How do you beat Falcon's Eye?

[purplearcanist]

Has anyone beaten the game Falcon's Eye? If you did, can you give me some tips on how to do it?

[Tuna-Fish]

Get a really beefy character and kick ***.

oh, you want more details?

One good trick for a newbie is to pick a single class/race combo and truly flood the early game, playing completely recklessly until something really good happens. You'll die often and early, but that only means you learn faster and sooner or later, usually sooner, you'll, by sheer statistics, run into something good and/or cool which will keep your character alive until you bumb into the midgame with all it's cheesy challenges.

Examples: Eat everything you do not KNOW to be poisonous. Read most stuff, drink most stuff. If you come upon a pool, 'q'uaff from it until it disappears. There is a small chance that doing that will give you a wish, if it happens, ask for a "blessed +3 silver dragon scale mail". It is probably the best armor in the game, sharing that status with the gray dsm.

And for the end, a specific cheesy trick for the game: Use a wizard, elven ones are a safe bets. Every now and then, you'll start with a magic marker. If neither of your starting spellbooks are of "magic missile" variety, look for the nearest pool, dip your more worthless spellbook in it and then try writing a new spellbook of magic missile. mm is probably the best offensive weapon there is for most of the game, as it's power scales with your level. Also, wizards get bonuses casting them, so you likely can cast it on level 2 or 3 safely.

And finally, remember it's really not all that hard. I have ascended in nethack with everything but valkyrias and tourists, valkyrias because I once almost ascended with them, and died on the astral plane by accident, and got so pissed off i never played them again and tourists because I'm not THAT much a masochist. After you get to know all the tricks there are to it, the game is not really that hard. My last game was orginally an elven wizard that I just wanted to try just how powerful I could get it. I turned it into a xorn (a demon that can walk trough walls and eat metal). Rings, when eaten by a creature that can digest them, have a small chance to give their power to the creature. That xorn ate so much rings of protection and rings of damage that it didn't take damage from most stuff even if it was naked and it could kill most enemies by prodding at them.

[Tuna-Fish]

Oh, and the most important advice. It is not real-time. If you feel like you're in it and deep, take your fingers off the keyboard, and think.

[purplearcanist]

How do you polymorph into a monster permanantly?

What is the best monster to become?

[K.Mandla]

(Shifted to Gaming. ;) )

[muguwmp67]

Falcon's Eye is based on nethack, and I beat that a long time ago. I had to cheat in order to do it though (I created a hack that backed up my game after each level).

All of the roguelike games are difficult to beat. A lot of luck is involved, as it really helps to find an uber item early in the game (boots of speed, woot!)

BTW, I don't know about others, but I've used the falcon's eye interface, and really have trouble reading it. I recommend playing nethack/slash 'em without the gui tiles, it makes it easier to see whats going on.

If you really want to beat nethack (aka ascend), here's a link to a various spoilers and faqs.

http://www.nicolaas.net/erebus/

[dbd]

Falcon's Eye is based on nethack, and I beat that a long time ago. I had to cheat in order to do it though (I created a hack that backed up my game after each level).
Nooo, save scumming! Boo!

All of the roguelike games are difficult to beat. A lot of luck is involved, as it really helps to find an uber item early in the game (boots of speed, woot!)
They are indeed VERY hard at first and have an insane initial learning curve. However, luck is not essential, there is a guy called Marvin who plays in the /dev/null nethack tournament who managed to ascend (win the game) something like 10 times in a row. So if you really know what you are doing, and play carefully, then you can win almost every time

BTW, I don't know about others, but I've used the falcon's eye interface, and really have trouble reading it. I recommend playing nethack/slash 'em without the gui tiles, it makes it easier to see whats going on.
I agree, ASCII graphics are really the only way to play :D

If you really want to beat nethack (aka ascend), here's a link to a various spoilers and faqs.

http://www.nicolaas.net/erebus/

Yes, spoilers are an option, an if you want to win in the next couple of years then they are pretty much essential. However, if you just want to have fun then I'd advise against to much spoiler use. Aim to chat to the oracle every game and record what he tells you, after a while you should have some ideas and will able to slowly get better. This will take a lot of patience, but thats kinda how I wished I'd done it now.

If you do want some clues to get you started, but don't want massive spoilers then I'd very strongly recommend this page:
http://www.melankolia.net/nethack/nethack.guide.html

By the way, I first ascended after having played the game on and off for 4 years, and I read some spoilers, but avoided them a lot. It is a tough game to learn, especially if you avoid spoilers, but well worth it, and IMHO one of the best games ever made :)

There is a dedicated nethack newsgroup here, if you have many questions then that is the place to go:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/topics?lnk=sg
Not than I'm discouraging you from posting here, its great here too, just there are a lot more experts over there :)

Just out of interest, how far into the dungeon do you tend to get, what kind of deaths are you suffering from?

[purplearcanist]

Just out of interest, how far into the dungeon do you tend to get, what kind of deaths are you suffering from?

I tend to get to about level 2 or 3. Sometimes my way is blocked since I can't find the stairs downwards. On a lucky (and rare) death, I get to about level 4 or 5. The furthest I've ever gotten was level 10 in the gnomish mines.

