User:Furey/Furey's NetHack Tips

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.

These tips are for NetHack 3.6.7.

Acknowledgements

arseniy, grasshopper loggers, roke, tjw, umbire

disperse for the sokoban practice page.

Early Game

Use pets

Learn all the tameable monsters: cats, dogs, horses, and apes. Learn what foods work with each of them.

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

Your pets can curse-test objects. Your pets can fight alongside you. Your pets can attack peaceful monsters without penalty. Your pets can fight leprechauns and nymphs with impunity. Your pets 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 a 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.

For hedering pets, a magic whistle is best. A leash is good too. A tin whistle is better than nothing.

You can also pacify a tameable monster by throwing food at it, even if the food is not suitable food for taming the monster. Even when you do not want a pet (or another pet), taming or pacifying a cat, dog, horse, or ape may stop it from killing you. This is especially important if you encounter a strong pet near a bones pile.

If you find a wand of speed monster, zapping your pets will make them a lot stronger.

If you find a wand of polymorph, polymorphing your pets may open up your game a lot. Try it!

I let my pets go after we win the Sokoban Zoo battle.

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. Alternatively, you can engrave an 'x', the traditional mark of an illiterate character, to preserve illiterate conduct.

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; even then, you still might want to wear that +3 small shield no matter what its beatitude.

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, 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
• the bell of opening, the candelabrum of invocation, the book of the dead, and the amulet of yendor
• touchstone, luckstone

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

Look for choke points

As you explore the dungeon, look for choke points where you can retreat if you need to. A choke point is a tile where only one monster at a time can get at you in melee. In the main dungeon and in Sokoban, the corridors are natural choke points, especially tiles just outside of doors. In the Gnomish Mines, you have to find turns and corners that make choke points.

Use rocks, darts, daggers, and spears

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

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.

How to survive bones

First problem is often a feral pet. Don't fight it, tame it! As usual, tripe or rations for a dog or cat; lichen corpse or veggie food for a horse. Even if you do not have suitable food, you can throw nearly any food at any dog, cat, or horse, and the food will pacify the monster.

Second problem is the ghost. Really not a problem, as the ghost is very slow, so you can usually walk away from it. If you really want to kill the ghost, but are having trouble hitting it, then try kicking it instead -- kicking uses a different attack chance than hitting.

Third problem is the inventory. Most of the objects on the ground have been cursed. However, objects inside a bag or other container have not been cursed. If the bag is a sack, you can just loot the sack with no problems; a cursed sack has no liabilities, it just behaves the same as any other sack. Same goes for an oilskin sack.

If the bag is a bag of holding, you can uncurse it by picking it up and dipping it in holy water or reading a scroll of remove curse on it. You can also uncurse a bag of holding by zapping a wand of cancellation on it (be sure to move all the other objects to a different tile first). Cancelling a cursed bag of holding cancels only the "cursed" part, making it an uncursed bag of holding, and not affecting any of its contents in any way.

If you cannot uncurse a bones bag of holding some way, then you can tip it. This will get you 12/13 of the items; the other 1/13 will be lost.

Most cursed objects are not useful until you can uncurse them. A few objects are useful even when cursed. A cursed amulet works as well as a noncursed amulet, except that you cannot take it off. A cursed sack functions as well as noncursed sack. A cursed skeleton key works fine. A cursed +3 small shield from valkyrie bones is likely to be useful for a long time; so is a cursed cloak of magic resistance from wizard bones. A cursed magic marker can write Elbereth. A cursed stethoscope or a cursed magic whistle are better than nothing. And unholy water has specialized uses later in the game.

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.

Buying the first round of intrinsic protection is a major goal in the early game.

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.

Poison Resistance

So important it gets its own section.

Poison resistance is the first part of the essential triangle: poison resistance, magic resistance, reflection. I have ascended without reflection, and I have ascended without magic resistance, but never without poison resistance.

One way to get poison resistance is to choose orc for your race.

Another way to get poison resistance is to choose barbarian, healer, or monk for your role. Barbarians and healers start the game with poison resistance. Monks get poison resistance when they reach experience level 3.

For most other characters, the hero will get poison resistance by eating an appropriate corpse. While you play, keep a tab open on the Nethackwiki page for poison resistance. Eat any corpse that is safe and has a chance of granting poison resistance. Also eat most things that are unsafe and have a chance of granting poison resistance. (I skip yellow molds and tengus, but I eat everything else.) Eating a poisonous corpse will not instakill you and may grant PR.

A tinning kit will transform a poisonous PR-granting corpse into a non-poisonous PR-granting tin. It comes with way more charges than you need, so use it freely.

An apron will grant PR as long as you wear it. When you get the message "you feel especially healthy", that means you have gained intrinsic PR, and you no longer need to wear the apron.

An unidentified amulet or an unidentified ring might protect your strength, as well. Again, watch out for "you feel especially healthy". That means you already had extrinsic PR (from an object) and just gained intrinsic PR.

