A Practical Guide to Nethack: New Player's Guide by R2 Last updated 9-18-07 ========================================================================== ========================================================================== About This Guide So you're going into the Dungeons of Doom to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. Good for you! But Nethack is a horrifically complex game and death lurks around every corner, so you'll need a leg up to get going. This guide assumes you're already familiar with Nethack, and written for NetHack 3.4 for Windows. If you're hardcore enough to use Unix, you're probably hardcore enough to figure out what, from this guide, applies to you and what does not. In this guide, when I'm talking about specific commands, I'll wrap the keystrokes in square brackets. For instance, [t] means to press the "t" key (to throw an item). [T] means to hold Shift and press the "t" key, just like you were typing a capital letter (to Take off armor). There are some long commands that are preceded by pound signs in the game, and will be transcribed as such. If I say to #name something, that means to use that command to give an item a unique descriptor. If a given item has its own name, then the word isn't used with the pound sign. This guide is intended to be used with other sources of information, be it regular Nethack spoilers found on the web or my other Nethack Game Guides. Cross-referencing between how to identify goods and a guide telling you what the items do is a fine idea, for example. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== First Things First First, read the Guidebook. The Guidebook came with the installation of Nethack, and is available online in case you don't have it for some reason. It has the basic information you need about roles, commands, items, display options, and so on. This guide assumes you've read the Guidebook and at least know how to move around and enter basic commands. If you're new, and in all likelihood playing on a Windows system, it is probably in your best interest to play with the tileset graphic option turned on. If you downloaded the game from the official website at http://www.nethack.org/v343/ports/download-win.html there's another link at the bottom for the big tiles patch, which is even better than the default tileset. You'll need to muck around in your defaults.nh file a little, but that's something you need to do anyway. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turn Off Autopickup Open up defaults.nh, found in your nethack installation directory. It's a plain-text document, so you can open it up in your favorite text editor. Most of this stuff you won't have to worry about. You're looking for a line that says: # *** Personal Preferences *** because that's where you set your game options. The most important one to add is: OPTIONS=!autopickup which will prevent you from loading yourself down with every useless (or dangerous!) item you find in the dungeon. There's more you can do here (like set your pet names depending on species, or tell the game what your favorite fruit is), but nothing is as important as turning off autopickup. If you downloaded the big tiles patch, you'll need to add the line OPTIONS=tile_file:tiles32.bmp, tile_width:32, tile_height:32 as well to activate that. You can turn autopickup back on (and back off) with [@]. But that's an awful idea so don't do it. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== What Are You Doing Here? Your goal, put simply, is to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor from the grip of the evil god Moloch and give it to your own god. It's a bit more complicated than that when you get to the details, though. The Amulet is held by the High Priest of Moloch, in his sanctum. Said sanctum is at the bottom of Gehennom -- hell itself -- which itself is accessed through castle at the bottom of the Mazes of Menace. To enter Moloch's Sanctum, you will need to perform the Invocation ritual: light the Candleabrum of Invocation, ring the Bell of Opening, and read the proper incantation from the Book of the Dead. Your quest, then, is to enter the Dungeons of Doom, recover the three Invocation artifacts and the tools needed to use them, then escape the dungeon to reach the Astral Plane where you can offer the Amulet to your deity, ascending to demigodhood in the process. Good luck with that. There are countless dungeon levels and thousands of monsters between you and your goal. Here are some hints to get you started. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Before You Begin: Race, Role, Alignment, and Gender It's a great big dungeon, full of things that are going to try to kill you. Doubtless whatever source led you to Nethack let you know it was almost impossibly difficult to finish, and the learning curve is very steep. But you've got to start somewhere, so let's put a hero together. It's the first thing that happens when you start a new game anyway. First thing, enter a name. Your role is what your character does. As a beginner, you have basically four options: Barbarian, Valkyrie, Wizard, and Priest. Play some of the others for a while if you like, but the four roles mentioned have the highest chance of surviving early encounters long enough for you to get a feel for what's going on. Barbarians and Valkyries are combat monsters with good equipment, Wizards are powerful and flexible spellcasters, and Priests have some spellcasting skill and the ability to determine whether an object is blessed or cursed just by looking at it. Your race is who your character is: human, elf, dwarf, orc, or gnome. Humans are flexible, with balanced stats and the ability to play any role. The other races have the ability to see in the dark better than humans as their biggest advantage, with a few other perks here and there. Elves get natural sleep resistance early on, Dwarves are tough, Gnomes are good at identifying precious gems (about as useful for survival as it sounds), and Orcs can eat just about anything -- more on that in the section on your Dungeon Diet. Your gender doesn't matter much at all. Your alignment -- your philosophy on life, on a scale of Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic, has probably been chosen for you by the time you get to that point. Barbarians and Wizards cannot be Lawful, Valkyries cannot be Chaotic, Dwarves are always Lawful, Gnomes are always Neutral, and Orcs and Elves are always Chaotic. The only race/class combination presented with full flexibility here is a Human Priest. Basically, Lawful characters are more in touch with their gods, but are stuck with a few basic precepts of human (or dwarvish) decency. Chaotic characters are more distant from their deities but have more freedom of action to, say, murder without regard. Neutral characters are somewhere in the middle. Don't stress too much about your character choices. Your first character is going to die. So is your second. And your third, and so on. You'll have plenty of chances to tinker with your character generation. If you can't decide, a Neutral Human Barbarian will probably work pretty well the first several times you play. