Introduction

(picture taken from The Kins' tileset)

Welcome to my Let's Play Nethack thread. Without a doubt, Nethack is one of the most difficult games out there - despite having been around in various incarnations since 1987 (and its predecessor, Rogue, was first released in 1980), despite having the game completely spoiled, despite having the source code examined and picked through, some people just can't beat this game. It sounds simple - descend through the Dungeons of Doom, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, then sacrifice it to your god. Still, as any Hacker can tell you, this game runs the gamut from difficult to excruciating, so much so that several abbreviations (YASD, DYWYPI?) have been created just to indicate that you've died.

I've been playing Nethack for maybe a year or two, and I've ascended a handful of characters - not all of them, but enough of them to get most of my characters through at least the very beginning of the game. Hopefully, through this thread, I'll be able to show you a few tricks about Nethack, how to use spoilers, and maybe (if I'm lucky) we'll even have an ascension to show off at the end of it. I'm also hoping that since there are people out there who ascend various conduct characters and are way better at this game than I am, others will chip in with their tips. We'll be playing without graphics, but I'll try and point out everything that's important.

So, first things first, let's make sure that we have the game itself. The newest version of Nethack, 3.4.3, can be downloaded at http://www.nethack.org/v343/downloads.html . The first and most important thing to do is to read the file Guidebook.txt, which comes in the download file. Now, once we've mastered the basic commands and have a general idea of what the symbols are (don't worry, it'll eventually become second nature), maybe tried playing it a few times, maybe died a few times on level 1, let's go spoil ourselves crazy. There are people who have been playing for years with spoilers and still haven't beaten the game, so don't feel guilty about using spoilers.

The two most important sites of Nethack information are:

http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~eva/nethack/spoilerlist.html
and
http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Open those up in another tab when you're playing, because they are invaluable resources, and frankly without them you probably won't have any shot at beating the game. The spoiler list has tons of condensed information about the game and should be your first resource. The wiki is more useful if you run across a random enemy that you haven't fought before or forget what some obscure item does.

Now, with an homage to the previous LP of Nethack, which has unfortunately sunken into the Archives, let's meet our first brave adventurer, or "hero", if you will...

The Let's Play Archive

Nethack

by Lobster Maneuver

Introduction

Table of Contents