCSS a bit a bit, and TOME, but never felt the magic in either. I could tell that I wouldn't really feel that same magic in Demon's Souls
This might be getting personal but there is something super-appealing to my play-style about single-author games. The clarity of tone is really necessary. Sometimes with Nethack variants, and the Angband games, and def DCSS, I felt that there was too much tinkering for me to feel transported. Too much democracy or something.
Part of the joy of single-player gaming is that it feels like a proxy for prayer, and games with permadeath make it a fully ascetic pursuit. Feeling that same sense of isolation in the game itself, that it was made by a small group, it can feel really magical. I felt that way as a kid about the Ultima games, and Ico. These days I've been feeling it most with Interactive Fiction, playing through all the main contenders for the Xyzzy Awards has been a good pastime for when I'm laid up
― fgti, Sunday, 9 November 2014 08:13 (nine years ago) link
the master system port of ultima iv was a big touchstone for me as a kid
well, not a touchstone, so much; something i spent all my time on for a period of several months and then left off abruptly. in memory the master system version was oddly beautiful and i was really disappointed when i emulated it, though i think actually it was at that level of technology that gained massively from the fuzziness of cathode ray tvs
i had gotten that there was the overall quest, and worked out that one had to gather mantras, meditate, but was lacking the resources somehow to make actual progress in this quest, or merely did not want to, and so played it as one would a JRPG, wandering around, levelling up
my mother bought it for me very reduced in a branch of debenhams or BHS (largely defunct brit department store chains) and it turned out the feelies were all in french; i remember bugging her to translate one day while she was doing the ironing and her being not so much stumped by the limitations of her french as just baffled by the mode and idiom in which the spell book and the lore book were written. this added to the feeling of something meaningfully or genuinely cultish or other about it -- that it came from a place whose rules others might not understand. plus of course it boots with the sequence where you're in the real world and go to the fortune teller and all that
so in ultima iv if you just wander around and level up around level 8 or so the wandering enemy difficulty curve (which is sorta exponential) intersects again with the strength of your party (which is more or less linear) and suddenly the world is hostile to you. the previously relaxing experience of wandering around britannia became suddenly stressful, as whenever one walked through a forest there could be balrogs or demons hanging around just outside of vision, and the party suddenly seemed hunted or persecuted, like their failure to accomplish anything meaningful was being judged by authorities other. this feeling was made much worse when one of the contacts was damaged, or the memory corrupted, on my copy of the cartridge, and so every screen started to load with hazard tiles from the dungeons scattered around, or garbage tiles one couldn't move in, which now i assume is from looking at the wrong address for the tile data. i sort of half-understood this at the time but it still seemed ontologically fraught to me: either this world was disintegrating or my interface with it was, after all. i stopped playing after that.
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Sunday, 9 November 2014 12:54 (nine years ago) link
http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/20130606_171141.jpg
Aw, love the story of your mum translating for you.
― Spaceport Leuchars (dowd), Sunday, 9 November 2014 13:48 (nine years ago) link
Beautiful post thomp
― fgti, Sunday, 9 November 2014 15:34 (nine years ago) link
Yes, that's beautiful Thomp <3
When I started nethack when 7 I didn't know what most names of the monsters meant, because they were in English. But the name combined with the symbol (H = hobgoblin, which I didn't read right and pronounced hoboglin until I was 16 or so, same with nearly all the others) surprisingly stick with you and your imagination just creates an image of it. Based on the shape of the letter (the H having quite a 'tough', moloch-like don't-mess-with-me shape in my eyes) it'd become a real, live creature for me. I doubt I would, or could play nethack in ascii if I hadn't already done so at an early age, but feel blessed because of it.
Anyway, so yeah, started this again today... Feeling both v excited and sad because of it. There's this overwhelming feeling of giving into the temptation, as if by entering the dungeon you kind of give up on everything else in life, put the rest on hold? Don't mean to sound pathetic - while I do - but I feel like Bam from Beckett's What Where. Life comes a knocking and it's too much or too little to speak of, I've nothing to show for myself rn and that is both comforting and scary. I am in the dungeon like the secret of What Where, passed onto Bom, Bim and Bem but without the what and the where, and the what, ever coming to light. Passed around slaying creatures.