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Your Pet When you begin the game, you will start with a tame little dog or a tame kitten. This is your starting pet, and will generally follow you around, fight on your behalf, and bring you items. Your pet is VERY important in the early game. Be nice to it. As a Barbarian or Valkyrie, it is important to lead your pet into dangerous situations, not follow it. If you are playing as a Wizard or Priest, your pet probably has more melee combat power than you do. Accompany your pet where it goes and don't let it wander too far away. Your pet will attack monsters on your behalf. Whenever your pet kills a monster, it gets "experience" for the kill, although this works a little differently from your own experience total and experience levels. Your pet gets the same advancement from anything it kills, so as you get stronger, let your pet handle the lower-class monsters like Grid Bugs or Jackals. Eventually it will grow and become a stronger class of dog or cat, but love you just the same. Watch your pet carefully, its instincts can be a guide to how things work in Nethack. Pets will generally avoid eating things that are bad for you (with some exceptions, see the Dungeon Diet section). They will shun cursed items and will move into a space holding one "only reluctantly" (unless the space also contains food, or you pushed your pet onto it, you jerk). If your pet seems to avoid an item, it's probably best if you didn't put it on. Your pet, however, needs to eat. Dogs and cats are carnivorous, so they'll often eat corpses of monsters you (or they) kill. This can be frustrating as your dog takes time out to eat an orc corpse, leaving you to fight the three other orcs that came with it by yourself, but pets will get confused from hunger and even starve to death if their needs are ignored. If you get the message that you "feel worried" about your pet, it's hungry. By this point it's starved enough to eat "people" food that it wouldn't otherwise, so throw it a Food Ration to keep it healthy. To make your pet like you, feed it yourself. There is an "apport" statistic to your pet that the game tracks; this is how much it likes you. Feeding it tripe rations (which are probably unfit for your consumption anyway) makes it like you more. If you learn the Stone to Flesh spell, any meat created by that spell is also a treat. When your pet has high apport, it will go out of its way to pick up items and return them to you, dropping them in an adjacent square. Since pets instinctively avoid cursed items, you can feel reasonably safe putting on or wielding whatever your pet fetches for you. When you go up or down stairs to a new dungeon level, your pet will only follow if it was in an adjacent space when you moved to the new level. If you leave your pet behind for too long, it may become feral -- untame, or even hostile -- before you return. If you see another dog or cat in the dungeon, throw it some food. Meat works best, but wild animals are always hungry enough to eat people food too. If the dog or cat accepts your offering, you've tamed it and it's a new pet. You can [C]all it by name if you like. If you have a Stethoscope, you can [a]pply it to your pet to see its current hit points. [Z]ap it with healing magic or [t]hrow healing potions at it to recover its HP. If you have potions you want to affect your pet -- Invisibility or Speed, for instance -- just [t]hrow those on. The effects are generally permanent. Never, ever eat or #offer your pet. Relevant Messages: "You feel worried about <>." | Your pet is starving. "You feel sad for a moment." | Your pet has starved to death somewhere. "You have a sad feeling for a moment, but it passes." | Your pet died in combat with a monster somewhere. "You hear the rumble of distant thunder..." | You killed your pet yourself. There are penalties to some of your hidden statistics for killing your pet, but not if you leave it behind or if it dies of starvation or blows to the head inflicted by a monster. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== How to Identify Your Gear There are a lot of different items in the game -- weapons, armor, food, wands, spellbooks, scrolls, potions, rings, amulets, tools, gems, and more -- and figuring out what is what is a part of the challenge. Which of the aforementioned item classes an item belongs to is usually obvious. Swords and spears are weapons. Chainmail and shields are armor. Bits of fluid in a bottle are potions. A sheet of paper is a scroll, a bunch of paper is a spellbook. However, the names and descriptions for each item changes every time you start a new game. A "twisted ring" might be a Ring of Levitation in one game, and a Ring of Slow Digestion the next. [r]eading a Scroll of Identify or [Z]apping the Identify spell will let you figure out every attribute of an item (maybe multiple items!). Unfortunately, Scrolls of Identify and Spellbooks of Identify are themselves unidentified at the beginning of the game. Until you can stock up on Scrolls or master Divination magic enough to cast Identify yourself, you'll need to use other methods to figure out what your gear is. To keep track of what you've found, use the #name command. As you figure out how an item works, you can give it a #name as a way of keeping notes. Generally you will respond "no" when the game prompts to name an individual item, this way items of the same kind you pick up in the future will also carry the name. For example, there are two kinds of lamps in the game: oil lamps and magic lamps. If you find one, #name it Lamp 1. All the other lamps of that kind (probably oil, since they're more common), will be named Lamp 1. If you find one that isn't, it's the other kind. Had you not used the #name command, both oil and magic lamps would simply be called lamps until they were identified -- you could be walking around with a wish-granting magic lamp and not know it. The game will occasionally ask you to supply a name for an object when you observe its effect -- if you pick up a scroll and it turns to dust, or if a monster throws a potion at you, the game will ask what you want to call the item for the next time you encounter it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- An equally important thing to know is whether an item is Blessed, Uncursed, or Cursed. As noted before, Priests can tell whether every item they find is Blessed or Cursed, and pets will not approach items that are Cursed if they can help it. If you find an altar, [D]rop all of your gear onto it. If an item flashes black when it touches the altar, it's cursed. If it flashes amber, it's blessed. No flash means it's uncursed. Many players will carry a chest into whatever room they find an altar in, allowing them to put away items they know to be cursed or useless thanks to the altar's insights. You will probably go through great stretches of the game carrying (or stashing somewhere) a packful of items you're afraid to put on in case they're cursed. This is normal. Cursed equipment cannot be removed, but if you know a particular item isn't cursed, you can try it on for a round or two and see if anything becomes immediately obvious or if it identifies itself. If you have a Wand or a couple Potions of Enlightenment, using them before and after you put the gear on will let you compare your attributes with and without the item and see what's different. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the numerical enchantment or number of charges left in an item can be determined, but generally this requires you to use a Scroll or spell of Identify. The numeric enchantment on armor is easy to work out, but other items aren't so friendly. Generally you'll just wield a weapon until it's identified or zap a wand until nothing happens anymore. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Specific Identification: Here are some specific instances of identifying objects by appearance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Potions: Clear Potions are always water. Blessed or Cursed, they become Holy Water and Unholy Water. If you have a few potions to identify, give the [a]pply command. The only kind of potion that will accept the [a]pply command is Oil (which will light it, turning it into a grenade to be [t]hrown. If you don't want to do that, press [Esc] at the prompt). To #dip an object into a potion is sometimes helpful. If you get the results described below, you've identified a potion. If you just get "Interesting..." then nothing happens to either the item or the potion, and you've eliminated one possibility. Try #dipping a weapon into an unidentified potion. If it "forms a coating" on the weapon (and the weapon is now poisoned), the potion is Sickness. If you have some violet gems, try #dipping them into potions. An Amethyst will turn a Potion of Booze into a Potion of Fruit Juice (#name the potential Booze beforehand, and name it back if the potion doesn't change. If it does change, of course, #name it Fruit Juice). This is also good for figuring out which of the three kinds of violet gems is an Amethyst. Unicorn Horns are great for #dipping. Potions of Hallucination, Blindness, and Confusion will turn into Water (again, #name them, #dip, and change the #name if they didn't turn into water). #dipping a Unicorn Horn into a Potion of Sickness will turn it into Fruit Juice. If a monster drinks a potion (they like Healing, Extra Healing, Full Healing, Gain Level, Invisibility, Speed, and Polymorph), it's usually identified for you. The exception is Gain Level if it's cursed, whereupon the monster will rise up through the ceiling and you will be asked to supply a name. Monsters will throw Potions of Paralysis, Blindness, Confusion, Sleeping and Acid. Only Acid ("This burns (a little/a lot)!") and Confusion ("You feel somewhat dizzy.") will prompt for a name, the rest will identify themselves. Nymphs tend to carry Potions of Object Detection. If you find a Delicatessen shop with potions, those will either be Fruit Juice, Booze, or Water. If you have an Amethyst and find a Delicatessen, you can check all three options using the trick mentioned above. If you have a Unicorn Horn, you can just find a safe spot and [q]uaff any potions you've found, [a]pplying the Horn to remove any nasty status ailments that befall you. You'll want to hide yourself away in case you drink Sleep or Paralysis, and the big risk here is accidentally swallowing a Potion of Polymorph. Most potions will identify themselves when [q]uaffed. The ones that don't: You get the message: You drank a Potion of: This makes you feel good! | Restore Ability This tastes like [Fruit] Juice. | Either Fruit Juice or See Invisible. This burns like acid! | Acid or Holy/Unholy Water, whichever | is opposite your alignment. Ooph! This tastes like liquid fire! | Booze Restore Ability might make you feel great, better, or mediocre depending on the BUC status of the potion. See Invisible fully identifies itself if there was something invisible nearby that you can now see. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scrolls Scrolls are tough to identify. With scrolls like Fire and Amnesia, there are much bigger penalties for [r]eading an unidentified scroll than there are for [q]uaffing an unidentified potion. An unlabeled scroll is always blank paper. Trying to read the scroll will identify but not consume it. If you pick up a scroll and it crumbles to dust, it was Scare Monster. If you can make it to Sokoban, there are always two Scrolls of Earth on the first level, side by side. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wands [E]ngraving is the best way to figure out or at least narrow down what a wand is. First, [E]ngrave a few letters in the dust with your fingers (press the - key when the game asks what you want to engrave with). Then [E]ngrave with the wand -- since this only takes one turn, "Elbereth" is a good choice to engrave. Light, Enlightenment, Create Monster, Digging, Fire, Lightning and Wishing will identify themselves, in all cases but Digging, Fire, and Lightning it will be as though you simply [z]apped the wand. Lightning will blind you with the flash. Otherwise, you'll get one of the following messages: The message is: The wand is: "The wand unsuccessfully fights your attempt to write!" | Striking "The bugs on the floor slow down!" | Slow Monster "The bugs on the floor speed up!" | Speed Monster "The bugs on the floor stop moving!" | Sleep or Death "The floor is riddled with bullet holes!" | Magic Missile "A few ice cubes drop from the wand." | Cold "The engraving on the floor vanishes!" | Make Invisible, | Cancellation, | or Teleportation "The text on the floor now reads [random quote]" | Polymorph Wands of Nothing, Undead Turning, Opening, Locking, Secret Door Detection, and Probing don't give any message when used to [E]ngrave. While that's not really helpful, at least you'll know it's one of those. Secret Doors will identify itself if there happened to be a secret door nearby that was revealed when you used the wand. Teleportation actually moves the text somewhere else on the current dungeon level, so if you find it elsewhere, that's the wand you used. Both Sleep and Death make the bugs stop moving. Ten to one odds the wand is Sleep. Monsters will often [z]ap wands at you, this identifies any wand a monster uses for such a purpose -- generally it's Striking, Magic Missiles, Fire, Cold, or Lightning. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rings Rings are tricky to identify. If you know they're not cursed, you can just try them on. Some rings will self-identify: Invisibility; See Invisible (if something appeared you couldn't see before); Adornment, Gain Strength, Gain Constitution, and Protection if charged above or below +0; and Levitation if you weren't levitating already. If you don't know what a ring is, it's best to take it off after a turn or two in case it's something nasty like Teleport or Polymorph that could get you into trouble. The only other reliable way to identify a ring is to drop it down the drain of a sink. This, of course, requires you to find a sink somewhere in the dungeon. If you [d]rop a ring on the same square as the sink, you'll get a message that can help you identify the ring -- at the cost of the ring. Needless to say, this is best done if you have more than one of a given kind of ring so you can #name it afterward. Drop another item you don't care about onto the sink before this experiment in case the ring you drop is Hunger. The ring was: The message is: Searching | "You thought your ring got lost in the sink, but there | it is!" Slow Digestion | "The ring is regurgitated!" Levitation | "The sink quivers upwards for a moment." Poison Resistance | "You smell rotten [Fruit]." Aggravate Monster | "Several flies buzz angrily around the sink." Shock Resistance | "Static electricity surrounds the sink." Conflict | "You hear loud noises coming from the drain." Sustain Ability | "The water flow seems fixed." Gain Strength | "The water flow seems stronger/weaker now." Gain Constitution | "The water flow seems lesser/greater now." Increase Accuracy | "The water flow misses/hits the drain." Increase Damage | "The water's force seems smaller/greater now." Hunger | "Suddenly, [item] vanishes from the sink!" Adornment | "The faucets flash brightly for a moment." Regeneration | "The sink looks as good as new." Invisibility | "You don't see anything happen to the sink." Free Action | "You see the ring slide right down the drain!" See Invisible | "You see some air in the sink." Stealth | "The sink seems to blend into the floor for a moment." Fire Resistance | "The hot water faucet flashes brightly for a moment." Cold Resistance | "The cold water faucet flashes brightly for a moment." Protection | "The sink glows black/silver for a moment." Warning | "The sink glows white for a moment." Teleportation | "The sink momentarily vanishes." Teleport control | "The sink looks like it is being beamed aboard | somewhere." Polymorph | "The sink momentarily looks like a fountain." Polymorph control | "The sink momentarily looks like a regularly erupting | geyser." Prot. from Shape Changers | "The sink looks nothing like a fountain." In the case of Searching and Slow Digestion, you get the ring back. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amulets Check to make sure an amulet isn't cursed before you put it on. If it comes cursed, it's probably a bad one. If not, it's probably a good one. Hide yourself somewhere safe and try on your new amulet. Restful Sleep and Choking make themselves readily obvious -- and are why you made sure the amulet was noncursed before you put it on. Changing is immediately obvious but not terribly important. The rest you can safely wear until you identify them -- some, like ESP or Reflection, should be obvious pretty quickly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spellbooks Plain spellbooks are blank. Other than that, you can either Identify it or read it yourself. If you read it yourself, try to bless it first. Reading a spellbook that's too hard for your character to understand or any cursed spellbook has all sorts of nasty effects, but reading a blessed book never carries a penalty. Of course, whether you're able to use the spell after you learn it is irrelevant to identifying the book. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weapons and Armor Any weapon that comes with a name is an artifact. Rare, but good to know in case you find one -- that's not just any Sunsword, that's THE Sunsword. If you can find the item's blessed/cursed status, that's a good indication of its enchantment. Blessed items are never generated with negative enchantment, and cursed items are never generated with positive enchantment. If you find noncursed armor, try it on and its numerical enchantment will make itself known. Some items are described by appearance to roles not familiar with arms and armor. It appears to be a: It is a: Broad Short Sword | Dwarvish Short Sword Samurai Sword | Katana Long Samurai Sword | Tsurugi Thonged Club | Aklys Double-headed Axe | Battle-axe Broad Pick | Dwarvish Mattock Iron Hook | Grappling Hook Vulgar Polearm | Partisan Pole Sickle | Fauchard Single-edged Polearm | Glaive (Naginata, for Samurai) Beaked Polearm | Bec-de-Corbin Forked Polearm | Spetum Prolonged Polearm | Lucern Hammer Pruning Hook | Guisearme Hilted Polearm | Ranseur Pole Cleaver | Voulge Hooked Polearm | Bill-guisarme Long Poleaxe | Bardiche Angled Poleaxe | Halberd Stout Spear | Dwarvish Spear Bamboo Arrow | Ya Curved Sword | Scimitar Blue and Green Shield | Elven Shield Large Round Shield | Dwarfish Roundshield Polished Silver Shield | Shield of Reflection Leather Hat | Elven Leather Helm Iron Skull Cap | Orcish Helm Hard Hat | Dwarvish Iron Helm Coarse Mantelet | Orcish Cloak Faded Pall | Elven Cloak Hooded Cloak | Dwarvish Cloak Slippery Cloak | Oilskin Cloak Apron | Alchemy Smock Walking Shoes | Low Boots Jackboots | High Boots Hard Shoes | Iron Shoes Furthermore, anything described as "crude" is of orcish (and therefore inferior) make, as are shields described as "red-eyed" or "white-handled". Anything described as "runed" is of elven design except a Runesword, but those are really rare. The Helmet/Kabuto, Helmet of Opposite Alignment, Helm of Telepathy, and Helm of Brilliance are each assigned a random appearance when the game begins; each one is either a Plumed Helmet, Etched Helmet, Crested Helmet, or Visored Helmet. Be careful about trying on nonidentified helmets, as Opposite Alignment can make the game quite difficult. The most common of these, worn by all sorts of humanoids, is the plain ol' Helmet. #name it accordingly. The Cloak of Displacement, Cloak of Invisibility, Cloak of Magic Resistance, and Cloak of Protection are each assigned a random appearance when the game begins; each one is either an Opera Cloak, Piece of Cloth, Ornamental Cope, or Tattered Cape. Protection and Displacement identify themselves when worn, and if you're not already invisible, Invisibility does too. Leather Gloves, Gauntlets of Power, Gauntlets of Dexterity and Gauntlets of Fumbling are each assigned a random appearance: old gloves, padded gloves, riding gloves, and fencing gloves. Whichever one is named "Riding Gloves" gives a bonus to saddling a steed. Gauntlets of Power identify themselves when worn, and again, the most common pair of gloves is plain Leather. Elven boots, Fumble boots, Kicking boots, Levitation boots, Jumping boots, Speed boots, and Water walking boots are each assigned a random appearance when the game begins; this appearance is either Mud boots, Buckled boots, Riding boots, Snow boots, Hiking boots, Combat boots, or Jungle boots. Whichever one is called "Riding Boots" gives an equal but noncumulative bonus to saddling a steed as the Riding Gloves. Whichever one is called "Snow Boots" lets you walk on ice as if it were normal ground. Levitation, Speed, and Elven boots all have obvious effects if you don't already have Levitation, Extra Speed, or Stealth. Jumping boots can be tested by seeing if the #jump command works -- unless you're a Knight or wearing Jumping boots, it won't. Only Wizards should try to find a Cornuthaum, it grants them Clairvoyance. Other classes get no benefit and may ignore this part. If you find a "conical hat", it's either a Cornuthaum (good!) or a Dunce Cap (bad!). The Dunce Cap may come uncursed and simply curse itself when you put it on, so make sure you identify any conical hat you find to make sure. You don't want a Dunce Cap setting your Intelligence to 6. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tools and Other Items There are four kinds of "bag": Sack, Oilskin Sack, Bag of Holding, and Bag of Tricks. #looting or [a]pplying Tricks identifies it. The others are worth keeping around as a container until you can identify them, as the only risk is losing items into the rare cursed Bag of Holding. If you have a bunch of scrolls and potions you don't care about, you can put them in a bag and #dip it into a water source a few times. If nothing is blanked or diluted, it's probably Oilskin (since the whole point of Oilskin is to protect against water damage). Lamps come in two varieties: Oil Lamps and Magic Lamps. Lamps don't turn into stackable piles, but if you #name the first one you find and then find another without the name, it's the other kind. If you [a]pply the lamp and find that it's about to go out after a few hundred turns, it's oil -- magic lamps never run out of fuel. To work out the difference between whistles, blow them. "High" or "shrill" sounds come from tin, "Strange" or "High-pitched" sounds are magic. For instruments, improvise and see what happens. Flutes that "toot" or "trill" are normal, those that produce "soft music" are magical. Horns that prompt for a direction are either Fire or Frost (and you can tell which is which by the beam it produces), if it makes food, it's Plenty. Magic harps make "very attractive music", while nonmagical ones make "a lilting melody" or simply "twang". Leather and Earthquake drums are very easy to tell apart when used. Gems come in nine colors: white red, orange, blue, black, green, yellow, yellow-brown, and violet. Most gems are pretty useless, but if you [E]ngrave with one, the game will tell you you're either writing in the dust or engraving into the floor. If you're engraving into the floor, you've got a hard gem and it's valuable. If you write in the dust, you've got a soft gem that might be valuable and might be worthless glass. If you kill a glass golem, everything it drops is glass, so #name accordingly. Gems are light enough that you can carry around a load without getting burdened down, but don't help your survival in any direct way, so don't worry about dumping or stashing them somewhere if you need to. There are four different kinds of gray stones: Luckstones, Touchstones, Flint Stones, and Loadstones. Picking up a Loadstone will identify it, and trying to drop it will identify it as being cursed. Since the whole point of a Loadstone is to curse itself into staying in your inventory so it weighs you down, this is a lousy way to figure out what it is and reason enough not to pick up any gray stones you find. If you have some clear space on the far side of the stone you find, give it a good #kick. If you get a "thump" sound, it's a Loadstone. If it slides across the floor, it's probably not (only Samurai, Monks, and characters with Strength of 22 or higher are good enough kickers to move a Loadstone any distance). #rub an unidentified gray stone with any item you can find made of iron, most weapons will do. If it makes a "scritch, scritch" sound, you've got a Touchstone. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Dungeon Diet The quest for food is what will likely propel you ever deeper into the dungeon, at least at the beginning of the game where victuals are scarce. The basics of Nethack nutrition, copied from my Food guide: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom burns a lot of calories, so you'll need to eat regularly to stay alive. Your character has a statistic that's hidden from you under most circumstances: nutrition. This runs from 2000 down to -200 or so, and both ends of the scale are fatal. If your nutrition is between 150 and 1000, you're not hungry, and there's no descriptive term. If it falls below that, you get Hungry down to 50 nutrition, and Weak as you drop to 0. After your nutrition goes negative, you will often faint from lack of food, and eventually starve to death if the monsters in the dungeon don't hack your unconscious body apart first. If your nutrition is above 1000, you're satiated and not hungry at all. If your character is a Knight or Samurai, eating while satiated carries an alignment penalty. When you eat a meal while satiated, you may be informed that you're having trouble getting it all down. If this is the case, stop eating! If your nutrition goes above 2000, you will choke to death on your meal. You will lose one point of nutrition every turn. You'll lose an additional point every other turn if your encumbrance level is "stressed" or worse, or if you have the regeneration, hunger, or conflict intrinsics from any source other than an artifact. You'll lose another nutrition one turn out of every twenty for each ring or amulet you're wearing, or by just carrying the Amulet of Yendor. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comestibles Most characters start with a little something to eat, but you'll need to find more soon. Food Rations (and their cousins, C-Rations and K-Rations) are the most common source of "people" food to be found, although you'll find everything from candy bars to fortune cookies in the dungeon. Prepared rations and journeycakes, including Tolkien-inspired Cram and Lembas, are some of the most nutritious food you can eat, so stock up on those if you can. However, you'll probably resort to eating whatever you can find. Sadly, most food isn't worth the effort to carry around, offering only slight boosts to your nutrition (your favorite fruit is best at 250 nutrition, whereas a Food Ration is worth 800 and a K-Ration, the biggest chunk of food that can be eaten in one round, gives 400). It'll take a lot of vegetables to make up for a balanced Ration. Special effects of food: Eggs are often rotten and barely worth eating even when fresh. However, in the event that the egg isn't a regular chicken egg, it might hatch into a baby ant, crocodile, naga, chickatrice, or even a dragon. There's a chance the hatchling will be tame and follow you around as a pet. Tripe is pet food. Only orcs and cavemen can stomach it (ha ha) without vomiting, which costs more nutrition than you gain from eating tripe in the first place. If you do eat something rotten or sickening, eating a Eucalyptus Leaf will cure sickness and vomiting. While they're not very nutritious, cloves of garlic may be [t]hrown or [w]ielded at undead creatures to scare them away for a few turns. Wolfsbane cures lycanthropy when eaten. Carrots cure blindness when eaten. Fortune cookies will give you a rumor when eaten. You can also just [r]ead the rumor without eating the cookie, although this destroys the item as thoroughly as chewing and swallowing it would have. Cream pies may be [t]hrown at monsters or [a]pplied to yourself to inflict blindness. Royal Jelly, should you be fortunate enough to find a beehive and claim it from the buzzing inhabitants thereof, has all sorts of beneficial effects. Not only is it a 200 nutrition snack that you can scarf down in one turn, but it restores up to 20 hit points, heals any wounded legs, and increases your Strength by a point. If your hit points are at maximum when you eat royal jelly, there's a one in seventeen chance that your hit point maximum increases by one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Corpses Eating corpses can be tricky, but the monsters you slay are an important source of nutrition (and sometimes other benefits). If you keep the following in mind, you should be okay: Your pet will generally not eat things that are bad for you. Exceptions are corpses of your own race (human, elf, etc.), other dogs and cats, bats, violet fungi, leprechauns, nymphs, and tengu. Why these are bad to eat is detailed below. Corpses are generally meat. Monks are required to follow a vegetarian diet, which means the only corpses they can eat are those of lichen, molds, and various fungi (their dietary code is tough for beginners to handle, this is part of the reason you were advised against playing a Monk before). If the corpse is more than 30 turns old, it's probably rotten and will give you food poisoning, killing you in a few turns. Only eat corpses that were recently killed if you happen to be hungry when you killed them (unless they give an intrinsic, see below). Corpses left from undead creatures -- mummies, zombies, vampires, and so on -- will always give you food poisoning, so never eat undead creatures no matter how hungry you are. Eating corpses of your own race -- human corpses if you're human, gnome corpses if you're a gnome, and so on -- is cannibalism, which punishes your luck and gives you the Aggravate Monster intrinsic. Note that many monsters leave human corpses, including Kops, Soldiers, Nurses, and a bunch of things that are a bad idea to eat anyway like lycanthropes and vampires, so be careful what you eat. Eating other sentient races -- an elf eating a dwarf -- is okay. Orcs (and the Caveman role) do not have the same social pressures as other races and are exempt from cannibalism. Many creatures are poisonous to eat, and will do HP damage and lower your Strength when eaten unless you have poison resistance (Barbarians and Orcs start with such an advantage). Poisonous creatures include all varieties of kobold and lycanthrope, yellow molds, homonculi, rabid rats, killer bees, jellyfish, soldier ants, giant beetles, snakes, vampire bats, giant spiders, water moccasins, gremlins, scorpions, quantum mechanics, pit vipers, xans, cobras, queen bees, salamanders, green dragons, and guardian naga. Green slimes and Medusa are also poisonous, but eating their corpses will kill you in other ways too so it's not really an issue. Many monsters are acidic, and will cause you damage (giving you "a very bad case of stomach acid") when eaten. On the other hand, if you're slowly being petrified by the hissing of a cockatrice, the acid will cure that condition (you can't get stoned while you're doing acid, you see). These monsters are: acid blobs, green molds, black nagas, gray oozes, spotted jellies, brown puddings, gelatinous cubes, ochre jellies, black puddings, and yellow dragons. Green slimes are also acidic, but eating them will turn you to slime and kill you anyway. Eating corpses of domestic animals (namely tameable dogs and cats, but not e.g. dingoes or lynxes) will give you the Aggravate Monster intrinsic, which will mean most monsters are even more obligated to come kill you. This stacks with the penalties from eating your own pet, if the animal was that before it died. The corpse of a newt, gecko, iguana, or lizard will cure slow petrification, confusion, and stunning. Lizard corpses never rot and are always fresh enough to eat, but the other creature corpses will go bad and give you food poisoning if they're not fresh. Likewise, lichen corpses never rot away and are always fresh enough to eat. Eating a yellow mold or violet fungus will cause you to hallucinate for a few hundred turns. Eating the corpse of any kind of bat will Stun you for several turns. Eating any lycanthrope will give you the same kind of lycanthropy they had. Eating any leprechaun, nymph, or tengu corpse will probably give you teleportitis, the chronic and nigh-uncurable condition that teleports you randomly around the level once every few turns. Eating a mimic corpse will make you mimic a pile of gold for a few hundred turns, leaving you helpless. Sometimes eating a corpse will give you a boost, either a permanent change to one of your attributes or a new intrinsic ability, like a resistance to fire attacks. Consider the following examples you're likely to find early in the dungeon: Floating Eye corpses will grant Clairvoyance. Eating a Shrieker will grant Poison Resistance 20% of the time. Other creatures give poison resistance, but most are poisonous themselves. Just about any elf corpse you find will grant Sleep Resistance two-thirds of the time. Fire ants can reliably give fire resistance, a one-in-five chance. Check an intrinsic spoiler, or my own Monsters guide, for a full list of intrinsics and abilities you can expect from eating corpses. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tins Tins are a special kind of comestible in that they never go bad. Until they're opened, there's no telling what's inside! Okay, you can identify them to find out what's inside. Spoilsport. Anyway, opening tins can be a hassle. If you're wielding a tin opener or the tin is blessed, it opens in a single turn. If you're wielding a dagger or crysknife, it takes 3 turns; an axe or pick-axe will open a tin in 6 turns. Otherwise, you try to open the tin for 50 turns before you give up. Cursed tins might explode in a spray of botulism. Most of the tins you find in the dungeon will be tins of spinach. Like a certain muscle-bound sailor-man, eating spinach will boost your Strength! Er, unless the tin is cursed, at which point you'll lose Strength instead. Tins of spinach are also worth a whopping 600 nutrition. Otherwise, the tin will be the corpse of a monster. Cannibalism counts, but whether the creature was poisonous doesn't. You can also get intrinsics from tinned creatures; tins of dragon or giant meat are extremely helpful. Tins of creature corpses will be assigned a random descriptor and nutrition value, generally ranging from soup (20 nutrition) up to candied (100 nutrition). Pureed creatures are eminently digestible and are worth 500 nutrition. If the tin was made of a rotten corpse (or cursed), you lose 50 nutrition, and might get confused, stun, or vomiting status. If the food inside the tin was french-fried or deep-fried, your fingers get slippery from eating the greasy food for up to 15 rounds. [a]pply a towel to wipe off your hands and pick up any of your inventory you may have dropped once your hands are clean. If you have a Tinning Kit, you can [a]pply it to a corpse to make a tin of Homemade whatever-the-corpse-was. If the corpse was already too old to eat, you'll get a tin of rotten meat, with all the normal effects that causes. Tins will have the same BUC status as the Kit that made them, so a blessed Kit will make tins that always open in one turn and a cursed Kit will make tins that often explode in your face. ========================================================================== Non-Obvious Commands Pressing [/] is the dungeon-delver's best friend: it tells you what things are. If you choose to identify an object by the cursor, move to whatever it is that's puzzling you and press [.]. You'll get a description of what it is. If you need more advanced help, press [?]. Move around with the number pad instead of the arrow keys. [1], [3], [7], and [9] move you diagonally. To look at the things underneath your feet -- items, dungeon fixtures, and engravings in the floor -- use [:]. To see what is in another panel of the dungeon, press [;], move the cursor to the space you want to investigate, and press [.]. [<] and [>] are used to go up and down stairs, but also to aim things upward (at the ceiling) or downward (at the floor). For instance, you can often escape downward to the next dungeon level by [z]apping a Wand of Digging at the floor and falling through the hole it creates. If you need to aim something (like a Healing spell) at yourself, use [.] when the game prompts you for a direction. If you're hurt (or, for Priests, Wizards, and other spellcasters) out of Energy, rest by pressing [.]