Gehennom

Gehennom is the underworld of NetHack. The introduction to the game mentions that Moloch hid the Amulet of Yendor in Gehennom.

Gehennom is a dungeon branch beneath the Valley of the Dead. (Actually, the Valley counts as the top level of Gehennom.) Gehennom is full of mazes; it contains the lairs of several demon lords and princes, Orcus Town, and also the stairs to Vlad's Tower and the Wizard's Tower, as well as a couple of Fake Wizard's Towers. Other than these, there are no special rooms in Gehennom. At the bottom level of Gehennom is the vibrating square. When the player performs the invocation ritual on the vibrating square it creates a downwards staircase to Moloch's Sanctum, plus a ring of water and fire traps around you.

A prayer in Gehennom is considered a prayer to Moloch, which can anger your god, amongst other things.

Gehennom has been in the game since NetHack 3.1.0. Prior to this, the underworld was Hell. Although it is no longer an instadeath to enter the underworld without fire resistance, you should still strongly consider it, since Gehennom is one of the areas where fire traps can be randomly generated.

Strategy

Many of the monsters found in Gehennom are resistant to fire, but not to ice, so Frost Brand is a popular weapon for this area. As there are a great many demons here, silver sabers and Demonbane can be quite effective, and Grayswandir is almost certainly the most effective weapon here.

Monsters found in Gehennom are:

Asmodeus Juiblex Baalzebub Vlad the Impaler Orcus wraiths ghosts zombies liches mummies quasits

xorns jaguars minotaurs scorpions elves ravens titanotheres vortexes rust monsters centaurs xans

winged gargoyles spheres long worms umber hulks dragons major demons zrutys horses elementals vampires purple worms

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, Gehennom consists of only 17 levels, but this includes lairs for all of the unique demons.

• 1st level: Valley of the Dead
• 2nd through 6th levels: Four of these five levels are demon lairs, one each for Juiblex, Yeenoghu, Orcus, Demogorgon.
• 7th through 9th levels: Wizard's Tower
• 10th through 15th levels: Four of these six levels are devil lairs, one each for Baalzebub, Geryon, Dispater, Asmodeus. The other two levels contain Fake Wizard's Towers.
• 16th level: vibrating square
• 17th level: Moloch's Sanctum

The most infamous fact about Gehennom in SLASH'EM may be how Demogorgon's lair is always above and before Asmodeus's lair! Demogorgon is the most dangerous opponent while Asmodeus is typically the easiest opponent.

The up staircases to Vlad's Tower and to Frankenstein's Lab are somewhere amid the 3rd to 12th levels. The portal to the inside of the Wizard's Tower is in one of the two fake towers.

Reference: dat/dungeon.def

Links

• NetHack Gazetteer: Gehennom describes the layout of Gehennom in vanilla NetHack.