NetHackWiki:Ask an expert/Archive4

NetHack can be a monstrously complicated game, so it's not unnatural to seek help from time to time. Conventional sources of wisdom are:

• The Oracle - the intended source of information for unspoiled players.
• rec.games.roguelike.nethack
• #nethack on irc.freenode.net

Additionally, a number of knowledgeable players are active on this wiki, so feel free to ask a question below and somebody is sure to answer it eventually. If you want to discuss a topic that is not about NetHack, please discuss it at the community portal.

Archives of this page: 1, 2, 3

Start a new section on the bottom of this page for each question.

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Most hopeless death

So I was on IRC tonight, and we were having some fun chatting. One guy says he's in the mines and has one hp. Then:

(name clipped) (Wiz Hum Mal Cha), 1136 points, killed by a worthless piece of white glass

What's the most pathetic death you've seen? Fredil Yupigo 01:54, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I was killed trying to mount my pony in a game of Net Nethack. I slipped and died. --216.228.41.12 02:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I died by kicking a wall ItazuEstamaru 16:26, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I died eating an egg. Turned out to be from a cockatrice, who would have known? -Billob

That's why I never eat eggs unless I'm desperate.--Kahran042 05:27, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

This one was pretty sad for me:

• Val Hum Fem Law), 287938 points, Phranck,choked on a lump of royal jelly

I just got really greedy and didn't notice I was oversatiated :( Addps4cat 18:49, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Once I had Magicbane, but forgot I had Magicbane, and was killed by a giant ant :( Fredil Yupigo 02:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

How to identify gray stones in containers?

I am familiar with the kick test for seeing if a gray stone is a loadstone. However, how can one determine if a gray stone in a container is a loadstone? After all, the container weight makes it impossible to kick the container, regardless of the stone inside. RJaguar3 14:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, this is one of those corner cases where there's no perfect strategy. I think you'll either have to take a chance and grab it, or else leave it alone. -- Killian 14:55, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

If you can get a gelatinous cube to eat the container, and then kill it, the suspected loadstone will end up on the floor. Maybe then you'll be able to kick it. 91.84.221.238 15:08, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

You can #Force the container with a blunt object, such as a quarterstaff, repeatedly to destroy the container; the contents will then be left on the ground. Be sure to take out potions and such before doing so, though. Fredil Yupigo 17:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Ideally, but very tedious: Take out everything but the mystery stone. Then get another container of the same kind, and an identified safe grey stone of any kind. Drop all your inventory and lift each container in turn. If they have the same effect on you ("Burdened" in both cases, say, or nothing in both cases) then gradually pick up other items and repeat. If they both roll over from burdened to stressed on the same round, then it's not a loadstone; if one jumps before the other, it is. More practically: take out everything but the mystery stone and lift the container. If it's a loadstone, it will be a bigger-than-expected burden.

But, since the DevTeam thinks of everything, the game offers a rare kindness for your situation: loadstones generated in containers will not always autocurse the first time you pick them up. This happened to me two hours ago. Stupidly, I picked it up again.--Jack

My policy is not to retrieve a gray stone from a container if I even suspect that it's a loadstone. It's not worth the risk, especially considering the guaranteed luckstone at the bottom of the Mines. Still, all four gray stones in vanilla NetHack have their unique properties: touchstones go "scritch, scritch" when you rub an iron object on them; flint stones draw no price when offered in a general store; loadstones fail the kick test; and luckstones have none of the preceding properties. (If you're playing SLASH'EM, you also have the healthstone to deal with.) In this way, the four gray stones can be identified, and perhaps you can figure out which stone you're looking at.--Ray Chason 14:24, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

You could pick up the container. It should be much heavier with a loadstone. --24.225.69.8 06:29, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Lance training

Does pounding train the lance skill, and does it matter whether you're mounted or unmounted? What about attacking with the lance while on foot? Getting my lance skill up could be difficult if the only option is to attack while mounted and risk breaking it every time. 404notfound 18:57, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

You can't "pound" a lance. Pounding is when you apply a polearm, while jousting happens when you apply a lance. Every succesful joust will exercise the lance skill (see uhitm.c#line657 and uhitm.c#line907). You must be mounted to be able to joust. You can exercise your lance (as long as you do at least 2 damage) while unmounted but you won't be able to joust. Addps4cat 14:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

You most certainly can "pound" a lance. You don't even have to be mounted to do it. It works just like pounding with a polearm. Pounding (mounted or unmounted), jousting, and hitting normally while mounted with a lance all exercise lance skill. (Bashing with the lance doesn't.) Marcmagus 16:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Astral fun!