. Don't go wandering around the dungeon with single-digit HP remaining! Find yourself a safe spot and wait for your vitality to return (although you will probably need something to eat in the meantime). The #sit command is only for sitting on thrones and (in special circumstances) laying eggs, and does not help you rest. You can [d]rop only part of a stack of items by entering the number of items you wish to drop before the letter that designates those items. If you have 15 arrows in your pack assigned to the letter b, you can press [d][7][b] to drop seven of those arrows. When you need a breather (like in the above instance regarding rest to recover HP), it's a good idea to [E]ngrave the word "Elbereth" into the floor. Most monsters will flee from your presence rather than engage you in melee. It doesn't protect against ranged attacks or some specific creatures including those represented by the @ symbol (humans and elves), nor does it function if you mar the engraving by doing anything but standing still on the space. If a door is locked and you have no way to open it ([a]pplying a lockpick, credit card, or key will unlock a door), [k]ick it down. (If [k] doesn't work, use [^D].) If you want what's in a locked box or chest, you can pop the lock with a sturdy [k]ick or #force the lock with your weapon -- this might break items inside, the box itself, or your weapon, depending on the circumstances. If you can't find the stairs down, [s]earch for secret doors and passages. Nethack is notorious for cloaking doors and passages you need to get to the downstair on many levels. Check which parts of your map haven't been filled yet (indicating a potential place for a room you haven't found), then [s]earch nearby walls and passages. You may #chat with pets to get a general status report. Healthy dogs and cats will yip and purr, hungry ones will bark or mew, ailing ones will whine or yowl. Every once in a while, try to #enhance your skills; you may have missed the message notifying that you were ready to do so. A discussion of skills is beyond the scope of this guide, check another spoiler or my Weapons guide for details. You can [a]pply boxes, bags, and chests when they're in your inventory to take things in and out. If it's on the floor, #loot it instead. When you're in trouble, #pray. More on that later. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== General Hints If you're overwhelmed in combat, try to back into a corridor. Only one monster will be able to attack you at a time, at most two if one sneaks up behind you. It beats getting mobbed by a crowd. By the same token, if you're in one room waiting for a mob to file in, stand two spaces away and one to the side from the door. That way you can attack monsters as soon as they enter (diagonally), but you're not in line with any wands or beam attacks possessed by monsters are still stuck in the other room or hallway. Don't hold keys down. If you want to do something for a long time, hit the [n] key, then type in the number of turns you want to do something, then the key for the action you want to do. [n][100][.] will wait for 100 turns, or (and this is the big advantage over holding down the key) until something noteworthy happens that demands your attention, like getting hungry or a Storm Giant knocking down the door to the room you're in. Even if you can't find a Bag of Holding, keep your items -- especially fragile ones -- in a regular sack. Potions, scrolls, and spellbooks can be burned, shocked, frozen, and otherwise destroyed by random events if they are in your inventory, but are safe in a container. Try to avoid being Burdened (or worse) if you can avoid it. Being burdened slows you down, and speed is one of the biggest advantages to have in the game. If you can't help being Burdened, exercise! Pushing boulders back and forth is a fine way to increase your Strength over time. Exercise your other stats if you can: if you have a lockpick or key, lock and unlock a door to exercise your Dexterity, and [E]ngrave "Elbereth" with a capital E to exercise your Wisdom. You'll exercise your Constitution naturally by being neither Hungry or Satiated. On that note, just because you CAN eat it doesn't mean you SHOULD. And along that vein, just because a dungeon fixture is there doesn't mean you should do anything to it. Don't mess with fountains, sinks, or thrones unless you have a good reason to. Fountains are best used as a water source to #dip Potions in to turn them into water, or to #dip scrolls into to blank them. Considering some of the nasty potential side-effects, like being attacked by a swarm of snakes or a water demon, even that should be approached with caution. If you're low on ammunition, try to #untrap a dart or arrow trap. Doing so results in a pile of darts or arrows where the trap used to be. If you see a boulder in an odd place, shove it aside a space or two. Chances are there's a rolling boulder trap nearby, and pushing the boulder out of line with the trap disables it. If you need to move past a boulder blocking your way, you can shatter it by [a]pplying a pick-axe or dwarvish mattock to it, or by [z]apping it with a Wand of Striking, a Force Bolt, or Stone to Flesh spell. If you don't have any of those means, drop everything you're holding. If you have very few items in your inventory, you can sometimes squeeze into the same space as the boulder to see what's blocking the other side. If you still can't fit, take off your armor and drop it too. You may even need to drop your weapon to squeeze in, so hopefully the obstacle isn't a big, strong creature you'll have to fight with your bare hands. If you find the downstair, pop down it and immediately climb back up again to finish exploring the level you're on. If you fall into a pit or trap door, you'll know how to get back to where you were. That said, descend slowly. Until you get past dungeon level 5 or so, you'll want to be at a higher experience level than your dungeon level. Hang around and kill things. Gather lichen or lizard corpses to eat later, since they never go bad. Stockpile armor and weapons. Train your pet to kill Grid Bugs. When it's time to move on, hang around the staircase for a little while on each level -- especially levels with big rooms full of monsters like the Gnomish Mines (and, uh, the Big Room). If things get hairy, run back upstairs to take a break and recover. Don't wait until the last minute to flee, though, as some monsters will follow you up and down stairs. When you're in trouble, #pray to your god for help. Don't #pray too often (you don't want to pester your god) but when you're in trouble, it wouldn't hurt to ask. Before you can stock up on food, #praying is probably the best way to keep from starving, because the amount of time it takes for your god to allow prayer again is generally less than the time it takes to go from not hungry to Weak (assuming you're not wearing Rings or Amulets, which both increase the rate you digest food for some reason). Casting spells also burns calories, but this generally isn't an issue for Barbarians and Valkyries (who are crummy spellcasters anyway) or Wizards (whose arcane expertise reduces or eliminates the nutrition needed to cast). If you can find an altar of your alignment (use the [:] command to check), you're in luck! #offering the corpses of monsters you kill will please your god, who will allow you to #pray sooner and may reward you with artifact weapons or spellbooks. Hanging around an altar to sacrifice anything that crosses your path is somewhat frowned upon (called "altar scumming"), but as a starting player you frankly need all the help you can get. If you're going to altar scum, lug a chest nearby to stash all the items the monsters drop that you don't need. If you have Wands or Scrolls of Create Monster, you can better control your altar output. Remember, monsters that leave corpses too heavy for you to carry will need to be lured onto the altar before you kill them -- you can #offer a