Showing posts with label nethack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nethack. Show all posts

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Hacker II – The Barbarian Exhibitionist

Jump to details about Nethack
Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.


Hacker II is a male chaotic barbarian orc.



He’s a born fighter and weak in other departments. He wields a two-handed sword, wears an orcish ring mail and carries some food and a spare axe.



Dungeon Level 1
He enters the dungeon along with his tame dog called Idefix. He thanks Set when he finds 55 gold pieces. There’s a fountain and a glittering spell book.



Dungeon Level 2
Idefix falls down into a pit. He waits for Idefix to get out of the pit. After hacking a few lesser crawlers he finds a green gem. Advances to Level 2 (23 Hp) There’s only three rooms and he can’t find any secret doors so he continues down.

Dungeon Level 3
He tries to #force open a locked chest in a dark room but breaks the axe. He kicks open the chest. Finds 115gp, a circular amulet, a couple of scrolls and two grey stones. Hacker II #rubs the stone against his sword and makes scratch marks on both. It is said that a magic stone should produce the sound: “scritch, scritch”. He then tries to rub the stones against the green gem and it makes green scratch marks on the stones. Hacker II doesn't understand a thing what's happening and return to dungeon crawling.

Later he finds a new axe. He hears the footsteps of a guard on patrol. He slays some Kobold Zombies and advances to Level 3 (30 Hp). He finds some gems, a key, a chain mail and a potion. Now he is burdened. He tries the chain mail (AC: 5). He has to drop some stuff to be able to go through a small corridor section, but finds nothing. He gets the stuff again. He falls into a pit but gets out before anything attacks him.

Dungeon Level 4
He is now getting low on food. He finds two rations. He has a tough fight with an Iguana and advances to Level 4 (36 Hp). He finds and eats a fortune cookie. The message is: “Yet Another Silly Message. (YASM)”

Dungeon Level 5
He kills a Hobbit and a Golden Naga Hatchling. Advances to Level 5 (44 Hp). He enters a room with statues.



In the middle of the room is a smaller room with a friendly character saying: “Hello Hacker II, welcome to Delphi.” A detailed look at the character reveals it to be the Oracle.



He #chats with the Oracle. She charges 50gp for a minor consultation and 750gp for a major. He pays for a minor. True to her word, the Oracle says: “They say that wielded, a long sword named Fire Brand makes you feel cooler.” He continues on and finds a splint mail (AC: 4). Idefix steps on a teleport trap and disappears. He finds a curved wand and Idefix. He notices a Gnomish Wizard with infravision. The Wizard fumbles with his spells but manages to cast a speed spell but Hacker II kills him. He finds one more circular amulet.



Dungeon Level 6
He kills a Pony and eats it whole. A Leprechaun robs him and then disappears. Later two Hillorcs and the Leprechaun ambush him.



He softens the Orcs with darts and slays them with a final slash from the two-handed sword. He hits the Leprechaun with three darts but it robs Hacker II of even more gold. There is a set of stairs leading up.

Dungeon Level 5 Sokoban



There’s some kind of boulder pushing puzzle. He is burdened with all loot. He drops a lot of stuff and finds a ring. He begins pushing boulders into the pits. One boulder is blocked by something behind it. It’s ambushing Mordor Orcs.



He kills one and advances to Level 6 (56 Hp). He kills three more. The last one zaps a wand of magic missiles. Hacker II closes in for the kill as the Orc zaps the wand again. “The magic missile whizzes by you! The magic missile bounces (on the wall)! The magic missile hits you! The magic missile hits the Mordor Orc!” Hacker II smites the Orc and kills it. He picks up the wand and notices that it’s similar to his other wand, both now identified. He finds and wears an orcish helm. It’s +1 (AC: 2). He continues to push around boulders to fill the pits. He kills a Hobbit and a Baby Crocodile. The puzzle now solved he moves up the stairs.

