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

Wait, I have an idea: Silver Dragons reflect magic attacks, right? Couldn't you use one as a pet as a make-shift mirror to reflect magic missiles and other spells off of? Or is it more trouble than it's worth?

My question is -- what sort of emergency situations do you envision the wand of wishing saving me from?

I've heard this strategy before, and I've never found myself quite certain of it. I have to keep the wand of wishing in my bag to prevent it from getting blasted, so it can't be use in absolute emergencies. I suppose there are occasional situations where a cockatrice corpse might be necessary, but I'm still not sure that'd contribute to my overall survivability moreso than my own Archon or an amulet of life saving.

I generally don't prioritize the amulet, but in this case I have the luxury of an open equipment slot. It'd be either an amulet of life saving, a cloak of displacement, or possibly an amulet of magical breathing.

PR -- Remember, I'm reflective too now, so anything the silver dragon would reflect wouldn't bother me. At this point, I might just choose blue because that's my favorite color.

That's true, you've got the Silver Dragon armor now. Mostly I'm trying to think of which dragon would have the best resistances for a pet at the moment, what with all the possibilities of instant death lying around (silver to reflect death and disintigration? grey to resist magic? yellow to resist stoning? etc.). Unless that's no longer a problem, in which case blue sounds great to me (esp. since it would match with Lyll's color scheme).

In any case, regardless of pet, I've had a change of heart, and think the best name to give a/the pet would be Dez, in honor of her memory. May her soul rest in peace.

Cockatrice corpses would be the big thing, of course. Magic markers would be another biggie. Or scrolls of charging. It wouldn't do to get your unicorn horn or bag of holding cursed, especially if your stack of holy water had been cursed also.

Basically the idea is, better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. The wand of wishing can stand in for any other item in the game, and you wouldn't want to find yourself in some unlikely situation where you need Item X, and you could get one if only you hadn't wasted your wish on that archon whom you got separated from after three floors anyway.

If I were in your shoes, though, I would wish for a couple cursed genocide scrolls, warp back up to Sokoban and do some mad nurse dancing. HP is your only apparent weak spot at the moment.

I'm surprised you don't carry a regular bag. i always carried one with a few holy waters, in case of cursed bag of holding; that way they don't get exploded. Not sure what your water supply looks like, esp as I thought Cone of Cold blew up potions on the ground.

My supply of water is doing well -- I can cast cancellation to easily transform other potions.

I also have the spell remove curse in case of bag of holding disasters.

You totally can!

"Turn undead" wands and spells, when used on corpses, will "turn" them "un" (read: not) "dead." I.e., revive them. So you can fill the graveyard with resurrected adventurers if you like. And charm monster/scroll of taming should work on them just as it does anything else!

Just out of curiosity, can you put the leash on any pet?

There have been no updates for days. Days.

This is unacceptable.

I bet Lyll got killed by eating a mummy corpse or some stupid shit and Netbrian has been too embarrassed to tell us.

Netbrian! You can talk to us, baby, we won't be mad.

We will be sooooo mad.

That would be heartbreaking.

Gehennom is really boring. Playing through it should increase my diligence.

Started a game to kill time whilst waiting for more updates.

Neutral human caveman.

First scroll found, floor 1: blank.
Second scroll found, floor 2: genocide.
Third scroll found, floor 3: genocide.

Something seems strange. -.-

EDIT: Aw man, died to a floaty eye + jackal combo. =( The scrolls were all uncursed as well.

Wait, you're not supposed to make backup copies of your savegames? =(

Real roguelike players regard this as cheating.

Yeah, Gehennom is Nethack's biggest failing by far.

NO! The danger adds to the fun. I am not joking. It's like how poker is 100X more excited when playing for real money.

I'm trying to figure out how to permanently set options under the Qt OS X port. Anyone know how? The game auto-exits when you die, and I have to reset the options I want every time I start a new game.

No -- Roguelikes are balanced around a particular death mechanic. Why would you bother identifying items in Nethack if you could just restore after a mistake?

Some Roguelikes have somewhat less punitive deaths, but I've never seen one that allows you to do this.

I think he was joking, guys. =p

Edit (or if it doesn't exist create) the .nethackrc file in your user directory. Some information about how to set that file up like you want can be found here.

Mm.. where in user directory? Just.. the root? Or Library/Application Support? Or..?

(still fairly osx-newbie)

/Users/your_username

aka

The directory in sidebar of Finder that is your username.