corpse not in your inventory if it's already sitting on the same square as the altar. And while on the subject of altars, #praying on an altar has some additional effects. Not only can it get you out of trouble like usual, but it might enchant your weapon, uncurse all your inventory, or grant you intrinsics. If you drop some Potions of Water onto the altar and #pray, the water will become Holy Water. Once you have even one Potion of Holy Water, you can #dip a whole stack of regular water into it to make lots more Holy Water. Before long, you'll be burdened with all sorts of things you don't need to lug around all the time. That means it's time to create a stash. Carry a chest to some easy-to-reach location (near an altar of your alignment is a grand idea, as is the cleared-out Castle or dungeon level 1 or 2), [E]ngrave "Elbereth" with a Wand of Fire or Digging (so it lasts a long time), and put whatever you need to keep but don't need all the time into the chest. For example, if you find a Ring of Slow Digestion, you will probably burden yourself with Rations you won't need for a long time -- if there are lots of Soldiers about, you might find yourself carrying 40 each of Food Rations, K-Rations, and C-Rations. Stash most of them, carry a few with you, and return to collect more when you're running low. If you can't use an item, stash it or destroy it. If you leave behind wands and potions you don't want, monsters will pick them up to use against you. If you are granted a Wish, you're allowed to ask for an item in the game to be added to your inventory. You can ask for more than one of items that stack, but asking for more than two or three will likely get you only one. Likewise, don't get greedy with numerical enchantments -- more than +2 or +3 is unlikely to be granted. There are spoilers out there that will help you decide what to wish for, but always ask for your items "fixed" (e.g. "fixed +2 Mjollnir); they will arrive fireproof, rustproof, or whatever they need to be. [q]uaff Potions of Healing, Extra Healing, and Full Healing even if your hit points are full, unless the potions are cursed. A Blessed Potion of Full Healing will increase your maximum hit points by 8, but even an uncursed Potion of Healing will increase your maximum hit points by 1. It adds up! Potions of Gain Energy are a bit rarer and energy is slower to recover on your own, so you may want to hold off on using those to increase your maximum energy level unless you have a lot of them and they're blessed. It helps that Potions of Gain Energy increase your maximum energy even if you aren't at full energy when you drink them. Try to hold off on drinking Potions of Gain Level as long as you can. It's easier to level up from 4 to 5 by experience points than it is from level 19 to 20, so if you can save your Potions of Gain Level until you're level 19, you'll save yourself some time and effort. Use your judgement -- a Potion at level 4 is better than one at level 19 if you die at level 10. Did you know the dungeon branches off into other areas? The first you'll find is a level with an extra down staircase; this leads to the Gnomish Mines. You are not high enough level to conquer them the first time you see them. Trust me, you're not. Continue through the main dungeon until you find a level with an extra up staircase; that leads to the boulder-pushing puzzle Sokoban. By the time you find Sokoban you should be strong enough to take on most challenges in the Mines, so backtrack and do those. Sokoban, being a series of puzzles, can be challenged any time you feel clever enough to try -- monsters aren't the problem there. When you're in Minetown, a special level full of watchmen in the Gnomish Mines, behave yourself. Attacking the guards, picking locks, stealing from shops, and messing with fountains or statues will anger the guards into attacking you. Scrolls of Enchant Weapon and Scrolls of Enchant Armor can make you very powerful if used carefully. After your weapon is enchanted to +5, you may read ONE more scroll carefully. If it's blessed, you might end up with a +7 weapon, as good as it gets. Armor may be enchanted up to +3, then the results of one more scroll, for a maximum potential bonus of +5. Overenchanted items will disintegrate, never to be seen again, so [T]ake off any armor past the safe limit before you read that scroll. If you've got a cursed item stuck to your body, the easiest way to get it off is to use a Scroll or spell of Remove Curse or #dip it in Holy Water. But you can also remove it through some trickier means. Try removing all of the equipment you want to keep, then reading a Scroll of Destroy Armor, overenchanting it until it disintegrates, harassing a nymph into stealing it, [z]apping yourself with a Wand of Cancellation... Watch out for these monsters: Floating Eyes: Never engage Floating Eyes in melee combat; their counterattack will paralyze you long enough that even a lowly Grid Bug can approach from the other direction and zap you to death one hit point at a time. Stand back and throw things or use spells. Nymphs and Leprechauns: Nymphs steal items and teleport away, Leprechauns steal gold and teleport away. You can engage a Leprechaun if you drop all your gold or put it into a container where they can't steal it, but nymphs are best avoided. If a nymph steals from you, seriously consider how much you need the item back, especially if it's something the nymph can use on herself to steal more things from you (like a Wand of Make Invisible). Fungi, Molds, Slimes: Most of these have surprisingly dangerous innate counterattacks to a starting character. A lot of slimes can also corrode your weapons and armor. Most are slow if not entirely immobile, so stand back and take them out from a distance. Ants, Killer Bees: Fast and dangerous, ants of all kinds and bees attack in swarms. Step back into a corridor to take them on one at a time if you can. Rothes, Manes: Rothes and Manes tend to appear in large packs, and Manes get several attacks a round. Again, try to bottleneck them so you only fight one at a time. Mimics of all sizes: By the time you stumble into one, you're already in trouble. Frustratingly common in shops, so if you see any item that doesn't fit the general theme of the shop you're in -- like a sword in a Delicatessen -- avoid it. Goes double for boxes and chests, which are a mimic's favorite disguise. Cockatrices: These monsters can petrify you with a touch, so don't go punching them or kicking them without gloves or boots on. Even picking up the corpse is hazardous if you're not wearing gloves. And for god's sake don't EAT one! There are other creatures with extremely dangerous attacks, but they only inhabit the lowest levels of the dungeon -- mind flayers can suck your brain right out of your skull, green slimes can turn you into one of their own, and liches can inflict curses on your entire inventory. By the time you find these creatures, you should have enough gameplay experience and proper equipment to handle them. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section V: EoD/Copyright Notice And that's that. Happy hunting! This guide was compiled with information from Nethack spoilers found on the world wide web, such as those by Kevin Hugo, Dylan O'Donnell et al, combined with my own research. This game guide is copyright 2007 Richard Rouse. Feel free to distribute this guide anywhere you like, but crediting me as the writer would be nice.