Nethack!

[zephyrblade]

I can not believe I only discovered this game a month ago.

For the last 20+ years, I have been no stranger to video games. But this ...
I feel I've found some 'holy grail' of gaming.

It is the greatest game I have ever played !

And being a noob, (trying to remain relatively spoiler free), I know I've had but a whiff of the sheer depth of gameplay...

I am dying. Alot. And I love it!

Prior to this, I was playing 'Oblivion' again - now that game just seems like spoon-fed gloop for toddlers.

The game I just lost was my best yet - my mighty barbarian got to level 10 before getting thoroughly smited (mental note; do not get priests angry!).

I just had to share that

Is anyone else here new to the 'Dungeons of Doom'?

Can any nethack gods bestow upon us mortals some *non-spoilerish* nuggets of wisdom?

[glaze]

Welcome to the club. I've been playing for several years and have ascended a couple of times. Here's some tips:
* If you're in a bad situation, stop and think. There's no hurry.
* Identify scroll is much cheaper than others.
* You can identify some wands by engraving on the floor with them.
* You can identify some wands by zapping monsters with them.
* Potions costing < 100 are safe to drink, but be careful if you drink booze because then you'll easily hit friendly creatures.
* You can drop items to altars (_) to see their BUC status (blessed/uncursed/cursed).

[oldrocker99]

It is THE greatest RPG ever created...and one of the toughest as well. There are spoiler files available, if you look...

[zephyrblade]

* If you're in a bad situation, stop and think. There's no hurry.
* Identify scroll is much cheaper than others.
* You can identify some wands by engraving on the floor with them.
* You can identify some wands by zapping monsters with them.
* Potions costing < 100 are safe to drink, but be careful if you drink booze because then you'll easily hit friendly creatures.
* You can drop items to altars (_) to see their BUC status (blessed/uncursed/cursed).

Thanks glaze - some mighty solid tips there ...

The first tip especially.
I need to identify that it is a bad situation earlier. Death can seem swift!

Though it is the completely obvious thing to do, I haven't really been zapping many unknown wands.

Am yet to encounter booze.

Have also learnt that my pet is alot more useful than I first thought.

I said I'm relatively unspoiled; I thought I had a few 'major' discoveries somewhat worked out, and do admit to taking a quick squiz at the Wikihack entries - just to confirm

Am going to try not to though - discovering is the fun part.


My last 'discovery':

It was the first time I've had success praising my Deity!
Trying to keep a good thing going, I soon ran out of sacrificial sentients.

With a stroke of luck, an innocuous looking creature slowly ambled onto the scene - a cockatrice.

It was the first time I'd seen one.

My crossbow made short work of it, but lets just say it never reached the altar!


I feel I've plateued a bit; I can regularly make it past the Gnomish Minetown, (and thereabouts in the Main Dungeon), but somewhere not long after, things seem to start snowballing.

[glaze]

A very important tip is that you can make holy water by dropping clear potions to an aligned altar and praying. Then you can dip items to it and uncurse/bless them.

[cisforcojo]

You should also check out Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (a nethack variant).

The design philosophy of DCSS makes it more suitable for me.

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

[DirtDawg]

I can not believe I only discovered this game a month ago...

Can any nethack gods bestow upon us mortals some *non-spoilerish* nuggets of wisdom?

Oh man. I have been playing Nethack on and off for almost seven years and I have never come close to ascending (deepest dungeon level I've ever made it to was somewhere in the twenties). I also try my hardest to avoid spoilers, though. In fact, I just started playing again a couple weeks ago because I found a version for my Droid. Awesome! Now I can stupidly die wherever I go!

Here's a great page of hints with no spoilers: http://www.melankolia.net/nethack/nethack.guide.html

Also, read through the official guidebook. No spoilers and it has some great suggestions as well: http://www.nethack.org/v343/Guidebook.html

Glad you finally discovered the greatest game ever written. Now if we could just get an updated version. But it's been the better part of a decade since a new version was released, so I'm thinking the project is either dead or considered "finished" (though I would take issue with that. The interface could use some work, if nothing else).