Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 zorkmids.
If the player somehow manages to die on or before the first turn (indicated by "T:1" if the time option is enabled), the following message appears:
- You die... Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 zorkmids.
The message is a reference to the Monopoly board game, in which one penalty is, "Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200." Monopoly players periodically pass the Go space on the board and earn 200 more dollars each time. Players going directly to the Jail space must not pass Go, even if Go is between their current position and Jail.
Causes of death
Many players never receive this message, but outside of intentional attempts, there are a few rare accidents that can cause it.
- The most common way is probably, as a Knight, to attempt to #ride your pony at turn 1, fall off, and take enough damage to die. The #ride command uses a turn if you mount successfully, but does not use a turn if you mount and fall off, making it possible to trigger this with repeated failed attempts.
- As your first move, you might trip a trap that kills you. While most of the sufficiently dangerous traps never appear at dungeon level 1, it is still possible to trigger a dart trap that fires a poisoned dart and hits the 10% instadeath or suffer the fate of many cats and dogs.
- You zap a damaging wand (e.g. fire, cold, magic missile) as your first move, and the ray bounces from a wall and kills you. This last death is comparatively rare, since only wizards can start with such wands.
The following accidents might also trigger this message:
- The game places a dangerous unidentified object, such as a cursed wand, that can kill you if you use it on the first up staircase, and autopickup is enable. After grabbing the item (which does not use a turn with autopickup), if using it kills you (e.g. the cursed wand explodes) you will trigger the message. This includes blasts from cross-aligned artifacts, especially if they are intelligent, though the odds of such an event are infinitely lower.
- Here, ais523 demonstrates a first-turn death to picking up Grayswandir as a Tourist. He has calculated the odds of this to be roughly 1 in 3 million.
Example
In this example, you begin as a Wizard with a wand of polymorph. You decide to polymorph yourself, but unluckily trigger a system shock and die.
The messages are: "You shudder for a moment. You die... Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 zorkmids. Do you want your possessions identified?"
Strategy
To avoid a 1-turn death, if you are a Knight, do not try to #ride your pony until you know that you can survive the possible 14 hp damage from falling off. If you do fall off on turn 1, do not try to #ride again until you have more hit points.
Avoid using a wand or spell to fire a ray at a wall that might bounce the ray back at you, unless you resist the ray's damage. This is good advice during the entire game, not only turn 1.
Intentional 1-turn death
- Wizards can start with a sufficiently powerful wand to zap yourself with, such as a wand of fire. (Casting force bolt or magic missile at yourself will fail, because of your cloak's magic resistance.)
- Wizards and Monks start with random scrolls:
- A scroll of genocide can be read to genocide your own race.
- A scroll of fire may deal sufficient damage to you, including exploding potions.
- A non-blessed scroll of earth will bring down a boulder on your head.
It would take an extremely long time, but you could overflow the turn counter to turn 1 and die. You would probably prefer to attempt 1-turn ascension.
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