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NetHack foolishness

NetHack is an excellent game. Most people who play NetHack seem to be a bit serious about it, but I'm not. I like messing around and robbing shopkeepers and collecting ridiculous pets. Because of this whimsical approach, I am not a very successful NetHack player.

This is my not very successful NetHack page. Your contributions are welcome.

Oh, by the way: if you use Hearse, and if you encounter the bones of a wizard called Eq, then you have met one of my former selves. Let me know how it goes!

Oh look, something new in my shop

Wayne: Kops don't seem to care that shopkeepers disguise monsters as items so you die and they can sell your stuff.
Eq: I thought the mimics just crept in, like other things can. That said, if there were four sets of stairs in your shop (assuming it's not a very large Debenhams) you should be suspicious.
Wayne: I doubt it — why would they always creep into shops?
Eq: 'Cause they know you won't suspect the plate mail in the middle of a bunch of other items. If it was lying innocuously around in the dungeon, you might think twice and chuck an arrow at it to check.
Wayne: And surely the shopkeeper knows what he's selling? He wouldn't be like, "Oh look, something new in my shop. I don't know where that came from, but I'll sell it anyway."

Wayne: I wonder if you could walk into Debenhams with a dwarvish mattock.
Eq: At least with Debenhams the doors slide open automatically. No risk of kicking one down and suddenly owing 400 zorkies.
Wayne: It would be funny if the Debenhams acoustics suddenly changed, and a dwarf came pickaxing through the leisurewear section.
Eq: "Do you wish to teleport? (y/n) ... Angmagssalik yells, 'I'll get it back with civil recovery!'"

Wayne: If real life were more like NetHack, I'd spend all my time messing with sinks.
Eq: Time stands still while you and the succubus lie in each other's arms. You are late for work.

It's the perfect crime!

[Taken from a rec.games.roguelike.nethack discussion about a shuddering shopkeeper.]

I don't know if wands of polymorph are zapped by monsters at all.

Monsters do sometimes zap themselves (but are limited in how powerful a creature they can become), but I don't think they ever zap the player.

Maybe a thrown potion of polymorph? This would at least not leave any traces...

It's the perfect crime!

You know, sir, it's a strange thing: my wife has always taken an interest in animals, and she says she's never seen a dog that couldn't be tamed with a tripe ration. But this dog here... well... he seems angry. Now how exactly would you explain that, sir?

Ah, good point. Well it's the perfect crime until the Columbo patch is implemented.

He'd spawn much like the Keystone Kops, but only when a shopkeeper is killed, and follow you around much like a peaceful summoned demon lord but with more frequent teleports and "Oh, there's just one last thing..." every time he inexplicably appears next to you just when you thought he'd finally left.

Very powerful (not unkillable, though, this is Nethack), best bet is to try and leave him at the mines' end or somewhere, and even then he'll continue to come after you, Rodney style, eventually presenting you with such swaying evidence that your character will have no choice but to give himself up and be escorted from the Dungeons of Doom.

"It's amazing what they can do with pictures these days, isn't it, sir? I had the lab boys blow up that picture of the nymph from the roll of film that was in the expensive camera we found in the shop, and well... They found something very interesting in that mirror she's holding. Would you read me what it says on that T-shirt it's reflecting, please? And this T-shirt that we found in your stash by the altar on DLvl 3, would you read that too? Oh, you'd been in the shop to sell your camera? I understand, sir, I forget things all the time myself, that's why I keep this pad, write things down. Oh, like, look at this! 'get eggs'. I would have forgotten all about that if I hadn't written it down. What's that? Oh, no no, of course not, I'm just collecting all the facts. Matter of procedure, sir, I'm sure you understand."

You feel a blast of power

Now, in the aftermath of the explosion, grieving Yendorians are increasingly angry with a separatist system they claim has let them down.

"We came here to worship and sacrifice in a spirit of tolerance," said one local thaumaturge, returning to sift through the wreckage for his belongings, many of which were cursed by the blast. "If Muslims are raised without any understanding of our culture, of course they will see spellcasting as 'witchcraft'."

"This is terrible, unbelievable," a nearby ice troll told us. "I have always wished for a cohesive society where people of all races and alignments can coexist peacefully, but nothing fitting that description exists in the game. Last time I got a tripe ration."

The government is said to be concerned about the rise in violent extremism after last week's "iron shoe bomber" incident in which Anootok's delicatessen was targeted by a faction claiming --More--

I'll get me cloak

Here's a cautionary tale from Wayne, who wasn't such a happy shopper on this occasion, about the importance of double-checking.

