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Killed by ambiguous color mapping. Let's Play Nethack! Valkyrie, Part 3
Last time, we delved into the Gnomish Mines, dicked around in Minetown, and climbed back up to the main dungeon. Now, we saunter vaguely downwards toward Sokoban.
Dogs and cats can show up as enemies, too. If one leaves a corpse, don't eat it. Unless you're a caveman or an orc, you'll get the aggravate monster intrinsic, which wakes up monsters, makes it easier for them to find you, and also gives you harsher penalties for things like accidentally attacking your pets. Once you're decently geared up, it's no more than a nuisance, but for a squishy character early on it can cause problems.
That grey + is a spellbook. They use the same symbol as closed doors, yes, but you're unlikely to mistake one for the other. I go ahead and pick it up for now - I'm really not planning on spellcasting, but spellbooks can be sold for a decent amount of gold, and I'd like to learn a level 1 spell early on if possible, for later. Valkyries cast from the Wisdom stat and can reach Basic proficiency in attack spells and escape spells, but metal armor hurts your spellcasting chance and there's not really much reason to bother.
Each class also has a "special" spell that they can cast more easily than others; the Valkyrie special spell is cone of cold, which is not very helpful.
Another shop on this level somewhere!
I also decide to take a look at my skills, to see if I can advance my longsword skill yet (I can't). The skill levels are Unskilled, Basic, Skilled, and Expert. Master and Grand Master also exist beyond Expert, but only for a couple of roles in a couple of skills (only Monks can achieve Grand Master level, and only in martial arts). For most roles, including Valkyries, you should think of Expert as the maximum skill level.
Proficiency in each skill goes up as you use the given skill successfully, and is capped depending on your role. Raising your skill level improves your spellcasting failure rate and provides bonuses to-hit and to-dam for weapons. Being Unskilled in a particular school generally provides penalties to same.
I mentioned above that Valkyries can reach Basic proficiency in attack and escape spells, but every other spell school is going to be stuck at Unskilled forever, no matter how much you use them. They have better luck with weapons - they can reach Expert level with daggers, axes, long swords, two-handed swords, and hammers, and Skilled in several others. It's good to consider your proficiency caps when deciding what weapons to train - you only get so many skill slots. That's a way bigger problem for casters than us, though.
Okay, enough blah blah blah about skills. It's not a complicated system or a centerpiece of the game like it is in some other roguelikes.
A hobgoblin attacks me, and I kill it and take its stuff. Scimtars are roughly equal in power to longswords and use their own skill that Valkyries are worse at, so no thanks. I do take that helmet, though. I don't put it on yet since I don't know if it's cursed and it'd be silly to backtrack all the way to Minetown to find out, but I'll hang onto it for a bit.
The p is for piercer - this one's a rock piercer, the weakest. They like to hide on the ceiling and drop on your head, but this one isn't for whatever reason. They're also extremely slow; the only danger is from the initial ambush, really. I kill it and move on.
Oh hey, a sink! That's the # in the middle of the room (another character doing double-duty). I should mention that I'm playing on NAO - nethack.alt.org, or alt.org/nethack - and this is the character set they use, which has some differences from the default, like boulders.
Anyway, sinks have a couple of uses. You can kick them, which I won't be doing just now. But you can also use them to identify rings.
I go ahead and drop my cursed shiny ring down the drain.
You'll get a unique message that hints at what the ring does. This one means that our cursed ring was a ring of polymorph.
And it kindly lets us name it. I say the ring was a ring of polymorph, because we're not getting it back. Rings dropped down the drain stay down the drain, so make sure you're not going to miss it when you try this. The one exception is, appropriately, the ring of slow digestion, which the sink will regurgitate.
I see a message flash by too quick to catch it, so I use ctrl+p to bring up the message history.
Most recent messages are at the top. A "crunching sound" means that there's a metal-eating monster somewhere on the level, and it just ate something. It was probably gold, but it could be any item made of metal, like, say, a bronze ring or something. Nothing like leaving a stash somewhere and coming back to find a metallivore slurped up half your stuff.
There's the store! It's a bookstore. There are two kinds - second-hand bookstores sell mostly scrolls and a few books, and rare book stores sell mostly books and a few scrolls. Second-hand bookstores are more common.
But it's tiny, again. Sigh.
Well, at least there's one thing we can do. This store's got a couple of cheap scrolls, and there's only one scroll with a base price less than 50.
These scrolls are what we'll be using to figure out for sure what all the crap we're carrying around is. I'll probably come back and buy these later if I don't find more lying around. In hindsight I should've just bought them now, but oh well.
The third scroll is also easily identified - the only base-price-50 scroll, light. They're completely useless, but I'll pick up any I find anyway to for blanking purposes. I'm not actually going to spend money on one, though.
I also check out what level my spellbook is. It's easier to narrow down the price of an object by selling than by buying. If you keep dropping the object the shopkeeper will offer you one of two different prices; the higher price is half the value of the item. He offered me 225 sometimes and 300 other times, which means that this is a level 6 spellbook. That's way higher than I'm ever going to use, so I sell it and take my 300 gold.