Dungeon Level 4 Sokoban
He finds himself in a new but similar puzzle. He pushes boulders and finds some more loot. He kills a Pony and advances to Level 7 (68 Hp). He now feels quicker (he got the intrinsic speed). A Hobgoblin is picking a fight by blocking a boulder. It dies. Two Human Zombies attack and are killed (again(IVAN)). Happy to finally have solved the puzzle he rushes into a room behind a door and gets ambushed by a lot of monsters.



A Kobold Shaman casts a spell and Hacker II gets a slight headache. There’s a Black Naga Hatchling, a Gnome Zombie, a Leprechaun and a Kobold Lord. Hacker II backs out through the door opening and zaps a magic missile at three of them.



The Kobold Shaman dies. The Kobold Lord throws two daggers, one hitting the Black Naga Hatchling, the other almost hitting Hacker II. Hacker II kills all monsters except the Leprechaun who is closing in to steal Hacker’s gold. He backs out into the corridor and when the Leprechaun follows he zaps it with a magic missile that hits and then bounces and hits one more time. Finally Hacker smites it with the sword killing it. It leaves 85gp.

Dungeon Level 3 Sokoban
A new puzzle. There’s a ring in one of the holes. Hacker II wants it and jumps into the hole.



Air currents pull him down to Dungeon Level 4. There’s a whole bunch of Manes but Hacker II kills them with darts. Hacker II gets hungry often but there’s lots of food rations in the Sokoban. He goes up again and solves the third puzzle. He readies himself for battle before opening a door, but there’s only one Giant Ant in the room. He finds a jewelled wand.

Dungeon Level 2 Sokoban
Hmm, this puzzle is difficult. Hacker II manages to make it unsolvable by pushing the wrong boulders. He undresses everything and manages to squeeze behind the boulders to move them. Three Giant Rats attack the naked and unarmed Hacker II. He manages to reach his sword and kills the Rats. He feels more confident in his skills and chooses to become skilled in two-handed sword fighting.



He drops the sword again and is about to squeeze in behind a boulder when it reaches out and grabs him. It’s a Giant Mimic!



Hacker II reaches for his sword but can’t escape the Mimic’s grip. He begins bashing the monster with his bare hands.



The Mimic is slow but it’s crushing attack do a lot of damage. Hacker II hits the Mimic many times but the Mimic finally crushes Hacker II only one step away from his battle gear.



There are no possessions to identify, as he was naked when he died. He vanquished 82 creatures. He was a greater hero than Hacker the first.



Lessons learned: Never feel safe in the Dungeons of Doom! Maybe remember to pray next time!?!



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Sunday, December 3, 2006

Hacker part 2 - The quest for Excalibur

Jump to details about Nethack
Jump to Hacker part 1

Hacker has heard a rumor (read a spoiler) that a lawful high-level person might be rewarded by dipping a sword into a fountain so she tries it. Her long sword rusts somewhat and a feeling of loss comes over her. She tries a couple of more times and the sword gets wet, rusts some more and water gushes forth from the overflowing fountain. She tries once more but the fountain dries up and she now has a very rusty long sword.

She goes down to the shop and sells the cloak and three helmets for 35gp. She now has to find some food before she becomes hungry again. She finds a room with a large box but a trap door opens up under her when she enters and she falls down to Dl 5. She kills a pony and begins to eat it when three giant rats attack. They perish in a rain of throwing daggers and she resumes her meal, just to get disturbed by a door opening. It’s a hobgoblin and she kills it with throwing daggers and finishes her meal. On the hobgoblin corpse she finds a scimitar, an orcish helm, a chain mail and a lamp. She gets burdened when she tries to carry the chain mail so she drops it. It is not wise travelling while burdened, you get hungry faster and move slower. She eats the corpse of a giant rat and feels sick. She eats the hobgoblin and gets satiated.