I was playing wizard mode games on the astral plane, and saw a player monster named "Andy the invisible Necromancer". I killed him, and in his corpse were two wands of death - 0:3 and 0:7! What were the odds of that!? Fredil Yupigo 01:25, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

By my calculations, the chance of an Astral PM being generated with 2+ wands of death is about 0.1%. There are apparently 3–6 of them on Astral, so the exact chance would depend on how many you kill and loot. -- Killian 02:09, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Did you notice his name? He's a necromancer; it's probably a DevTeam joke.

Patching Nethack for Windows

I've followed the patching page you have here, but I keep getting the same error. When I get to this point:

• Start cmd.exe and do the following:

cd c:\nh343
path=c:\mingw\bin
patch -p1 < nh343-menucolor.diff

It gives me this message, "'patch' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program of batch file." I don't know what's up, help!

Checking my own MinGW installation, I see that patch is in c:\msys\1.0\bin. MSYS seems to have been split off from MinGW at some point. You'll need that too, and the path line should be path=c:\mingw\bin;c:\msys\1.0\bin;%PATH%.--Ray Chason 19:05, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I just went to the Patching page and it already has a way to get the patch program:

• Download the patch binary zip package from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/patch.htm
• Unpack that into the same directory as MinGW, so that the patch.exe will be in the same place as mingw32-make.

Did you do that? Does the file c:\mingw\bin\patch.exe exist? If not, you'll need to install it.--Ray Chason 19:09, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I see that I had unpacked the patch zip wrong. But now I get this error:

"E:\nethacksrc>patch -p1 < nh343-menucolor.diff

patching file include/color.h

Assertion failed: hunk, file ../patch-2.5.9-src/patch.c, line 354

This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.

Please contact the application's support team for more information."

Thanks for the help so far though.

The Platinum Yendorian Express Card and wizards

So, I'm playing a wizard and I am getting close to the castle and will get my wand of wishing. I have almost all resistances (save for disintegrate, but I'm working on it.) and I was thinking of making one of my wishes the PYEC. The Wish page says it's ok for a Neutral character to wish for it, yet the PYEC is an intelligent artifact and it says it will blast me if I use it if I'm not the proper role. So, my question is - should I wish for the card or not? Even if it blasts me, will I still be able to recharge my items with it?

If you're neither neutral nor a Tourist, forget about the PYEC -- it will evade your grasp. If you're neutral but not a tourist, you can charge things with the PYEC, but you will only get the uncursed charging effect. The bottom line here is never charge a wand of wishing or magic marker with the PYEC unless you are a Tourist, because these objects can be charged only once and you want that charge to be the blessed kind. Use a blessed scroll of charging instead.

My style is never to wish for artifacts, not just for the conduct but also because I don't accept the risk of failure. I'll wish for a magic marker if I must, and two scrolls of charging if that's also necessary; once I have a magic marker and have identified the scroll of charging, I tend to find I can get all the charges I need.--Ray Chason 18:36, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess I'll forget about it then. Also, the character is in Explore mode so his score and conduct don't really matter that much. I think I'll use the wishes for 2 blessed scrolls of charging, a marker and....for something else I can't think of right now. (gotta check what I need)

Master Mind Flayers

Hello everyone, I have a question re Mind Flayers. I have yet to meet one but my friend as well as various nethack spoilers tell me that they can make you forget items you have previously identified. My question then is this: I have identified a gem, and #name'd it as such. If a Mind Flayer removes my memory of that identified gem will the #name remain? If so would #name'ing all my items be a viable defense?

