User:Furey

Furey on NAO (stats, games, deaths, dumplogs, ttyrecs)

Introduction

My goal is to help more players survive longer. If this page helps, that would be great!

My measurable metric is for the lowest score on NAO Top 2000 scores for the past 365 days to be an ascension.

Acknowledgements

arseniy

Early Game

Use pets

If you take care of your initial pet, you will play slower, and you will live longer.

Your pet can curse-test objects. Your pet can fight alongside you. Your pet can attack peaceful monsters without penalty. Your pet can fight leprechauns and nymphs with impunity. Your pet can steal items from shops. Your pet can step on traps before you do.

A dog or cat will feed itself. A horse needs attention. Husband your apples and carrots and lichen corpses.

If your pet gets too hungry, and you are out of food, it is better to abandon them then let them starve. You can come back and re-tame them if you acquire sufficient food.

If you meet more tameable monsters, tame some of them. I find three pets to be about the best number.

I let my pets go a little after I finish Sokoban.

Engrave-test and use wands

A wand can be useful as soon as you find it, even without checking for cursedness.

First, engrave Elbereth on the ground with your fingertip. Then engrave with the wand. Answer yes to "add to engraving". This will formally identify some wands and informally identify many more wands. See Wand#Engrave-identification for complete information.

After you engrave-test a wand, type-name it something appropriate.

Use your wands early and often. A wand has a certain fixed power; both you and the monsters get stronger as time goes on, so wands get less useful over time. In a normal game most players find dozens more wands than they will ever use. Just be careful not to hurt yourself with ray rebounds.

If you are fortunate enough to engrave with a wand of wishing, then wish for 3 blessed scrolls of charging so that you can recharge the wand. After that, take care of the essential trinity: poison resistance, magic resistance, and reflection. After that, wish for anything you want. A game with an early wand of wishing is nearly always ascendable.

Fight for every point of AC

In the early game, every +1 or +2 helps. An AC 0 character will live a lot longer than an AC 4 character.

Use your pet or an altar to curse test lots of armor. You can also price-identify armor; anything that has a sell price higher than normal has plus enchantment and is almost never cursed (exception: armor from bones piles.)

If your character is a spellcaster, you can usually wear metal helmets, boots, and gloves with an acceptable penalty. But if you wear metal body armor or shield, you will become a noncasting tank for a while. Sometimes this is a good trade-off; sometimes not.

I adjust my inventory so my armor is on the same letters every game. That makes it easier to wear-test a lot of armor after I get it curse-tested.

Use the same inventory letters every game

The more letters you reserve, the more your muscle memory can help you.

It's not important which letters you choose, but it is important that you choose something.

I have reserved letters for:

• worn amulet
• primary weapon, secondary weapon, primary throwing weapons, secondary throwing weapons
• shirt armor, body armor, cloak, helmet, shield (if any), boots, gloves
• lizard corpses
• holy water
• primary ring, secondary ring, tertiary ring, quaternary ring
• primary wand (if i have a favorite)
• blindfold or towel, primary bag, secondary bag, key or lock pick, lamp, mirror, camera, stethoscope, unihorn, pick-axe, tinning kit, musical instrument
• luckstone

You don't need the whole megillah. Just a pick a few of these, especially armor. Add more over time.

Use rocks, darts, daggers, and spears

You hit them. They don't hit you. Projectile weapons are great.

In the very early game, grab a few rocks. Use them for floating eyes, F class monsters, and j class monsters.

Check the multishot page for your class. If you can multishot any projectile weapon, then collect those weapons and enhance that skill.

Rocks and darts will sometimes mulct when you throw them. Daggers and spears never mulct.

Unless you are playing a ranger, don't bother with projectile weapons that require a launcher. Switching between launcher and primary takes time and you don't get a strength bonus for launched projectiles.

Harvest the Gnomish Mines

You can get experience, daggers, armor, edible corpses, bone piles, and a pick-axe. If you survive to Mine Town, then you can buy and sell and price-identify at shops, buc-test at the altar, and occassionally score a magic lamp from Izchak.

If you are dying a lot in the upper mines, then spend more time preparing before the enter the mines.

Get a pick-axe or a dwarvish mattock. Attack a peaceful dwarf if you have to. Or let your pet do the dirty work.

A dwarvish mattock does a lot of damage. If you can enhance pick-axe skill, and your primary weapon is mediocre, you might want to use a dwarvish mattock for a while.

Each level of the gnomish mines has at least one tool (except for Mine Town and Mines' End).

Be wary of groups of orcs using poisoned projectiles. You have to run around corners and let them come to you in melee.

Dig out vaults

Whenever you hear a vault sound, #annotate the level with the word "vault".

After you get a pick-axe, dig out all the vaults.

Use a bag

Start using a bag as soon as you can. A bag protects items from damage and theft.

First use your pet or an altar to curse-test the bag. If the bag is cursed, then you have to price-id it. A bag that sells for $1 is a sack and you can safely use it even if it is cursed. A unidentified bag that sells for more than $1 is not safe to use if it is cursed.

If you find a noncursed bag, put it on the ground and loot it. If the bag is a bag of tricks, it will bite you for 1d10 damage. You cannot use a bag of tricks to keep your items in, although you can use it for other things later.

Set up a stash

Set up a stash as soon as you find a large box or a chest that you can open. Bring your unidentified items to your stash. Optionally, you can protect your stash by rolling a boulder on it when you are not using it.

You can also set up an open stash with no container. Just drop items in a pile near a staircase. A boulder is even more useful for an open stash.

You can have more than one stash. Later on, after you have a noncursed bag of holding, you can consolidate stashes.

Dig behind iron bars

If you see iron bars, and you have a digging tool, then dig around the bars. You will find a scroll behind the bars. There may be other items along with the scroll. The scroll (or one of the scrolls) is a scroll of teleportation, a very handy escape item.

Track your prayer timeout

Your prayer timeout is usually about 800 to 1000 turns. (As with many NetHack features, the exact formula is complicated.) Whenever you pray, use the name command to name one of your individual objects, such as a key, with the turn number that you prayed on. I use the notation [pray:1234] to mark the turn number. Later on, when you get in a jam, you can check the turn counter to decided whether to pray or whether to try another tactic.

Options

Edit your configuration file and set and unset some options. Depending on your NetHack server, your configuration file may already have some of these.

Set autopickup and pickup_thrown

So you can pick up your thrown missile weapons.

Set autodig

So you can get into vaults faster.

Set !cmdassist

You don't need the game to blort a picture at you every time you mistype a direction.

Set dark_room

TBD

== Set hilite_pet and hilite_pile

So you can tell which monsters not to hit and which tiles to look for more objects on.

Set !legacy

Everything on your screen should be beautiful or useful. The introductory legacy message is neither after the first 10 times.

paranoid_confirmation

TBD

showexp

TBD

!sparkle

TBD

statuslines:3

TBD