A gnome attacks with throwing daggers but Hacker hacks it, getting even more daggers. She hears the chime of a cash register. She hacks another gnome and gets an axe and a slime mold. She feels clumsy and loses a point in dexterity (because of rat?). She picks up 53gp. She then encounters a floating eye and backs away. She finds a scroll labelled: “LEP GEX VEN ZEA”, some stairs down and a new fountain, time to #dip! The sword gets wet again but she finds 22gp in the water. She dips the sword some more times and now it becomes a cursed thoroughly rusty +1 long sword. Cursing, she dips again, the sword now grafted to her hand. She feels a sudden chill. Desperately, she dips again and now she unleashes a water demon and the fountain dries up.

She hits one time against 16 hits from the water demon, it having three attacks each round. But the demon doesn’t seem to make much damage. (42/59 Hp) She tries to retreat but the demon is to fast. She hits it again but now a second demon materializes. (33/59 Hp) She tries to zap them with her ebony wand. A bolt of fire hits the demon and bounces on the wall.



She zaps both demons one time each but they survive and now she is seriously wounded. (22/59 Hp) She tries to flee and gets out into the corridor without suffering any more hits. One of the water demons wields a bow. A yellow light blocks the corridor.

She realizes that the last move she made was a big mistake. She had a great chance to hit both demons with each zap of the wand of fire, but now it's to late, she took one step to many up into the corridor. She takes a chance and moves towards the light. It explodes and Hacker is blinded by a blast of light. She now senses creatures from a distance.

She moves up through the corridor but gets to a dead-end.

What should she do now? It’s not a good idea to zap the wand of fire because it would bounce back at her. She prays to her god. The water demons are held back a few turns while Hacker prays to Tyr. She can feel that Tyr is well pleased but nothing happens and yet one more demon is summoned. Hacker hits a demon trying to fight her way out. Someone is zapping a wand at her and one more water demon materializes.

She is critically wounded (5/59 Hp) and tries to pray once more but Tyr no longer protects her and she dies. Her possessions are identified but there isn’t anything special. Her attributes were interesting, she was poison and acid resistant, maybe with Tyr’s help?

But what help was that against the water demon? She vanquished 55 creatures.



Lesson learned: Never dip your sword one to many times or you will get more than you asked for. And of course, always make maximum use of your wands!



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Saturday, December 2, 2006

Hacker Part 1 – Dungeons of Doom

Jump to details about Nethack
Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.




Hacker is a Valkyrie. From the Nethack guidebook: “Valkyries are hardy warrior women. Their upbringing in the harsh Northlands makes them strong, inures them to extremes of cold, and instills in them stealth and cunning.”



She is Lawful and Tyr is her god.



She is very strong (St:18/03), quite agile (Dx:14), got good health (Co:15), not so bright (In:8), not the wisest (Wi:9) and not very charming (Ch:8). She has no gold pieces, 16 hit points (how much damage one can take), 2 power points (used for magic), AC: 6 (armor class, 10 is unprotected), experience level 1 and she has been around for 5 turns of game time.

Hacker has been dreaming strange dreams about adventuring lately. When asking around she heard about the Amulet of Yendor. One legend even mentioned that the one who finds the amulet would be granted immortality by the gods. It is rumored to be somewhere beyond the Valley of Gehennom, deep within the Mazes of Menace. In the morning, she gathers her gear, eat what may be her last meal outside, and enters the dungeon... (a short summary from the guidebook)



This is her gear. She is more or less naked, although the shield gives her an AC of 6. Her sword is magical with a +1 to hit and damage bonus and the dagger is good for throwing.

She is standing on the stairs leading back up. She brought her pet, a kitten, with her. In the room there’s a fountain, a corridor and a door. She has heard that fountains can be magical and give great benefits, but they also can be deadly dangerous. When her kitten moves she sees 27 gold coins on the ground. She picks them up, happy to have found her first treasure already. She doesn’t touch the fountain and tries the corridor instead. It’s a dead-end and she searches for secret doors but finds nothing. She then tries the door and it’s unlocked.