Thanks,

Tim

Yes, if you individually name each item, then you will remember the names after an amnesia attack (note that amnesia might make you forget the names you assigned for each class of items). See #name for more information. —Shijun 22:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Loss of ability to search

Something rather strange happened in a recent game. Very early on (first 500 turns or so) I failed in trying to convert an altar and ended up converting myself. I knew this made the game unwinnable, but decided to play on for fun. (Because it was just after finding a WoW and giving myself a nice ascension-quality armor kit, no less!) I was a neutral human archaeologist, and sacrificed a werewolf, without thinking, pissing off my god severely. I forgot that this also made the altar chaotic, so I sacrificed again to appease my god and ended up getting converted.

Anyway, the strange part is that I apparently couldn't search for anything--doors, traps--at all after this. No matter how long I searched in a spot where I knew there was a door, I never found it, although digging would yield "You break through a secret door?" Is this some weird punishment I've never seen before, or is it possible that my luck was so low as to make successful searching completely impossible? How low would this have to be, if so? (I played about 10 000 turns total before succumbing to a mind flayer.)

Well I looked into it a bit. If you look at detect.c#line1191 you'll see

if(rnl(7-fund)) continue;

This is basically making a call to the random number generator that is influenced by luck (see Rnd.c#rnl). Basically that function needs to return a zero for you to find your door. You'll see that right after that it makes a call that reveals the door:

cvt_sdoor_to_door(&levl[x][y]);	/* .typ = DOOR */

Anyway, with the worst luck possible (-13), and no artifacts or lenses you have a roughly 0.2231% (~1 in 450) chance of revealing it each turn. You'd have to search for about 1400 turns to have a 95% chance of the door being revealed. Addps4cat 13:04, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

elemental planes

I'm never able to make it past the elemental planes. What always happens is archons and titans keep summoning more of each other until the entire level is filled with them. Wearing a ring of conflict doesn't seem to be enough to thin their numbers, unfortunately. What am I supposed to do? How do you deal with the hordes of archons? I'm wondering - perhaps I'm genociding too many classes of monsters and thus, their summon spells summon more of each other? Maybe I should pursue a more minimalist genociding strategy?

You shouldn't try to kill them all of them. Archons and others can be zapped with a wand of teleportation. If you get surrounded, you can't teleport yourself but you might get away by breaking a wand of teleportation. --24.225.69.8 22:32, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I just ascended for the first time :) (As a Caveman.) This time, I didn't genocide very many species; I found that the archons did not summon more archons this time around. I also made a point of bringing a few wands of teleportation along (plus 3 wands of death, for good measure) just in case I started getting surrounded again. In the Astral plane, I did find that there were a lot of monsters, but not nearly as many as the archons used to summon when I genocided 20+ species. 150.108.235.22 06:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Recovering games on NAO

So my internet connection is spotty at best. I was playing on NAO the other day, and I lagged out/disconnected while I was waiting for the terminal to tell me what happened after I attacked a monster (I think it was a gnome king). I futzed with my wireless for a bit, and then tried to log in again. NAO had me wait a bit while it resolved some stale processes, which happens when you DC, and it said something about a stale monster (don't remember exactly). So just my luck, I got disconnected again while this was going on. I logged in yet again, afraid that something horrible had gone wrong, and indeed, I got:

Shall I pick a character's race, role, gender and alignment for you? [ynq]

Panicking, I checked the page for my account (http://alt.org/nethack/plr.php?player=Handrocles) and indeed, after several days it still shows my game as it was when I crashed. I daren't try to start a new game or anything, beyond the message above. Now, and here's the clincher: RNG knows I die often enough, but on this particular game I found a wand of wishing (0:3) on turn 12, an amulet of life saving, and later in Izchak's shop I got two magic lamps! Needless to say, this character is pimped out (AC -1 at level 1, as a wizard!). The RNG giveth, and the RNG taketh away, but I'd really hate to lose this game to anything other than my own stupidity.

So, here are my questions:

1. Has anyone else had this happen before, and what happened if you started a new game on top of your old one?
2. Is there any way I can contact someone on NAO to try to recover this game?

I wouldn't even be bothering anyone if this weren't my best game ever ever, but given what's gone on so far I think it's worth trying to save.

