The November NetHack Tournament

The November NetHack Tournament, abbreviated as TNNT, is a NetHack tournament that takes place during the month of November. It has been run every November since 2018. Its main page can be found at https://tnnt.org/.

Unlike Junethack, which takes a broader focus on multiple NetHack variants, TNNT focuses primarily on the vanilla game, while still being open and accommodating to all skill levels.

Like Junethack, TNNT is played on public servers, allowing players on those servers to reuse their existing accounts. Currently the three Hardfought servers are the only ones on which TNNT is available to be played. Likewise, TNNT supports clans, allowing a group of players to coordinate and pool their accomplishments in competition with other clans.

Chatting about the tournament happens in the #tnnt channel on the Libera IRC network. A bot in the channel announces player deaths and game events during the tournament.

Gameplay differences

As of October 2023, TNNT is based on NetHack 3.6.7. There are few, if any, gameplay differences from the base version of NetHack. Fundamental game mechanics will stay the same - weapons and armor stats and properties, roles and races, spells and their effects and levels, monster abilities and behavior, so on and so forth. The changes that players will see and experience are in the way of optional custom content and/or branch levels added to the game, without changing the mechanics or usability of existing content.

Swap chest

Swap chests allow players to exchange a limited number of objects between games that other players can use.

Devteam Office

The DevTeam Office is a small side quest that involves a few members of the DevTeam.

Deathmatch Arena

The Deathmatch Arena allows you to challenge a player monster based on a previously ascended character. If you win, your reward will be a single object of your choice from their final inventory.

robotfindskitten

A special level based on robotfindskitten.

Awards

Leaderboards

As of October 2023, there are 16 leaderboards. Each leaderboard has individual leaders and clan leaders.

• Most Ascensions, Earliest Ascension, Lowest Turncount, Fastest Realtime
• Most Conducts in One Ascension
• Most Achievements in One Game, Most Achievements Overall
• Lowest Scoring Ascension, Highest Scoring Ascension
• Longest Streak
• Most Unique Deaths
• Most Unique Ascension Combos
• Highest Z-Score
• Most Post-Amulet Splats
• Most Successful Swap Chest Donations
• Most Games over 1000 Turns

Trophies

You can win a trophy for ascending an entire set of games, or for satisfying an individual challenge in one game, or (in one case) by refraining from certain play behavior in every game. Your clan may also work together jointly to win a trophy. As of October 2023, there are 44 trophies:

• Great Dwarf, Great Orc, Great Elf, Great Gnome, Great Human -- ascend each role playable with that race.
• Great Archeologist, Great Barbarian, Great Caveperson, Great Healer, Great Monk, Great Priest, Great Ranger, Great Rogue, Great Valkyrie, Great Wizard -- ascend each race/alignment combo playable with that role.
• Lesser Dwarf, Lesser Orc, Lesser Elf, Lesser Gnome, Lesser Human -- complete gnomish mines and sokoban with each role playable with that race.
• Lesser Archeologist, Lesser Barbarian, Lesser Caveperson, Lesser Healer, Lesser Monk, Lesser Priest, Lesser Ranger, Lesser Rogue, Lesser Valkyrie, Lesser Wizard -- complete gnomish mines and sokoban with each race/alignment combo playable with that role.
• Both Genders -- ascend each playable starting gender.
• All Alignments -- ascend each playable starting alignment.
• All Roles -- ascend each playable role.
• All Races -- ascend each playable race.
• All Conducts -- ascend a set of games covering all conducts.
• All Achievements -- ascend a set of games covering all achievements.
• Nethack Master -- ascend each role/race/alignment/gender combo.
• Nethack Dominator -- earn both Nethack Master and All Conducts.
• Never Scum a Game -- never finish a game in less than 100 turns by quitting or escaping.
• Keep Your Nemesis Alive, Keep Vlad Alive, Keep Rodney Alive, Keep the High Priest of Moloch Alive, Keep the Riders Alive -- ascend a game with that monster(s) not ever dying.

Achievements

A player earns an achievement by doing some specific task during one game. Some achievements commemorate regular milestones in game progression, some require going a little bit out of the way to accomplish, and others require significant setup to produce a contrived scenario.

As of October 2023, there are 325 achievements available.

