Digging for victory

Digging for victory is a strategy in which the player aims to quickly reach the castle and obtain its wand of wishing by digging down as soon as possible - the resulting game is itself a dig for victory. In addition to a digging instrument, the player needs a tonal musical instrument (not a leather drum or a bell) in order to open the castle drawbridge. Since elven wizards and priests are guaranteed to start with an instrument - and instrments are normally rather rare - an elven wizard is a popular choice of character for this strategy (due not only to the starting instrument but to the large selection of other magical equipment with which they begin).

The dig for victory strategy is mostly preferred by players who find it an exciting way to reach the castle in a high percentage of newly begun games. However, many strong players do employ a controlled dive to the Castle if they do not yet have magic resistance or reflection after completing Minetown and Sokoban. This dive can take a variety of forms, from simply not exploring every dungeon level thoroughly to actually digging down all of the way. A player making the dive after getting some protection, building up a set of armor, and collecting wands is much more likely to succeed. Reasons to do this include the avoidance of traps which are painless with magic resistance (especially polymorph traps, which can destroy armor, and teleportation traps and level teleportation traps) and being able to obtain relatively early immunity to the touch of death (for which some players would preferentially genocide master liches over arch-liches because the former is more likely to appear at the castle).

Execution

A dig for victory usually starts with the player entering the Gnomish Mines and searching for a pick-axe, where such tools are plentiful. If the player did not start with an instrument, they will also usually look for one in the Mines (Minetown can have instruments in the hardware store). The player then returns to the main dungeon, and digs down until the castle.

Digging with the pick-axe requires multiple turns, so occasionally monsters will appear and halt the digging process. These must be scared off with Elbereth or otherwise dealt with. Worse, the player may encounter a minotaur (which ignores Elbereth) in a maze either just before or on the castle level.

Once at the castle, the drawbridge can be opened and closed at will by playing the passtune, crushing anything that stands on it, which will hopefully be everything. Once the castle is clear, the wand of wishing is available for the taking.

Criticism

Much like the protection racket, digging for victory is nice when it works. Unfortunately, low experience level, interference from monsters, lack of equipment, minotaurs, collapsing drawbridges and purple liches all conspire to make the fatality rate very high, leading to the strategy's nickname of "dying for victory". As such, it is really a metastrategy (a true strategy aims to maximise the survival chances of a particular character, not maximise the chance of at least one of many characters surviving), and even considered by some to be a form of scumming behaviour.

History

Digging for victory is a relatively new strategy; the first mention of it by the name "dig for victory" in #nethack was on May 19th, 2006, by SpeedEvil, its creator.

External links

• A humorous graphical criticism by GreyKnight of the strategy