Note: in unix (and mac osx) files that start with a period are hidden files, so once you create the file you won't see it is there from Finder.

Edit: if you want feel free to IM me so as to avoid having a bunch of tech support in the let's play, my AIM screenname is the same as my forum name.

ASCII -- http://mysite.verizon.net/res10gez0/Nethack/LP10aA.htm
Tiles -- http://mysite.verizon.net/res10gez0/Nethack/LP10aT.htm

The first thing I do after entering hell is to immediately leave. I need to poke around with a few things first.



I take Brickroad’s command not to wish for anything. Luckily, one of the things I wanted most just appeared – a spellbook of charm monster.

Charm Monster is a very powerful spell that has a chance to render monsters near you tame, and thus pets. Not only is it an easy way to find powerful pets, but there are several monsters that are actually easier to charm than to actually kill. We’ll see this emphasized a bit later.



As you can see, the first circle of hell consists of a giant boring maze. For that matter, so do the next twenty circles of hell. Gehennom is infamous for its tedium, and I’m better positioned than nearly any other character class to take it on, with Magic Mapping to find my route, Detect Treasure to see if anything’s worth taking, and Dig to blast holes in it. Believe me, it’s usually a thousand times worse.



I do manage to tame a black dragon for PapillionReel. Unfortunately, starting about now, the life expectancies of my pets absolutely cratered, so I don’t have high hopes for him. He might make the next section more amusing though.



Pochi, the black dragon, tried to eat a green slime. Now I have a pet Pochi the green slime. There’s that story.

This is why I hate dealing with the bloody slimes.



Just touching it makes me feel nervous. Getting slimed is unpleasant, which is why I tried to have my pet deal with the bloody thing. Pochi gets left behind.



Interspersed with long boring mazes are long boring mazes with a special demon lair embedded in them. They help break up the monotony a bit, but there are frankly not enough of them.



Bert dies. I also see the demon lord hiding nearby.



First, I have to deal with the balrog, who won’t let me pass. They even come with whips, and are surprisingly high-level opponents.

Fun fact – one of the Roguelikes out at the same time Nethack was, Moria (which eventually mutated into Angband,) had the Balrog as the final boss. He was apparently very tough.

I actually spent a great deal of time trying to tame the balrog, but just couldn’t manage it. It seems like major demons can’t be tamed as such. Like player monsters, zapping them with the charm monsters spell just makes them peaceful.

Unlike player monsters, you can get tame major demons through figurines or polymorphing existing pets, so the dream of a succubus on a leash isn’t dead.



We meet our first demon, Asmodeus. The game actually gives you the option to bribe him, but I’m not particularly interested in doing that. I’m overpowered by now, and want blood on my hands.

He apparently embodies the deadly sin of lust, but that isn’t visible here. He also doesn’t seem to have starred in as many SMT games as I think he should have, though he did make an appearance in “The Kids of Shin Megami Tensai”



Err, oops. I wanted blood on my hands, but not quite that much. I blast him with magic missiles before he becomes hostile, the sort of thing I generally avoid doing.

Oh well.

Asmodeus’ main attack involves frost and cold, which I resist. People that try to play challenges where they don’t end up with this resistance often have trouble with this boss – he can do a lot of damage if you aren’t prepared.



Many major Nethack monsters share an attack pattern. They’ll wail on you for a few turns, and once you’ve done some damage, they teleport to the upstairs to heal. After their siesta, they’ll come back at you for a few turns, and then bounce back. Unless you somehow get lucky, the only real way to do this is to make your way to the upstairs yourself, and wait for him to try and move in to attack you. Once he does that, you can sit on the stairs and prevent him from escaping while you blast them to death.

The quest nemeses (in my case, it was the Dark One) also follow this pattern. In my case, he just didn’t live long enough (no, demons aren’t vulnerable to finger of death.)

Dealing with the pattern is boring mostly. You run to the downstairs, wake them up, and then plod back to the upstairs, fighting off occasional hit and runs. I purposely dig out tunnels to make the trip as fast as possible, but it’s still irritating.

In any case, we make it to the stairs while suffering very little damage. Nethack’s resistances tend to work much more like “immunities,” so either this guy is hellishly powerful or he’s a pushover.



See?

He really couldn’t even touch me. Now I get to trot back to the downstairs (trip three,) and continue the level.