Started as a Valkyrie, and spent a good two hours puzzling my way through Sobokan just for a sodding holding bag. Was fortunate to receive my Thor hammer after just two sacrifices on the altar in the Gnomish mines, because that can take absolute ages. I forgot what good artifacts are in store going down the mines all the way? Don't really want to look up spoilers but if one of youse can fill me in that'd be nice :)
Will update this irregularly if people are interested.
― a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Saturday, 15 November 2014 19:05 (nine years ago) link
If I recall the only really nice thing at the bottom of the mines is a luckstone? But I've always avoided spoilers on Nethack, so maybe there's all sorts of stuff I never knew about.
― who cares? the moon sucks. (The Yellow Kid), Saturday, 15 November 2014 19:39 (nine years ago) link
Stuck in a mine not being able to find the staircase, sigh. Fuck it. Going back up. Luck stones are overrated imho.
― a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Saturday, 15 November 2014 19:47 (nine years ago) link
Sometimes you have to make your own luckstone.
(I don't know if this is possible)
― ya'll are the ones who don't know things (Karl Malone), Saturday, 15 November 2014 19:58 (nine years ago) link
Heh I don't think it's possible in the game Zach but 100% otm :)
― a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Saturday, 15 November 2014 20:02 (nine years ago) link
also, i sympathize with your thoughts on the attraction of games like this when your irl is on a downswing. it's a comforting and sinking feeling. i too have been in a weird headspace lately, injecting myself with beckett doses every week or so and seeking to lose myself in something new for a while (in my case it's watching battlestar galactica for the first time). if i was better at nethack i'd probably be doing that instead!
anyway, hugs, support, <3 <3
― ya'll are the ones who don't know things (Karl Malone), Saturday, 15 November 2014 20:14 (nine years ago) link
Thanks man, know you understand and I really appreciate that <3
It is comforting and sinking, and while that feels bad as a wasted day can make you feel bad for not having done anything, there's still something worthy in there. Something of value. Something of note. In a way I think you would be an excellent nethacker, seeing your gifs and the imagination you intrinsically need to pull off those amazing pieces of work. But I can also see why you went 'nethack lol waht'. And am not too sure I'd wish diving deep into nethack for any people I have an affection for? You've got your click disaster game anyway, that should suffice ;)
― a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Saturday, 15 November 2014 20:44 (nine years ago) link
thanks guys
man I am so not tempted to play nethack again, it's weird. even though I feel like my life is in a place it would make sense.
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Saturday, 15 November 2014 21:00 (nine years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/3giwLqE.png
Started a new game today and I just killed Lord Surtur. Done all of the Gnomish Mines and Sokoban. Now it's down through Gehennom to kill Vlad the Impaler. My stats are less than impressive though - I think - with an AC of only -12. I have the Grayswandir sword to slash my way through the ghouls and undead, but looking at my stats, is that enough? Can I make it with these numbers? I've got the basics (dragon scale mail, power gauntlets, speed boots, magic resistance cloak, telepathy helmet), how do I bring down my AC? Get a +10000 hawaian shirt?
Also I forgot to pick up seven candles needed for the Candelabrum of Invocation #fml. Will I find candles in Gehennom or should I go down to the Gnomish mines to pick them up first?
Won't be able to resume play before xmas, so any input or advice would be most welcome!
― a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Sunday, 21 December 2014 23:01 (nine years ago) link
essentially this is a game about eating monsters
(yes i am playing this again)
― Mordy, Monday, 11 July 2016 02:12 (seven years ago) link
I'm always coming back to this.
Eating monsters otm. Been playing this for more than 20 years now, and only recently learned eating a nurse (!) will get your health back up to max :)
What are you playing as?
― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, 11 July 2016 09:34 (seven years ago) link
valk but just bc i wanted something i was familiar w/ to ease back in - i'm thinking about going wiz soon. what's a good race for that?
― Mordy, Monday, 11 July 2016 14:00 (seven years ago) link
I've rarely played as a wizard myself (for some reason I'm just not a 'spell'-player). Gnome looks like your best bet. Human makes for a hard time in the mines (as both dwarves and gnomes will come after you), Elf is intelligent but v weak, Orc pretty much the other way around.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, 11 July 2016 14:56 (seven years ago) link
i've got a decent run going but i've only found like 3 total identify spells - and blessed none of them did a full inventory. also found 3 throne rooms but none of them identified either. so i've identified all my rings but i have a huge stack of potions, scrolls and wands that are totally unidentified. i found amnesia scroll early on so i'm thinking i should just brute test them all but i hate wasting potentially useful stuff (like potions of gain ability) that could be blessed.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 12 July 2016 22:02 (seven years ago) link
also got 2 magic lamp. blessed the first and rubbed it and got the genie pet :( and now i don't want to waste the other one bc i wanted to use it for unlimited lighting in gehennim.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 12 July 2016 22:20 (seven years ago) link
found a 3rd magic lamp during the quest so i blessed + rubbed the second one and wished up some grey dragon mail - enchanted that, found the shield of reflection on perseus's statue and enchanted that up. i'm at -15 AC and down to the castle. few things i want if i can survive the castle and get to the wand like gauntlets of ogre power and cloak of magical resistance. an uncursed magic marker and i can generate a bunch of enchant armor and i think get well above 20. didn't find a t-shirt either so i might wish one of those up. i don't remember - if you get to the wand and immediately wish for 2 blessed scrolls of charging how many wishes do you get out of that? oh, some scrolls of genocide would be nice too bc fuck liches, mind flayers + disenchanters. anyway, closed it for the night bc i'm getting tired + distracted and that's no way to go into a castle that apparently has numerous liches, disenchanters, dragons and one mind flayer in it.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 02:24 (seven years ago) link
The pet sucks :(
Iirc you can only recharge your wand of wishing once, after that it will explode. Found this in a wiki: "Your first wish from this wand should be a source of charging, if you do not already have one. This typically involves wishing for 2 or 3 blessed scrolls of charging. If you have already identified charging scrolls, you should wish for a magic marker and write your own. Wizards with high Luck have a good chance of writing unknown scrolls, and should generally wish for a magic marker instead."
How did you bless your magic lamp? I've a cursed magic lamp atm (yes, started playing again, your fault) and can't remember a way to have it blessed. Not encountered holy water, nor have I found an altar of my alignment, which sucks.
Also, when do you go down Sobhokan, the puzzle/labyrinth levels? Do you do it on first encounter? It's got some nice artefacts but it's boring as hell to play.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 13:11 (seven years ago) link
i've gotten pretty good and quick at it and the bag of holding is essential (and the amulet of reflection isn't too bad either) and sometimes you find some good rings +wands. when playing valk i go in order: a. hit lvl 5 to get excalibur, b. go to minetown, c. go down to sokoban and do that, d. go to mines' end
i think only way to bless the magic lamp is holy water. which means u need an altar of yr alignment. which means either finding one or converting one. don't convert one that has a priest or they will blast you.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 13:39 (seven years ago) link
ha! thought my so far v successful game was fucked when this formerly peaceful giant summoned a master mind flayer and a minotaur (among others) which quickly dropped me down to... well... take a look for yourself
http://i.imgur.com/VMjLRva.png
i thought for sure i was dead. but i am alive. what did i do? quaffed two potions of extra healing and then broke the wand of teleportation i was holding! whoop whoop!