In the corridor behind it an orcish dagger suddenly hits her. She takes one more step forward and encounters a goblin. She attacks the goblin with her +1 long sword but misses and the goblin hits her and injures her. (12/16 Hp) The next strike hits the goblin, killing it. It drops an orcish helm. She picks it up, but doesn’t wear it. It could be cursed.



She moves into the next room and steps on a teleport trap and gets teleported into another room. A grid bug attacks her. She easily kills the grid bug. From the detailed info about grid bugs: "These electronically based creatures are not native to this universe. They appear to come from a world whose laws of motion are radically different from ours.” There’s another one and it suffers the same fate. In the next room she finds an unlabeled scroll and a statue of a sewer rat. She encounters a newt and kills it. She knows that she has to save her food rations as long as possible so she has to eat some of her kills in the dungeon. She is eating the newt, and it tastes horrible, when a fox turns up. She kills it and finish eating the partly eaten newt corpse. She then tries to eat the fox corpse but it’s rotten. Her kitten is gone, probably on her own adventure, chasing after some rats or something.

She gets to a door and opens it, and there’s her cat, 10gp, a large box and a stairway leading down. The large box is locked so she kicks it until the lock breaks. She hears a muffled shatter from inside the box. Hmm, something broke. Inside she finds a scroll labelled “YUM YUM” and a yellow gem. She could try to read the scroll now and see what happens but that might be dangerous.

Before she takes the stairs down she wants to explore the whole dungeon level. She kills a lichen and eats it. Suddenly she gets cold inside. From the shadowy corner of the room one pair of cold and dead eyes gazes at her. It’s a zombie from a kobold corpse. Without thinking she strikes at the zombie, killing it before it had the time to move. She then notices a goblin far away in another room. Because she doesn’t have any missile weapons but the goblin might, she waits around a corner. The goblin never shows up so she continues another way around. She has now recovered from her wounds(16/16 Hp).



There’s a boulder in one corridor and she pushes it until it’s stopped, but it’s a dead-end. She encounters one more kobold zombie but her sword misses it. It hits her for a lot of damage. She has time to attack once without the zombie attacking her because it moves so slowly but she misses again. She misses a third time but now the zombie hits, and she is critically injured. (4/16 Hp) She retreats with ease from the slow moving zombie.

She enters a dead-end corridor and searches for a while, regaining some health. (8/16 Hp) No secret door, so she takes the next corridor leading to the room with the goblin she saw earlier. There it is, just a few steps inside the room. She rushes straight at the goblin, and then takes a left to give the kitten room to attack. While doing so the goblin manage to hit her. (6/16 Hp) She kills the goblin and advances to experience level 2 with a boost in health. (17/26 Hp) She also finds 53gp.

She continues onward. No sign of the kobold zombie. She encounters two sewer rats and places herself so that the kitten can take on one of them. Hacker misses but the kitten kills her rat first and then Hacker’s rat. Kittens are really good against rats. There’s 47gp on the floor.

In the last room she finds a neutral altar to Oden and a statue of a newt. There's no use sacrificing at another gods altar, but it can have other uses. She steps at a teleport trap and ends up in another room. She returns to get the kitten and heads down to dungeon level 2 (Dl2). (the picture is taken using the original smaller tiles, click it to get the bigger picture)



In the second room of Dl2 she fights a newt and finds a white spell book and 29gp. She reads the spell book and feels a wrenching sensation and the spell book crumbles to dust. She gets teleported and freezes for a short while.

In the next room she finds a purple spell book, a pear and a statue of a kobold zombie. She reads the spell book and memorizes the runes. She learns the 3:d level spell “cause fear”, but she has no chance to use it. Valkyries are bad spell casters.



