Net Hack

NetHack is a single player dungeon exploration ("roguelike") game that runs on a wide variety of computer systems, with a variety of graphical and text interfaces all using the same game engine. Unlike many other Dungeons & Dragons-inspired games, the emphasis in NetHack is on discovering the detail of the dungeon and not simply killing everything in sight - in fact, killing everything in sight is a good way to die quickly. Each game presents a different landscape - the PseudoRandomNumberGenerator provides an essentially unlimited number of variations of the dungeon and its denizens to be discovered by the player in one of a number of characters: you can pick your race, your role, and your gender.

NetHack is FreeSoftware. Even if you read the CeeLanguage sources, grepping for messages to learn what "You feel that something is helping you" means, exploring those SwitchStatements to learn what all of those scrolls do, and diving into monst.c to check if that monster corpse is good to eat, the game is so difficult that you might never find that Amulet of Yendor and win the game, even after years of play.

NetHack is to UnixCulture what GameOfPong was to the world in general.

Get NetHack 3.4.3 at http://www.nethack.org.

More NetHack links at http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Websites

If you are interested in roguelikee games (the category of games begun by Rogue, by Ken Arnold and Michael Toy), try these links:

• http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/ - a wiki about roguelike games
• http://www.hut.fi/~eye/roguelike/ "Guide to Roguelike Games"
• http://www.tripalot.com/roguelike/ "Roguelike Review" updated 2005
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

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Neutral Valkyrie Walkthrough

A walkthrough for newbie, just to win the game.

When playing nethack seriously, you should make a plan. Main goal is ascending and there are several subgoals; also there are sub-sub-goals. The sub-sub goals vary, depending on the current situation. For example, if a lot of your items are cursed, the sub-sub goal is to make some holy water.

Here are my sub-goals:

• Goto Gnomish Mines, get decent armor, buy things at mine town, goto the end of mine

Always check armor, whether it is cursed or not (use your pet). There are possibly two good things in mine town, bag of holding and magic lamp. Also get a pick axe (sometimes you need to dig), make sure it is not cursed.

• Armor wish list for this level:
  • high boots (AC 2) (WGT 12)
  • leather gloves (AC 1) (WGT 8)
  • dwarvish iron helm (AC 2) (WGT 40)
  • dwarvish cloak (AC 0) (EFFECT ##) (WGT 10)
  • dwarvish mithril coat (AC 6) (EFFECT ###) (WGT 150) rather than plate mail or crystal plate mail (AC 7) (WGT 450)
  • Hawaiian shirt/T-shirt (put inside the bag, wear it later)

• Find altar then setup base (to store item, polypiling, sacrificing, etc)

Cycle of (magic-marker, scroll of genocide, unicorn horn, magic-marker). To optimize armor need a lot of scroll of enchant armor, so need many magic marker, the easy way to get magic marker is polypiling unicorn horns. Wrote cursed scroll of genocide (to genocide unicorn), after killing them all you have a lot of unicorn horn. [and unicorn corpses for sacrificing].

Put your stuff in close room and lock the door, engrave Elbereth surrounding the room to protect your stuff.

After sacrificing some new big corpse (maybe some black/white unicorn), usually you get Mojo (Molljnir).

• Survive until Sokoban level, get reflection and/or magic protection (avoid polymorph trap, level >8).

• Get more experience by going just before medusa level, go to quest

• Goto Quest

• Find Fort Ludio, get more money, for donation

• Goto Medusa and castle, get wand of Wishing

• Kill Vlad

• Find vibrating square, go back to base, optimize everything

• Ready for final battle, kill Wizard Of Yendor

• Back to base, pickup some stuffs for plane, prepare things.

• List of weapon and armor:
  • Amulet of life saving
  • the blessed +7 Mjollnir
  • the blessed rustproof +7 Frost Brand
  • a blessed +7 long sword
  • Orb of Fate
  • a blessed rustproof +5 helm of telepathy
  • a blessed +5 silver dragon scale mail
  • a blessed fireproof +5 T-shirt
  • a blessed fireproof +5 cloak of magic resistance
  • a blessed fireproof +5 pair of speed boots
  • a blessed rustproof +5 pair of gauntlets of power
• Goto planes
• FIN

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Oh sure, you make it sound so easy. I've been playing this stupid game for three years and I still haven't ascended. But one day I will! -- EricHerman

Just three? I'm in my eighth year, but I killed the Wizard at least!

• Also, bear in mind that if you do die, bones may be created. If you see your ghost, best way to get your stuff is to find a random sword/dagger/potion/rock/arrow and throw it at the ghost, then run around it in a big circle. Go to where it was standing and get all your stuff. (It may help if you drop your current stuff or put it in a bag of holding --Nudger