NetHack Ascenders on Ubuntu?

[quietglow]

So anyone ascend while playing on an Ubuntu box?

Just curious...

[matthew]

I have not...

<hangs head in embarrassment> I haven't made it past level 10.

I have this terrible habit of standing and fighting when I should run.

Any non-spoiler tips would be appreciated as NetHack is my favorite "hey, I have five minutes to kill, let me bring up my saved game" time waster.

[doclivingston]

I have not...

<hangs head in embarrassment> I haven't made it past level 10.

I've made it to the plane of Earth once, but never gotten the amulet apart from that.


I have this terrible habit of standing and fighting when I should run.

Any non-spoiler tips would be appreciated as NetHack is my favorite "hey, I have five minutes to kill, let me bring up my saved game" time waster.

Let your pet kill things. First off, it will get more powerful and be able to help you more. Second, it makes you level up slower - leveling up has both advantages and disadvantages

[quietglow]

Let your pet kill things. First off, it will get more powerful and be able to help you more. Second, it makes you level up slower - leveling up has both advantages and disadvantages

You know, I'm just starting to learn to appreciate playing the Tourist, so I'm learning to let the pet do the work. What would you say the disadvantages of leveling too quickly are, though?

FWIW, I too tend to get capped around dungeon level 10-11 too, but my strategy thusfar has been to play classes which have stronger offensive power. I usually play slashem, so this means Flame Mages and Rangers with the occasional Wizard or Samurai.

[doclivingston]

You know, I'm just starting to learn to appreciate playing the Tourist, so I'm learning to let the pet do the work.

The Tourist is generally considered the hardest class to win at, but you do learn to be careful.

What would you say the disadvantages of leveling too quickly are, though?

This is slightly spoilery, but not very much - so it's attached in a text file.

FWIW, I too tend to get capped around dungeon level 10-11 too, but my strategy thusfar has been to play classes which have stronger offensive power. I usually play slashem, so this means Flame Mages and Rangers with the occasional Wizard or Samurai.

Don't be afraid to #pray if you're about to die (poison, starving or monsters), just don't do it too often or if you've annoyed your god.

[quietglow]

Yeah, I meant to put a spolier banner in the title!

The Tourist is seriously difficult to play, but I have a special pet peeve about dying of hunger and they do come pretty loaded down with food.

[doclivingston]

Dying of starvation is sad when it happens, and it happens all too often. As long as a) you're hunger-rate isn't increased by anything, and b) you don't pray for anything else and c) don't do anything to affect your gods disposition toward you, there is enough time between episodes of becoming starving to pray safely. However (a) and (c) are fairly easy to do, even by accident, so it's really only useful when starting out with a class that doesn't get given food.

In theory you can complete the game without ever eating (it's on the #conduct list), by doing this. In practice, I don't think many people ever have.

[quietglow]

I manage to ALWAYS tick off the gods--and usually it most often happens in the pursuit of food too :-)

I have managed to make a blend of finding stuff, eating foes and praying to mostly take care of the issue, but it sure does feel nice starting off with walmart on your back as when you play the tourist!

[zaivala]

I have not...

<hangs head in embarrassment> I haven't made it past level 10.

I have this terrible habit of standing and fighting when I should run.

Any non-spoiler tips would be appreciated as NetHack is my favorite "hey, I have five minutes to kill, let me bring up my saved game" time waster.

Isn't that more like, "I have 5 minutes in which to get killed"?

[zaivala]

I'm running Ubuntu through Wubi (i.e., on my Windows partition). I have installed Ubuntu several times (for increasingly embarassing reasons). The first several, Nethack worked fine. The most-recently-previous installation, it hung upon exit (edited to add: each and every time I run the game -- it runs fine, just doesn't close when I die), and I had to go to System -> Administration -> System Monitor to kill the process.

The current installation, it worked fine for several weeks, then returned to its poor closing behavior.

Has anyone else had this problem? How do I fix it?

On a somewhat different Hack subject, I have played Falcon's Eye somewhat extensively, but don't like it as much... nice that they added graphics, but movement is 45 degrees off what I'm used to and it seems easier to die faster.

When I started playing Hack, it had just recently evolved to Hack from Rogue... I was playing on a VAX cluster at Digital Electronics Corp.'s Colorado Springs facility, which cluster my wife was Manager of.