Jelly's Adventures in Nethack (unspoiled)

[JellySlayer]

I decided that I would give NetHack a try today. I played the game once or twice briefly a few years ago, and have been thinking for awhile about giving it another chance. Just for fun, I thought I would document my adventures here, completely unspoiled, as I try to figure the game out. ADOM is the only Rogue-like I've ever really played to this point, so it will be an interesting experience to see how it goes. If you have played NetHack, please don't include spoilers in this thread unless I explicitly ask for them...

Character 1: Joe the Samurai

Picked Samurai more or less because it sounded cool. I have a blessed katana and wakazashi, some splint mail, and a yumi, which is apparently a kind of Japanese bow. For some reason I have a dog named Hachi. I explore about a third of the first level before finding that I've run out of real estate. Apparently paths just sometimes stop randomly? I go back and find a secret door. Autopickup is apparently on by default, which is kind of annoying. My katana gets rusted by a trap before I kill my first monster. Kill a few other things, find the stairs. Find a chest which I pick up but can't open while it's in my inventory. Weird. Okay, put it down, figure out how to turn off auto-pickup. For some reason you open doors but loot chests. I try to force the lock but my rusty katana breaks. Equip the wakazashi and use that to pry the lock. Some gold and a melon in it. Probably not worth the loss of my primary weapon. Descend, leaving my dog behind, and level up on some goblins. Not sure what effects leveling has. Then again, I don't know what special abilities I'm supposed to have as a samurai either. Never did figure that out. Leveled again and descended again. Level 3 has two downstairs; I choose one at random. On level 4 I get attacked by two things called rothes that are doing lots of damage and get lots of hits. I retreat and remember to try my bow, but I can't shoot very well, apparently. I get trapped in a corner because you can't walk diagonally through doors if you have too much gear? But I'm not encumbered... I kill one rothe but the other one kills me.

Joe the Lawful Human Samurai was killed by a rothe on level 4, gaining 1119 points in 1160 moves, while killing 33 monsters.

Not bad for a first attempt, I guess. I note on the high score that there's religion, of course. Should have tried to pray, maybe.

Character 2: Mike the Knight

Okay, tried a knight this time. Start with some decent knighty armor, a lance +1 and a longsword +1. I have a pony this time. There's a fountain on the level, but I don't try drinking. Doing pretty well killing stuff so far. Find a brass ring which I equip to no obvious effect. Try reading a scroll that gives a "strange sensation", but no obvious effect either. Fall through a trap door! That's actually a pretty cool type of trap. Work my way back up. Leveling seems a little slower on the knight than my samurai. I find a dwarvish helmet that I equip. NetHack uses the negative AC thing I see. Okay, so it's better than what I have. Level once or twice more, descend again. A goblin drops an opal ring that I equip. Inventory in this game is annoying. There's different keys for equipping weapons, armor, and accessories, and different keys for removing them. Wandering a bit later, I suddenly turn into a blue jelly! WTF! A bunch of my gear gets dropped and I'm massively encumbered. Uh, okay. A couple monsters show up next to me as I change back. I try to attack one, but I'm not wearing my gear (oops) so I have bad armor class, and it happens to be a paralyzing eye monster. Paralysis death. Ouch. Inventory reveals that the opal ring was a cursed ring of polymorph, which was apparently the culprit of my jelly adventure. Neat trap item.

Mike the Knight died on level 3 with 726 points after 1763 moves. He advanced to level 4.

To be continued...

[anon123]

NetHack was my first roguelike. You will have fun discovering things in NH that aren't possible in ADOM (although that works the other way around too). Polymorphing is one of those. It's a good game and I enjoyed my time with it greatly, unspoiled too, although in the end ADOM hooked me up more.

Good luck!

