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Choked to death on your own hubris. Let's Play Nethack! Valkyrie, Part 1
Nethack is a game notorious for killing its players with extreme prejudice. First released in 1987 as a direct descendent of the earlier Hack, it underwent continuous development and updates for 16 years until the release of version 3.4.3 in 2003, after which, development completely stalled.
For vanilla Nethack, anyway. A wide variety of variants are still rolling merrily along, with an equally varied number of development goals - UnNethack makes the game harder; Acehack makes the game easier; SLASH'EM takes Nethack's "everything including the kitchen sink" approach to gameplay and says "but what if there were a dozen more sinks and a toaster?"
But I won't be playing any of those, at least not yet. While I may miss some quality of life improvements from some of the other variants, vanilla Nethack is a good place to start. Nethack has a reputation as brutally difficult, but it's really just a puzzle - one that anyone can solve if they're armed with the right information.
Because Nethack does not play fair. Instadeath comes in a wide and colorful range of forms - poison, stoning, drowning, sickness, on and on. But once you know what constitutes a threat, you generally stand a good chance of avoiding it if you play smart.
And that brings me to my next point: guys, I am not good at Nethack. I can win, and have done so several times, but I'm not one of those brilliant and cautious players who can get a 50-win streak or ascend with the harder conducts (more on those later). I have a variety of tragic flaws as a player, including preferring to solve problems with my face, failing to bother using my light sources, and a tendency to completely forget the #pray command exists. And yet, I've still ascended with several different roles! Seriously, anyone can win if they know what they're getting into.
Enough blabber, let's get to the game!
For this run, we're going to be a lawful dwarven Valkyrie, widely considered the easiest combo to win with, for reasons that will be explained as we go. Valkyries are always female, and dwarves are always lawful, so that cuts our character creation decisions down.
And there's our story. We're on a quest to reach the bottom of the dungeon and retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. Simple enough!
And here's our start. You'll notice it looks awfully similar to Rogue - the apple didn't fall far from the tree here. The @ sign is your character (and your character will always be represented by @ regardless of their race), and the d there is our pet! Every new character in Nethack gets a pet, usually a little dog or a kitten, although some roles start with a pony instead. Your pet can be quite helpful through the early game, and the starter pets will even "evolve" into larger versions as they gain experience, although their usefulness does fall off by mid-dungeon.
You can see our starting stats at the bottom. Stat caps vary by race, with dwarves having excellent strength, dexterity, and constitution at the expense of intelligence and wisdom. We're unlikely to do much, if any, spellcasting as a Valkyrie, so this is quite good for us! As a dwarf, we'll be getting a lot of HP, which helps survivability at pretty much every point in the game. Our AC is our Armor Class, which is currently 6. Naked player characters have an AC of 10, and lower numbers are better for some reason I don't understand that probably has to do with old D&D rules. We're getting a hefty four points from something right off the bat.
This isn't indicated anywhere, but Valkyries also start with intrinsic cold resistance and stealth. Cold resistance prevents damage from cold attacks, and stealth will keep our presence from waking up sleeping monsters (handy!)
Ahaha... oops. I actually didn't notice this message until I came back to get screencaps. This made a certain encounter later much more dangerous than I realized. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
And here's our starting inventory! Some other roles (notably wizards) start with a more varied and exciting inventory, but what we've got here is plenty for our build.
That long sword is a nice weapon that will do well for us. It's an important part of the reason "lawful Valkyrie" is a particularly easy role to get off the ground, although we won't be seeing the full extent of that for a little while.
That +3 small shield is the other reason - that's the source of our 4 AC, which is a substantial amount of protection this early in the game. This is a good character for dealing with threats by running into them until they die.
The dagger's unremarkable, although it does have a little bit of utility; the food ration is nice and takes some pressure off the early game (yes there is a hunger clock, yes it will kill you); the oil lamp is also handy if you remember you have it. Valkyries only have a 16.7% chance of starting with one, so we were a bit lucky.
Exploring a little, I find the first downstairs almost immediately - that's the > next to me. The . are lit rooms, and the # are corridors/tunnels, which are unlit. You'll notice there's an upstairs - the < - in the room I came from, but taking that now would just end the game, and that's lame.
It's a good idea to pop down as soon as you find the stairs, since monster generation is based on your character level when you first enter a floor.
So that's what I do. Ooh, money! Unlike Rogue, gold piles are represented by yellow $ symbols, and there's a use for money beyond scorekeeping. I pick it up (59 gold!) and head back upstairs to explore the rest of Dlvl 1.
Our first enemy! That yellow : is a newt, as you can see the readout telling me. They're chumps, especially for my character. Nethack has a very expanded bestiary compared to Rogue. Monsters are generally categorized by type under a given symbol - d for dogs and other canines, : for various lizards and lizard-like things - which are further differentiated by color. The most powerful monster of a particular type usually gets a purple symbol.
