User:Bluescreenofdeath/Branches

Compared to vanilla, SLEX's dungeon is quite a bit longer and also has many more additional sub-branches, some of which are essential to winning the game while others are optional but can provide potentially useful rewards when completed. The player may also obtain trophies for completing optional branches, which are useful mainly during Junethack.

Plot-critical areas

For a summary, refer to the tldr section below

The main dungeon is 100 levels in length. Of these, the first 50 are the Dungeons of Doom, with the castle being on level 50; there may be a wand of wishing there, but it's not guaranteed as some castle variants lack the wand. Level 51 to 100 are Gehennom, where the player cannot pray and it's not possible to convert altars to Moloch. The Valley of the Dead is on level 51, the Wizard Tower spans levels 75-77 and is accessed via a fake tower on a random level below, and level 99 has the Vibrating Square and the Seven Deadly Sins who chase the player and resurrect after being killed while the player searches for the square. On dungeon level 100, Moloch's Sanctum houses the Amulet of Yendor in the possession of the High Priest, and can only be accessed if the player completes the invocation ritual on level 99.

In order to complete the invocation ritual, the player has to collect three items: the Bell of Opening, Candelabrum of Invocation and Book of the Dead. The bell can be found in the Quest, which is usually accessed via a magic portal on dungeon level 15-49, but in about 3% of all games the portal is on a random level in Gehennom instead. Entering the level that has the quest portal will give a message hinting at its presence. There are 7 levels in the Quest, with the last level forcing the player to battle their quest nemesis who has the bell. After obtaining it, the bell also has to be imbued: in order to do so, the player needs to find a magic portal somewhere on level 2-6 of the Quest and enter it, which leads to the new Subquest branch. If the quest nemesis has already been defeated, being on the level with the subquest portal will display periodic messages hinting at its presence. The Subquest branch is 10 levels in length, and on level 6-10 (placed randomly) there's a pink staircase that leads to the Bell Caves. Upon entering the Bell Caves, the player receives a full-screen message and a trophy, and the bell is imbued. However, the player then needs to make their way back out; level teleportation is not permitted within the Bell Caves or Subquest. Also, upon imbuing the bell, a clone of the quest nemesis is spawned along with some hostile quest-specific monsters. Trying to perform the invocation ritual with a non-imbued bell does not work.

Obtaining the Book of the Dead is similar to vanilla: the book is held by the Wizard of Yendor, who is always found in the center of level 75. Here, the player can either enter the tower from below by finding the fake tower with the portal, or wake him remotely via e.g. mind flayer psychic blasts or a drum of earthquake; killing the Wizard causes him to harass the player for the rest of the game, although the frequency of harassment is reduced compared to vanilla. The Candelabrum of Invocation is found in Vlad's Tower, but before the player can enter that, they first have to find the entrance stair to Sheol somewhere in Gehennom. Finding this stair can take a while, since there is no in-game hint pointing the player in the right direction, so unless the player randomly stumbles upon it during their Gehennom explorations, they may well have to look for it everywhere. Sheol itself is 25 levels in length, most of them ice-themed, and the stair to Vlad's Tower is on a random level in Sheol, once again potentially requiring the player to search everywhere. When the player enters Vlad's tower, they may stumble upon various doors that require specific artifact keys to unlock; two of the three alignment keys are needed to reach Vlad normally, although methods to wake him up remotely can be used too. In any case, Vlad holds the candelabrum and the player needs to fight him to obtain it.

With all three invocation tools in their possession and the Bell of Opening imbued, the player is now capable of performing the invocation on level 99. For this level, the player has to find the Vibrating Square, which is on a random floor square and can only be found by stepping on it, so the player has to walk everywhere; this is complicated by the fact that the Seven Deadly Sins are chasing the player. They resurrect like Riders and any attempt to get rid of their corpses just causes them to resurrect instantly; if the player tries to eat them, it's DYWYPI. When on the vibrating square, the player needs to ring the Bell of Opening, light the Candelabrum of Invocation (which needs to have seven candles attached; a bunch of them can be found in Vlad's Tower) and read the Book of the Dead. Compared to vanilla, the invocation tools stay primed for quite a bit longer after being used, and the bell has many more charges so a mishap is less disastrous. Also, while the invocation tools work best when noncursed, even a cursed one may still work occasionally (the player will have to try repeatedly if they are cursed).