[grobblewobble]

I never tried Nethack so this will be a great spoiler-free way to learn about the game. :)

[JellySlayer]

Character 3: Alpha the Human Monk

Had a nice run with this character. Started with a healing spell, which helped a lot. Also started with a cat. I guess all characters start with pets in this game? I ignore it just like the others. Cleared the first few levels no problem. There was a shop on level 3 which I visited, but couldn't really make much use of since all of the items were unidentified... Went down into a large cavernous level full of dwarves, gnomes, gnome lords, rothes, other things. Pretty interesting. Lots of fights, I gained levels pretty fast here. There were nymphs around that were super annoying because when you tried to attack them, they would seduce you and get you to take off your armor, as well as steal random items from you pack. They were very fast and/or teleported. I lost a tonne of gear from them. The levels were also complicated because there seemed to be a lot of pit traps that I'd fall through into a lower level... but it didn't always seem to be the same one, or I was falling multiple levels? Not really sure. The nymphs were occasionally using a (stolen) wand of digging to make pit traps and drop themselves onto lower levels as well. A few levels down I found a town. I'm still not sure how to talk to people, but there were a couple shops there that I again mostly ignored. The town also had some monsters in it, but it wasn't too bad.

I ran into trouble a level or two lower. It was dark and there were lots of monsters. I had a lantern, but I don't know how to use that either. For some reason that I am unclear on, my spells were failing a lot. I found what I thought was some better armor to replace all of the stuff the nymphs had stolen (dwarven mithril or something), but it encumbered me and I couldn't fight well. Got pinned down by a couple guys and slaughtered.

I ended up with a couple intrinsics--poison, sleep, cold resist, see invis. I was also "warned", stealthy, and fast. 102 monsters vanquished.

Alpha the Monk died in the Gnomish Mines on dungeon level 8 with 9309 points, after 3938 moves. He was level 8.

[anon123]

The nymphs were occasionally using a (stolen) wand of digging to make pit traps and drop themselves onto lower levels as well.

That's one of the things where NetHack is better than ADOM. Many monsters can intelligently use a lot of items (sometimes on you!).


I'm still not sure how to talk to people

Use the #chat extended command (type a #, then 'chat'; if you're on Windows, the game autocompletes these commands).


I ran into trouble a level or two lower. It was dark and there were lots of monsters. I had a lantern, but I don't know how to use that either.

The NH equivalent of 'u'sing items is having to 'a'pply them.

[JellySlayer]

Character 4: Beta the Dwarf Valkyrie

My first non-human character. I guess races are very specialized to their classes. Started pretty well. I had a +1 sword which I randomly upgraded to +2 with a scroll, and a decent +3 shield. Cleared a few levels until I ran into a jackalwere (werejackal?). Yikes. I guess he infected me with lycanthropy (or is that only for werewolves?) and I spent the rest of the game as a werejackal. Kind of weird. About 90% of the time, I'd be in jackal form, which meant I had near-zero HP, but insane regeneration. I also had no hands, so I couldn't use my weapon or wear armor. I couldn't fight terribly well either, but did have excellent HP regeneration. I went down into the Gnome mines, but didn't make it very far in before getting paralyzed by one of those eye monsters and dropped by an Uruk-Hai while paralyzed. Never could figure out how to get rid of my werejackal problem. Oh well, that's for another time I guess.

Beta the Valkyrie died in the Gnomish Mines on level 4 with 2355 points after 2824 moves, reaching level 6.

Character 5: Gamma the Elf Ranger

I guess this is NetHack's equivalent of the archer, except that they suck with missiles. I started with a +1 bow and some +2 arrows (and a +1 dagger), but I could maybe score a hit on 1 in 8 attacks with my arrows. I don't know if there's weapon skills or not in this game, but unless missiles can get a lot better in some other way... they're pretty lame. Not too much interesting on this one. Cleared a couple levels without difficulty, got pickpocketed by a leprechaun. Then I guess there was a summoner around that I couldn't find because huge groups of monsters starting appearing near me. First was about 8 hill orcs, who I managed to dispatch, but then a group of about 8 killer bees showed up behind me and they were just too fast and did too much damage.

Gamma the ranger died in the Dungeons of Doom on level 4 with 2145 points, after 2179 moves, killed by a killer bee after 44 kills of her own.

Character 6: Delta the Orc Barbarian

Not too much to say on this one. Had a pretty good run, I suppose. I found an armor shop on D:5 which I was able to significantly improve my gear, getting down to AC 0. I figured I'd start exploring the gnome mines, which seem to be pretty full of good equipment, and sell stuff back to the armorer who was just one level over for a bit. Unfortunately, I fell through a pit in the floor onto a nasty level with several dwarf/gnome lords chasing me around. They did lots of damage and my HP regeneration is somewhat difficult. Eventually, I was just overwhelmed by the numbers of monsters. Apparently if you kill a mimic in a store, the shopkeeper owns the corpse, which is a little weird.

