Douglas E. Berry

Last night I started a game of Nethack (Vulture's Eye graphic version.) Valkyrie name Arya, and yes I named her longsword Needle. Second room I enter has a lamp. Just giggles, I rub it. One wish later, I have +2 blessed Gray Dragon Scale Mail. Pushing on, I find gauntlets of power and speed boots in a shop, two magic lamps in Minetown which yield a blessed magic marker and the blessed rustproof +2 Frost Brand. Three different bones piles give me all sorts of goodies.

Now I'm pushing down past Medusa (amulet of reflection did her in) and a graveyard allowed me to wraith dance up several levels. I am so freaking doomed.

Assuming I live to get the Wand of Wishing, my needs are:

1. Two scrolls of charging
2. Blessed rustproof +2 Magicbane
3. Blessed ring of levitation
4. Blessed rustproof +2 helm of brilliance
5. Blessed fireproof +2 cloak of protection
6. Blessed magic marker

But with that start, I am so gonna die.

Just ascended my first character in the Vulture's Eye variant of Nethack. Ann the Valkyrie found the correct altar on her first try, having to get past Pestilence three times. I hate that thing. Ended up with Mojo (+6, RP), Magicbane (+2, RP), Excalibur (+4, RP), and Cleaver (+0, RP). My final AC was -43 and I had 195 HP.

For my next trick, I'll ascend a Wizard.

BTW, Rodney is pretty awesome looking in this version.

Had a perfectly good Valkyrie going yesterday. A little luck and some hunting gave me speed boots, gauntlets of power, and a cloak of protection before I even hit the Gnonish Mines. Then things went sour.

• Evidently, it was Rust Monster Con.


• With a special appearance by fire-breathing monsters


• Which meant that all my armor was either rusted or burnt.


• There was exactly one altar in the entire dungeon. That was the Minetown Temple. At least that was co-aligned.


• There were no general stores or used bookshops. So I had to identify scrolls the hard way.


• The Wand of Wishing had one charge. Used that to get 2 scrolls of charging, then had to burn a wish to get scrolls of enchant armor!

After all this, I was heading back up stairs to do the Quest when I was jumped by a mind flayer. Despite having the +5 Mojo, the damn thing still ate my brain. OK, see what I've forgotten.. how to write identify scrolls.

I gave up. I crawled back up to level 6, took off everything, stuffed it my bag of holding, dropped that, then used my bag of tricks to summon some monsters. The idea was to leave a Christmas present bones file, but sure enough, no bones.

Frustrating game. Going to play some more now.

Rob Balder dot com has filked Pepper by the Butthole Surfers into a wonderful tribute to our ASCII obsession. In true Nethack form, he's made the song available under an open-source agreement.

Enjoy!

Here are the lyrics.

Started an Orc Barbarian in Nethack today (my favorite "hack/slash" combo) and was having a good but unremarkable run until the second level of the Gnomish Mines. There, I found bones I had picked up through Hearse. Good pile of stuff, and I have a blessed scroll of identify.. yes! I'm getting everything identified, and see these two items:

wand of wishing (0:2)
wand of wishing (1:2)

For the non-Nethackers, wands of wishing allow you to wish for just about anything in the game. (You can't get the three items you need to enter the Sanctum, and can't wish for your own Quest Object. Also, the more artifact weapons are in play, the less likely you are to get one from a wish.) The first number there is the number of times the wand has been recharged (WoW can only be recharged once) the second is number of charges left. Once the wand is exhausted, you can keep zapping it to get one last charge out of it. Got it?

So very early in the game I had a complete Ascension Kit. Frost Brand, Gray Dragon Scale Mail, Speed Boots, Gauntlets of Power, Helm of Brilliance, Cloak of Displacement, and a Shield of Reflection. Also managed a Bag of Holding.

Also in this pile is a Wand of Death (0:6). My only thought is the original player didn't know how to identify wands by writing with them.

But now I'm doomed. Because this kind of crazy luck so early in a game, especially on the new moon (game keeps track of lunar phases, during the new moon your luck takes a hit) usually means a really stupid death lurks on the next level. You get hit with a deadly poison. You step onto a sleeping gas trap and get nibbled to death by a newt. A rat steps on a polymorph trap and turns into an Arch-Lich. But you are doomed.

