Standard strategy

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Before you begin

You may find these pages helpful from an overall strategy perspective:

• Role difficulty
• Game stages
• Why do I keep dying?
• Notetaking

The very basics

Firstly, learn how to move your character, fight monsters and go up and down stairs. Take advantage of diagonal movement keys. Pressing ? brings up online help which explains the basics of playing the game and how to move your character.

If you dislike the default vi-style movement keys, you may want to enable the number_pad option which lets you use the number pad to move your character. To do so, press O and select the option from the menu. On some servers (for example, NAO), that option is enabled by default. Which one is "better" is mostly a matter of personal preference.

The first lesson a new player should learn is: take it slowly! Never use the auto-repeat feature of the keyboards: press each key deliberately and carefully — and take your time. Use _, g and G to move safely down corridors.

Use > and < to go down and up stairwells — if you cannot find one, search along walls (s) until you find a doorway; you may need to search around 10 times on a bit of wall before you find one. If the door is locked and you do not have an unlocking tool, you can kick (ctrl + d, or k with number_pad enabled) the door down, although it is preferable to leave the door locked and come back later when you have found an unlocking tool.

The goal of the game is to get the Amulet of Yendor which is on level 50 or so of the dungeon, so head down slowly and explore the dungeon carefully. For now, your main goal is survival.

When you come across a monster, first look it up in this wiki to determine whether it is a good idea to fight it. Moving into the square it occupies will attack it. When fighting, watch your HP (health), and if it goes below half of its maximum, run away to heal (do not wait until you have only 1HP left!). Healing occurs slowly as you explore the dungeon (or rest (.) if you are burdened).

After you have killed a monster, you will usually want to eat its corpse, but make sure that you check that monster's entry in this wiki to determine if its corpse is safe to eat. If you do not eat corpses, you will probably die of starvation.

In the first few dungeon levels, do not eat kobold corpses — they are poisonous — and also do not eat the corpses of creatures you did not kill during the previous 50 turns (with the exceptions of lichens and lizards).

Some monsters are not safe to attack with melee — if you fight a floating eye in that manner, for instance, you may get paralyzed for hundreds of turns, thus becoming an easy prey to creatures lurking around; use ranged weapons or magic instead, and check this wiki for the entries of monsters you do not know to avoid such nasty surprises.

If your HP gets below 6, or in case you are "weak" with hunger or otherwise in a dire situation, use the extended command "#pray". Do not do this more often than once every 1000 turns, though, since that may anger the god you are praying to, which would probably make things even worse for you.

Engraving "Elbereth" on the ground will stop most monsters from attacking you and cause them to turn to flee while the word remains intact; during an emergency, you can write it in the dust by typing E, then -, then "Elbereth", but then it will not last long — there are ways of making it more durable, so it pays to learn about engraving.

The early game

The goals of the early game are completing the first two branches off the main dungeon — Sokoban and the Gnomish Mines — and gathering basic supplies and resistances. You may find some nice armor or sacrifice for a shiny artifact weapon, but such luck does not always happen.

Goals

• Gain magic resistance and reflection. These two defenses counter many powerful attacks that would otherwise harm your equipment, severely damage you, or even kill you. They cannot be gained intrinsically, and must be provided by worn or carried equipment, such as dragon scale mail or quest artifacts. Because they are so vital to survival, are rarely randomly generated, and often come packaged with other useful attributes, many early wishes are spent to gain one or the other.
• Gain poison resistance. Without poison resistance, any poisoned attack or trap has a chance of being instantly fatal. Several classes acquire poison resistance intrinsically early in the game, but others will want to consume monsters that provide a safe chance of getting this valuable resistance. A unicorn horn, tinning kit, carefully planned prayer, ring of sustain ability, or source of restore ability can also help you by allowing you to consume poisonous corpses (including many that confer poison resistance) without suffering attribute loss.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Unicorn horns no longer restore lost attributes. Also, poison no longer has a chance of instantly killing you, but it can do a significant amount of extra damage and drain your attributes.

• Complete Sokoban. Sokoban has wands, rings, and one of either a bag of holding or an amulet of reflection, both of which are quite useful. It is also no-teleport, which makes cornering unicorns for horn harvesting or gem tossing very easy.
• Complete the Gnomish Mines. The Mines are the first branch, but some players consider it to be dangerous, as it is inhabited by swarms of dwarves and gnomes — which, individually, are slow and weak, but tend to gang up, and may be generated with wands that will kill you very fast. However, Minetown may contain many shops and is guaranteed to contain a temple, so it is an excellent place for price identification, BUC testing, donating to a priest, and finding useful loot. Particularly dangerous traps may be generated below Minetown, so it is not recommended that you venture down unless you have some method of dealing with them. However, there is a luckstone at the bottom of the Mines, which is a useful thing to carry around once you can get your luck up.
• Gather useful knick-knacks. Any pieces of your ascension kit are great, but you will want to gather other things that will be useful later on. Potions can be alchemized or watered down for blessing, scrolls can be blanked, and extra magic armor and tools can be saved for later polypiling.

The mid game

The mid game involves the remainder of the Dungeons of Doom, including the Quest and Castle. You will get a wand of wishing during this portion of the game, so you will be able to flesh out your equipment.

