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NetHack 3.6.7

nethack.org

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Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#91

If Dwarf Fortress can get a fantastic GUI, does that mean we can get one for NetHack too? I can dream.

I had a great GUI for nethack at one time. I forget what is was called, though. There are a number of options, you should try them out.

Personally, the text interface remains my favorite. The world I build in my head is far richer than any GUI can do.

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#92
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DCSS feels like it's been taken over by people who've played the game too many times, steadily working to refocus the gameplay to cater to minimizing the tedium of having completed the game many times.

Hmm. The way I've heard it expressed is they want every decision the player makes to matter. In other words, the ideal to work towards is that there is never a "no-brainer" choice to make, you always have to think about every action. To me, that always seemed like a great design goal, but I never thought about it from the new player perspective. Maybe the act of learning that a choice is a no-brainer is itself a valu…

it's not even just from the new player perspective. I've played DCSS reasonably casually on and off for like a decade and the more recent years' changes have been a bit too much for me, in terms of stripping everything down. I completely agree with the comment before yours. I liked the food "minigame", it was fun to play KoBe and chop corpses into chunks to eat, before they go bad.

it's not that it's a bad game now, or anything like that, but it does feel like some edges may have been sanded down that should have been left intact.

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#93

I must be some kind of medieval purist because today in the middle of 2023 I still play the original rogue, in its 3.6.3 and 5.4 versions, and I can barely tolerate some of the changes. That's what I don't like about Hack and its "new" incarnation, Nethack. Changes were introduced that change the original spirit. I also played Moria and Adom for years with mixed results. I was never able to play Nethack. I'm going to…

DCSS would more be in your alley, since the devs actively try to simplify mechanics (perhaps too much IMHO).

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#94
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is somewhat sacrilegious to say but I think for all the reasons you say DCSS is a much better game than nethack. Some years ago I went through a phase of being quite into nethack and ascended a couple of times, but really lost interest because there are too many situations where there is only one correct way to play. There’s also just a lot of arbitrary nonsense that they expected you (not sure whether th…

Nethack tries to present the experience of exploring a rich and detailed world, full of interesting things to discover. The drawback is that you only get the joy of discovery once. Finding something like the technique to steal from shops is fun the first time, and then tedious every other time. To best enjoy Nethack, I recommend avoiding spoilers as much as possible. DCSS sacrifices Nethack's sense of wonder for bett…

> Nethack allows selling items to shops. This means there's a reason to pick up trash items, which is annoying.

This seems subjective? I mean, sure, it's grindy to pick up cheap helm after cheap helm, but there are other ways of getting money for shops, or getting items from shops without money, or getting by without shops entirely if need be. You can adapt your gameplay to your preferences and/or what the game is giving you.

Similarly with traps: playing without much specific care for them (beyond maybe getting a helm and poison resistance as quickly as possible) basically makes them random bad effects. You can choose to play more carefully or experience them as "sourceless malevolence."

People talk a lot about nethack lacking tradeoffs compared to DCSS and while it's apt enough for the late game where lots of ascension kit gear and other prep have a strong particular shape, I think that's wrong for the early and mid games which offer a wide variety of options and play for reaching intermediate goals.

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#95
post #7

Oh jeez, this fixes CVE-2023-24809 - i.e. nethack on shared systems may be risk due to buffer overflow in pre-3.6.7 versions. I was looking at the list of diffs with some confusion about why it's such a small point release ( https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/blob/NetHack-3.6/doc/fixe... ) before I re-read the release notes and saw the security issue.

I wish it was "Becoming a demigod allows arbitrary code execution..."

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#96
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web UI is excellent, but not flawless... for example, Ctrl-Q is the key to quit the game (so you can start over with a new character). But... that's already taken by the browser.

You can type * and then another character as a replacement for control.

Thanks!

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#97
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as sibling said, they are quite different games actually. Rogue to me feels a lot more minimalist, while nethack is 'everything AND a kitchen sink!'.

Isn't it SLASH'EM that's "everything and the sink?"

IIRC, SLASH'EM is a descendant of SLASH, "Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack"

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#98

I must be some kind of medieval purist because today in the middle of 2023 I still play the original rogue, in its 3.6.3 and 5.4 versions, and I can barely tolerate some of the changes. That's what I don't like about Hack and its "new" incarnation, Nethack. Changes were introduced that change the original spirit. I also played Moria and Adom for years with mixed results. I was never able to play Nethack. I'm going to…

Did you try Brogue? I love it.

My favorite thing about Brogue is that I don't have to build a character before starting. You just jump in and grow your character naturally through equipment choices.

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#99
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 256 dungeon levels. (Maybe including the town; I'm not sure.) Dungeon level 100 doesn't have stairs down, but you can get to level 101 by falling through a trap door on level 100.

Hah, nice piece of trivia, I didn't know. How are the item levels down at level 200, because droprates and stuff are based on dungeonlevel right?

Artifacts, ego types, and most normal objects have to pass a depth check before being generated. But nothing in the game has a depth below 100, so there would be no difference between 100 and 200 from that perspective.

It might be easier to find weapons with higher +to_hit and +to_dam values, or armor with higher +ac, but that would be unlikely to matter much, because you'd be using artifacts anyway.

I don't know if rings of speed take dungeon depth into account. Most other types of bonuses in the game are capped. (e.g. a Ring of Constitution +6 is as good as Rings of Constitution get.)

Re: NetHack 3.6.7

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DCSS is great, the web UI works flawlessly. https://underhound.eu:8080/#lobby It has a very different philosophy from NetHack tho, in that you generally have clear trade-offs between your choices (e.g. there isn't a "best" armor or weapon, you have limited skill upgrades and need to choose how to spend them etc..), compared to the "keep buffing up until you're god" you get in NetHack. Both are a lot of fun and frustr…

I know this is somewhat sacrilegious to say but I think for all the reasons you say DCSS is a much better game than nethack. Some years ago I went through a phase of being quite into nethack and ascended a couple of times, but really lost interest because there are too many situations where there is only one correct way to play. There’s also just a lot of arbitrary nonsense that they expected you (not sure whether th…

> I think for all the reasons you say DCSS is a much better game than nethack

I would say.. maybe? IMO it's just fun in a different way.

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