Do You Want Your Possessions Identified? Let's Play NetHack

I agree with you (though I forgive ADOM a bit more,) but I'd like to note some things. Nethack actually has its own fairly successful bots floating around, which I just learned. (Do a search for TAEB.) Unfortunately, there aren't Windows binaries available so I haven't been able to make it a screensaver.

I will argue that Angband is fairer though -- if you have a general idea of what to have when, you'll almost always be reasonably safe. I think that the infamous "You go down the stairs. The Drolem breathes poison. You die." deaths are about as common as deadly poison or the "gnome that finds a wand of death" chances in Nethack. It's obviously a matter of taste, I have even fewer deaths I feel are "unfair" in Angband than I do in Nethack.

To be honest, what I'd recommend people play after Nethack is Shiren the Wanderer.

And don't forget Rog-O-Matic, which plays the great granddaddy of them all.

The 3.x line is making Angband even 'fairer', which I don't know if I like. I'll take that up when I get around to playing it, but I think one of the changes that's been in the game for quite some time is you either spawn into a room with sleeping monsters, or are guaranteed to get the first turn even against +10s creatures.

Not that this makes it any fairer when your dwarf priest wakes up the Drolem after moving, and then dies two turns later.

I'd recommend Shiren before Nethack. Simpler, portable on the DS, but yeah

I hadn't heard of Nethack bots, neat!

I guess more-so than Nethack, you need or really want a print out (or self-made) spoiler sheet of what resistances at what depths you need in Angband. I guess it just promotes boring/slow grinding play in Angband, whereas 'diving' fast in Nethack can be a viable alternate strategy for long-time players.

Now that I've discovered the wonders of searching.. I am dying in whole new ways!

Got down to floor 7 or so today, had a decent amount of (unidentified) equipment, even some food, but decided to retreat up to a higher floor to safely regain some HP. I remembered a door'd room (I don't know how else to describe it; several entrances into the room, but doors on each entrance, so you can close it up).

What do I find when I get back to this room?

Dwarves! Who have started digging all over the damn place.

An entire band of Uruk Hai! Who appeared from who-the-fuck-knows-where but provided an awesome many-turn battle between Caveman Oog and his orcish nemeses.

And a fucking mountain nymph who, on her first hit, stole a wand. That wand turned out to be a wand of sleep. You can probably guess how poor Oog eventually met his end. =(

Mind you, absolutely none of these things were on the floor on my first trip through, and it was pretty-well (though not completely, I guess) explored. =/

After poking around to decide my next step into the world of PC roguelikes, I wound up trying Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, on the theory that the integrated tutorial, attractive tile graphics, and mouse support would ease the transition a bit. I've been playing it nonstop for a few days now, and absolutely loving it, though I haven't gotten more than a dozen levels or so in yet. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a "next roguelike."

yea DCSS is rather fun. I was well on my way to my third rune when I got banished to the abyss at level 14. Needless to say I didn't make it out. Those demons are nasty!

I too started playing Nethack again in response to this thread. I first tried an elven wizard to match with the LP, but then decided I wanted a slightly different experience so I'm now rocking a Dwarven Valkyrie.

Doing pretty good so far. I have an apron (so I can eat poison things and hopefully gain poison resistance), gauntlets of power, and some other decent armor and items.

I also managed to find a lawful altar on the third dungeon level so that helped a lot. Unfortunately, I was recently attempting many sacrifices on it in an attempt to get a gift and, without thinking offered a dwarf corpse that my pet had killed. Whoops. One point of wisdom and a level lower, at least I'm still alive...

I just got done reading the whole thread today, and it was great. But, gwohohohoho, you are so not tricking me into getting hooked on Nethack again. I wish I had something around to render irrefutable the tourist I ascended with 7 artifacts. I had a level with an altar where I'd entirely dug it out and I just kept summoning and summoning. And I let Archons and titans summon too! It was a joyous time. Chests were filled with booty, tossed in pits, and I rolled boulders on top of them to put them out of reach of the mensch. It was ludicrous.

I will say that I've found Slash'em to be less fun than Nethack, as they gimped the unicorn horn. They made it's healing chance based on enchantment, and even at top you can't guarantee removal of sickness. How can this be fair in a game where Demigorgon's guaranteed?

Oh, and throwing bullets was hilariously overpowered as this action only reduced your chance to hit, not the amount of damage done. I'd not be surprised if that got fixed by now.

Oh well, time to catch a bus and play Shiren

I was silently following along with this over the last few days and I have to really give you a hand, Netbrian. This was probably the best Let's Play I have read on this forum, and there have been some really great reads.
I think Nethack lends itself well to this, as instead of just posting screenshots of what has to happen coupled with a little bit of strategy, everything that happened in this game was your choice, and thus, almost completely unique. Not to mention you did a great job of explaining all the little fiddly bits of Nethack. I was really rooting for you there.
I hope you'll consider maybe taking some other classes for a spin and show us the dungeon through their eyes next. I'm sure it's a very different affair.

Did we have a Nethack/Roguelike thread? I thought we did, but google isn't finding it.

I mostly just want somewhere to post my YASD. Got further than I'd ever gotten (quest level) and then got greedy trying to raise my Charisma in a magic trap.

There were two Shiren threads, and there've been RL discussion threads, but nothing for general RL play. I guess we could start one in General, or just co-opt this for all things nethack.

I'm sure I started a Nethack thread at some point.

I also started a thread about savescumming in particular and nunix yelled at me. =)

Yes, but only because I disagree with your use of the term in a general sense! I am all for the rights of the common player in playing their games however the heck they want.

Which is also why I get irritated in the more general RL threads; semantics are important!

Anyway the built-in search sucks, try searching with the google operator 'site:'.

I did (google search "site:gamespite.net/talkingtime nethack". I guess I didn't realize I had to go all the way to page 7. Anyway, here it is: http://www.gamespite.net/talkingtime...ead.php?t=2836

Still not sure whether it's worth posting in there or just making a more general roguelike thread that might see more traffic. Regardless, I'm over my big YASD (and don't remember the details as well now).

I'll vote for a new ongoing general roguelike discussion thread. I've been playing DCSS every chance I get for a couple of weeks now (got my first rune a couple of days ago), and would love to be able to get some discussion going.

Here is a new thread, then.

@ Netbrian: This is fucking awesome. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this so far (I'm not through your first character yet). It has inspired me to try Angband (you mentioned it was more fair than Nethack).

My only experience with Roguelikes is a million IVAN deaths, so I'm looking forward to it.

Winning Angband takes 10-100x MORE turns than Nethack. Therefore angband << Nethack. Seriously, why not just start with a save-scum after post-stat gain given the # of turns? Hopefully the newest Angband versions fix this issue. (Auto-explore would help with total # of turns but not the magnitude of how many it takes to win between the games)

Autoexplore would also not work in Angband nearly as well as DCSS, since you have to search a lot more often to progress. Also, you would very definitely run the risk of "It breathes -more-".

Thing is, I've only ever gotten past around floor 20 twice; one lived to see dlvl 77 and the other's still alive, has every resistance, every sustain except Int which he doesn't need, hold life, and only really needs to hunt uniques before going after Sauron/Morgoth. After a certain point, if you die in Angband knowing the proper depth/resistance checkpoints, it is almost certainly entirely your own fault.

Having said that, I do think the game is a bit on the long side.