User:Bluescreenofdeath

Important notice: As of today, 21 July 2021, I am officially retiring from the nethack community. As it turned out, my variant was deemed too offensive for the public, and so it's probably for the best if I leave before things get even more out of hand.

The content below is preserved for the sake of posterity, although at this point I wouldn't really shed a tear if all mention of SLEX was wiped from the wiki. For me, it's time to move on with my life, as there are more important things to do than wasting my time with stupid nerdy video games. My Github projects are also frozen indefinitely now, don't expect to see updates on them anymore.

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Hi there, and welcome to my user page! My nickname is Bluescreenofdeath, but you can call me Amy, and I'm a Nethack player (who would have thought?). My favorite variant is SLASH'EM, in fact SLASH'EM is what I consider the "true vanilla", although 3.4.3 is vanilla too of course. 3.6.x I don't consider vanilla NetHack because of certain changes like statue glyphs looking like monsters, quest leaders becoming hostile and booting you out when you attack some irrelevant peaceful monster, and more; that is stuff I'd expect to find in variants, and therefore 3.6.x is a variant of vanilla NetHack in my book. I decided to form my own one-woman (actually we're currently two people) devteam for a variant called "Slash'EM Extended". SLASH'EM's original devteam told me they don't mind me making a variant of their variant, so Slash'EM Extended is the official successor now, although by now it's pretty different from regular SLASH'EM :-)

Now, the aim of my variant is to add even more variation to the game than SLASH'EM does already, and also try to make the later parts of the game more challenging while reducing the risk of experiencing an early-game YASD. In particular, the player should never know whether they can ascend or not, no matter how good at the game they are - there should always be something that can cause a game over, even for a player in a full ascension kit. Nonetheless I've ascended 9 times in my own variant: neutral male illithid Scientist, chaotic female bastard Healer, neutral female doppelganger Monk, neutral male ironman Binder (wishless conduct!), neutral female ak Thief is dead! monk LostSoul, neutral female hemophage Korsair, chaotic male giant Foxhound Agent (polyselfless and genocideless conduct!), chaotic female nordish Barbarian (genocideless conduct!) and chaotic female phantom Cavewoman (genocideless, wishless, polyselfless and polyobjectless conduct!); none of those ascensions were in a version that has the expanded dungeon size though. I also ascended the samurai in Dynahack (thrice), NetHack 3.6.0 (twice), NetHack 3.4.3 (twice), Unnethack (twice), Nethack4 (twice), Nethack Fourk (twice) and Splicehack. I would have ascended a samurai in xnethack too (was a far-progressed one) but a savebreak ate that one. Also, I "ascended" a neutral droven nonbinary (null) (sic; actually a cartomancer) in splice due to a hall of fame bug but of course that wasn't an actual ascension ;) You can watch me play Slash'EM Extended here: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?723346-(Let-s-Play!)-Slash-EM-Extended-a-NetHack-fork

Tariru ascended an angel rogue in version v217 on April 11, 2018. Dumplog: https://www.hardfought.org/userdata/T/Tariru/slex/dumplog/1520798174.slex.txt And an incantifier fencer with wishless conduct intact, also in version v217 on April 28, 2018, starting a 2-ascension streak. Dumplog: https://eu.hardfought.org/userdata/T/Tariru/slex/dumplog/1523093480.slex.txt And a naga paladin in version v222 on May 11, 2018, increasing it to a 3-ascension streak. Dumplog: https://eu.hardfought.org/userdata/T/Tariru/slex/dumplog/1525123580.slex.txt And a spirit archeologist in version v222 on June 10, 2018 (during Junethack), increasing it to a 4-ascension streak. Dumplog: https://eu.hardfought.org/userdata/T/Tariru/slex/dumplog/1527945792.slex.txt

Porkman ascended a redguard priest in version v261 on March 11, 2020. Dumplog: https://em.slashem.me/userdata/porkman/slex/dumplog/1578524542.txt He also ascended a reguard wizard on April 8, 2020, starting a 2-ascension streak. Dumplog: https://em.slashem.me/userdata/porkman/slex/dumplog/1584394928.txt

Dumplog of my healer ascension: https://em.slashem.me/userdata/Bluescreen/slex/dumplog/20160817204412.txt

Honorable mention goes to my splatted characters: a phantom ice mage who was killed by Famine one square from the high altar, a navi jester with whom I foolishly pressed space at the finger of death direction prompt on the Plane of Earth, a mazewalker topmodel who got swarmed and killed on the way up with the Amulet of Yendor, and a nemesis anachronounbinder who had just done the final Amulet of Yendor imbue but got killed by Ubernightmare before being able to escape.

Development news: Current version is v266 (Apr 25th, 2020).

There's also a github repository, showing most of the latest changes as individual commits: Slash'EM Extended on GitHub (to see the changelog, refer to history2.txt)

If you're playing an old version, updating is advised. However, please don't update your game version with a character in progress; the game is very likely to consider your character incompatible with the new version, so you should finish the game with your current character first before updating.

There's an IRC channel for discussion of Slash'EM Extended: #slashemextended - feel free to join and talk about the game! :)

Oh yeah, and here's my worst embarrasing YASD: http://abload.de/img/eyalsodesisjetztabernakkbr.png

Feel free to post on my user talk page!