I kill the newt and keep exploring.
Alright, some new stuff here! That green F is a lichen. They can't hurt you at all. They can hold you in place, making you unable to attack anything but the lichen until it's dead or lets go, which could theoretically be dangerous if you had something else attacking you at the same time, but in practice that rarely happens, especially since it only takes a couple whacks to kill a lichen even this early.
Rarely isn't never though. I'm pretty sure getting trapped by a lichen around a larger threat has, in fact, killed me before.
The % next to me is a food item. Several food items map to brown, so I can't tell just by looking what kind it is, although my guess would be a food ration.
The ( next to the lichen is a tool of some sort. There are some extremely useful and many extremely useless tools in the game. Several different types of tool map to light blue also, so I'll have to have a look and see what it is.
As I move in, I find some graffiti on the floor. Stepping on the square scuffed it, but you can still make out the message: "They say that if you teleport to heaven you're presumed to be dead already."
Graffiti shows up randomly and can be nonsense, a hint, or a false hint. This one happens to be a real hint - if you try to level teleport to a level above the ground floor of the dungeon, it's game over. If you level teleport beyond ground level, you'll even end up in the sky and plummet to your death (if you don't have levitation)!
I pick up the food (it was a food ration), and my little dog kills the lichen for me. Now there's a % where the lichen was standing - a corpse. Many monsters will drop corpses upon death, and you will be eating a lot of them to conserve your permafood. Most corpses will start to rot, and if you eat them after a certain point, you'll contract fatal food poisoning and die. Don't do that.
However, lichens are an exception. Lichen corpses never rot, so it's good to pick them up and carry them along as another source of permafood, at least in the early game.
Now let's see about that tool...
A whistle! There are two types of whistle in the game - tin and magic. Magic whistles teleport your pet to you, which is great. Tin whistles are mostly useless. The easy way to tell them apart is to use them and see what happens.
Darn, tin. I use the #name command to name all whistles of this type "tin" so I know not to bother the next time I run into one, then chuck it and move on.
Another early enemy, the jackal. Nothing special about them, although they can be a bit of a threat to squishier starting characters.
That % inside the room turns out to be a cram ration. It's a bit less nutritious than a food ration, but lighter to lug around.
Grid bugs! Grid bugs are an exception to the "strongest monster in a category is purple" rule, being quite weak. The x character is for magical/mythical bugs, apparently. They have an electric zap and I believe will only move or attack orthogonally, not diagonally. I think they're the only monsters like that. Not a threat to much of anyone.
A goblin decides to join the party. The "o" is for orc, which goblins get lumped in with, I guess. They can use equipment, and can be a moderate threat to squishy characters, which, again, I am not.
That "You hear some noises" prompt means that my little dog is attacking something where I can't see it. It's on the other side of the goblin, presumably.
Aww. That message means that my pet died somewhere out of sight. That sucks. Oh well, as a Valkyrie I'm not too worried about continuing on by myself.
The goblin dropped a food ration, also. I'm doing really well for permafood right now.
I go to pick up the ration and discover what killed my dog. Z is for Zombie, and this one happens to be the very weak kobold zombie. It dies. Er, re-dies.
The brown + is a closed door, and this door happens to be locked. I don't have a key or anything to pick the lock with. I do, however, have muscular legs and a nasty temper.
Ta-dah! Violence solves everything!
Nothing in here but two grid bugs and a jackal. I run into some more newts on the way back. Eating a newt corpse has a chance to boost your MP - or "Pw"/power as the game calls it - but no such luck for me. Not that Valkyries care about magic.
And this is what the cleared Dlvl 1 looks like. Those "0"s in the corridors are boulders; we'll be seeing more of them later. The ` in the far right room is a statue, not of particular interest to us right now. You can break them with a digging implement, which we lack at the moment, or bring them to life with the stone-to-flesh spell, which we're never going to get as a Valkyrie.
Onward and downward!
Another statue, more money, and a new item category. The " is an amulet. There are amulets with extremely valuable effects, and also amulets that can kill you, because this is Nethack. Never wear an amulet without at least knowing it's not cursed.
All items in the game have a B/U/C status - that's blessed/uncursed/cursed. Depending on B/U/C status, items have different effects. Mostly blessed effects are the best, but there are uses for uncursed and even cursed items at times. Cursed equipment and jewelry cannot be taken off, and detrimental jewelry is often generated cursed. If you have no way to uncurse it, an amulet of strangulation will choke you to death in a few turns.
There's no easy way to identify amulets short of wearing them and seeing what happens, so I just pick this one up and carry it along. Just like in Rogue, most objects have a randomized appearance each game and will have to be identified.