If you don't have any PR, and you eat an unsafe corpse, you may lose some strength as well as some hit points. If you have a unihorn, great, you can fix the strength immediately. If you don't have a unihorn, eat those unsafe poisonous corpses anyways! It's better to have a strength of 8 and get PR, compared to preserving a strength of 18/01, and not have PR and get insta-killed. You can fix all your strength loss later when you do get a unihorn.

If your strength gets too wrecked (like str 3), pick up a bunch of rocks or other junk, make yourself overloaded, and pray.

Middle Game

Use the travel command

This command saves a lot of time when you are collecting objects from all over the dungeon for your stash.

Sokoban

https://dispersemedia.com/sokoban/ is a good place to practice boulder pushing.

If a monster gets between your boulder and the next pit or hole, throw projectiles at it, preferably cheap ones such as darts.

If a pet gets between your boulder and the next pit or hole, use a magic whistle. If you do not have a magic whistle, then you have a problem. One solution is to leave the level and come back later after your pet loses tameness, then kill it. Another solution is to destroy the boulder. However, there is a luck penalty for destroying a Sokoban boulder, and if your luck is bad, that interferes with wishing and praying. I avoid the problem by keeping my pets one level away when I am pushing boulders.

If you see in an object in a pit, just go pick it up. If you see an object in a hole, you can turn on autopickup for that object class and plunge into the hole (no luck penalty), or you can push a boulder into the hole, use a pick-axe to dig a pit, pick up the object, and continue playing (no luck penalty, but does use up a boulder), or you kick the object (bad idea for potions and other breakable objects, also a bad idea on the level with the zoo. Kicking makes noise and wakes up monsters on the level.)

Bring pets to the Sokoban Zoo

I like to leave my pets one level away while I push boulders so they don't get in the way. You can try keeping pets on the same level as your hero if you want.

When you reach the door of the zoo, put your strongest pet next to the door, and yourself one tile away. Check the door for traps ten times. Do not make noise (so do not use a tin whistle or a cursed magic whistle). Stealth helps but is not essential.

Open the door quietly to preserve stealth. Then walk away from the door, displacing your other pets until you are at the back. Be patient.

During the fight, take advantage of the sight lines to throw projectiles, throw more food at tameable zoo monsters, and zap wands. The Sokoban zoo is the hardest fight for a long time, so use your wands freely. When a wand becomes empty, individual-name it as 'empty' (this is a free action) and keep zapping with the next wand.

After the battle, I usually leave my surviving pets behind on the Sokoban zoo level.

You don't need two bags of holding

After you find one bag of holding, you have enough. If you find a second bag of holding, do not even pick it up. Just loot it on the ground. You can annotate the level 'boh on ground' if you want.

If you want a second bag, get an oilskin sack or a sack. (I use a primary boh and a secondary sack).

There are a few exceptions.

• You encounter a bones pile, and you have holy water or remove curse, and want to uncurse the bag that way.
• You are collecting magical tools for polyfodder.
• You are playing TNNT and getting the Sokoban prize achievement. Just pick up the Sokoban prize bag and drop it.
• You are playing TNNT and want to donate the second bag of holding to a swap chest. (They are popular!)

Magic resistance

Magic resistance is the second part of the essential triangle: poison resistance, magic resistance, reflection.

Without MR, you are vulnerable to several wands (including striking, magic missile, and death); polymorph traps; levelport traps; several high-powered monster spells including Destroy Armor and Touch of Death; and several high-powered monsters, including Angels and Death (Rider). With MR, these attacks do little to no damage.

I have ascended only once without MR. (My hero was a samurai.)

There are only a few ways to obtain MR.

• Wield Magicbane.
• Wear gray dragon scale mail or gray dragon scales.
• Wear a cloak of magic resistance. Most players who choose this pair it with silver dragon scale mail.
• Several quest artifacts grant magic resistance.

Rodney can steal quest artifacts, and Rodney can also cast Touch of Death. Therefore it is dangerous to rely on a quest artifact as the only source of magic resistance as long as Rodney can come (which usually starts the Rodney wakes inside the Wizard Tower to the time the hero enters the Astral Plane).

Reflection

Reflection is the third part of the essential triangle: poison resistance, magic resistance, reflection.

Without reflection, you are vulnerable to many wands; the breath weapons of several monsters; and the stoning gaze of Medusa. Besides damage to your hit points, these attacks damage the objects in your inventory!

I have ascended without reflection. (I don't recall whether I genocided black dragons or not.)

There are several ways to obtain reflection:

• Wear an amulet of reflection. 50% chance of getting one as the Sokoban prize.
• Wield Dragonbane. But then you're stuck wielding Dragonbane. Sometimes this is the only available choice.
• Wear silver dragon scale mail or silver dragon scales.
• Wear a shield of reflection. This precludes spellcasting. Often available from the statue of Perseus on the Medusa level.
• Wield the Longbow of Diana quest artifact.

Spells

Essential spells: magic missile, identify, remove curse, charm monster.

It is possible to ascend without these spells (or any spells), but I find these four spells make the game faster and easier.

A robe helps. So does not wearing a shield. If your character can two-weapon then you usually do not want a shield after the beginning game anyways.

Levelling up helps. In particular, there is a discontinous drop in failure rate at XP21 for casting level 3 spells with unskilled casting.

