Anyone know about NETHACK, like how to win it?

[Umbran]

That's some good mindless fun, though.

Ah, that's the thing, you see. You can play Nethack as mindless fun, and have a ball. The game even strongly tempts you to do just that. However, you'll never win that way. While a certain amount of luck is required to win, luck alone is not sufficient. You have to plan, use cunning, and know what's what in order to win the thing.

 

[mattcolville]

Yeah, NetHack rocks. I still play it. I've never ascended, though I have almost gotten to the level with the Amulet of Yendor and all the you need to get it.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I've probably ascended 20 times over the many years. I prefer ASCII still. Nothing beats the system requirements (IIRC, 1/2 meg of RAM and 2meg of HD space?

I usually have the most fun with either the knight or wizard. The wizard's survival totally depends on the items you get.

The knight was fun, because I'd kick my horse to death at start, then eat it. Sure I'd have bad luck for a while, but I'd be full and gain a level! And he didn't eat all my apples...

The newsgroup is fun, people make their own variants of Nethack with new twists.

Main thing to remember for me: More ascensions happen on a full moon (Good luck) than a new moon (bad luck), the bad luck is rampant on new moons, and sometimes I'd put the game aside until it passed. I mean, how many goblins can have Wands of Death anyway?

 

[AuraSeer]

Are you willing to cheat?

What makes Nethack hard is that it only saves when you quit, and loading the save also deletes the file. So if you die or do something stupid, you have no previous save to go back to.

If you're willing to cheat, you can work around this. Whenever something significant happens-- you get a cool artifact, or successfully genocide mind flayers, or whatever-- you quit the game and save. Find the savegame file in your Nethack directory, and make a copy of it. Then restart the game and keep playing. Next time you starve to death or stumble into lava or get eaten alive by your pet puppy, you can just copy your backup savegame back into the Nethack directory, and load it to continue your quest. This isn't exactly honorable, but if you're used to the omnipresent "Quicksave/Quickload" buttons of modern RPGs, it will probably just feel like a workaround for missing functionality.

If you're feeling like a really ambitious cheater, you could hack the game itself, to add a save/load menu. Not that any programmer I know would stoop to such a thing. Nope. Never in a million years. (And besides, I was just a kid, and it was on a really old version, and I lost the whole thing in my first hard drive crash.)

 

[Zappo]

I can't tell you anything about nethack, but if you get into zangband I can help.

 

[Umbran]

Main thing to remember for me: More ascensions happen on a full moon (Good luck) than a new moon (bad luck)

IIRC, in current versions, you do get bad luck during the real-world new moon. However, you no longer get actual good luck on the full moon.

 

[afreed]

Ah, Nethack. Truly one of (if not the) greatest games ever.

I haven't played much for a few years--after placing in the yearly tournament a few times, I sort of took it as my cue to "retire." (I still have my tournament T-shirt!) I still play every now and then, but no longer feel the compelling urge to ascend every session.

In my free-time-ridden youth, I spent many hours playing with the source code and creating an Arabian-themed variant of the game. Never did finish it, but it was a satisfying experience.

This year's tournament, if anyone's interested, is scheduled to start November 1.

And remember what the engraving says:

You'll never get it up the stairs.

(Then again...)

 

[BigRedRod]

Play ADOM(http://www.adom.de/), its like what nethack would be like if it was twice as good

I cannot wait for the "sequel" Jade, although I just tend to love most roguelikes

 

[snarfoogle]

Play ADOM(http://www.adom.de/), its like what nethack would be like if it was twice as good

I cannot wait for the "sequel" Jade, although I just tend to love most roguelikes

A.D.O.M. is my favorite Roguelike... just enough options, great Cthulhuesque Chaos effects...

 

[Salhan]

I've played through twice - with samurai and cleric. cleric was really easy (at least compared to samurai - the damn fakewiz kept on stealing my +7 tsurugi). can't remember the version.

It's excruciating game, for the most part, but if you want a REALLY good character, go with monk. If you can keep up the vegan diet, you'll get some nifty extra points in the end, and if you have to eat something in hell, who cares. It's not like you can keep your luck maxxed out through it.

Traditional tricks:
polymorph your pet (or lay some dragon eggs yourself).
keep a magic whistle or three with you, always.
learn to cast "Remove Curse."
magic map every hell level you can, and dig straight path from a staircase to another (this'll save you a LOT of time coming back up).
level teleport back to the nearest priest of your faith after completing Fort Ludios.
Don't genocide wraiths before you hit level 30 (and then some).