Old School - Nethack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

^NEWB

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

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

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

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

oh, xpost

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

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

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

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

FUN!

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

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.

Think I was probably playing a pre 3.0 variant.

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.

Wow Mordy you're going fast it took me months to get to the quest

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)

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).

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.

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.

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.

fucking tengu

+ 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

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.

Do shops ever restock inventory?

No

Thx. Re mobile nethack, too tedious for me. Might be better if you're willing to learn all commands thru swipes

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

shift+@, but i've gotta hit it whenever i start a new game. essential tho.

still don't get why you would play nethack in 2012 when dungeon crawl exists. much better game imo

maybe its just because i could never beat nethack though, whereas i've won DCSS a few times

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).

nethack is a lot of fun specifically bc of how challenging it is

that said, i've never played dungeon crawl so idk it might very well be better + more fun in every way!

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

nethack AC drops to way less than you might be thinking if you're still thinking in terms of d&d fyi

like a 'good' ac is ~ -20, if it is the focus of a strategy ppl will go for ~ -40

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

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

Bar-Hum-Mal-Cha

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

my final kit in case anyone is curious:

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

Congratulations Dalialatte

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

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

Awesome! congratulations! 3.6.0?

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

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

congrats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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