Conducts (2019)

The following official conducts were also added:

• Survivor, never having your life saved using an amulet of life saving.
• Swap-chestless, never removing an object from a swap chest. Placing objects in is not restricted.
• Never allowed the quest nemesis to die
• Never allowed Vlad to die
• Never allowed the Wizard to die
• Never allowed a high priest to die
• Never allowed a Rider to die
• Artifactless: never touching an artifact.
• Petless, activated by setting OPTIONS=pettype:none and never having a pet. If you reach the Astral Plane with this conduct intact and would receive a guardian Angel, it will not be tamed.
• Permanent deafness, activated by setting OPTIONS=deaf, and makes the character permanently deaf. This can make the quest challenging to complete if the leader starts roaming, as you cannot chat to them. It's not impossible, however: the quest leader will still speak to you if you corner them in a corridor or other spot where they have nowhere to move, or if you throw the quest artifact to them. Similarly, the dev team's quest is never unwinnable, as you can complete it by throwing the scrolls to Mike Stephenson. A permadeaf character cannot chat with priests, but can buy, sell, and price-identify objects in shops.
• Permanent hallucination, activated by setting OPTIONS=hallucinating, and makes the character permanently hallucinating. Wielding Grayswandir ends your hallucination and breaks the conduct.

History

In 2020 and earlier years, TNNT offered very in-depth scoring. At the core, ascensions were worth 50 points each, which could be boosted by conducts, speedrunning, and streaks. Individual and clan trophies earned also contributed points to scoring.

New and enhanced commands

TNNT provides several new and enhanced extended commands.

The #achievements command allows you to look at achievements that you have or have not earned yet in this game.

The #conduct command is not new, but it does show TNNT-specific conducts.

The #snacks command allows you to see types of food you have and have not eaten yet this game, for the achievements that rely on eating a lot of types of food.

The #species command allows you to view all of the eligible monster species you have killed or not killed, for achievements that rely on what types of monsters have been killed.

The #tnntstats command allows you to check the progress of achievements that require doing things multiple times or doing a set of different things.

New and enhanced options

Options for general use

realtime is a compound option with value disabled, play_time, or wallclock_time, with a default value of wallclock_time. This option is not in vanilla Nethack. When this option is set to disabled, no time is shown. When this option is set to play_time, the status bar shows the time the player has been playing, excluding time that the game was saved and not being played. When this option is set to wallclock_time, the status bar shows the time since the game was started, including time that the game was saved and not being played.

realtime_format is a compound option with value seconds, condensed, fixed units, or units, with a default value of units. This option is not in vanilla Nethack.

tnnt_notify is a binary option, default true. This option is specific to TNNT. When this option is set, the game shows a message each time you earn an achievement.

Options for specific achievements

blind is a binary option, default false. This option comes from vanilla Nethack. The player must set this option in their configuration file before starting the game in order to play for the receive-the-quest zen (permablind) achievement.

bones is a binary option, default true. This option comes from vanilla Nethack. The player may set this option to false in their configuration file before starting the game to help play for the receive-the-quest bonesless achievement, although it is possible to earn this achievement without changing this option.

deaf is a binary option, default false. This option is not in vanilla Nethack. The player must set this option in their configuration file before starting the game in order to play for the receive-the-quest permadeaf achievement.

hallucinating is a binary option, default false. This option is not in vanilla Nethack. The player must set this option in their configuration file before starting the game in order to play for the receive-the-quest permahallu achievement.

mail is a binary option, default true. This option comes from vanilla Nethack. This option must be enabled in order to play for the receive-mail achievement.

nudist is a binary option, default false. This option comes from vanilla Nethack. The player must set this option in their configuration file before starting the game in order to play for the receive-the-quest nudist achievement.

pettype is a compound option. This option comes from vanilla Nethack. The player must set this to pettype:none in their configuration file before starting the game in order to play for the receive-the-quest petless achievement.

History

TNNT statistics

	Players	Ascending Players	Achievements	Notable Features
2018	165	60	196	trophies, achievements, swap chest, devteam
2019	206	83	250	deathmatch
2020	272	115	250	-
2021	281	88	287	leaderboards
2022	335	102	323	-
2023 (beta)	-	-	325	robotfindskitten

In 2016 and prior years going all the way back to the early 2000s, the /dev/null/nethack tournament was run each November. However, in 2017, after the release of NetHack 3.6.0, the devnull organizer krystal announced that the tournament would be shutting down permanently. Several players coordinated with the hardfought server admins to quickly put together a one-off tribute tournament, which was held in November 2017; but the expectation was that in subsequent years some new tournament would be developed to take its place, which ended up becoming TNNT.

TNNT is not trying to reproduce the system or unique challenges offered by devnull, and has instead been designed from the ground up.