74 creatures killed, died in the Gnomish Mines on DL6 with 4412 points after 3224 moves, advancing to level 7.

Character 7: Epsilon the Monk

After the (relative) success of my last monk I decided to give another a shot. This one didn't go quite so well--I didn't start with healing spells, for one thing. For another, I read a random scroll on D3 or so and got a giant ball-and-chain stuck to my leg. I wasn't able to break it with any items obviously available to me, and every time I went down a stairwell the ball smacked me for massive damage. Got hurt pretty bad entering the gnome cave, then got killed before I could recover my HP back.

45 creatures killed, died in the Gnomish Mines on D5 with 1993 points after 1804 moves. Advanced to level 6.

[JellySlayer]

Character 8: Zeta the Dwarf Caveman

Cursed equipment in NetHack is quite a bit more annoying than in ADOM. Pretty much any cursed item is guaranteed to have a negative modifier on it, so getting stuck with cursed gear is pretty unfortunate early on. Ended up with some cursed ring mail early that was pretty poor. I found an altar, but it didn't ID B/U/C status of my gear--maybe it was an alignment or piety issue, I dunno. Apparently all of the monsters in the Gnomish Mines are non-hostile to dwarves (or cave people?), which is kind of nice except it makes it a little hard to get around because you can't (AFAIK) swap positions. I made it down to the town. Was exploring and opening all of the rooms. The captain of the watch accused me of being a thief, I guess for kicking open his door when it was locked? I don't remember stealing anything. He was very strong and killed me quickly.

Zeta the Caveman died in The Gnomish Mines on DL 5 with 1186 points after 1603 moves, he advanced to level 5.

Character 9: Eta the Elf Wizard

Very nice character to start. Had a ring of slow digestion which basically eliminates food problems. Also started with identify and remove curse scrolls, a force bolt spell and a haste self spell (though the latter has 97% failure rate to start with). Apparently wearing armor increases spell failure, so I skip most of it. I find a spellbook of identify a few levels down, which is very nice, but again, high failure rate. PP recovery is very, very slow in this game, so I have to be careful with my spells. I find a book shop on D3 and start trying to buy everything out. Add sleep, wizard lock, detect food, charm monster to my spell list. I'm not sure if I ever need the books again once I learn the spell; there aren't any obvious spell castings or whatever. I sell some of my less useful books back to buy more. Still a few expensive ones I can't get yet. I descend another level and I guess I missed a message of importance, because I stumble upon the artifact hammer Mjollnir just lying on the ground. It shocks me to pick it up and is cursed, but I use my remove curse scroll to take care of that. It seems pretty strong, doing thunder damage with every successful hit. On D6 I stumble across some sort of temple thing with lots of monsters including some naga things that are quite nasty, so I retreat and try the Gnomish Mines instead. Fall through a trap door down into the town and get attacked by the ghost of Zeta! Manage to kill him and find all of his items lying around. Very cool. There are lots of strong monsters in the town (and the guards are very unhelpful). I end up having to leave and start working my way back up the Gnome mines to connect to my bookshop again.

On my way back up, get attacked by a werewolf and surrounded by wolf minions. Down to 8 HP, I try drinking a potion of invisibility in hopes of escaping, but apparently wolves see invis (or invis doesn't help if they've already detected you) and was killed. Such a promising character :( Hopefully I'll find his corpse with the artifact hammer in it next game.

142 creatures vanquished, died in the The Gnomish Mines on dungeon level 5 with 13678 points after 5807 moves. Advanced to level 9.

[Soirana]

For another, I read a random scroll on D3 or so and got a giant ball-and-chain stuck to my leg.



Cursed equipment in NetHack is quite a bit more annoying than in ADOM. Pretty much any cursed item is guaranteed to have a negative modifier on it, so getting stuck with cursed gear is pretty unfortunate early on.

Heh, from what I recall on Nethack - it has quite different view on handling items. For one there is some workarounds to identify/evaluate stuff but these are rather spoily and not intuitive, besides honestly at moment i start reading them I lost most of interest in Nethack anyway.