Numbers for the stat lovers: The current version of Slash'EM Extended has 34611 monster species, 6643 objects and object appearances, 2225 artifacts and 535 trap types. There is a total of 165 playable roles and 261 playable races.

I'm also maintaining the DNHslex variant of dnethack. Additionally, BIGslex is playable on the em.slashem.me server: it's exactly like regular SLEX but with huge dungeon levels.

Getting started

Copied from the main Slash'EM Extended article. This section is supposed to be helpful for Slash'EM Extended players.

Shift-O opens the options menu. The option to switch the movement keys between vi-like keys (hjkl) and the number pad is the number_pad option. Be sure to set it so that you can move around the dungeon comfortably!

The options file is called defaults.nh on Windows and ~/.slashemextendedrc on Unix; it does not necessarily exist on a fresh install

New players may be overwhelmed by the huge amount of available roles and races. These links may be helpful:

A list of hints (recommended reading for new players) that will hopefully enable new players to learn how to play without dying constantly.

FAQ (recommended reading for new players) answers some of the most common questions that players may have.

A list of Slash'EM Extended's new roles, including their key features and average difficulty rating. The Zyborg, Chevalier and Electric Mage roles are suitable for beginners, while the Convict, Bleeder and Courier are harder-than-hard roles that should be picked by experienced players only. The role selection menu does not work with the curses interface at the moment. A workaround is to start the game in tty mode, select a character, save and then change the configuration file to curses.

A list of Slash'EM Extended's new races, including their key features and average difficulty rating. The Trollor and Asgardian races are suitable for beginners, while the Ungenomold and Alien races should be picked by advanced players only.

Options, hotkeys and commands (recommended reading) shows the various new options and commands that aren't present in other variants. It is highly advised to familiarize oneself with them, since some parts of the game expect the player to use certain new commands (comparable to vanilla's #wipe command, which isn't used often but comes in handy in certain situations).

A rudimentary version history, which is incomplete but tries to give a chronological overview of the variant's features.

A list of Slash'EM Extended's new items, including information about what they do. Slash'EM Extended also has lots of new randomized appearances for scrolls, potions and other items.

A list of Slash'EM Extended's new monsters, including information about their levels, attacks and special abilities.

A list of Slash'EM Extended's new traps, including information about their effects. Some traps are classified as "nasty"; they're very dangerous, and very hard to figure out without spoilers.

Skills in Slash'EM Extended explains what the new skills do (recommended reading for players unfamiliar with the skills). There are a whole lot of new combat skills, some of which may be rather obscure to figure out without spoilers.

Techniques in Slash'EM Extended lists the various techniques available in the game.

Dungeon option templates for those who want to change the glyphs used to represent various dungeon features. Especially important if, for some reason, you don't want solid rock to be displayed as # and would rather have it be invisible like in vanilla NetHack.

Appearance aptnesses are special effects of armor-class items that depend on their randomized appearance. These are also documented in the game.

Dungeon overview shows the various dungeon branches in the game, including some details about what the goals in the various optional branches are, as well as special rules that may apply while the player is in certain subdungeons.

Item materials details the effects of the various item materials present in the game, including showing which erosion effects can affect them.

Monster and item egotypes shows what the different egotypes in the game mean. Egotype monsters are highlighted yellow, egotype items show as "an enchanted foo" to hint at the presence of a special property.

A list of known bugs that should be removed in future versions. Players with coding knowledge are always welcome to help fixing them to make Slash'EM Extended even more enjoyable.

Identifying rings and amulets shows the messages given when dropping rings down sinks, or dropping amulets down toilets. This can be used to identify jewelry.

A screenshot Let's Play by the creator herself, showing off a lot of this variant's features. Audience participation is encouraged by e.g. suggesting role/race combinations for Amy to play.

SLASHTHEM Extended - the variant inside a variant! This explains how to activate the special playing mode, as well as detailing the differences in gameplay it entails.

The Evil Variant - a special playing mode that makes SLASH'EM Extended much harder in very unfair ways!

Friday the 13th - playing on the unlucky day also makes SLASH'EM Extended much harder, and for those who don't want to wait for that date, there's another special playing mode that also enables these difficulty elements!

Other interesting works about Roguelikes

SLEX reddit - always looking for new participants :)

NetHack balance blog - shows my thoughts about various NetHack-related design topics

User:Bluescreenofdeath/Balance_issues_comment - my comment to User:Phol ende wodan's balance proposal

There's an acquaintance of mine who has written a book about a roguelike game. Apparently that game doesn't really exist (but some parts of it remind me of NetHack, even though the guy says he didn't know about NetHack back when he wrote it; for example, it has monsters called "Gelatinouswürfel" which are totally not a NetHack gelatinous cube :D), yet I think it's fascinating to read, and quite some of Slash'EM Extended's features were actually inspired by reading that book. It's in German language though. Available here. For a die-hard roguelike fan and especially a roguelike designer/programmer, this is a must read! There is also a spacewars fighter role in Slash'EM Extended v41 and higher versions in honor of the book; people appearing in the book are present in the form of quest leader, nemeses and gods of that new role. ;)

Occasionally I also play TOME, an Angband variant, and I've started my own variant of that as well: https://github.com/AmyBSOD/ToME-SX

E-mail experiment

I'm conducting an e-mail experiment to collect mails completely unfiltered for statistical purposes. My email address: spamcatchmail@gmx.de (theoretically I can be contacted via this one as well, but it's not recommended)