NetHack

[Al]

So, has anyone played this before?

It's about twenty years old but I'd never played it before this afternoon and I'm finding myself a little befuddled. Who thinks they can answer some questions?

[Rett Mikhal]

(Cracks neck.) I once spent an entire summer without using my mouse thanks to Nethack. Bring any questions to my desk.

[Al]

All right, first two questions:

The search function. There has got to be an easier way to do this than pressing 's' on every single space on the board. It doesn't seem to work every time and I feel like I'm burning through precious energy at an alarming rate. I've found that the healer's stethoscope is pretty foolproof, but it's also slow. I've run into a few websites that talk about a 'num_pad s10' function that searches ten times at the end of every turn, but I have no idea what that means.

Giant bees and giant ants. Whenever I run into one I die immediately. I don't feel like I've done anything wrong up to that point, but whenever I descend to floor five or six or head into the little mountainous area with the dwarves, they show up and relentlessly chip away at me until I'm dead. Help!

[Rett Mikhal]

This guidebook is very useful:

www.nethack.org/v343/Guidebook.html


Within the game, the `O' command allows you to view all options and change most of them. I believe here you can enable or disable autosearch and autopickup item. However, you have to have a fair amount of luck to find most things (8-10 will give you a 60% chance of finding anything) or items to help you, such as lenses or a Ring of Searching. The Ring of Searching, if found, should be immediately consumed, because it will give you the properties without draining your hunger as rings always do.

I, myself, only use search in shops (where Mimics might be hiding) or when I know there's a secret door (as in a dead end.) Other than that, there's usually less than 3 traps per level, and there are no instant kills. I find searching to be a waste of time.

You're not alone when facing trouble with Ants and Bees. They are by and far the most common enemy to die to, especially for low level and inexperienced users. Ants have the advantage of being very fast, some attacking you twice for your one movement, and always coming in packs. Here are the best strategies to use:

- Bottleneck them. When facing one ant at a time, you can usually overpower them and, if all else fails, run away. This protects you from getting surrounded and protects your pet, which will undoubtedly die if it gets even partially surrounded at low levels.

- Use ranged weaponry. Ranged weaponry will go right through (literally) ants, and since they always swarm you'll hit several of them. Wands are best, but arrows or even simple throwing daggers or rocks will do. This is best used when they are in a long line, such as a bottleneck.

- Close doors. Ants can't open them and it will buy you time. They may destroy them, however.

- Use Elbereth. 'Elbereth' is your best friend you never heard of. Carving it on the ground, then stepping on that word, will cause 99% of most monsters to fear you. It's the name of a god from Tolkien. You can attack while standing on it, but this will cause it to degrade, especially if it is written in the dust with your finger. Also, it takes time to write it and there's a good chance you'll muck it up (1/25 chance of typo for each letter.) Each time you move on the space it will degrade. A good strategy is to write a longwinded one, such as just writing ElberethElberethElberethElbereth, since it reduces your chances of mucking it up and increases the time before it erodes. However if you use your fingers or a hard gem, it takes forever. The absolute best two things to carve with are an athame (the wizard's default weapon) and a wand of Fire, the latter of which will permanently scorch it and make you almost invincible. Monsters will run from you, but you can chase them and come back.

- If all else fails, run to the stairwell. If you are trapped, check your inventory for all items that could be of use. If you are trapped, have no useful items that you know about, take the last ditch effort and use an unidentified item. Use this as a last resort. If you use a wand and it turns out to be change monster, you could easily be dealing with an army of ants and a Medusa and that would end your day real fast.

Hope that helps.

[PoolMan]

<jawdrop>

What on EARTH is this thing?

[Rett Mikhal]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nethack

It's basically 20 years of all the rules of Dungeons and Dragons combined into a monster of a game. Although it has no graphics (see Wiki image), you'll hardly notice that. Remember that scene in the Matrix when Cypher says he doesn't even see the code, just what the image is? You'll eventually turn into that. Then you'll look down at your keyboard and scream in terror.

There's very, very little the game programmers haven't thought of. For instance, if you beat a cocktrice and pick up its corpse (while wearing gloves, of course) you can swing it as a weapon and turn enemies to stone. However, if you fall down the stairs or fall into a trap door, there's a chance you could touch it and turn to stone. Or, if you choose, you can throw it in the air and have it hit you, thus awarding you the stupidest way to die.

[Al]

EDIT: ^ what he said

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Well, the short answer is that it's a D&D-based dungeon crawler done in ASCII.

What's cool about Nethack takes a bit more time to explain, though. The game has been under constant development since 1987, meaning they had twenty years to add monsters and treasures, tweak the game logic, and basically account for every possible decision you could ever make. The blog post I read that got me interested in it explained it like this:

"For example, every potion in the game can be drunk, of course, but it can also be thrown at monsters, or the wall, or the floor — and monsters can and will throw it at you in a pinch (assuming they are intelligent and have arms). It can be boiled, frozen, diluted, or mixed with any other potion — and if it boils you might be affected by the vapour. You can dip your weapons, armour or any other item into it. It can be blessed or cursed. And every interaction has been considered and tested! If you try dipping a potion of acid into a fountain, it will bubble up and burn you instead of diluting. If you dip arrows into a potion of sickness, it will poison them, but if you dip them into a potion of polymorph, it might turn them into darts. A potion of gain level will normally raise your character’s level, but if it’s cursed, it will raise you a level of the dungeon, instead. Nethack likes puns."