Aha! That message indicates that there's a shop on the level. The chance for a shop to be generated decreases with dungeon level. You are guaranteed a shop each on Dlvls 2 and 3, if the level generates with a room appropriate for a shop (basically, a room with only one entrance), which doesn't always happen.
Killing another lichen nets me my first level up! I gain 7 HP and 3 MP. The accuracy formula also involves experience level, so I should whiff my attacks less often, as well.
This message means there's a vault on the level. A vault is a small isolated 4x4 room (2x2 floorspace) that contains a nice sum of money, but I'll need a digging tool to get at it. I'll keep it in mind and come back later.
If you come to a dead end like this, chances are there's a hidden door or passageway next to you. You'll have to hit the "s" key a bunch to search, which will eventually reveal it.
Sure enough, there was a door there, and opening it reveals a new enemy - bats! The capital B seems to encompass both bats and birds, but mostly bats. They're not particularly tough. Bat corpses, however, will stun you for something like 30 turns, so don't eat them.
Kicked open another door to reach this room. The ) is a weapon of some sort. I constantly forget which parenthesis is for tools and which is for weapons, personally. The { is a fountain. Fountains have some interesting properties, but we won't play around with them just now.
The weapon turns out to be a spear. Meh. Spears are a poor choice to train because there are no artifact spears, so they're not really endgame-caliber weapons. I'm fine with my longsword, thanks.
Here's the store! Luckily, the door was open. Shop doors can be locked, and kicking them down will piss off the shopkeeper, who is plenty capable of killing you dead at this point in the game. Luckily, the game is kind enough to warn you with a "Closed for inventory" message written in the dust in front of the door of the shop. If you're on a level with a shop, make sure to double-check that you don't see this message before kicking down any doors.
This is a general store, which means it carries a hodgepodge of item types. Unfortunately, it's tiny, so there's not a lot here.
The ? is a scroll, which have a variety of handy effects, but can be tricky to identify. The [ are pieces of armor. The * is a gem, which can be sold for money, taken to the end of the game for score, or one other use we may see later. It could also be worthless glass, which we won't know until with identify it. The shop will sell it as though it's valuable regardless if it's unidentified, though.
The / is a wand. Wands are both useful and generally easy to identify. I check the price.
Okay, here's the deal. There's a process for identifying (most types of) objects called "price identification." You take the offered price of an item and your charisma score (which affects shop prices), then look the price up in a little table, which will tell you the "real" value of the item. Every item in the game has a set value, so this narrows things down.
Going through this for every item is unbelievably tedious, so I won't be doing that. However, I did take a glance. This wand is actually a 100-value wand, which means it's either a wand of light or a wand of nothing. Completely useless, not worth buying.
In retrospect I should've given the wand a name to remind me it's worthless, but oh well.
The armor might've been useful, but my shield's doing a lot, and you can generally find basic equipment lying around, or get it off the corpses of enemies, so I don't bother for now. Plus, my options here are plate mail and banded mail, both of which are pretty heavy. The scroll is in a price tier that's a pain to identify, so I leave it too.
Geckos are slightly more threatening than newts, which is still not at all threatening. Killing it nets me level 3! 11 more HP for me.
I'm also hungry now. I'm putting off dealing with it just yet in the hopes a corpse will drop and I won't have to dip into my permafood just yet.
That's it for Dlvl 2. On to 3!
And here my hunger status goes from "hungry" to "weak," which means I need to deal with it. The message up there is a cheeky Gauntlet reference. I think it only shows up if you're playing a Valkyrie or a Wizard, although I could be wrong.
I eat a food ration and continue on.
A fox! Another unremarkable canine, only slightly more difficult than a jackal. I kill it and eat it.
Ohoho. This level has two down staircases, which means one of these leads to the Gnomish Mines! The Mines are a side branch, and they can be surprisingly deadly to an unprepared character. The staircase always appears somewhere on Dlvl 2, 3, or 4.
The first major decision a player faces is whether to enter the Mines now, or to continue on to the second sidebranch, Sokoban, and do the Mines later.
Well, regardless, I'm going to at least clean out this level first.
This teal % is a tin. Teals can contain the flesh of a monster, or spinach. Spinach tins are nice because they increase your strength (as long as they're not cursed, so it's worth waiting to make sure your tins aren't cursed before eating them, lest you waste them). It takes some time to open the tin when you try to eat one, and then you'll be told what's in the tin and given a prompt to decide whether you want to eat it or throw it away. The food in tins won't spoil, which is nice.
The r is for rodent; they're mostly rats. No threat, and their corpses are safe to eat.
Level cleared, it's time to decide which path to take. Now, I've died a bunch in the Mines, personally, so Sokoban is a valid choice. However, the main reasons for being a lawful dwarven Valkyrie rather than a human all become apparent in the Mines.
So I'm tackling the Mines.
Next time!