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 14:49 (seven years ago) link
<uncomfortable silence as everyone realises Mordy's playing a graphical version>
― Andrew Farrell, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 14:56 (seven years ago) link
tbf i'm playing 2 games at once -- nethackcocoa (which has the tileset) and alt.org which doesn't
nb shortly after this screenshot i blew up my bag of holding (i want to blame the mind flayer for amnesiaing me but really it was just sloppy inattentive play) with all my good shit in it, said fuck it, went to the castle, tore through everything and got to the wand. so i think that'll end up saving my game. but damn i have a lot to make up.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 15:24 (seven years ago) link
idk, too much ascii makes my eyes hurt :/
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 15:25 (seven years ago) link
yeah balls to playing in ascii if you don't have to
Mordy do you ever read strategy guides on this or is it just relentless playing over and over that's taught you everything?
― PLPeni (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 13 July 2016 15:37 (seven years ago) link
I have definitely looked things up but much more a couple years ago and now I look up very little (like generally v obscure things like if I toss a ring into a sink and don't remember what the message means).
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 15:39 (seven years ago) link
Some things you need spoiled I think or you'd never know how to do them ime - kudos to anyone who gets anywhere in this thing with no spoilers. I don't think I'd enjoy it
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 15:40 (seven years ago) link
yeah that's my take on it but i'm still probably too spoiler averse on this thing
this revive made me download the latest ish - didn't realise they'd updated in the last couple of years
― PLPeni (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 13 July 2016 15:41 (seven years ago) link
Never seen that graphic version, am still playing ascii myself. It's just what I'm used to, played this for the first time nearly thirty years ago, on an old xenix machine. Tried graphic versions but I'm too accustomed to ascii.
Spoilers: Not a fan, but have to agree with Mordy. Some things are nearly impossible to learn without them. My base knowledge is good enough to ride it out, I've ascended nearly ten times I think? No doubt with more knowledge I could do it faster, better etc, but meh.
NV, are you new to this or have you played it often before?
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 18:18 (seven years ago) link
Mordy, what did breaking your wand do?
My latest effort got short tracked when I got death zapped by a kobold. -_-
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 18:20 (seven years ago) link
it teleported all the monsters surrounding me to elsewhere in the level
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 18:21 (seven years ago) link
kobold w/ a death wand!!!
I know, so tragic a death I could only laugh tbh.
I really need spoilers on breaking wands and the effects of that, as that is completely new to me. Great escape!
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 13 July 2016 18:23 (seven years ago) link
i used to play it quite a lot a few years ago tho i suspect not as much as some of you guys, always pondered whether to look at guides or not, could do with a guide that tells you stuff you really need to know without killing all the surprises i think
― PLPeni (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 13 July 2016 18:24 (seven years ago) link
salvaged that shit - reconstituted my inventory, got a bunch of levels down in gehennim, grabbed the candleabra, things were going great, and then i blew up my bag of holding again bc thoughtlessness. felt so despondent i "let" a master lich destroy me. time to start over.
― Mordy, Thursday, 14 July 2016 16:22 (seven years ago) link
Oof, that's harsh. (did you have the Grayswandir? Especially useful in Ghehenomm)
I'm not a big gamer, but unlike other games having to start over, with Nethack a death never bothers me for long? With Super Mario, say, you have to do everything over again exactly the same way. Nethack is fresh and a completely new exp from the get go. Which even makes having to do Sokoban every time again bearable.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Thursday, 14 July 2016 19:15 (seven years ago) link
yes, one thing that makes it not just bearable but actually kinda enjoyable to start a new game (and why i have 2 simultaneous) is v similar ime to like opening a new booster pack of mtg cards when i was a kid - just the totally fresh possibility of everything / who knows what you'll find (often punctuated by disappointment but w/ exciting enough results often enough that the brain def gets hooked on this skinnerism shit and just can't wait to rip open the new pack / restart the game and see what shit is lying around waiting to be identified).
