Rogue level

NetHack is a roguelike game, but there is one special level that is more like Rogue (game) than the others. This Rogue level is a reincarnation of the original Rogue.

This special level is somewhere in each dungeon, below the Oracle but above Medusa. Here is a list of traits from the older Hack and Rogue games that you can also find in the Rogue level of NetHack.

1. All monsters are uppercase letters. (NetHack achieves this by not spawning any lowercase-letter monsters at this special level. It is still possible to bring lowercase-letter monsters like pets from other levels to this level.)
2. Doors, represented by +, act like open doorways, meaning that you can not walk diagonally through them. There is no way to close or destroy these doors.
3. There are no DECgraphics or color. Rogue and Hack lacked those features. NetHack, at least when playing the tty port, disables those options during the special level.
   • IBMgraphics has an interesting effect. Especially for DOS users, NetHack replaces several characters with the ones used in a DOS port of Rogue. See IBMgraphics#Rogue level for more information.
4. Stairs are percent signs %. (Hack uses < and >, like NetHack normally does.) In Rogue, there was always one stairway: down if you had not found the Amulet, or up if you found it. Hack and NetHack introduced an innovation where old levels were saved to disk, allowing you to freely travel up and down. Thus, the roguelike level of NetHack contains two percent signs.
5. Food is colons :. (Hack uses %, but NetHack uses : for food and corpses at the roguelike special level. Thus, NetHack players might sometimes confuse food and corpses at this level with newts or other lizard-like monsters.)