Role difficulty

Role difficulty is the general difficulty of being able to successfully ascend with the various roles. It has been demonstrated that every role is ascendable, but opinions vary as to which roles are the easiest and hardest to ascend.

Starting Difficulty Versus Ascension Difficulty

Usually when people talk about class difficulty they are mainly referring to the beginning of the game. This is because the early game is by far the hardest part of the game, to the point where you could argue that starting difficulty is the only factor that matters.

However some classes have advantages over other classes in the late game in spite of having a lot of advantages in the early game.

For example, barbarians start with poison resistance, which allows them to eat poisonous monster corpses and protects against instadeath from poisoned arrows and spikes, common causes of death for early-game players. However, valkyries have a number of advantages over barbarians in the mid and late game. Their +3 small shield makes it very easy to get good armor class, and their starting +1 long sword can be dipped into fountains for easy access to Excalibur if lawful. The artifact they receive on sacrificing, Mjollnir, is much better than Cleaver, especially if thrown with gauntlets of power. Additionally, the valkyrie's quest artifact is vastly more useful than the barbarian's. This means that while barbarians are probably easier classes to start with, valkyries are arguably a lot easier to ascend with.

Starting Advantages

• High Strength and Dexterity
• Good starting equipment
• Access to good ranged attacks (especially daggers)
• Good starting intrinsics (especially poison resistance and speed)
• Recognizing BUC status

Ascension Advantages

• Good Quest Artifact
• High Intelligence and Charisma (these are the hardest attributes to raise)
• High maximum statistics (determined by race)
• Good acquired intrinsics (for example wizards gain warning and teleport control at high levels)
• Access to useful weapon and magic skills
• Good artifacts available by sacrificing
• Starting with highly enchanted or hard to find equipment

Roles' Difficulty Levels

Most agree that valkyries and barbarians are the easiest classes - possibly followed by samurai - due to the strong physical combat options presented by the roles from the very beginning (arguably minimising the amount of strategy necessary). Barbarians have the advantage of poison resistance at the start of the game (as do orcs, although an orc barbarian gets no extra advantage), and Valkyries have the advantage of some easy access to early artifacts (Excalibur and Mjollnir), an easy quest with an excellent quest artifact (the Orb of Fate) plus intrinisc cold resistance. It is notable that Valkyries cannot be Chaotic, and Barbarians cannot be Lawful. However these classes are similar, and strong options for beginners - some suggest that a beginner should play as a Barbarian until they learn which corpses are and aren't poisonous, and then switch to Valkyries for the cold resistance and artifacts.

Samurai start the game with powerful physical combat capabilities (both melee and missile), but have fewer advantages as the game enters the middle phase. In particular, their quest is riskier than either the Valkyrie's or Barbarian's. The luck of the draw (finding a longsword to dip for Excalibur or an altar for sacrifices) has a big impact on how easy it is to manage this phase of the game. Their starting speed intrinsic is also less useful than the Barbarian's poison resistance.

Wizards are usually easy due to their good starting equipment (for this reason, wizards are often start scummed) and powerful late game (thanks to e.g. magic missile and finger of death). They also have potential to cast spells with no hunger penalty, and easy access to Magicbane. Those that attempt to play them as physical combat characters will, however, find them difficult due to their bad starting attributes.

The priest's innate ability to detect the BUC status of an item can be a tremendous advantage, starting out, but they are restricted in all edged weapons and cannot advance any ranged weapons past basic, meaning their weapon choice will be very poor later on.

The knight's codes of conduct can be cumbersome, though the penalty for breaking them (1 point of alignment) is minor, unless you are roleplaying or playing a pacifist.

Rangers and rogues can either be difficult or easy, depending on how capable one is of making use of their powerful ranged weapons (especially in the early game).

Cavemen can be considered a more difficult version of barbarians.

Monks are a unique class whose early game is relatively easy compared to its tricky midgame, mostly due to Master Kaen and armor and weapon penalties.

Healers and tourists have a reputation for being extremely difficult, due to weak starting attributes and poor equipment. Archeologists are almost as difficult but have the advantages of starting with speed and stealth, being able to identify gems, and early access to a good weapon--the dwarvish mattock.

However tourists, while very weak to start, enjoy a lot of advantages which make them arguably one of the stronger classes in the endgame--they have access to a large number of weapons, they start with a hawaiian shirt which can be enchanted for extra AC later in the game, and their Quest Artifact, the Platinum Yendorian Express Card, is one of the best artifacts in the game.

Role Difficulty Chart

This chart is a rough ranking of the roles from easiest to hardest. Emphasis is on starting difficulty. Many things can affect the order based on a players preference, experience, strategy, and play style.

Rank	Role
1	Barbarian
2	Valkyrie
3	Wizard (with good starting equipment)
4	Samurai
5	Monk
6	Knight
7	Priest
8	Caveman
9	Rogue
10	Ranger
11	Archeologist
12	Healer (unless doing protection racket)
13	Tourist

For the wizard, good equipment might be some of the following: 1) a good second spell, such as healing, magic missile, or identify 2) a good starting wand, such as polymorph, 3) good starting rings, especially invisibility, and 4) ideally, a magic marker. Because the wizard is very weak in the early game, having invisibility or digging is crucial when "run away" is the best option.

SLASH'EM Roles

SLASH'EM has several new roles with varying levels of difficulty. Also, some of the original classes may be more or less difficult in SLASH'EM than in vanilla NetHack.

• Flame Mage
• Ice Mage
• Necromancer
• Undead Slayer
• Yeoman

External References

• [rgrn thread: measurements and respective merits of difficulty metrics]