Catching up (on nethack)

Howdy folks, just dropping you guys an update due to posts failing to make it out of the gate...

I've got three posts waiting to be finished, and four recordings waiting to be posts, but those things fell to the wayside in favor of something (presumably) more important.

Nethack.

I got a few false starts (IE, getting my ass kicked) and then got a good character started up. After I made it to the mine town, I got a little greedy and tarried a bit too long... Which allowed the Random Nethack God plenty of time to ensure my distruction. I died from a lucky shot from a sleep ray... Carried by a randomly nasty monster. Fux.

I started another character, and resolved to play this close to the vest. About 6 hours of total play time got me

Velkommen Val, the human Valkyrie, welcome back to NetHack!



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Val the Woman-at-arms      St:18 Dx:16 Co:18 In:10 Wi:12 Ch:9  Lawful
Dlvl:6  $:3524 HP:95(95) Pw:27(27) AC:1  Exp:10

My Lawful Human Valkyrie, just exiting the Sokoban mazes (first time I really tried the maze, and beat it for a possibly blessed Bag of Holding. Though I already had a BOH, I got some wands and rings. I'm trying to get good with some spells, and it's kind of hard because I'm not used to using them. Anyways, after completing the Sokoban, I was afraid I'd get careless if I continued, so I took a break, and planned my next moves.

It's amazing how attached you get to your character when you're given one life, and no save points. Those 6 hours could instantly be wasted by making the wrong move (or a stupid or aggressive one). The thing is; when you get in a tight spot, you usually have an escape opportunity. You just have to be smart enough to see it.

If you're low on health, and surrounded, you have a few avenues of escape, some obvious and some unobvious. You can pray to your god for healing (presuming you haven't done anything to piss him off), you can read a scroll of teleport (or just random unidentified scrolls, hoping one is teleport), zap yourself with a teleport wand, zap a wand of digging straight down to make a hole you can escape through, read a powerful spellbook you can't understand for a chance of the powerful magic teleporting you (there is a risk of injury or confusion when you do this), quaff unidentified potions and hope one's healing, or throw them at monsters and hope they're confusion, break a wand to release its magical energies (dangerous), drop a scroll of scare monster (or drop all your unidentified ones and hope one is scare monster), zap yourself with a wand of speed (or quaff potion of speed) drop your heaviest stuff and run, zap monsters with wand of slow monster to help you escape, rub all your lamps... Gee... that's all I can think of now...

The point is, you can do a lot in this game, you just need a combination of brains and luck to get through. Unfortunately, this game is notoriously evil. When you start playing you'll soon find yourself dying in very creative, imaginative, and downright murderous ways. That's why it takes people years of playing to beat it. Your first ascension (beating the game) is a very momentous occation.

But back to our story... I've been overworking myself lately, so the nethack was a welcome relief. And I really needed it.

Wow, I just spent almost 6 hours reading through a nethack story! I was looking up pictures to post for you guys, and I found some guy's chronicle of his first truly serious game of nethack! It's awesome! You can head HERE and read the first entry to get a pretty solid feel for what it's like to play nethack! Great story!

Head over there and read the first entry; it's not too long, and gives you a pretty good feel for how the game is played. It may seem a little corny if you haven't played before, but if you keep reading you'll realize that all this thought was necessary.

Yeah, I started this post at 8:11am today, so... yeah... Just got caught up in the story! Now I want to start my own Ranger!