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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Annual Nethack Tournament 51

Posted by Cliff from the tis-the-season-for-a-dungeon-crawl dept.
jvarsoke notes: "After the last little goblins leave your porch tonight, sit on down at your old-school terminal and light up your favorite dungeon crawl. The annual /dev/null/ Nethack Tournament starts tonight. Or, if Nethack is too easy (or Marvin too intimidating) for you, slide over to the public Slash'EM server."
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Annual Nethack Tournament More

Annual Nethack Tournament

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  • What's this, the annual Slashdotting of DevNull?

  • Just started (Score:1, Interesting)

    by WTFmonkey ( 652603 )
    I just discovered NetHack two days ago. It's amazing how much more fun I'm having with it than I had with, e.g. Baldur's Gate 2.

    That is all. Carry on.

    • Re:Just started (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wow, talk about an undeserved up-mod. To put off the inevitable "overrated," howzabout I actually say something interesting?

      I think what makes it fun (and I haven't gotten very far yet) is the anachronisms and humor. BG is fun, but it's very locked in its D&D rules and can get a bit tedious. Yeah, there's a fairly decent sense of humor at times, but overall, the game gets repetetive quickly. The monsters get harder, so you ge tmore stuff. Buy a bigger sword, kill a bigger monster, get more stuff, a

  • If it's good enough.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Naffer ( 720686 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:04PM (#7361747) Journal
    Nethack is one of my all-time favorite games, one I've been playing since 1200 baud was smokin' fast. -- Actor Wil Wheaton

    If it's good enough for will wheaton, then it's good enough for me. I'll have to give it a try. Anyone else tried it out?
    • Yeah, its a good game to play during work. The barbarian is the best class to start out as, because you dont get poisoned as easily.

    • Re:If it's good enough.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pentagram ( 40862 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @05:06PM (#7362415) Homepage
      My God(s)! If you haven't tried it out yet, then download it now. Provided you don't mind losing a few months, that is.

      NetHack is the one of the most vicious, amusing, intelligent, fun games of all time. It has its own insane rules that it follows to their illogical conclusion and more cool ideas and quotable lines than you can shake a wand at. It's also extremely challenging and requires considerable dedication to beat even if you take all the easy options.

      Example: there is a cockatrice monster that can turn you to stone if it hits you. But if you kill one, you can hit monsters with its corpse and turn them to stone (assuming you're wearing gloves, naturally). But what happens if you get swallowed whole by a huge worm and then you hit it from the inside with a cockatrice corpse? Try it and find out.

      Just try not to read the spoilers - the most fun part of the game is working out how it works.

      • I don't know about the spoilers bit. Before I read the spoilers, I spent years not getting very far. The game has improved a lot for me since I read the spoilers. I simply had no idea there was so much depth to it.

        First five years of playing, I saw the castle once. Then read spoilers. Next five years, about 18 ascensions. In thousands of attempts, it's still not very easy, Nethack will never be easy :-)

    • Sweet, I've been playing Nethack longer than geek-celeb Wil Wheaton!

      I was playing when 300 baud was the only thing available, circa '83. It was called hack then and this was on a Tandy Model 16 running MS-XENIX. My dad helped me make a super character class so I could find the Amulet of Yendor (my intro to C programming), but no one had coded the Amulet level yet. There were also no spells for magic using classes and I don't think explore mode worked.

      Nethack is the same addictive game it was when I was in
    • Nethack holds a record where I'm concerned: it's the game I've failed to get into the most frequently.

      It promises depth. It promises adventure. It promises to be better than sliced bread. From the descriptions, it's exactly the game I've been looking for all my life. Yet in actual practice, I still find staring at a grid of ASCII characters, trying to learn an interface more cryptic than Emacs, and dying permanently every five minutes to be somehow just not fun.

      Hmm... it's about the time of year when
      • You just need to learn how to play the game. it's not easy, and while it seems like everything is random and you're just going to die over and over again, in actuality 90% of the deaths suffered in NetHack are suicides. Look here spoilers to get you started [cam.ac.uk] Newer versions of the game have a prmitive graphical tileset that can be activated in the options (open the config file). It's still not pretty, but some people find pictures easier to deal with than ascii. Never forget the power of Engraving "Elbere

  • I would.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:07PM (#7361779) Journal
    I was planning on playing, but I ate some meat earlier and I feel deathly sick.

  • Hey boys... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:19PM (#7361892)
    FREE PR0N!!!
    &
    n
    &
    n
    &

    FREE LESBIAN PR0N!!!

    n n
    n
    n

    FREE BEASTIALITY PR0N!!!

    @ @
    u
    @ @
    • Troll? Hmm, better tin it before it's too late. No, don't try to eat it! Sigh. The bite-covered troll rises from the dead!

      Actually, I thought the idea of nethack pr0n was pretty funny.

    • Hey! That is from Cyde's (and other rgrn-posters) fortune txt file! Where did you find it? I can't find it anywhere on the net :(

  • Ughh.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:23PM (#7361948)
    Last year, after the /. nethack post, I tried nethack. That game is the most ridiculously addictive frustration fest this side of thumb cuffs. I don't understand how some (rare) people can ascend so often. I'm always falling through the floor, pissing off of shopkeepers, getting poisoned by snakes, running out of food, pissing off my god, or getting turned into a were-something. (Those were-somethings deaths are particularly annoying, especially when praying doesn't work) I generally play a dwarf Valkarie, because the mines are really much easier when everything isn't trying to kill you.

    Is there any place for watching logs of successful games, to get an idea of how to play certain aspects of the game? For example, I still have trouble with spells and scrolls. They usually do something bad to me, and I never find out what they do (until I die).

    Heh,

    -Sean

    • Re:Ughh.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by bakunin ( 112609 ) on Friday October 31, 2003 @04:26PM (#7361995) Homepage
      The tournament offers players the option of recording their games as VT ASCII animations, and the option of making these files publicly available.

      Once we've launched, you can go to the gamefiles section to see whether any of the mor successful players have this turned on and (if so) you can re-run those games as terminal movies. Some of them can be incredibly edifying.

      -robin
    • This site [cam.ac.uk] has the largets compendium of "spoilers" (thorough guides on a variety of subjects) that I know of.

      DO NOT READ THEM ALL AT ONCE.

      If you find that you keep dying from the same thing, then don't do it. =)
      For example, drinking from fountains is one of the single largest causes of newbie frustration. Just experiment a lot, and if you find yourself really, really confused, consult a guide at that website. They often have useful advice.

      Some things, like scrolls, just take a while to learn the effects

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • >I'm always falling through the floor

      Go down every staircase as soon as you find it (and then come right back up). The 'up' staircase will then be 'lit' on the next level and you can find it easily if you fall through.

      >>pissing off of shopkeepers

      Stop stealing! Don't zap wands at them, and don't use their stuff if you can't pay for it.

      >>getting poisoned by snakes

      You shouldn't be drinking from a fountain unless you have poison resistance.

      >>running out of food
      Don't play

      • >>pissing off of shopkeepers

        Stop stealing! Don't zap wands at them, and don't use their stuff if you can't pay for it.

        You are correct on all of your comments, particularly the slow down part. I have a bad habit of accidently breaking down doors that lead to closed shops, (and certain death) not dying for any of the reasons you list.