I usually get whacked by monsters or by starvation/eating a rotten corpse.

I just need a way to continually train my character easily.

[dbd]

Well done, getting to level 10 just once is a significant achievement for a new player :)

What classes do you tend to play, or do you just play random?
Valkyries are definitely the best for new players, since they are poison resistant (so you don't have to be quite so careful about what you eat) and because they are very strong. However it is more important that you are having fun, so just go for a class you like the sound of most (NOT tourists though :))

A good tip for nethack play is to be a coward. Be prepared to make like Brave Sir Robin and RUN AWAY whenever things start to look bad. The dungeon is a very dangerous place, especially for new characters, and you need to always be on the look out for situations that might kill you.

As for starvation, that's a problem that you'll soon learn to avoid. Just make sure you eat every corpse you produce that is not poisonous (finding out that is a mixture of common sense and trial and error or spoiler work I'm afraid), and ONLY eat fresh corpses. You wouldn't leave real meat lying around in a dungeon and then come back to eat it in real life would you? :)

Also, maybe I should mention that you need to expect to die a lot. Even though I know how to complete the game probably more than half of my characters don't get to level 10.

[Tuna-Fish]

How do you polymorph into a monster permanantly?
By wearing an amulet of unchanging around your neck.

What is the best monster to become?
I like xorns because of the ability to walk trough walls (and thus hide from any harm if there only is a wall nearby) and the ability to eat some rings and amulets.

on the other hand, xorns have only mediocre stats and cannot wear shirt/armor/cloak(and boots too, iirc), leaving quite few empty item slots. Weapon, shield, two rings and hat.

the game isn't really about having the best possible stats but having lots of all kinds of cheesy little advantages that you can use in a difficult situation. Whether they are means of escape (wands of digging, cursed !oGL, speed, teleportation), means of instakill (cockatrices, eggs of cockatrice) or anything else that might apply.

[rolando2424]

I also a new player to nethack and derivades.

I've only reached level 8 of the dungeon I think, using a Barbarian Ogre and beating the crud outo of anything that stood in the way :D

But I like playing with Wizard (that's in almost all the game I play that have some kind of magic thing).

I usually use and Ogre Wizard, because of the non-poison food thing.

But I think I'm doing something bad (I mean, aren't Ogre supossed to be stupid, though really bad at magic? No offence to any Ogre's out there :D).

I haven't played in a while though.

Also if you want to play a funny-gore-5-minutes roughlike game, give DoomRL (http://doom.chaosforge.org/) a try.

A managed to beat the game in a few days... But then you unlock several challenges to add to the fun :D

[purplearcanist]

What classes do you tend to play, or do you just play random?



I usually play wizard. Now, I'm getting some chessy tactics.

1. Polymorphing into a xorn permanantly., and eating up and identifing rings.

2. Charming an army of monsters.

[dbd]

I just came across (on the nethack newsgroup) what I believe to be some of the best nethack adivice I've ever seen:

Another piece of unsolicited advice: it isn't at all obvious, but NetHack is designed top to bottom to be a _puzzle_, where discovering what things do, what objectives to set, what possessions are best, purely by playing the game, is a huge part of the entertainment possibilities.

In that regard, it is like Zork or Adventure or Bard's Tale, not like more modern games.
If you hang around this newsgroup picking up tidbits, or consult the huge set of available online "spoiler" documents, almost all of that aspect of the game will be irrecoverably lost to you, and it will become much more mechanical, which might make it lots less fun.

The choice is entirely yours.

With regards to wizards, they are not one of easiest classes, but they are also not as hard as Tourists. Also it depends a lot on your starting kit on how hard wizards are. If you stick to wizards then it will take you longer till your first ascension than if you had play Valks, however, you should not be in a rush to complete this game, and you have much more fun playing wizards.
So really as I see it you have a choice:
1) Complete the game as soon as possible, play Valks and ignore the entire puzzle side of the game by reading many spoilers.
2) Get as much out of the game as possible, play whatever class you feel like, avoid spoilers, therefore solve the puzzles (which are basically working out how to play) yourself, but take longer to complete the game. (Note: when I say this will take longer, it will take MUCH longer, very very few people have managed to complete the game without any tips from outside the game).

If you want a middle way, that isn't as hard as 2, but doesn't ruin a large amount of what the game has to give you then I'd read the tips in the link I posted earlier:
http://www.melankolia.net/nethack/nethack.guide.html
And absolutely nothing else.

The big problem with nethack is you have no idea really how much spoilers spoil the game until you have already read them and played using them a lot. This is partly because the gameplay (as a puzzle) in nethack is kinda unique amount games, no other games make part of the challenge working out how to play. So you are really unable to make an informed decision about how to approach the spoilers. My advice would be to avoid them, but there are other opinions, you're just gonna have to guess who's opinion is best for you :)

[purplearcanist]

Lately, I find myself getting a little better at Falcon's eye. What I try to do is:

1. Be a wizard, keep choosing wizard until you get an object that allows you to polymorph. Then search for an amulet of unchanging. Be sure to become something fierce.:grin:

2. Be an elven ranger. Automatic searching and trap detection rock.:)

I also discovered a trick, that you should polymorph your pet with a wand of polymorph permanently into something fierce.:grin: