/dev/null NetHack Tournament 2005 Starts Tomorrow 43
Elitist Snob writes "Registrations for the 7th Annual /dev/null nethack tournament are now open. Time to start cursing at how unfair the Random Number Generator has been to you today. (Or you can just start another holy war about which interface is the best.)" All you folks who shake your canes and say that these new fangled threedee graphics aren't needed, this is your chance to shine. Update: 10/31 16:13 GMT by Z : Thanks to HanClinto for pointing out that if you're new to the tourney you need to wait until Midnight tonight to sign up. Previous year's players can sign up now.
Re:whaet is nethack? (Score:4, Interesting)
And it doesn't have threedee graphics. In the 'purest' incarnation, it has no graphics whatsoever. Instead it uses an ASCII.
Ah, heck with it. Check the wikipedia [wikipedia.org] entry.
Re:Most Ascensions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Woah now, did I just say that? Granted, there is a lot, and I mean a LOT, to learn. It has taken me years to get to the point where I can say that.
But once you get to that point, you start seeing how the game really gives you many possible escapes. Just remembering that you can pray to get out of trouble will prevent a huge number of deaths. Finding strategies for early wishes, keeping a good stock of food, learning the Sokoban solutions, finding out about Elbereth, finding good equipment-gaining strategies, learning the ways to identify and bless stuff, knowing when to fight and when (and how) to run, and most importantly, avoiding trivial errors like stepping into water like you did. Nethack characters tend to get much more survivable as they proceed; if that character of yours hadn't died at the Castle, you would probably have stood a reasonable at winning, assuming you had a good ascension kit put together and knew how to handle the special situations remaining in the game.
There are a lot of things to learn in Nethack, but there are not an infinite number of them. No one ascends their first Nethack character, or even their 40th. But with spoilers, newsgroup reading (rec.games.roguelike.nethack) and practice, it is certainly possible to ascend in nearly every game, and once you learn all the tricks, it could almost be termed easy.
That's the point where you start playing conducts,
special challenges designed to make the game harder: Atheist. Vegetarian. Foodless. Pacifist.
You may also begin playing Slash'em, the super-deluxe Nethack variant with three times MORE stuff in it. And the process begins again....