        -Sean
    • "I generally play a dwarf Valkarie, because the mines are really much easier when everything isn't trying to kill you." I find it's much easier with those convenient little gnome rations running around :)
  • In case you haven't noticed my sig, I have a public Nethack server as well. If you want to try out Nethack but don't want to go through the hassle of installing it (it's not much of a hassle if you install binaries, but unless you've installed it from source before, it's not that easy), then try using my server. Simply login to (SSH or telnet) fyre.sytes.net with username "yasd" and password "yasd". Create a name (basically an account), and start playing! If you need help with Nethack, check out the Net [nethack.org]
    • That password doesn't appear to be working...=(
      • Umm, "yasd" is a dummy password. I've erased passwords on the yasd account ... so any password should work. If you're still having problems, try logging in using Telnet. It won't even prompt for a password.
        • YASD for an anon account?

          Kind of holding the unregistered players in low regard, are we?

          (For those not familiar with roguelikes, the acronym means, "Lrg Nabgure Fghcvq Qrngu." NetHack's the most infamous for the concept.)

          If NetHack seems too insane, you could try Angband. [thangorodrim.net] It's not any easier, but it's much more rational.

          • For those not familiar with roguelikes, the acronym means, "Lrg Nabgure Fghcvq Qrngu."
            You know, some of us aren't familiar with ROT13 EITHER...=P
            • Those not familiar with rot13 probably don't quite fit into Nethack's target audience...
              • Hi.

                I have no clue what the fuck rot13 is.

                I also run WindowsXP. On both of my computers. I use a QWERTY keyboard. I buy from Gateway and Dell. I also never majored in any of the sciences, and vehemently dislike coding.

                My girlfriend goes one step further from all of this, and does not even know what /. is.

                We both play Nethack.

                A lot.

                So, yeah, I think you may be a little bit off on your grasp of Nethack's target audience.
          • Everyone suffers many YASD's. This is NetHack after all, not a cake walk. And all players, "registered" or otherwise, always have to login using the name "yasd" ... after that point I have my Perl script set up to handle logins.
  • I tried NetHack. I wanted to like it. I realy, REALLY wanted to like it. But I kept dying to stuff I had no chance of escaping. Open a door at level 3, find a Pony. It runs me down and kills me. Get to the bottom of the mines, a Mummak (sp) runs me down and kills me. By some miracle live long enough to get down to say, dungeon level 13 and what do I find but a Minotaur, which runs me down and kills me. And thats not counting the multitude of times I was just surrounded and outnumbered or met some other ridi
    • I think you just underestimate the power of prayer [steelypips.org]. Also a good number of people enjoy figuring out how to reduce the randomness through identification methods. Figure out which jewels are worthless, which spellbooks you can read without losing your mind, and which armors can be worn without negative consequences! A minor spoiler: the scroll of identify is the cheapest in the game. Shopkeepers will charge the average customer 26 gil for one (If I remember properly). I suggest not selling them, once he makes
    • Try another roguelike game that is less randomly wierd. I recommend Angband [thangorodrim.net] or one of its variants. I'm a total addict. Yesterday my favorite character died, one i had been working on for five months. Mostly my own stupidity. I almost cried :(
  • There will be an IRC course on nethack on Sunday, 16th November 2003 18:00 GMT.

    http://www.linuks.mine.nu/irc/
  • Someone would have posted the "First Ascension Post" :)...

    + + + +
    By the way, this is someone's rendition of good old Slashdot saying "Natalie Portman Naked and Petrified"...

    The nymph pretends to be friendly.
    The nymph steals your cloak.
    The nymph steals your robe.
    The cockatrice hits, you begin to turn to stone!
    - more -
    The nymph steals your armor.
    The brown pudding hits!
    - more -
    You turn to stone.
    You die. DYWYPI?

    (See http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3C9DB9F5.903 0 702%40libero.it)
  • Now, all you fanboys -- back away slowly.
  • We have been training for months for this tournament!
    You are going DOWN!!! [mac.com]
    hahahahaha

  • Welcome to /dev/null/nethack 2003! If you have any issues or problems, please email us [mailto]. (And a special welcome back to EIT [mac.com] who, as far as we know, are the first folks to ever have put together a NetHack Clan.

    Now, let the games commence! ;-)

    Cheers,
    -robin

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