It's also horribly...'cruel' is the wrong word, but 'hard' doesn't quite convey it. The dungeon is fifty levels deep and it only lets you save if you're quitting. And the first thing it does after you load a game? Deletes your save file. When you die in Nethack, you die for good. Game over. Back to level one. And, every new game, all items, scrolls, and potions are randomized, so, even though you identified a 'sparkling potion' as 'heal' in your last game, it could be anything when you start a new one.

What I think has me so captivated, though, is that the game has never killed me out of spite (if that makes sense). There's never been a Mario Kart moment, where I was running a perfect race but then two blue shells come out of nowhere in the final lap and I finish sixth. Every time I've died in Nethack, it's been because I was stupid or greedy or careless. The ants and the bees I mentioned above have been pretty tough to deal with, but the more I encounter them, the more I figure out and the better I'm getting.

Of course, I still have yet to make it to level ten without being eaten by werejackals or succumbing to food poisoning or blowing myself up, but it's safe to say that I'll figure that out eventually, too, because I don't see myself stopping anytime soon.

[PoolMan]

Good lord... I don't know whether to run screaming or hug this thing! It sounds awesome/terrifying.

How does one convey these myriad commands? All keyboard based, I assume? Is there a command prompt, or what?

[Rett Mikhal]

As stated before, a Hack addiction will make you forget what a mouse is or does. Everything is based on the keys, with every key having at least two functions (lowercase letters and uppercase.) There's also an extended few commands by pressing the #, which have to be typed, such as CHAT, MOUNT, PRAY, and the rest.

All items you own have an identifying letter, based on when you owned them first (started with a, going to z, then A to Z, and AA to ZZ, though you'll never be able to hold that many without cheating.)

So if you have a food ration with the letter g, the command to eat it (e) would simply be e followed by g. More complicated things demand more key presses, but the game always has a parser at the top asking what you would like to do ("Dip what into what?")

Did I mention it's free?

www.nethack.org/v343/downloads.html

Thanks for starting this, Al. I had gotten over the addiction. Now I'm playing it again and finals are next week. My GPA just quietly committed suicide.

[Al]

Hey, just doing my part to keep the procrastinator's spirit alive and encumbering.

[coccatino]

While I am immune to the call, I just sent the link to a friend who is 3 weeks away from defending his doctoral thesis... here's hoping he's really already prepared, because he'll LOVE this.

[dex]

"If you drop something in a shop by accident, the shopkeeper will usually claim ownership without offering any compensation."

"Eating a deep fried or french fried [D: there's a difference?] tin will give you slippery fingers which will cause you to drop your weapon. It is therefore unwise to eat tins in a shop without first unwielding your weapon."

Even a fast food place is an adventure.

This is just crazy. Thank you, this will cost me years of my life.

[Rett Mikhal]

I would have suggested the game sooner, but it's hard nowadays to get people into it when they see the lack of graphics. There are graphics versions with sprites that actually look like Wizards and Cats and Dragons and potions, but I find it somewhat... gaudy. I don't know, years of playing this game have made me think any graphics beyond color letters are just trying too hard and not concentrating on what's important: gameplay.

No game has ever, or probably will ever, come to the level of gameplay Nethack has. If there ever was a game where you want to imagine it and do it, this is it. There's a billion and one strategies because of this. One of my favorites stories is when I accidentally put on a cursed -5 Mithril Coat. I knew there was a nymph running around, so I found her and removed all armor and dropped all items. The nymph always steals from you, so she stole the cursed armor and I could put on my leather armor again. Later I found the nymph on another level trying to read a scroll of remove curse.

I DARE you to find a game where you sound nerdier talking about it.

Did I mention there's a wiki?

nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

April's featured article is sunny sunny GENOCIDE.

[Al]

Apr 30, 2009 17:27:53 GMT -5 Rett Mikhal said:

If there ever was a game where you want to imagine it and do it, this is it.

One thing I assumed would be a no-brainer but can't find a way to do is throw coins in fountains. Is there a command I'm missing?

[PoolMan]

All right, I downloaded it. Damn you guys!

I'm playing it on tile mode (ie. with the minesweeper-like graphics), and I don't see changing. I actually find the graphics kind of charming, and more engaging than ASCII. But that's just me.

What IS amusing me is the depth. I'm still not 100% sure what happened, but I stumbled into a shop, complete with hobbit shopkeep. I read a scroll accidentally without paying for it (I swear!) or knowing what it did. Turns out it was a good job I did. The hobbit started blasting me with a death ray wand, ultimately killing himself as spell after spell bounced off my lucky ass. So there I am, standing in a now unmanned shop, surrounded by valuable goods. Good thing I was playing a chaotic character!

I have three main questions, from my limited time playing:

1) is there a way to SELL things? I'm picking up gems, I'm carrying weapons I can't use, all in the hopes that I can convert it into gold at a shop, but I can't figure out if there's a way to do this.

2) is identifying objects supposed to be so rare and difficult? In ten games, I've found one identifying spell, and I have to imagine the farther you get into a game, the less likely you are to just drink a potentially fatal potion to see what it does.

3) the occasional lucky fountain aside, it seems pretty tough to get HP back. Am I missing something?