Next she finds stairs leading down and a fountain. There are a lot of dead-end corridors so she returns to the room with the stairs. She kills a green mold but its acid splashes her. She advances to level 3. (28/32 Hp)

By the stairs she reads her scrolls hoping for magic mapping. The unlabeled scroll is blank. When she reads "YUM YUM" her +3 shield crumbles to dust. Hmm, maybe it’s a bad idea to read unidentified scrolls. Oh well… she is now AC 10 and hungry. She eats the pear and it’s delicious but she is still hungry so she eats a food ration and the food really hit the spot.

On Dl3 she finds a black potion and 47gp. There’s a locked door and she kicks it in anger (for the loss of her shield) three times before it breaks, revealing an empty room. She finds 61gp in next room and an altar to the chaotic god Loki. There’s a yellow mold that she looks at with detailed view.



She drops an unidentified orcish dagger on the altar to check if it’s cursed. Altars make blessed or cursed objects glow. Nothing happens but a giant bat attacks. She kills it and at the same time the kitten attacks the yellow mold. The kitten staggers and misses the yellow mold and Hacker sidesteps to get a line of sight to throw a dagger at the mold. She hits it, killing it. Although the kitten seem to avoid the yellow mold corpse, Hacker is low on food and tries to eat it. “Ecch – that must have been poisonous! It tastes terrible. Oh wow! Great stuff!” Suddenly the kitten looks like a pirate and the dagger looks like a scroll.



The next second they morph to a cyclops and a mace.



She continues down a corridor with her kitten behind her, morphing into insects, spiders, puddings etc. At one time she tries to strike a jabberwocky, but it doesn’t hit her back, so it was probably her kitten. She missed it though.

She looks into a room and sees two objects and two creatures, but they morph all the time so she isn’t sure what they are.



She throws daggers at the closest creature. The first dagger misses the frost giant, the second dagger kills what is now a grey-elf. She advances and when she reaches the spot where the creature died she can feel with her feets that it is a lichen corpse. She picks up her daggers and throws them at the second creature. The kitten, she believes it is, comes up from behind looking like a microscopic space fleet. She misses with both daggers but hits the second creature with her sword and she is caught in the gas spore’s explosion. She advances to level 4 (20/39 Hp) still hallucinating.

A third creature enters the room and she kills it with her daggers. She’s not sure what it was but it surely looked like the horned devil when it died. She finds a potion. She ventures out into a corridor and kills a baby silver dragon? Suddenly her kitten disappears and another creature shows up in front of her. To test if it’s her kitten she #chats with it and “the killer bunny purrs.”, revealing that it probably is her cat. She hears some noises. (there’s no sound in the game, all sounds in the dungeon are described by text messages)

She opens a door and she’s not sure if the creature behind the door is the kitten so she chats with it and "the lichen squeaks" so she kills it. She finds the stairs down. She is tired of hallucinating and tries her two potions hoping for an antidote. She tries the black one first. She feels strong, smart, wise, agile, though and charismatic. Hmm, she actually got one point extra in all attributes except strength that went from 18/03 to 18. By checking her “discoveries”, a page listing everything she has encountered so far, she finds out that it was a potion of gain abilities. It must have been blessed. Next she tries the dark green potion. She feels better, totally healed from all wounds, but is still hallucinating. A few steps later she stops hallucinating and "everything looks SO boring now."

In the next room she first doesn’t believe her eyes, there’s an eye floating in the air.



She bypasses it and throws her daggers at it, hitting with one of them. She waits for the floating eye to move so that she can get to her daggers. It moves very slowly and the kitten attacks it but gets frozen by its gaze. Hacker picks up her daggers and throws them again, hitting with one. The problem is that she by mistake threw her long sword and she is now unarmed. An acib blob moves into the room complicating matters even more. Luckily the acid blob is also a slow mover. After a long wait the eye moves again and Hacker tries to get to her weapons.

She picks up her weapons one square from the acid blob when a giant bat enters the room. She takes one step away from the acid blob and wields her long sword just in time to meet the giant bat.