This is more like it – it’s a giant swamp level, injecting some freshness into our trip downward. I equip my ring of levitation and my oilskin cloak (I don’t want to be drowned by resident eels.)



Oh not the create monster nonsense again. Luckily, it’s fairly easy to escape this storm of monsters by floating around them. Most of them can’t fly, making this safer.



I tame another dragon for the heck of it, and let her loose on the remaining monsters.

The giant orange blob here? This is Jubilex, another demon lord, prince of the oozes. He’s much more interesting than the last fellow, and can attack me by either sickness (which will kill me after a few turns) or engulfing me. Getting too near him is rather dangerous I’m afraid.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, unlike many of the demon lords, Jubilex was actually created for D&D, rather than being plundered from some other mythology.

The “what a relief” is my frantic attempt to cure the sickness with my unicorn horn.



I run away from Jubilex for the time being (whom doesn’t show up with ESP because he’s mindless.) One of the things I like about his level is all the monsters scattered around – lots of puddings, jellies, molds, fungi, blobs, and cubes. I think it’s really cool.



I encounter Jubilex again. My levitation means I can skip over most of the monsters.



Jubilex doesn’t seem to use the same attack pattern as most demons, which means he’s not only more interesting but falls more gracefully.



My dragon is eating. I need to wait around before he can continue on. My dad is like that too.



In retrospect, it wasn’t worth it. He gets eaten by an Olog-Hai, the powerful immortal troll.



Oh goodie, we’re back to our more conventional demon lairs.



This time I infuriate Baalzebub before attacking him. He didn’t like the idea of asking him to bribe me not to attack him.



I accumulate another dragon. He won’t last long. Baalzebub is actually more dangerous than Asmodeus with very powerful attacks (even scary to me), and he’s gating in more demon friends. Hopefully, my black dragon will play interference.



He doesn’t, but I win anyway. Now time for my slog through these demons to continue the literal descent into hell.

(Baazlebub has a powerful gaze attack, so I use the Bugblatter strategy and cover my eyes.)

The next level includes another upstairs.



Interesting – it’s a cute little tower.

I take the opportunity to go back to the main dungeon for some housekeeping (I need to reread some spellbooks and make some sacrifices.)



I take the opportunity to buy candles. Unfortunately, shopkeepers don’t like invisible customers, so rather than the obvious route (wearing a mummy wrapping,) I bore a hole into his walls, pay him for the door repairs, and buy more candles. Izchak, the shopkeeper, was named after a Nethack designer that passed away – that’s why he’s the only surviving shopkeeper in Minetown. I spared him from Deathpony’s wrath.

These are absolutely necessary to win the game, but I hate having them in my inventory. Many a game was became unlivable by someone putting candles in a bag of holding, and then blowing them up. (You can wish for seven candles at once.)

No more procrastinating, I buy them.



Amulets of change are cool. They give you a complimentary sex change. I can’t risk Lyll’s virtue, but it means that after you’re done with incubi, you can switch sides as it were. There are only about 128 incubi in the game, and that might not be enough to satisfy yo.



I took my friend the golden naga and the elvenking which I accumulated in my vacation. We continue making our way up the stairs.



Sweet! It’s a 1Up you can wear! Another wish saved.

There’s one of these guaranteed in this tower, which is nice. There’s also an amulet of strangulation. Hint – the one that doesn’t kill you is the one you want.


We are in a room filled with chests. The elvenking has died somewhere.



Next time, we fight the awesome opponent and defender of the Candelabraum, Vlad the Impaler, the horrific boss enemy.

You killed.. a black light. Did you use a glowstick or something?

I'm gonna guess that Vlad the Impaler zaps himself to death with magic missile, if that last screen is anything to go by.

Hooray!

D:

And then you end up recruiting another dragon (named after me, even!*) so it's all right in the end. ...Until he gets eaten too.

...nuts.

Well, anyway, I'm seconding the bet of Vlad killing himself. Unless there's another, more humiliating way for it to be done...?

(*Minor nitpick: Papillon only has one I in it.)

I always like to let Juiblex swallow me, then zap him with a wand of digging and poke my way out. Unihorn takes care of the awful sickness and then you're good to go.

Interesting note about Juiblex: he's the only monster in the game you cannot kill more than once. He doesn't leave a corpse and so can't be raised, he's mindless and therefore will not put on an Amulet of Lifesaving if you give him one, and he's a unique monster and therefore only spawns in one spot. Everything else in Nethack can be re-killed by using one of those three methods.