See that l at the bottom of the corridor I'm in? That's a leprechaun. Leprechauns are like nymphs that are just annoying instead of dangerous. They steal your gold and then teleport away.
But if you see them coming, they're easily dealt with.
Can't steal what you don't have! Putting all your gold in a bag works just as well. I think I forgot that I'd B/U/C identified my bag already, or I would've done that.
I charge on in.
This message means that my long sword skill just went up from whacking the leprechaun. However, it won't actually advance until I enter the skill menu and choose to advance it.
I did not notice this message as I was playing. When will I finally remember and actually bother to upgrade my skills? Stay tuned!
Another annoying thing about leprechauns is that they're fast, faster than I am right now. As I give chase, I run into a rock mole - the source of the crunching sound from earlier. Rock moles can tunnel through walls, so there's probably a weird hollowed-out patchwork of #s somewhere around.
Like here. The map will update when it comes back into view. I also went back and picked up my gold since the leprechaun got away from me for now.
More rock mole tunnes, and the leprechaun came back! The light blue o over there is an orc shaman. They cast a couple of spells but aren't dangerous.
I drop my gold again and chase after the leprechaun, killing the orc shaman in the process.
Yay! At level 7, Valkyries get intrinsic speed. This would've helped just a minute ago when I was chasing down the leprechaun 
Leprechauns often drop gold, which is nice. Their corpses have a 50% chance of giving you teleportitis, which without teleport control you reeeeally don't want. Don't eat leprechauns.
Really, you could make it decently far in this game armed with no knowledge but a list of Things You Shouldn't Eat.
The q over there stands for quadruped, and that one in particular is a rothe. Rothes spawn in groups and can be very dangerous to a squishy character. Take them on in corridors if possible.
I decide not to bother with them and head to the next level.
Kobold lord, the most powerful kobold. Yawn.
Kobold corpses are also poisonous, don't eat them.
Ah, I know what level this is now!
That N is a naga - this one's a red naga hatchling. Hatchlings are pretty harmless, but their adult counterparts have breath attacks you should watch out for.
Red nagas and their hatchlings are fire-elemental and have a chance to give the fire resistance intrinsic when you eat their corpses.
Which this one did! Now I'm both fire and cold resistant, nice!
I explore a little bit more before heading into the center room
This is the Oracle level! A really early Oracle level. The Oracle shows up in every game and will be located on a random floor from 5 to 9, so we got the shallowest possible one. She'll always be surrounded by four fountains, with eight statues in the outer chamber.
You can #chat with the Oracle and pay her a fee for either a minor consultation or a major consultation. Minor consultations are true rumors, like that graffiti we found way back in the first update. Major consulations are a description of some part of the game, for example, an explanation of Elbereth, or how to use a scroll to level teleport, or even how to access the endgame. If you're trying to make your way through the game without external spoilers, paying for major consultations is probably a necessity. You also get some experience the first time you buy each, which is important for people who are trying for, say, pacifist conduct (never kill anything the entire game), but not so much for me.
Since I already know the stuff she says, I leave her be.
I head downstairs and...
YELLOW (!
Goddamnit.
Well, I pick it up anyway, along with the gold there.
A group of hill orcs show up, the yellow o's. Squishy characters should be careful with these guys, but I'm okay.
One of them drops a tripe ration, which I snag. Don't eat tripe rations yourself unless you're an orc or you want to vomit - which you might, rarely, as a last ditch effort to save yourself from food poisoning. But I can use this for something else.
Aha, a second up staircase: the entrance to Sokoban, which will always be located on the level directly below the Oracle. So we've got the shallowest Sokoban possible, too. If you decide to go for Sokoban first and end up with a really deep one, you might consider backing up and trying your luck with the Mines instead. I've been killed both ways, so it's personal preference!
I'm going to go ahead and explore the rest of the level first.
Well how fortuitous, a housecat! Time to put that tripe I just picked up to use.
By throwing it at the cat. Voila! New pet!
Tripe rations can tame little dogs/dogs/large dogs and kittens/housecats/large cats. This won't work for other monsters, but if you lose your initial pet really early, this makes it reasonably easy to get a new one. And early on, cats and dogs can be quite useful.
Nothing else interesting on the level, so I patiently herd my cat toward the Sokoban stairs (your pets will only follow you from level to level if they're adjacent to you).
Uh-oh, a blue a.
But it's just a giant beetle, not the more dangerous soldier ant. NAO remaps the monsters that by default use dark grey characters to blue characters so they're easier to see, which has the unfortunate side effect of doubling up in some cases. Use the farlook command to check, if you're cautious, or just check with your face, if you're me!
Killing the beetle gets me level 8! And then I stand on the stairs and wait for my cat to wander over to me, before finally entering Sokoban.
But that'll have to wait for next time!