Castle

The Castle is a special level just above the Valley of the Dead. It is the lowest level of the Dungeons of Doom, and is located between DL 25-29. The level is ineligible to leave bones files and is no-teleport. It is considered a graveyard level (undead are unlikely to leave corpses).

The stairs up are always in a small maze on the left side of the level. The middle part of the level contains the castle, surrounded by a moat. In one of the four corner rooms, there is a chest containing a wand of wishing. The floor and walls are undiggable, and the only way down is through the trap doors in the castle (there is no downstair). If you fill the trap doors, you need to level teleport down.

Climbing the upstair from the Valley of the Dead will place you in a random location in the right-hand maze on the Castle level.

The map of the castle (with the random mazes removed) looks like:

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|}|.....+...............................................+.....|}| 
|}-------------------------------+-----------------------------}| 
|}}}}}}|........|..........+...........|.......S.S.......|}}}}}}| 
|.....}|........|.barracks.|...........|.store.|.|.store.|}...... 
|.....}|........------------...........---------S---------}.....| 
|.....}#...{....+..........+.........\.+.^...^...^...^..^+......| 
|.....}|........------------...........---------S---------}.....| 
......}|........|.barracks.|...........|.store.|.|.store.|}.....| 
|}}}}}}|........|..........+...........|.......S.S.......|}}}}}}| 
|}-------------------------------+-----------------------------}| 
|}|.....+...............................................+.....|}| 
|}|.....|-----------------------------------------------|.....|}| 
|}-------}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}-------}| 
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The four rooms marked "store" are filled with food, weapons, armor and gems, and may include useful magical items.

The Castle moat contains four sharks and four giant eels. The two marked barracks contain their usual complement of soldiers and officers; in addition, each corner tower contains two soldiers, and the atrium eight soldiers and a lieutenant. The throneroom contains 27 monsters, roughly equally chosen from the characters EHLMNORTXZ; a chest is behind the throne. The alcoves between the marked storerooms contain two random dragons each.

Getting into the Castle

There are many ways to get into the castle. These include:

• Open the drawbridge by playing the passtune, zapping it with a wand of opening, or applying the blessed Bell of Opening. Be sure to stand back a couple of squares for the wand or a knights-move away otherwise, to avoid having the bridge hit you in the face and kill you. If you have a tonal instrument, you can repeatedly play the passtune to crush monsters under the drawbridge. Do not cross until you're sure no monsters with wands of striking might zap them at you.
• Zap the drawbridge with a wand of striking or a spell of force bolt. This will leave an empty square of moat, which can be crossed by reading a scroll of earth and pushing a boulder in, levitating across, jumping, or zapping a wand of cold to freeze the water (be sure no fire-breathing monsters or wands of fire are aimed at you before crossing). If you are truly desperate, you can wait until the square where the drawbridge used to be is empty, then repeatedly dive into the water. Eventually, you will climb out on the opposite side. (Naturally, drop anything you don't want wet first.) Also, make sure you are not standing directly in front of the drawbridge (over the moat)--if you are, you will be hit by flying metal and killed. Any further back is safe.
• Levitate or water walk around to the back of the castle, or freeze the water around the castle with a wand of cold or the cone of cold spell. (Look out for sea monsters.) Or you can Level teleport into the Valley of the Dead (you can specify level 99, or one level below the castle), and climb the stairs up to the castle. In either case, you will need to get through the back trapdoors in the back to get into the castle; you can levitate or jump across, or you can use the boulders from a scroll of earth to fill them in (note, however, that if you do this you will not be able to enter Gehennom except by controlled level teleport).
• Polymorph yourself into a phasing monster (xorn or earth elemental), and walk through the wall of the castle. This has the advantage of taking you directly to the wand, if you know where it is, and allowing you to skip the monsters. (Both xorns and earth elementals can also breathe underwater, so you can walk through the moat safely, although anything not inside a greased or oilskin bag will still get wet.)

It may be useful to quaff a blessed potion of object detection (or cast the Skilled spell of detect treasure) before entering the castle, as this will both reveal the location of the wand (allowing you to travel to it directly), and the contents of the store rooms (which frequently contain magical armor or artifact weapons and therefore might influence how you spend your wishes).