― Mordy, Thursday, 14 July 2016 19:18 (seven years ago) link
i hadn't seen a bones file floor since i started playing again but last night i started a game where i hit 3 in a row and they all had amazing stuff on them. i only just finished the mines (and grabbed my luckstone) and i already have Mjollnir, a +7 Excalibur, +2 gray dragon scale male, a bag of holding, 2 magic markers, an amulet of reflection, a ton of rings i need to identify, a ton of wands i need to identify, and just stacks and stacks of potions and scrolls. and super lucky conveniently placed altars throughout the dungeons for easy BUC identification and holy water production. i'm only trying to play when i can focus my attention (so i stop accidentally putting wands of cancellation and bags of tricks into my bags of holding) so it'll have to wait until after my kids are asleep tonight, but i'm feeling pretty good about this one. and i still have like 20 floors to go before the castle.
question: does anyone know - if the valkyrie throws mjollnir at an eel, and it doesn't return (i think it has a 1% chance of not returning) - is there a way to fish it out of the water? or is it just lost at that point? cause one of the main reasons i want the gauntlets of power is so i can throw it at eels and not have to get close enough to be drowned.
― Mordy, Friday, 15 July 2016 14:54 (seven years ago) link
Wow, that's really fortunate Mordy. Were you able to uncurse all those items with holy water? +7 Excaliber! I've not encountered a bones file on my recent travails.
I ended playing (Valkyrie as well) last night in the Castle. The eels in the moat aren't trouble at all, one or two blows with Exc and they're dead. Not sure if you will retrieve your Mjollnir though. Maybe if you have an amulet of magical breathing and can swim over the place you dropped it? Don't quote me on that though.
If you've got a wand of teleportation you can also teleport the eel onto land, where it's basically powerless. The amount of eels is fixed iirc, there won't be new ones popping up ad infinitum I think.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Friday, 15 July 2016 15:54 (seven years ago) link
So I'm at the Castle now and have a decent kit. I like playing at night but should indeed stop before I love concentration, too. Last night a simple miss press of a key caused me to nearly drown and "drop some stuff to be able to crawl out", something like that? Turned out I'd lost my bag of holding in the water ;_; In the same castle is a wand of wishing so asked for a holding bag again, but still.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Friday, 15 July 2016 15:58 (seven years ago) link
*stop concentrating
that's rough but at least you didn't blow up your bag of holding, wish for a new one, and then blow that one up too :p
― Mordy, Friday, 15 July 2016 16:03 (seven years ago) link
Blessed +2 Silver Lining ;)
― Le Bateau Ivre, Friday, 15 July 2016 16:08 (seven years ago) link
got everything identified and things are even better off than i thought. the magic markers have no recharges registered on them and respectively 94 + 38 charges. one of those rings is a polymorph control and one is a polymorph ring. (one of the cursed ones is a levitation too - but that's easily fixable.) also identified one of the scrolls as enchant armor so i can start bumping stuff up - esp as i find better gear than the mostly standard stuff i have. unfortunately having things go so well means that i'm feeling super conservative and i barely want to play lest i fuck up.
― Mordy, Friday, 15 July 2016 19:57 (seven years ago) link
i'm thinking about polymorphing into a master mind flayer. does anyone have any experience with this? i know about not attacking cockatrices.
― Mordy, Friday, 15 July 2016 22:14 (seven years ago) link
Honestly couldn't tell you. Do you get to keep all your stuff as a mind flayer?
I got offed at Vlad's just now... Not that disappointed, my kit was mediocre (forgot to pick up seven candles even, lol). Conflicted, as always, as to start over again straight away or take a break. The latter probably most wise, but after playing so much the last couples of days this feeling of 'fuck I want to better myself' - and having the Saturday night off - I just want to dive right back in. This fucking game eh?
― Le Bateau Ivre, Saturday, 16 July 2016 18:14 (seven years ago) link
otm lost my v promising character to an eel I tried to teleport away only remembering a second too late that the floor was non teleport. Let out a stream of curses and then immediately started a new character.
