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NetHack 5.0.0

nethack.org

171–180 of 186 posts

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can only guess about what's going wrong for you specifically . But I like guessing: (extremely mild spoilers:) - A core skill for Nethack is understanding how much danger you're in at any particular moment. Your comment about soldier ants below tells me you've made good progress here. But you need to recognize when you're in danger and how long you have to deal with that problem before you'll react appropriately.…

Elbereth always seemed like a cheat... Never understood the point of it. I got to the quest without it, but not deeper.

It's not a cheat. It's explained in the game's manual (the Official Guidebook [1], just search for Engrave).

It's been nerfed since 3.6.X as well. Now it can no longer be used for fighting, only escape, and attempting to fight while standing on it will make you "feel like a hypocrite" and deduct 5 from your alignment score.

[1] https://www.nethack.org/v500/Guidebook.html#toc_4

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#172
post #4

I can highly recommend the 3D client especially because it works almost everywhere, hope it will be updated for 5.0.0 soon https://github.com/JamesIV4/nethack-3d Web https://jamesiv4.github.io/nethack-3d/

Is it possible to access wizard mode on the web version? I suppose I could just clone it and run locally and implement it if not, but would be nice if it's already there to know how to trigger it.

Yes, it's supported. It's one of the "initialization" options when you start a new game.

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#173
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re in a thread about Nethack 5.0 release, I think it’s safe to say not everyone in this thread has finished the game.

OP is talking about a several decade old version of nethack, not nethack 5.0.0.

I've never understood why something being so old is an excuse to spoil. Many people weren't old enough to be alive when it was last a cultural icon and may not have heard about it until this thread.

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#174
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LUA_USE_C89 How much functionality/performance does one lose with this flag? Genuine question, I don't know. If C89 and C99 were equally performant/functional, it would seem logical to just target C89 (since any C99 compiler should be able to compile C89 too). There must be some reason it's a flag.

I downloaded a Lua 5.4.8 source tarball and checked all the uses of LUA_USE_C89 (manually, without AI): luaconf.h:50-655 - windows builds always use C89 (quote: "broadly, Windows is C89") - in C99 Lua uses 'strtod' and 'sprintf' for hex number conversions. Otherwise, Lua provides its own implementation. - no math function variants with l_ and f_ prefixes in C89 - optional lua_KContext type is not available with C89 l…

Thank you for looking through that; that's very interesting and helpful.

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#175
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Are you referring to the dungeon level (depth) or the experience level?

Dungeon level depth, mostly. This being NetHack, an answer is often not as straight forward as it could be. Most of the time the level difficulty is proportional to how deep you are into the dungeon but there are levels where your experience level factors in as well.

If so, it's changed. Back when I played, spawning of random monsters (i.e. almost all of them) was based on simply dungeon level + experience level.

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elbereth always seemed like a cheat... Never understood the point of it. I got to the quest without it, but not deeper.

It's not a cheat. It's explained in the game's manual (the Official Guidebook [1], just search for Engrave). It's been nerfed since 3.6.X as well. Now it can no longer be used for fighting, only escape, and attempting to fight while standing on it will make you "feel like a hypocrite" and deduct 5 from your alignment score. [1] https://www.nethack.org/v500/Guidebook.html#toc_4

I know it's not, but I don't understand why it has to exist.

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a cheat. It's explained in the game's manual (the Official Guidebook [1], just search for Engrave). It's been nerfed since 3.6.X as well. Now it can no longer be used for fighting, only escape, and attempting to fight while standing on it will make you "feel like a hypocrite" and deduct 5 from your alignment score. [1] https://www.nethack.org/v500/Guidebook.html#toc_4

I know it's not, but I don't understand why it has to exist.

There are a million other wacky things in the game. Nothing about Elbereth seems out of place or unbalanced (since it’s been nerfed anyway).

They added the ability to apply your money to flip a coin in this version! Why does that need to exist? Because they thought of it!

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#178
post #59

I've been playing on and off for 15 years, sometimes daily for months on end. The deepest I managed to go is level 11, and as soon as I enter the Big Room, I die. In fact, I went past level 8 for the first time this year. I've read all of the NetHack wiki back and forth. I don't have the slightest idea what I'm doing wrong or how to improve. I'm 46 now, and if I continue that pace, I'll be dead before I even reach th…

Been pkaying on and off since I was 12, 38 today.. Good times. Quick tip is to play valkyrie, dip sword for excalibur, rub any lamps and wish for sdsm, and you should be good. Also check out DCSS, amazing game, been playing for soon 40 years.

Been on and off playing since I was 19, 63 today. Always good times. I had it in my autoexec.bat, so when I got home, and turned on my machine, I was ready to play. Always abused polymorphic traps. Sorry to see them go.

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#179
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always heard that one of the enjoyable experiences of Nethack was figuring things out for yourself, so I've never read spoilers. I'd like to know what others think.

I'm going to quote myself from a blog post I wrote back in 2012: > Nethack is incredibly difficult, and near impossible to win without some knowledge. Whilst it could be argued that one could attain this knowledge through trial and error, it would take many many playthroughs to make any headway, even if you played in the invincible “Wizard” mode. Whilst I would recommend the use of spoilers if you wish to make progre…

Die. Die?

Re: NetHack 5.0.0

#180
post #37
post #32

In the early days of NetHack, spoilers were not so widely known (the web didn't exist yet) and save scumming was more difficult* (few people had admin access on systems that could run it) compared to now. I wonder how many players today will resist those temptations now that they're not only trivial to discover and execute, but also widely accepted in gaming culture. I urge new players to resist spoilers and cheats f…

Nethack runs as a setgid process that hides save files from users. Kind of old fashioned now that almost every Unix system is a single user system. There are still public servers for those that want the temptation to be taken away from them. As to spoilers... Everybody reads the spoilers. I doubt anyone has ever ascended spoiler-free.

The ! command. If you run as SUID anything, and the UNIX you had, had a SUID bug, then the shell command SUID as root. Scary when you were running on a "secure" version of UNIX, and it had a SUID bug.

On DOS, the ! Command, gave you access to the levels files, for which you could make a closet level.

I always started a few rounds as every role, and watched the hilarity begin with the stupid ways to kill yourself, which after a few months, were always hillariously fun to read.

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