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The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

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Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#41

Post by Pinckney »

PaulHoule wrote: post #18

Has anyone won this game honestly? I've patched the C code and only got so far. I tried savefile hacking and that didn't get me to the end. I was only able to win by compiling a version with debug symbols and playing inside the debugger. (eg. find the flag for the Wizard of Yendor's invisibility status and clear it.)

I won 14 times, back in high school when I had way too much free time. Once with every class, plus an illiterate barbarian.

One of the big thing is knowing enough to recognize when you're in danger, before you're in danger. Stuff like "That q is too tough for me to take right now", or "I'd be screwed if that n steals X", or "I don't have poison resistance yet, so I better not fight those o at range," or "It's dangerous to be in the mines with this AC and no source of light." This comes with experience.

Another big part of it is understanding the sequencing, and how to build an ascension kit. Do you want to try to get to minetown early to grab a magic lamp? When is it safe to go to mines end, and do you need magic resistance to do it? What's the earliest you can take on a unicorn?

There are lots of other tricks (identifying wands, potions, etc), clearing the big room safely, finding the portals on the elemental planes, stealing from shops, what gives resistances, maximizing wishes, etc.

Ultimately, Nethack got boring for me because the late game is too long, and doesn't differ much between different classes. Ascension kits tend to be very similar (GDSM + silver shield or SDSM + CoMR?). I really liked what Derek Ray did with Sporkhack, and I never managed to win that, although I died on astral a couple times.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#43

Post by [deleted] »

VectorLock wrote: post #16
mherdeg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't even need a web browser to view this announcement -- it was posted on 27 April 2018 to rec.games.roguelike.nethack. Assuming you already have a newsreader set up, you can just go ahead and read that message.

Nethack.. Newsreaders.. Really taking me back to the halcyon days here.

[deleted]

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#44

Post by djur »

Spoom wrote: post #26
roghummal wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Elbereth" must now be the only engraved text on a square to function So... "elberethelberethelberethelbereth" won't work anymore, either.

That is a potentially big change if you like to use Elbereth to protect your stack. Now you basically have to burn it.

As of Nethack 3.6.0 Elbereth no longer works on a square that you're not standing on, so it can't be used to guard a stash. Now you need to use a scroll of scare monster for that purpose.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#45

Post by djur »

__s wrote: post #23
PaulHoule wrote: post #18

Has anyone won this game honestly? I've patched the C code and only got so far. I tried savefile hacking and that didn't get me to the end. I was only able to win by compiling a version with debug symbols and playing inside the debugger. (eg. find the flag for the Wizard of Yendor's invisibility status and clear it.)

Yes, in fact NetHack is supposed to be a more forgiving roguelike. See http://nethack4.org/blog/strategy-headroom.html

It might have been 20 years ago, or even 10, but today there are a lot of popular roguelikes which are still challenging but have fewer unavoidable deaths and less reliance on spoilers. Dungeon Crawl is a good example, but there are a lot of roguelikes even gentler than that.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#46

Post by erydo »

PaulHoule wrote: post #18

Has anyone won this game honestly? I've patched the C code and only got so far. I tried savefile hacking and that didn't get me to the end. I was only able to win by compiling a version with debug symbols and playing inside the debugger. (eg. find the flag for the Wizard of Yendor's invisibility status and clear it.)

Yes — won once, and died another time on the Plane of Fire. (I meant to zap down, not at myself! Damn. Learned to think before acting. NetHack is not as real-time as it feels when you're in a sticky situation.)

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#47

Post by djur »

kibwen wrote: post #17
endemic wrote: post #15

Anyone have recommended resources for learning how to play?

I'm a Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup player, which is a cousin to Nethack, but I imagine the process is the same: get an IRC client, connect to Freenode, join #nethack, ask questions, and learn to use the utterly invaluable resources provided by the in-channel bots (e.g. the learndb).

NetHack's learndb (Rodney) isn't quite as vital as Crawl's, mostly because NetHack is more spoiler-reliant and (as a result) has a much more detailed and accurate wiki, as well as other sources of spoilers.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#48

Post by chungy »

jammi wrote: post #40

Personally, since I'm less interested in MS-DOS modes and fixed-length 8bit charset modes, I switched to the redesigned NetHack 4, which works fine with modern UTF-8 terminals. NetHack 4 is geared towards progression of the game and staying up to date with the changing world rather than mothballing the old game. It's a separate project from NetHack 3.x, with different goals and development teams. http://nethack4.org

The continued existence of an MS-DOS port doesn't detract from versions for current operating systems in the slightest... Vim and Emacs even maintain current ports for MS-DOS and I doubt anyone is going to give them up just because a DOS port exists.

NetHack 4 is a radical shift for the game, and many of its ideas were incorporated into NetHack 3.6 (the upstream project), I think even its developer was placed onto the devteam for upstream NetHack while maintaining the fork simultaneously. It's a cool project, but NetHack 3.x is the conservative one, both in gameplay and in maintaining ports to operating systems of yesteryear (they clearly aren't against removing them, but they support them when there is at least one person to maintain it).

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#49

Post by wwweston »

darkkindness wrote: post #8

The most game-changing additions, IMO: > "Elbereth" now erodes based on attacks by the player, not monsters scared > Allow taming monkeys and apes with bananas > Peacefuls may react when you attack other peacefuls Also, I'm happy about these QoL changes: > New status line conditions Stone Strngl Deaf Lev Fly Ride > Give feedback just before timed levitation runs out

> "Elbereth" now erodes based on attacks by the player, not monsters scared

That puts Elbereth back into useful territory. The way it was nerfed in 3.6 made it borderline useless when encountering a single foe that outmatched you, and entirely useless encountering a group.

This is possibly bad news for people who thought that maybe The Problem With Nethack™ was that it was too easy to get out of the early game, but probably good news for everyone else.

Re: The NetHack dev team is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1

#50

Post by duncan_bayne »

digi_owl wrote: post #29
Cursuviam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find DCSS's development goals very interesting in contrast to Nethack. While Nethack is widely famed for "the dev's think of everything", DCSS has been on a streak of streamlining mechanics, such as the latest release collapsing all food items to rations instead of the pizza, royal jelly, and others. Though rip wand of healing.

Ugh, that kind of development approach gets my skin crawling for some reason.

Upvoted. In my opinion, this is what broke AD&D 3rd edition relative to 2nd Ed.
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