― Mordy, Saturday, 16 July 2016 18:16 (seven years ago) link
just marked the vibrating square
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 July 2016 18:19 (seven years ago) link
Watching Stranger Things reminded me of terrifying battles with Demogorgon
You run into him at all, Mordy
― fgti, Thursday, 21 July 2016 20:54 (seven years ago) link
Also tell us about your character, I will never play Nethack again until I'm laid up with an illness but I always wanna hear about it
― fgti, Thursday, 21 July 2016 20:55 (seven years ago) link
Very exciting Mordy! I've not started a new game as I said I would upthread, probably need an illness before I fire it up again just like 0wen, but do tell us more.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Thursday, 21 July 2016 21:19 (seven years ago) link
here is all i have to say
http://imgur.com/Tru25zu
http://imgur.com/lbY4mtv
― Mordy, Friday, 22 July 2016 02:43 (seven years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/Tru25zu.png
http://imgur.com/lbY4mtv.png
― Mordy, Friday, 22 July 2016 02:44 (seven years ago) link
sorry for tileset. my heart is still beating v quickly. you may notice that i offered while i was fainting and blind. the rider next to the lawful altar where i ascended was death. i essentially ignored him and ran past.
in the end i had a full valk ascension kit -- twoweaponed excalibur and a silver sabre, gauntlets of power, helm of telepathy, i had 3 amulets of life saving - 1 of which i ended up needing, rings of conflict, slow digestion, and free action (i ended up almost starving to death by the end bc i could only wear two at a time) -- i actually did starve to death once, that's why i needed that amulet of life saving. i kept fainting while a bunch of summoned monsters wailed on me. i found one wand of wishing but enough magic markers that i was able to enchant everything up to +4 or +5. i also brute wrote genocide and charging scrolls to keep my wishing and 2 death wands charged up.
near the end i found a couple magic lamps and i rubbed one and wished for a third death wand which turned out to be a good move bc i ended up using all 3 of them. i had silver dragon mail, cloak of magic resistance, and not enough prep for the actual ascension. when i do it again i will make sure to have enough holy water (i only had 3 vials and i could've used more like 9 -- luckily nothing too essential ever got cursed), and to have a way to get confused so i can read spells to find magic portals. instead i had to brute search for them which was a pita.
um - what else to say. the random teleportation in gehennam hit me particularly bad and i spent probably half an hour retracing my steps trying to get out. it was super annoying. once i did get out tho it was v smooth all the way up to the first floor. rodney showed up a few times but my many death wands kept him at bay. hard to emphasize how annoying the teleportation effect tho was -- i thought for a bit that i'd shut down for the night because i didn't have the patience to keep going. it turns out i did.
― Mordy, Friday, 22 July 2016 02:50 (seven years ago) link
now i'm smoking a celebratory joint
― Mordy, Friday, 22 July 2016 02:51 (seven years ago) link
i kinda never thought i'd ascend - i took a long break but last couple weeks i had been craving a rich gameplay experience and nothing was delivering so i booted up nethack again and it was exactly what i wanted. it's ridiculous but it's also so deep and requires so much attentiveness and as insane as this probably sounds i love the inventory juggling and making sure you have each piece you need and getting yr identification system set up, and finding a reliable BUC check, and getting a steady stream of holy water and exploiting opportunities for wishes. it's funny bc i thought that if i ascended i'd exorcise it permanently from my life but now that it's over i keep thinking about how tempting a wizard ascension looks. if anything it'll be nice to find an identification spellbook and never have to worry about that bullshit again...
...or maybe i should take another break.
― Mordy, Friday, 22 July 2016 03:50 (seven years ago) link
"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?
― Le Bateau Ivre, Friday, 22 July 2016 16:33 (seven years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Friday, 22 July 2016 18:06 (seven years ago) link
i'm so happy that i still haven't closed the app. it's open to the final image.
― Mordy, Friday, 22 July 2016 18:23 (seven years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Thursday, 3 May 2018 23:52 (five years ago) link
What version? I've ascended with a wiz but relied HEAVILY on Elbereth, which has been very much nerfed in 3.6
― Dan I., Friday, 4 May 2018 00:15 (five years ago) link
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.
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 4 May 2018 00:20 (five years ago) link
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!
― Dan I., Friday, 4 May 2018 00:29 (five years ago) link
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.
