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#Post#: 1561--------------------------------------------------
NetHack
By: Omni_Builder Date: February 7, 2014, 1:22 pm
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So...NetHack.
This is probably one of the hardest games I've ever played. It's
a free adventure game with randomly-generated levels, and it's
renowned for being so robust that it takes years to master.
Everything is portrayed in colored ASCII characters, but there's
plenty of lore and descriptions to tell you exactly what you're
seeing in the Dungeons of Doom.
It's an incredibly fun game, but, well...if you die, you're dead
for good. Sometimes, you can encounter the ghost of your past
self, and get all your items back, but you have to do so with a
new character. However, the high scores table keeps you playing
again and again.
I've gotten some practice, so I know a lot of the commands and
such--unfortunately, I still die for the worst reasons ever.
Here's a list of some of the most magnificent ways I've died!
(I'm probably missing some)
[list]
[li]Couldn't find the stairs down. Ran out of food. Ate a jackal
corpse. "You got sick." "You can move again." Walked five steps.
DIED. (Insert Kill Bill joke here.)[/li]
[li]Found a door with a sign that said "Closed for inventory."
Tried to open the door. (Locked.) Kicked in the door. Angered
the shopkeeper inside. DIED. (Shopkeeper confiscated all my
items.)[/li]
[li]Read an unidentified scroll. "You feel threatened." An
iguana appears. Iguana attacks 20 times in a row. (I'm not even
exaggerating.) DIED.[/li]
[li]Read an unidentified scroll (again). About 25 monsters
appeared all around me. Attacked literally the ONLY monster that
could paralyze me. Got paralyzed. Got attacked a few dozen
times. DIED.[/li]
[li]Drank an unmarked potion (I really need to stop doing that).
Started hallucinating (makes all entities change appearance with
each step). Accidentally auto-attacked a shopkeeper, thinking it
was an ettin. DIED. (Shopkeeper confiscated all my items.)[/li]
[li]Got attacked by a kitten. Almost got killed by the kitten.
(Yeah. I was level 5.) Fired a "wand of sleep" at the kitten.
The bolt hit the kitten. The bolt BOUNCED OFF THE WALL. THE BOLT
HIT ME. I FELL ASLEEP. A dwarf wandered in and attacked me 8
times while I was asleep. DIED.[/li]
[li]Found ultra-powerful wand of fire. Used it as a last resort.
Yeah, that one bounced off the wall too. DIED.[/li]
[/list]
So, yeah...it's an ingenuous game, but it's not for the easily
angered.
Has anyone else played it? If not, you can download it for free
at nethack.org. (Yes, I know the website sounds a bit shady. The
"hack" refers to the hack-and-slash game genre.)
EDIT: Just fired an unidentified wand in an empty room to test
it. It bounced off the wall, hit me, and killed me instantly. It
was an extremely powerful wand. I'm sure I'll learn after
accidentally shooting myself another few dozen times.
EDIT #2: And we have a winner. "R.I.P. Slipped while mounting a
saddled pony." Apparently a 4-foot fall is instant death for
Knights.
EDIT #3: Okay, I've gotten a lot better at this game, so I'm
staying alive longer and longer. I just died, and...it wasn't a
stupid death, but it was a very sad one. I was doing well as a
Samurai, and had a lot of items. One of them was an unidentified
amulet, but I didn't want to put it on--I had heard of the
"cursed amulet of strangulation," and did not want to die
because of a poor choice like that. Unfortunately, I was being
attacked by huge swarms of powerful bugs on several floors of
the dungeon at that time, and I was pretty stuck. I finally got
killed by a fire ant (it ignited a potion of oil I was holding,
which dealt some extra damage). Since I was dead, the game let
me see what all my unidentified items were. THE AMULET I WAS
HOLDING WAS AN AMULET OF LIFE-SAVING. It's an extremely rare
amulet that resurrects you when you die, making it an extremely
good item in a game where death is permanent. And I hadn't
equipped it.
EDIT #4: I just found a beautiful new use for my spellcasting. I
was wondering, "what would happen if I cast 'stone to flesh' on
one of those giant boulders?" The result is a Giant Chunk of
Meat. Now I never have to go hungry again.
#Post#: 1986--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: Lemon_Sprinkles Date: February 21, 2014, 7:28 pm
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Thanks Omni... add this game to my list of addictions.
My most (Not really) epic way to die.
• Christian the healer was killed by a gridbug.
:(
#Post#: 1988--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: Omni_Builder Date: February 21, 2014, 7:45 pm
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Hooray, someone to talk to about the game!
Healer is a neat class--the wand of sleep is great, and it's
always nice to have healing spells. The stethoscope is actually
really useful; it takes very little time to use, and you can use
it on any monster (including hostile ones) to view their level,
hit points and armor class.