Except, not only has 666 the Orc evaded doom, he's prospered. Found Magicbane in another bones pile. The portal to Fort Ludios was in the first vault he checked. He got two more wishes from thrones! He's current;y 19th level, AC -43, about 200HP, and whirling invisible displaced ginsu of cold death.

Damned if this guy may not ascend.

But there is one stupid death left lurking. A previous bone level has freaking DemonLordCon, complete with Demogorgon.

ATTACK!!!

A few weeks ago I had a very good Samurai running the endgame in Nethack. He was wielding Sunsword (+5, RP) and a Silver Saber (+5) as a two-weapon combo, had good protection, and was already to kick elemental plane butt.

Until the Plane of Fire, when a wand of lightning vaporized my rings of levitation and conflict. Which are an important part of my endgame strategy.

Fearing yet another late game death, I put aside the game for a while. Just now, I decided to finish the damn thing.

Getting through the fire plane without levitation or conflict is tedious. You're mobbed by elementals who keep setting you on fire, but you're fire resistant (or better be at this point) so you keep scrolling through the endless messages after each attack. This is one reason why I like having Frost Brand as a primary weapon for Valkyries and Barbarians. Cleans out the fire elementals quickly. But I made it over to the portal, and blipped to the Plane of Water. Where, thanks to not having levitation, I had to work my way from air bubble to air bubble tracking down the portal which is floating in one of the bubbles! Takes forever, and in the meantime, you're fighting off giant eels, krakens, and water elementals. Find that portal. blip to the Astral Plane...

.. and luck out. Pestilence drinks a cursed potion of invisibility which shows me where he's hiding. So I decide to try the right-hand temple first. This is guarded by Death, weakest of the three riders. Having the Guardian Angel actually helped (usually I find the GA to be an annoyance at best, which is why I rely on conflict.) Having a half-dozen or so fully charged wands of death helped clear the priests, and I bust into the inner temple to find that I've chosen the right temple on the first try.

Here, God-dude, have an amulet.

I used 10 wishes (none for artifacts,) never changed form or polymorphed an object, and had no genocides.

Hell the Wizard started with a spellbook of identify, a wand of death, and a ring of levitation.

Dead on Mines level 4, no bones pile. Killed by a freaking fire ant while my pet mumak was off head-butting gnomes or something.

More specifically, I hate Nethack's Random Number Generator. Earlier today, I started an orc barbarian named Smash. I was going to try for a speed ascension, just barrel my way through as fast as possible.

Early on, I began finding bones piles; a lot of them. Soon, I was Burdened (with an 18/24 strength!) and desperate for an altar. I finally found one on level 14, converted it, dropped 16 waters on it, and prayed.

Set was angry with me.

Say what? I hadn't killed my own pet, had prayed in the previous 500 turns, or attacked an innocent! What gives? Bowing to the inevitable, I start sacrificing anything I can find.

*ZOT* "You have a feeling of inadequacy."

*ZOT* "You have a feeling of inadequacy."

*ZOT* "You have a feeling of inadequacy."

*ZOT* "You have a feeling of inadequacy."

and so on for several hundred turns and almost 100 sacrifices. Out of food, I went back up, cleared the mines, came back down, explored as far as Medusa's Lair (no shops and no other altars) before feeling that by now I must be in the clear. Just to be sure, I sacrificed a newt.

*ZOT* "You have a feeling of inadequacy."

In the end, my "speed run" ended up with me spending close to 10,000 turns trying to mollify my god. Never did happen.

I hate this game.

I just lost the perfect Nethack game due to sheer stupidity. Han the Wizard had it all. All the good offensive spells at 0% failure, AC -31, and I even got the Valkyrie Quest object (The Orb of Fate) which I could carry as a Neutral character. While my ascension wasn't a lock, it was going to be easier than most.

Then I got stupid. A demon threw a potion of blindness at me, and I tried to cast Cure Blindness on myself. Cure Blindness was spell slot "t". I hit "y", which was Finger of Death. Not thinking, when I was prompted for what direction to shoot, hit "." - which is the key for "hit yourself."

Do You Want Your Possessions Identified?

Waaaaaaaaaa!!!!! I want my Wizard back!!!!