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 4 May 2018 00:33 (five years ago) link
Dan, what 'route' did you choose on your successful ascension? Keep exp low to avoid stronger combat or just go all in
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 4 May 2018 00:34 (five years ago) link
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!
― Dan I., Friday, 4 May 2018 00:43 (five years ago) link
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.
― Dan I., Friday, 4 May 2018 00:46 (five years ago) link
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
― Dan I., Friday, 4 May 2018 00:47 (five years ago) link
I’m playing 3.6 what was the nerf?
― Mordy, Friday, 4 May 2018 00:54 (five years ago) link
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
― Dan I., Friday, 4 May 2018 01:26 (five years ago) link
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
― Dan I., Friday, 4 May 2018 01:27 (five years ago) link
oops, I meant magic cancellation
― Dan I., Friday, 4 May 2018 01:28 (five years ago) link
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
― Mordy, Thursday, 10 May 2018 21:09 (five years ago) link
You made me load up a quick game, got killed by a sewer rat - literally took all 12 of my hp in one move!
― In space, pizza sends out for YOU (Ste), Thursday, 10 May 2018 21:28 (five years ago) link
You have slow digestion and an altar, so why not just camp out and sacrifice until you get Magicbane?
― Dan I., Thursday, 10 May 2018 21:30 (five years ago) link
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)
― Dan I., Thursday, 10 May 2018 21:33 (five years ago) link
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?
― Mordy, Thursday, 10 May 2018 22:14 (five years ago) link
maybe i should mention my current body armor is studded leather armor +0 and my current head armor is an elf helm +0
― Mordy, Thursday, 10 May 2018 22:21 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Thursday, 10 May 2018 22:25 (five years ago) link
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?
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, 11 May 2018 11:03 (five years ago) link
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
― nevertheless, he stopped (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, 11 May 2018 12:09 (five years ago) link
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).
― Mordy, Friday, 11 May 2018 17:55 (five years ago) link
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)
― Mordy, Friday, 11 May 2018 17:59 (five years ago) link
That sounds awesome! Do you have reflection (did you end up getting that sdsm)? How's your magic resistance and cancellation?
― Dan I., Friday, 11 May 2018 18:10 (five years ago) link
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?
― Mordy, Friday, 11 May 2018 18:22 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Friday, 11 May 2018 18:23 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 22 May 2018 23:24 (five years ago) link
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?
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 13:46 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 14:38 (five years ago) link
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.
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 22:56 (five years ago) link
Bar-Hum-Mal-Cha
https://imgur.com/4ObyK03.jpeg
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 June 2018 15:51 (five years ago) link
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)
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 June 2018 16:51 (five years ago) link
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
― nevertheless, he stopped (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 13 June 2018 17:08 (five years ago) link
Awesome! congratulations! 3.6.0?
― Dan I., Wednesday, 13 June 2018 17:49 (five years ago) link
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)
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 June 2018 17:56 (five years ago) link
i found an outrageous number if gain level potions and wraith corpses that game
― Mordy, Wednesday, 13 June 2018 22:57 (five years ago) link
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
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Wednesday, 13 June 2018 23:13 (five years ago) link
Congrats Mordy, very nice kit you've got there (love the shirt). Didn't Stormbringer being cursed hamper you?
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 14 June 2018 10:12 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Thursday, 14 June 2018 12:40 (five years ago) link
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?
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 31 July 2018 21:38 (five years ago) link
https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Minetown#Orcish_Town
― Dan I., Tuesday, 31 July 2018 21:48 (five years ago) link
yeah it's the new minetown and there are no shopkeepers - you'll need to pickaxe your way in
― Mordy, Tuesday, 31 July 2018 22:02 (five years ago) link
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.
― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 31 July 2018 22:04 (five years ago) link
https://cohost.org/morayati/post/838182-there-s-also-code-in
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Friday, 13 January 2023 19:16 (one year ago) link
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.
― Øystein, Wednesday, 18 January 2023 07:06 (one year ago) link