After the invocation is complete, a downstair appears that leads to Moloch's sanctum. Here, the player needs to make it to the High Temple and defeat the High Priest who holds the Amulet of Yendor. The priest also has a sidekick named Amudor, who may be slightly annoying but shouldn't pose a big threat by this point. Once the player picks up the Amulet, it cannot be dropped any longer, and unlike vanilla it also cannot be named; care should be taken since fake amulets also exist, and those likewise cannot be dropped but weigh 500 units. With the amulet in their possession, the player now needs to find the portal to the Yendorian Tower; this portal is somewhere in the sanctum and can only be used after the player has already obtained the amulet. Simply walking back up the dungeon after obtaining the amulet is a bad idea and won't allow the player to win. Instead, the amulet needs to be imbued before the ascension run begins. While holding the amulet, the player branchport or be banished at all, and horizontal teleports may randomly fail. In order to imbue the amulet, it needs to be taken to three sub-branches of the Yendorian Tower: Ordered Chaos, Forging Chamber and Dead Grounds. After entering all three of them, the amulet is fully imbued and the player is transported back to the bottom of the Yendorian Tower, where they can now finally use the portal to go back to Gehennom and start the ascension run. If the player didn't defeat the bosses of the three alignment quests, the ones that are still alive will spawn in the three side dungeons in much stronger form.

Once the amulet is fully imbued, the adverse effects of carrying it become much worse: from that point on, it completely prevents all forms of teleportation, Rodney's harassment becomes a lot more frequent, and spellcasting costs much more mana. Also, while the player is making their way to the upstair on dungeon level 1, the monster spawn frequency is maxxed and they often spawn on the upstairs of a level. Unlike vanilla, cursed potions of gain level cannot be used to skip levels, but on the bright side there is no mysterious force. Taking the pink upstair on dlvl1 while having the amulet takes the player to the Plane of Earth, and then the player has to find magic portals to go from plane to plane until they reach the Astral Plane, where offering the amulet on the altar of the player's alignment wins the game.

At this point, the player gets the option to continue playing in freeplay mode, and if they accept, the character is placed back on dungeon level 1 where the negative effects of carrying the Amulet of Yendor cease. The Elemental Planes are locked now, but can be accessed again if the player ventures to the sanctum of Moloch on dungeon level 100. All forms of teleportation also become available again as soon as the player enters freeplay mode. In order to leave the planes, the player may now simply press < while on any high altar on the Astral Plane, which will teleport them back to dungeon level 1 again.

TLDR summary

TLDR In order to win the game, you need to obtain three invocation artifacts. The Bell of Opening is found in the Quest, which is somewhere on level 15-49 of the Dungeons of Doom. You must imbue the bell after obtaining it, by finding the subquest portal on level 2-6 of the quest and then, on level 6-10 of the subquest, finding a pink stair to the Bell Caves. Obtain the Book of the Dead on the wizard tower level, which is level 75 of Gehennom. Find the stair to Sheol somewhere in Gehennom and within Sheol find the stair to Vlad's Tower somewhere, kill Vlad to obtain the Candelabrum of Invocation. Take the three artifacts to level 99 and perform the invocation. Go to level 100, kill the High Priest of Moloch for the Amulet of Yendor and, on the sanctum level, find a magic portal to the Yendorian Tower. Scour the entire tower for three staircases that imbue the amulet when entered. With a fully imbued amulet, make your way back out of Gehennom and use the stair on dungeon level 1 where you started your game. Reach the Astral Plane, offer the amulet on the altar of your own alignment, and celebrate your well-earned victory.

Semi-critical areas

Some dungeon branches in the game should be completed, because not completing them causes certain other, mandatory areas of the dungeon to be much harder. These are shown in this section.

Optional areas

Here, the various optional dungeon branches are shown. The player is free to ignore them, as completing them isn't required for winning the game. Most branches give at least one Junethack trophy when completed, and usually also have some sort of reward.

Note: Unlike vanilla NetHack, most special levels in SLEX aren't guaranteed to exist in a given game; they may randomly be replaced with filler levels. This includes levels that have trophies on them. If the trophy is granted for beating a boss, the player can still get lucky to have the boss spawn randomly somewhere; for such trophies it doesn't matter where the boss was when the player killed them. However, trophies obtained by picking up specific items on the level, e.g. the luckstone in Mines End or the prize on the final Sokoban floor, cannot be obtained if the pertaining special level didn't generate, because there is no way to make the item in question appear after the level was generated. This means that the player has to get lucky to have the special levels generate if they want a trophy, and may have to try repeatedly with several characters until the trophy-bearing level generates.

Resting Zones

To be continued...