Thanks! --Andronikus 16:59, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I die alot

Everytime I start a wizard I die around the mines area (i suck). But more often than not its because I run out of energy first killing all those damn gnomes (as I am an elf, also last game my pet died). Normaly my pet would take care of everything but I feel like I relying on mittens too much. Is their something I should be doing? I'm engraving elbereth alot too. Ha! Showed you! 00:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Using your pet and engraving E are both good techniques. The next thing I can suggest is to start picking up and throwing daggers, since starting Wizards don't really have enough power to use spells exclusively. Don't forget to curse-test and wear armour you find, too. Non-metal armour is best, but depending on your spell selection you might find that extra AC is more important in the short-term than spellcasting. Once you can survive long enough to find an altar and start sacrifice-camping for Magicbane, the Wizard game tends to get a whole lot easier. -- Killian 03:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Quantum Mechanics

I've never had a chance to figure this one out:

When you kill a Quantum Mechanic you sometimes get a box left behind. This box either contains a live cat or a dead cat (i.e. Schrodenger's box). I have always wondered what happens when you shoot a wand of probing at Schrodengers box? Is the cat alive, dead, or alive and dead at the same time?

anyone ever try this one?

The cat (alive or dead) is created by observe_quantum_cat in pickup.c, which is only called when the box is opened. In fact, a comment in this function explicitly notes that other forms of observation should determine the cat's state, but don't. I haven't tested this, but based on my reading of the code I would expect the box to be considered empty by the probe. -- Killian 15:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

That's fantastic that the DevTeam has considered this problem. Any other ideas on how to detect the cat without opening the box? Maybe telepathy? It's definitely a Small Matter of Programming to properly implement all the possibilities. --Andronikus 15:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The cat isn't in the box until it's looted. I just did a wizmode test, and neither telepathy nor probing revealed anything. Fredil Yupigo 02:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Recovering games

Hey everyone,

I have a first generation Macbook that has the great habit of crashing. Whenever I'm playing the game and it crashes, I lose that particular game. It seems that all of my good games stretch just long enough to have the computer destroy them.

I usually uninstall and reinstall NetHack to get it to work again whenever this happens, but this last game I got down to Medusa's Lair (dungeon level 21), much farther than I've ever gotten. I don't want to reinstall the game just to get that far and have it crash again, so I was wondering if there was a way to recover this character and continue playing?

I'm using Nethack 3.4.3, Mac OS X tile port. The operating system version is 10.4.11N

Many thanks

Eating corpses

Pretty silly question, but as an elf is it safe to eat and sacrifice dwarf corpses?

As long as they're not too old in the first case, and it's on an altar of your alignment in the second, you'll be fine. --Andronikus 10:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

My keyboard doesn't have "<>" how do I dig down? or how do I change the keys?

seriously, it doesn't have'em. I don't know what to do.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.143.59.162 (talk • contribs)

There's no way to remap the keys via NetHack itself. I see two possible solutions: either configure your operating system to use a different keyboard layout that does have those keys, or use some kind of terminal wrapper program to translate some other keystroke into the keys you want. It's difficult to give more help than that without some details of your setup (OS, physical keyboard layout, software keyboard layout etc.). -- Killian

If your keyboard doesn't have "<>", then it must be some non-US layout. Are you playing on Microsoft Windows? If so, are you playing the console or the tiled version? Nhraykey.dll might help you with your problem, if you can do any of these three things:

• Tolerate a somewhat annoying bug;
• Patch your source code to fix it; or,
• The whois data for your IP seems to place you in Colombia. Is that true? ¿Habla usted español? If so, then perhaps this es para usted. It's some silly gringo's attempt to render NetHack in the language of Cervantes. Más que esto, it's the only published version of NetHack that has a correct nhraykey.dll, and even enables it by default.

(Full disclosure: I am the Ray in nhraykey.dll. Yes, that means the bug is my fault. Mi culpa, mi culpa, mi máxima culpa. I am also that silly gringo.)--Ray Chason 14:35, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Preview Is My Friend. The bug I speak of is this one, dammit.--Ray Chason 14:36, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Alt.org - Really high HP

I'm looking at the all time high scores on alt.org, and some of these people have hp in the MILLIONS! How on earth did they do that? Nurse dancing? Potions of full healing? Royal Jelly? Edit: Looking here it seems as though pudding farming is the way to go. --Ha! Showed you! 22:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Polyself bug :) Pudding farming was probably used to hoard amulets of life saving so they didn't die from polymorphing to level 0. Fredil Yupigo 23:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)