Binder
The Binder is a role planned to be added in dNetHack. It is also a playable role in Slash'EM Extended. This article is about the Slash'EM Extended implementation of the Binder role.
Binders have a hard early game due to their negative starting alignment and luck, which makes early prayers very likely to fail, and they also start with sub-par equipment. Once they gain some levelups they may receive spellbooks though (33% chance to get a random spellbook on leveling up) and start casting a lot. The Binder also gets intrinsics and techniques for advancing skills.
Skills
Binders can train all of the following skills up to Expert skill level. If they reach "skilled" level, they get the intrinsic associated with that skill, and advancing a skill to "expert" grants the associated technique.
Of note is that the Binder starts at "unskilled" in every skill, including skills for their starting weapons.
Starting Equipment
- +0 voulge
- +0 knife
- +0 leather cloak
- some rocks
- some flint stones
- a cram ration
- some apples
- some tripe rations
Gods
- Lawful: Yaldabaoth
- Neutral: the void
- Chaotic: Sophia
Binder rank titles
The status line shows you to be one of the following ranks when you reach the specified experience level:
- XL 1-2: Exile
- XL 3-5: Heratic
- XL 6-9: Cultist
- XL 10-13: Real Binder
- XL 14-17: Akousmatikoi
- XL 18-21: Mathematikoi
- XL 22-25: Doctor
- XL 26-29: Unbinder
- XL 30: Gnostikos
Strategy
Binders should make sure they train the right skills to get the intrinsics and techniques they want; in particular, reaching expert level in a skill as early as possible makes sure the associated technique can reach a high techlevel, but this may be hard to do. Controlled level drain may be useful here; however, there are only so many skill slots, so you might not be able to enhance all the skills you want. The Binder also needs to rely on getting lucky with random spellbooks; getting an offensive spell (force bolt, magic missile et. al.) will make the early game a lot easier. Beware, sometimes the level-up spellbooks are generated cursed!
The Binder will also have to make sure not to get in trouble early on, due to their starting max alignment of -6 and negative luck, making it impossible to safely pray. Kill lots of hostile monsters to make sure your alignment record eventually reaches positive values.
The Binder quest spawns lots of liches and skeletons, and the nemesis Acererak is a more powerful lich that can cast lots of spells making your life hard. If you can defeat him, you will get the Pen of the Void, a quest artifact athame that does extra damage.
Origin
The Binder is based on a Dungeons & Dragons character with the same name, and the original NetHack implementation was done by User:Chris.