Condolences on your death by grid bug. Fortunately, you can
sometimes find the monster that killed your previous character
and exact sweet revenge. I once fired a mysterious wand at a
giant ant as a last resort, accidentally turning it invisible
before it killed me--the next time I played, I found the
invisible ant lurking around all my old items.
Also, I'm not sure if you already know this (it took me a while
to realize it) but you can use the "s" key to search for hidden
doors, hidden passages, traps and invisible enemies on all
adjacent spaces. This is useful because the stairs to lower
levels are sometimes only accessible through secret doors. It
sometimes takes multiple searches to find a secret, so I like to
briefly hold down the "s" key at every spot where I think
there's a secret. The Ranger class is very good at searching,
and takes a search action at the end of every turn, which can be
very useful.
#Post#: 1989--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: Lemon_Sprinkles Date: February 21, 2014, 7:49 pm
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Haha. At least you got your stuff back (I hope) from that
invisible ant.
Thanks for those tips! :D
I'm off to use the "s" key... >:3
#Post#: 1996--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: Omni_Builder Date: February 21, 2014, 8:05 pm
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Not knowing how to use the "s" key has made me starve to death
on several occasions...
Another neat trick: You can throw stuff with "t". If you have a
poisonous potion, throw it at an enemy to poison them. If you're
fighting an enemy like a gas spore, which explodes when you kill
it, get the finishing blow by throwing a rock at it (if you
don't have a ranged weapon). In fact, all Rogues start out with
a potion of sickness, which is a very effective thrown weapon.
Items like "darts" deal lots of damage when thrown.
Oh, and I like to press "@" at the beginning of each game. It
turns off "Autopickup," so you don't collect items as soon as
you step on them--you pick them up with "," instead. This means
that you don't accidentally burden yourself trying to drag
jackal corpses along with you.
#Post#: 2699--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: Omni_Builder Date: March 3, 2014, 12:44 pm
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So, uh...I tried to spam the "create monster" spell in order to
get a bunch of free experience points. It didn't work out well.
The spell is usually pretty useful since it only creates
monsters that fit the dungeon level. But if you cast it too many
times, it might summon something you can't handle. Like 20
manes, for example. (My wand of cold had run out, too.)
#Post#: 7258--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: idodi Date: April 19, 2014, 2:03 pm
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Once, when I was starting out, I wandered into a shop, picked up
a wand and zapped the shopkeeper. Silly, naive me thought I had
killed the shopkeeper, so I looted the shop and happily walked
out. Well, the wand was a teleporting one- the moment I stepped
into another room, the shopkeeper murdered me.
Another time, I found my ghost from another game. Not thinking
clearly, I picked up my old inventory, and as a result couldn't
move...I was killed by a kitten (while my own was trying to kill
my ghost).
And of course I've slipped from a pony twice and died.
#Post#: 7295--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: Omni_Builder Date: April 19, 2014, 6:06 pm
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Those shopkeepers are pretty hard to kill...fortunately they're
not very smart, so you can actually train pets to bring you all
the items.
I got my highscore to about 120,000, by finding an early "wand
of polymorph" and repeatedly polymorphing my spellbooks. This
allowed me to learn a ton of spells, and since I was playing a
Monk I could use all of them well. Unfortunately, I got careless
and was killed by a mumak on level 21.
Also, if you find a monster stuck in a pit, bear trap or spider
web, you can #untrap them to pull them out, possibly making them
friendly. (Only possibly, though. Rothes are ungrateful jerks.)
#Post#: 7435--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: Walrus365 Date: April 20, 2014, 4:09 pm
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I tried this. I died at level 2 from starvation because i didnt
know the key to open a door. I'm going to read the instructions
next time.
#Post#: 7442--------------------------------------------------
Re: NetHack
By: Omni_Builder Date: April 20, 2014, 5:04 pm
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Yeah, you'll need to do quite a bit of instruction-reading
before the controls get really intuitive. Some tips:
[list]
[li]Press "h" and then "b" to see a list of commands you can
use. Some of the most important are a/pply, s/earch, e/at,
i/nventory, o/pen, l/oot, k/ick and w/ield. Use the > and < keys
to climb down or up stairs. Also press @ to turn off
auto-looting, since it might make you unintentionally
burdened.[/li]
[li]Press "e" while standing over a corpse for a bit of extra
food. Just don't eat anything you think would be immoral or
painful--things will often go badly.[/li]
[li]Type #pray for cool things to happen. If you succeed,
enemies will pull back from attacking you, and you may gain
health, cure hunger, stop illness, etc. Don't pray again for a
little while, though--things will often go VERY badly. (The
worst case is, you'll go down to level 1 and lose most of your
health. The worster case: wide-angle disintegration beam.[/li]
[/list]
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