Alternative Strategies

You can whistle pets into the castle without entering yourself, e.g. floating over the moat between the corner towers and the edge of the map. Vampire lords work well due to regeneration provided you give them an elven cloak to cancel the lichs' cold attack. It is still a good idea to monitor your pet's health. In some cases, pet dragons have apported the chest.

Tools

Lazy players may find the automated Mastermind solver at http://nethack.gridbug.de/mm.html useful.

Drawbridge

The # at the front of the castle is the drawbridge. If you don't know the passtune, the way to open it is to play a game of "mastermind" with it. The player must use an instrument and be standing a knight's move from the drawbridge. Applying the instrument, the player must guess the 5 note combination to open the drawbridge. The notes you can play are A, B, C, D E, F, and G. Once you get the right combination, the drawbridge opens and you can cross the moat. You may close the drawbridge by playing the passtune again, to crush any monster that happens to be on it. Zapping the open drawbridge with a wand of striking or a spell of force bolt will smash it to pieces, also tearing apart any monster (or player) currently standing on or next to it.

The drawbridge may also be opened with a wand of opening, a spell of knock, or the blessed, charged Bell of Opening.

The drawbridge has been a source of many deaths. Here are a few things you can do to avoid YASD:

• Do not zap the drawbridge with a wand of striking while standing directly in front of it.
• Do not open it while standing on either of the two spaces directly in front of it.
• Do not linger near it when other monsters have wands of striking.

This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:

Redistribution, copying, and editing of these spoilers, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. The original contributors to any spoiler must continue to be credited.
2. Any modifications to the spoiler must be acknowledged and credited.

History

The original Castle appears in NetHack 3.0.0. The wand of wishing appears in one of the corner turrets, as in the current version; but it lies exposed on the floor instead of being protected by a chest and Elbereth. Furthermore, the Castle has empty rooms where the barracks are now. The next level is the beginning of Hell, and so the trap doors can lead to instadeath.

NetHack 3.1.0 adds the barracks and engraves Elbereth under the wand of wishing. Gehennom replaces Hell and so an adventurer without fire resistance no longer risks instadeath, though rashly dropping through the trap doors is still not a good idea.

NetHack 3.2.0 places the wand of wishing in a chest for the first time.

SLASH'EM

The water in SLASH'EM castle moat is different from any other water. Although SLASH'EM does not fully implement the Lethe patch, it takes the "waters of Lethe" concept from that patch. This water is far more dangerous than normal water: falling into it causes every magical item in your inventory to be dipped in it, and its dipping effects are far nastier than normal water. In addition, anyone falling into it will suffer amnesia, in the same manner as the mind flayer attack. The effects of items being dipped into the waters of Lethe are somewhat similar to cancellation, but in some ways worse. They are:

• All items have their BUC status set to uncursed.
• All items are subject to rust, if applicable. The waters do not affect the erosion-proofing of items, and so will not rust them.
• Scrolls and spellbooks are blanked.
• Potions are turned into uncursed water in one dip.
• Potions of water are turned into uncursed potions of amnesia (but can be turned back to water if dipped again).
• Enchantable items (rings, weapons, armor) lose one positive enchantment.
• Wands lose one charge.
• Magical tools and gems are converted into mundane counterparts, if possible: luckstones become flint, magic lamps become oil lamps, etc. Magic markers will not be changed, but will lose 8 charges. Crystal balls are unaffected.

Walking on the water via water walking boots (but not swimming via gauntlets of swimming or polyself) has no ill effects on the boots or you, and obviously flying or levitation over the water is safe. One of these three is very advisable in SLASH'EM's castle: destroying the drawbridge/door, jumping in the water and hoping you land inside the castle is no longer a viable strategy (although opening the drawbridge still is). Note that while the water is dangerous, controlled dipping of items into it via flying or water walking provides an unlimited way to remove cursed gear, so long as you don't mind the item losing a point of enchantment and possibly rusting. Note that non-chargeable rings and amulets will not be adversely affected.