Wayne: Haha, shattered a crystal plate mail in a shop.
Eq: Oh no. I hope you're fucking rich. So does Asidonhopo.
Wayne: No, I'm a level 2 wizard with less than 100 zorkmids.
Eq: Well, put on the crystal plate and you might get a chance to kill him. Oh wait. You blew it, Tom.
Wayne: No teleport.
Eq: Taming?
Wayne: No. Best thing I have is wand of death and that will just bounce off him.
Eq: No it won't! Shopkeepers aren't immune to death ray.
Wayne: I thought they had magic cloaks.
Eq: No, never; but try a double-bounce off a wall in case it misses, and FFS wear your cloak :)
Wayne: Ah, he died. Shit, I had my cloak on and it killed me!
Eq: Was it burned? Corroded?
Wayne: It was off.

Wayne: Succubus. Of course. She fucked me just before this happened. Bitch! That is incredibly annoying. There was such good stuff in that shop. Helm of brilliance, speed boots and gauntlets of power!

You know you've played too much NetHack when...

• You cause chaos by stripping naked in hospitals.
• You read book after book in Waterstones, hoping you'll teleport outside without paying.
• Your partner stopped hugging you because of all that grease.
• You won't wear new clothes until you've dumped them on the altar at your local church — which is tricky, since they banned you for dragging animal carcasses in there.
• Muggers chase you into a dark alley, and you quickly scribble Elbereth in the dust.
• You go on a screaming, murderous rampage in a zoo, blabbering about "the gold" and "the throne" — and when they lock you up, you keep telling the prison warden that your name is Croesus.
• You refuse to go anywhere near the stairs in large department stores.
• While changing a lightbulb, you can't resist rubbing it.
• When a rich friend or relative dies, you secretly hope they'll leave bones.
• You are deathly afraid of ants; and you laugh and shake your head when someone mentions seeing a woodchuck.
• Black puddings aren't just a threat to your cholesterol levels.
• When you get food poisoning you say "Ulch!" or "Ecch!".
• You gave your fiancée an engagement ring, but warned her you don't know what it does yet.
• You're bemused when a supermarket cashier's name tag says something as simple and pronounceable as Dave or Julia.
• That cashier gives you a funny look when you ask where they keep the tins of fire giant meat.
• You expect any woman you sleep with to steal something and run away; and if your wife tells you she's got a headache, you recoil in fear of being hit.
• Your grandmother doesn't understand why you keep picking up and putting down those figurines from her mantelpiece.

Changes

I got to the Village of the Damned

...or whatever it's called.

I know this will be utterly unimpressive to most players, but my rash impatience had prevented it from happening so far.

I got a pet balrog early on, festively dubbed Baby Jesus, which happily slew everything in Minetown, so I sat there sacrificing or eating whatever came along until I had collected quite a set of -banes (I only really needed Maggie, being a wizard) and got some intrinsics. When my wrist started hurting, I visited the bottom of the mines just for the hell of it (no pun inten— wait, that doesn't work anyway) and found a load of nice gems. Also, an unexpected wand of wishing got me SDSM and speed boots.

Baby Jesus stopped being tame when I left him in a lower level of Sokoban for a bit (he kept getting in the way), so after getting the amulet of reflection (useless at this point) I had to tiptoe past him with a sob and a goodbye.

As usual, I was still a puny "Magician" when I found my Quest Leader, so she sent me packing. I found somebody's bones a few levels below ("Wilma") which included a giant sack of everything, so I spent a while sorting that out and lugging things up to the altar on the previous level. Incidentally, despite not wearing my ring of slow digestion, I had an incredible surfeit of food in this game. My primary BoH had about 27 food rations in it, and then I kept finding soldiers' packed lunches and tripe rations and even a hive of royal jelly.

Since I'm an idiot, an embarrassing accident (snapping a wand of cancellation that I thought was a wand of nothing) blanked out a fair amount of my stuff, including the wand of wishing. But I reached Medusa with a ring of levitation and a blindfold. I kicked down the door and yelled "Police!" (I love doing this) and she immediately died for some reason — ah, perhaps it was my reflective SDSM, I now realise.

So this was the first time ever I got into that claustrophobic maze under Medusa. I even managed to kill a minotaur, another first. On arriving at the castle, I let the soldiers sort themselves out with my ring of conflict, then levitated across the moat and fell down a pit into that moaning, groaning valley. I was still too puny to go back and do the Quest, but I shouldn't really have attempted to soldier on here, because I got wedged between an arch-lich, a vampire lord, and a "hezrou" (what) and they all snuggled me to death.

Good game by my standards, though.

Stupid wizard

"Hm, what will I take into the Dungeons of Doom with me? I know. A scroll of punishment, a scroll of destroy armor, and — instead of a small piece of wire that will defeat any lock — a wand of opening with four charges."