Goals

• Reach experience level 14. This is required to enter the quest, but can take some time. Leveling to 13 and 14 by killing monsters is a painful and slow process. Hopefully, you will find some wraiths or potions of gain level — or make these potions via alchemy. If not, you may end up clearing the Castle and the Valley of the Dead before you are able to enter your quest.
• Kill Medusa. You can dig past her island, but you will eventually have to come up back past her. Perseus's statue can contain levitation boots or a shield of reflection, and the boots in particular can help with the Castle. You will generally need to have reflection or be blind to face Medusa's stoning gaze.
• Do the Quest. Some quests (such as the Wizard quest) are generally considered to be easy, others (such as the Monk quest) are considered extremely difficult. Either way, you will have to do it at some point: the quest artifact is almost always very useful, and you will need to retrieve the Bell of Opening from your nemesis to complete the game.
• Conquer the Castle. You will need some way of getting in. Any source of levitation, a tonal musical instrument, or some way to smash the drawbridge plus jumping or diving into the water will do the trick. A musical instrument has the advantage of allowing you to grind just about every inhabitant of the Castle to mush without any risk to yourself, but you will want levitation or jumping to reach the weapon and armor storerooms. The Castle can be very risky if you have not genocided liches and do not have magic resistance. It is not uncommon for the Castle to contain one or more teleporting, nasty summoning, armor destroying, equipment cursing, touch of death using arch-liches, so be careful! There is a wand of wishing in one of the corner towers, which should fill most remaining gaps in your equipment.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Master- and arch-liches will no longer generate at the Castle (or outside of Gehennom) when class L are specified by class-based monster creation.

The late game

You should have most (if not all) resistances, good stats, and excellent equipment by this point. Wands are twice as likely to be generated in Gehennom as in the rest of the dungeon, so you may find many wands useful for the end game.

Goals

• Go through Gehennom. This portion of the game is composed almost entirely of mazes, which can be frustrating and boring to map. There are some ways to ease the pain. Particularly on maze levels, Digging a path between the upstairs and downstairs (and perhaps also into other regions) when possible can help reducing mysterious force induced headaches and Rodney visitations during the ascension run.
• Be careful of the Powerful demons who make their homes in Gehennom. Though most heroes have sufficient firepower, by the time they get there, to tear through the hellish overlords, if you get yourself into a pickle, your god will be unable to help you while you are in the fiery depths. Be prepared to face Juiblex, Orcus, Baalzebub and Asmodeus, and possibly Demogorgon if you are unlucky.
• Kill Vlad the Impaler. The upstairs to his tower is located between the 9th and 13th level of Gehennom. Once you do find it, the tower has a couple of nice goodies, notably an amulet of life saving. Vlad might be very easy or harder than major demons, depending on the weapon he is generated with. He carries the Candelabrum of Invocation, which is required for the invocation ritual.
• Find the vibrating square. The vibrating square is located at the very bottom of Gehennom, on a level with no downstairs. It is not found by means such as magic mapping and requires wandering to find. Since this can take some time to find, you would rather do it before drawing the ire of the Wizard of Yendor. In version 3.6.1, it is marked by (~) once it is found. In versions 3.4.3 and earlier, it was not marked even after it was found, thus it was recommended that you mark it in some way so that you did not have to go through the hassle of remembering or finding it again.

The end game

The first step in the end game is killing the Wizard of Yendor. He is the single most persistent and irksome enemy in the game, so before slaying him, you should have everything arranged. Remap any levels lost to amnesia not recorded (hopefully none), pack the wands, scrolls, potions, rings, and tools for your ascension run, and take a deep breath.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Levels can no longer be forgotten.

Goals

• Kill the Wizard of Yendor. The portal to his tower is located in one of two fake towers. His tower is fairly straightforward, but the man himself is a pest. He can curse your inventory items, summon nasties or a clone of himself, and use touch of death. He can also steal quest artifacts, the invocation items, and the Amulet of Yendor. Once you kill him, he will not leave you alone until the end of the game; if he does not simply reincarnate to face you again, he may throw any number of maledictions in your direction. However, you need the Book of the Dead he carries to...
• ...perform the invocation and retrieve the Amulet. Once you have killed the Wizard, you should have all three invocation items, allowing you access to the Sanctum. Once you hack your way through the undead and priests standing in your way, you will face the High Priest of Moloch. Kill him to retrieve the Amulet - some players can be tricked by a fake Amulet of Yendor from a cloned Wizard of Yendor, so be sure yours is not a fake. From here, you can return to dungeon level one and take the upstairs to begin the final test.
• Pass through the Elemental Planes. The Wizard can reappear at any point up to the Astral Plane, so do not let your guard down. Levitation is very useful here, as is a way of detecting the portals (confused or cursed scroll of gold detection is popular). Conflict can also help to keep the masses of super-elementals off your back, especially on the Plane of Air, where the air elementals can chew through your health in an incredibly short time.
• Reach the Astral Plane, and cleave through the horde of nasties, hostile priests, player monsters, and angels, as well as the formidable Riders, to reach your high altar. Once there, sacrifice the Amulet of Yendor on it to end the game and ascend to demigod(ess)hood. There are many creative strategies for dealing with the denizens of the final plane - good luck and godspeed!

External links

• Ascension Walkthrough: A newbie-friendly and almost completely accurate, commented until the Gnomish Mines.

Variants

• Standard strategy - SLASH'EM
• Standard strategy - dNethack