Cheating

Cheating is the act of doing things in a game that is intended to garner an (often unfair) advantage through means not intended by its developers and/or considered to be against the "spirit" of the game.

What does and doesn't constitute cheating

As what falls under the curtain of "cheating" is such a subjective matter, here are some "obvious" examples of what does and does not constitute cheating.me

• Using explore mode or wizard mode, provided any resulting ascensions are not claimed as genuine.
• Engraving Elbereth, as this is an intended gameplay feature.
• Price identification, given that associating certain scrolls with their prices is effectively basic pattern recognition.
• Credit cloning. This feature is probably a conscious side effect, given how carefully crafted the shopkeeper code is and that rogues start with a sack.

Dubious actions

The legitimacy of these actions, on the other hand, is somewhat more unclear and subject to discussion, and even some controversy. Most people would not refer to these as "cheating", and at worst some of these would be considered "degenerate behavior".

Farming

While farming is considered by some to be against the spirit of the game, there are few if any rules or protections against these actions and nothing in the game explicitly disallows them, so other people may consider them to be a legitimate strategy. Even at its most extreme, farming does not do anything to fully guarantee victory, and excessive farming can potentially prove counterproductive with the tedium outweighing the benefits.

• Pudding farming
• Death farming
• Kraken farming
• Altar scumming
• Extreme forms of polypiling
• Start scumming

Reading spoilers

NetHack is a difficult game by design, and so knowing how to bypass every single problem presented is considered by some to be against the spirit of the game; however, even for the most spoiled players applying that knowledge is still a significant matter of skill, and reading about something is far different from experiencing it directly. Explore mode was implemented to allow newer players to experience the game without having to constantly worry about losing their character; other people also consider spoilers to be a kind of "missing manual", and many players choose to spoil themselves voluntarily for the aforementioned reasons.

While the community does not consider spoilers to be an "ethical" problem, common courtesy and good public forum etiquette form dictates that warning others ahead of time to prevent inadvertent spoiling is ideal.

Out-of-game notes

Many players take minor notes, such as which levels have altars or shops, where their stashes are, and the like; some other players believe too many out-of-game notes constitutes a mild form of cheating, as it renders amnesia ineffective. On top of many methods for extensive note-taking existing within the game already (such as engraving and the ability to call and name objects), the advent of NetHack 3.6.0 grants players the ability to annotate the current level. This, along with the potential length of an average NetHack game and the sheer volume of information needed to navigate effectively, seems to have mostly quelled the debate on this until further notice.

Probably cheating

• Exploiting a bug
• Changing the system clock to obtain a more advantageous moon phase.

Bones stuffing

Bones stuffing consists of playing a game for the express purpose of gathering useful items (up to and including a full ascension kit) and then deliberately committing suicide with the intention of leaving a bones pile for another character to exploit in some pre-designed manner. Sometimes the practice is taken to such extremes that the true identities of randomized items are engraved on the floor to aid subsequent characters.

Bones stuffing is not considered exploitation, and technically speaking is within the rules of the game, but most regard it as violating the spirit of the game. For example, a pacifist character who ascends using an ascension kit obtained via bones stuffing would not generally be considered to have ascended legitimately.

It is important to observe that under normal circumstances, encountering and exploiting bones piles is a legitimate action, even in borderline cases such as bones piles containing full ascension kits. The difference is that bones stuffing involves deliberate suicide of a character, whereas a normal bones pile is a result of an honest (albeit failed) attempt to survive.

Bones stuffing on a multi-user system is less likely to succeed, as it is possible that another player will get the benefit of your bones pile. In addition, some servers NAO and Hardfought make use of bones "pools" to reduce the effectiveness of stuffing, as well as using bones to intentionally create difficult situations for other players. These servers also provide [[Options#bones|an rcfile option that lets you play without loading any bones files.

Metagaming

As many servers create and post dumpfiles upon a game's end, it is possible to engage in metagaming, most often by looking up the inventory of characters that died on that server and match it to a bones file encountered in-game. While this allows the player to easily gain knowledge they should not have and skip item sorting and identification, most of the skill involved is not completely removed from the equation - that player will still have to contend with whatever killed the previous character originally, as well as the odds of hostile monsters in general grabbing items from the pile and using them against the player. In addition, much of the items will be cursed, requiring that player to uncurse some part of the leftover inventory to get the desired use out of them.

Definitely cheating

None of the methods of cheating described below are intended to be possible on a multi-user system. The file permissions will prevent you from fiddling with the game files, and you will not be allowed to play in wizard mode. Abusing the random number generator, however, may be possible if it has not been specifically patched.

Save scumming

Save scumming is the practice of copying a NetHack save file from the NetHack playground, so that if the character dies or suffers a calamity, the game can be restored by copying the file back into the playground. This directly bypasses a major design decision of the game—to disallow saving-and-restoring. However, it can also be used as an aid to learn how to play initially, although explore mode may be a much better option. In addition, backing up saves may be required to safeguard against sudden crashes on some systems.

Quit scumming

Some players believe that the object identification game is the heart of NetHack, which makes it all the more remarkable that an unscrupulous player can completely short-circuit this aspect of the game through a technique derived from save scumming. Simply save your game, make a backup copy of your save file, and restart. Then quit the game, and you can have all of your possessions identified. Restore your backup, and you've completely eliminated one of the deepest elements of NetHack. (This method of cheating can be used even on a multiuser system by saving the game, then reloading the save in explore mode, choosing to keep the original save, then quitting and continuing the original game outside explore mode. The DevTeam consider this to be a bug, and intend to patch it in the next version.)

Resetting individual levels

You can revert an individual dungeon level to a previous state using the following technique:

• While playing, locate the directory containing your save files.
• Look for a file named "[user name]-[player name].[dungeon level]".
• Copy that file into a different directory.
• When you want to revert the level, delete the original file and replace it with the copy. The level will be in the same state it was when you copied it.

In this way, you can duplicate money, items, pets, and monsters.

You must not save and restore between copying out and copying in. If you do, the process ID in the level file will not match the ID of the current process. The game will detect the manipulation (the level file might even belong to a different game) and declare a trickery.

Selectively deleting bones

It is possible to delete bones files. If you do this selectively, deleting only the ones that you think will kill you again, this is cheating. If you always delete all bones files including ones you would be glad to find, this is not cheating as it is the equivalent of playing every game on a fresh install.

NetHack has a limited ability to detect cheating done by fiddling with the game files. If it finds something suspicious, a death by trickery is likely.

Wizard mode bones

Should a wizard mode character die, and remain dead (as the player is given a possibility to resurrect him/her), the player can choose to leave a bones file of him for others to find, including characters not in wizard mode. Thus, the player can, in wizard mode, wish for practically every item in the game, drop the items to the ground, and commit suicide. He/she will then proceed to create a normal character and find the bones file left by the character in wizard mode. However, there are some items that will not be the same. The invocation artifacts and the current class's quest artifact will be replaced with normal items of the same type, and the Amulet of Yendor will be replaced with a cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor.

Abusing the random number generator

A sufficiently determined player can find the seed of the random number generator after starting the game and then use it to their advantage, e.g. to gain an unlimited number of wishes from a fountain. While this has been demonstrated as possible, it is ultimately a a proof-of-concept and generally unlikely to see much actual use.

Hangup saves

Deliberately provoking a hangup save can be used to "awake" on a sleeping gas trap, to escape holes you dig, to avoid dropping scrolls of scare monster or inserting a wand of cancellation into a bag of holding when you realize you accidentally selected your entire inventory, or to obtain a price quote for objects a shopkeeper would not normally sell.