On good side in Nethack once you have good thing you pretty much have it. No need for rings of ice, stashing, etc - even lousy T-shirt is next to indestructible by Adom standards

[anon123]

Fall through a trap door down into the town and get attacked by the ghost of Zeta! Manage to kill him and find all of his items lying around. Very cool.

Yes, that's another point for NetHack :) Bones files are nice. There was a program to swap them with other people, so that you get to fight the ghosts of their YASD characters.

[gut]

You chose nethack over dungeon crawl stone soup?
Best nethack character I ever had was a valkary who found an early altar. I somehow got a precrowning or such (livesaccing?) and got a great weapon out of it.

[Grey]

You should play Brogue, much better game. Sil is pretty cool too, for a *band.

[JellySlayer]

After I finish NetHack in a couple weeks maybe I'll try some of these other games ;)

[JellySlayer]

Character 10: Theta the Elf Wizard

Had a decent start to this one: spellbook of extra healing, force bolt, plus a ring of searching that was somewhat handy for finding the many fairly obscurely located secret doors in this game. General shop on the third level which I used to sell spare gear and buy a few extra books. Fourth level of the dungeon had very erratic danger level. Cleared it once no problem; when I came back from shopping a second time, there was a big group (maybe 5-10 of each) of hill orcs and Mordor orcs wandering around, plus a few other strong monsters like a gnome king and a gold golem. Maybe it was some sort of special event that I missed, dunno. I managed to kill most of these, but a nasty centaur got me in the end. I also apparently got level drained or something at some point, I think, since my high score claims I was level four with a maximum of six. Wizards seem pretty good in this game except for the really dreadful PP regeneration rates you get--maybe 1 point every 5-10 turns or so. Much slower than the base healing rate.

Character 11: Iota the Monk

One of my best characters so far. Started with a healing book, which is nice. An early shop added detect monsters, which was somewhat useful (and usable, unlike a lot of spells I find). Decided against doing the Gnome mines right away and instead descended a bit. Ran into an Oracle on level 6--the temple area I had seen before--who charges 50... gold (zomwoeifs?) for a fortune cookie message. Alright. Lots of monsters around. I think that this game's equivalent of a threat room is a random spawn of a dozen or so monsters of the same type. Descended quite far on the main dungeon path. Got to about level 8 when I found a stairs going back up. Investigated and found an interesting area. There were several rooms full of boulders and a large number of pits around. You have to work the boulders around each other to push them into the pits without getting any stuck. Kind of neat. Finished the first room of that, ascended, and found a second similar boulder puzzle. Unfortunately, as I was working, two fire ants spawned. Nasty things do lots of damage and set you on fire, which further drains your health and burns up your equipment. Wasn't able to kill them and was eventually overcome. I died in Sokoban dungeon level 5 (whatever that is), with 7411 points, advancing to level 8. He had 108 kills.

[JellySlayer]

Character 12: Kappa the Valkyrie

Explored the first couple levels. Found an altar, but I don't know if you can sacrifice or if there's anything else fancy to do with altars besides status ID--the command list doesn't seem to have a command for it. Found a crystal plate armor that was very, very nice and dropped my AC to -3. Descended a couple more levels. Ran into a big group of Uruk-hai that I was able to kill with little difficulty, then came across a room full of leprechauns with cash. I know leprechauns pickpocket, so I dropped all my gold, killed them one at a time adding to my stash each time. I tried eating a leprechaun corpse, which gave me teleportitis, and got randomly teleported into a hidden room with a guard in it, who demanded that I leave all of my cash behind in exchange for letting me out. Fortunately, I had left most of my gold elsewhere, so it only cost me maybe 200. I cleared the rest of the leprechauns and teleported around the next level or two until I ran into something called a mumak. I guess I wasn't watching my health very well, and he just slaughtered me.

Kappa the Valkyrie died in the Dungeons of Doom level 7 with 10824 points after 3688 moves. She advanced to level 8.

[Soirana]

Given your HP issues - wouldn't it be about time spoil/explore (E)ngraving?

[gut]

at least figure out how to sac. I remember figuring it out unspoiled though (iirc, it was a decade ago afterall).
It was with a valkarie that I did best, and only because I found an altar and sacced my way to a one-hander.