She hits it two times while it hits her six times and she is wounded. (26/40 Hp) She kills the giant bat with her next strike. She then throws a dagger at the acid blob killing it. She recovers her dagger and throws both daggers at the floating eye, killing it. She advances to level 5 and feel tough. (getting Co: 17) (36/49 Hp) She eats the floating eye and "feels a strange mental acuity". She eats the giant bat corpse and gets stunned. She now moves in random directions and the kitten finally awakes. She staggers around and hits the kitten by mistake, and it yowls. She relaxes and rests without moving until the stun goes away and she feels a bit steadier.

She chats with the kitten and "it mews". Maybe it’s angry or hungry. She meets a peaceful hobbit. She chats with it and it asks her about the One Ring. The kitten bites the hobbit obviously angry or hungry. The hobbit wields an elven dagger, but the kitten bites it again and it dies. Hacker picks up the elven dagger while the kitten eats the hobbit corpse. Hacker drops the dagger at the altar and it's not cursed. An elf zombie turns up and Hacker throws daggers at it while the kitten bites it. It dies.

Hacker is on her way own to Dl4 but can’t find her kitten. She meets a pony and kills it with one blow. It had four attacks each turn. She kills a gecko and eats it. It was rotten and everything suddenly goes dark. She is blind but can now sense (see) that her kitten is in another room. It must be that strange mental acuity she felt after eating that floating eye. She senses how the kitten comes to her but when she can see again the sense of the kitten disappears.

Dl4. She finds an ebony wand, 101gp and some stairs down. She finds 52gp and a boulder that blocks the corridor. She pushes it back and finds that the corridor splits in two behind it. She hears someone cursing shoplifters and finds a shop. It’s “Kadirli’s used armor dealership”. Just what Hacker needed! She’s got a total of 453gp. The bronze plate mail for 533gp is to expensive. She decides to buy a banded mail (120gp), an apron (106gp), a pair of leather gloves (10gp), an orcish cloak (53gp) and a pair of hiking boots (66gp). She tries to sell her spell book but Kadirli seems uninterested.

She returns to the altar on Dl3 to see if any item is cursed. At the altar two hill orcs attack her but she slays them and gets two more orc helms and one orcish dagger. She returns to the altar and drops the orcish dagger on it. There’s a black flash, so it’s cursed. She drops one of the orcish helmets and there’s an amber flash, meaning it’s blessed. She puts it on. It’s a blessed +1 helmet and she gets AC: 8. The banded mail is uncursed +0 and gives AC: 2 and the apron is +1 and blessed giving a total AC of 0. Just when she is about to wear the apron she is hit by an orcish dagger but can’t see any orc. She takes a step forward and notices a hill orc and throws a killing dagger at it. She advances to level 6 (53/59 Hp). She gets back to her items. Everything else is normal so she wears it for a total AC of –2. She can’t wear the orcish cloak because she already is wearing the blessed apron. She moves over to where the last hill orc died and finds two tins, and one more orcish helm. Three giant rats come from the other side of the room. The kitten and thrown daggers kill the rats. Hacker is hungry and eats her last food ration.

Jump to Hacker Part 2


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Friday, December 1, 2006

Nethack


Genre:
Roguelike
World map: No
Permadeath: Yes
Races: 5
Classes: 13
Religion: Yes, 36 gods.
Spellcasting: Advanced
Persistent dungeons: Yes
Version: 3.4.3
Latest version: Nethack.org
Isomeric version: Falcon's Eye
Graphics: ASCII/tiles/Isomeric
Mouse: No/Yes/Yes
Sound: No/No/Yes
Resource: Wikihack

Nethack is an evolution of an earlier game called Hack (1985), which was itself an evolution of Rogue (1980). It's a Hacklike with persistent levels. The theme of the dungeons follows a predetermined order but the individual levels are randomised, apart from a few static levels.

Jump to the story about:
Hacker the human Valkyrie
Hacker II the orc Barbarian exhibitionist


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