How to Kill a Temple Priest

Use a pick-axe to dig out one wall of the temple. If there is not already a corridor there, also dig out one line of tiles beyond the wall.

Stand on the line of tiles beyond the wall. Throw an aklys, or projectile weapons, or use wands, or use spells.

Because you are outside the temple, the temple's diety will not zap you. The priest will stay near the altar and will not come over to fight you in melee. The priest may summon insects; be prepared to melee a bunch of ants.

It helps to be very fast and unburdened so you can keep the priest lined up for attacks.

Usual penalty for murder applies: a lawful or neutral hero loses two points of luck and telepathy. You might want to carry some tins of floating eye.

Be careful about alignment. If you kill a co-aligned priest, you will lose all divine protection.

You can even murder the priest of Moloch in Valley of the Dead and the high priest of Moloch in the Sanctum. You can't dig walls there, but you can still line up the priest for ranged attacks.

I have not tried this method in minetown so I do not know if this technique will anger the watch. And I have not tried this method on the high priests on the Astral Plane.

Get your genocide on

Genocide L h ; as soon as you can.

Genocide L because even if real L cannot spawn yet, a shape changer can shift into L, teleport to you, and hose you. (Besides genocide, another defense is a ring of protection from shape changers).

Genocide h because re-doing levels and identifies is a drag. Of course, if your hero is a dwarf, do not genocide h! Rather, use two uncursed genocide (not blessed genocide) on master mind flayer and mind flayer.

Genocide ; because there are a lot of drowners in the dungeon, starting with swamps, some quest levels, and the Medusa level. Some players prefer to use other techniques on all the drowners up to the Planes, then enter the Plane of Water, then genocide ; so that there are fewer monsters on the Plane of Water. I prefer not to encounter drowners and just have more unhazardous water elementals.

As of this writing, https://alt.org/nethack/top60d.html shows 19 deaths from drowning and zero deaths on the Plane of Water.

If I have more genocide resources, I like to genocide P (a cause of instadeath), c (another cause of instadeath), and R (a nuisance).

Some players like to genocide m to force more objects in the Orcus town shops. I don't do this because I usually have all my objects before Orcus town.

Genoless is a valid conduct, and if you want to play genoless, that is fine. (I've done it several times.) But don't play genoless unless you actually mean to play genoless.

Fort Ludios

Don't Drown

Don't step on any tile next to a moat tile until all moat monsters are dead.

You can use telepathy or warning to find the moat monsters. You can use an aklys, projectile weapons, spells, wands, or a pole-arm to fight them. You don't even need skill or high strength if you throw enough projectiles, and there's a great big heap of knives, daggers, and spears available to you.

Moat monsters do not respawn, so once they are dead, you can safely step on tiles adjacent to the moat.

Besiege the Throne Room from outside

Destroy the door with a wand of striking, a wand of digging, or a spell of force bolt. Several other wands also work.

After you destroy the door, don't go charging into the throne room. Stay on your side of the moat and use ranged attacks to kill most of the monsters inside. A ring of conflict helps, too.

This battle is a good place to use up a lot of attack wands, which are not much use in most of the dungeon by this point.

Have a plan for Croesus

Croesus hits very hard. It's good to put some hits on him or kill him before you cross the moat. If you are carrying any potions or wands to help with the fight, get them into open inventory before engaging Croesus in melee.

Croesus is vulnerable to wands and spells, although you may need to try several times.

Rodney

Short circuit the Wizard Tower

Here is a very fast strategy for the Wizard Tower.

• Before you enter the portal to Wizard Tower, have these objects: two cursed scrolls of teleportation, a cursed potion of invisibility, and a ring of teleport control (or you can have intrinsic teleport control from another source, such as being a wizard with XP 17 or higher).
• Step into the portal to enter the tower.
• Read the first cursed scroll of teleport. Select a level number that is 2 floors up from the tower entrance.
• Quaff a cursed potion of invisibility.
• In about two or three turns, Rodney will wake up and teleport to you.
• Kill Rodney. Wand of death or whatever.
• Pick up the Book of the Dead.
• Read the second cursed scroll of teleport. Select level number 99.
• Optional: read one more noncursed scroll of teleport and teleport right on top of the vibrating square.

If you get all the steps right, then you can enter the tower, kill rodney, get the book, get to the vibrating square, start the invocation, and finish the invocation in ten turns.

Expel Rodney

You can expel Rodney from the dungeon.

• After the first time you kill Rodney, levelport to dlvl 1.
• Walk or teleport to the upstairs.
• Wait for Rodney to respawn.
• Beat up Rodney. (You must be capable of beating up Rodney without instakilling him.)
• When Rodney drops below 50 hp (roughly), he will get scared and retreat.
• Rodney will retreat by going up the dlvl 1 stairs and escaping the dungeon.
• After this, you will never see Rodney again. Not even on the plane of earth.

If Rodney casts Double Trouble, then you have to kill or expel one Rodney, and then expel the other Rodney before he casts Double Trouble again.

Even after you expel Rodney, the game will still hassle you with item cursing and summon nasties. Rodney will not take part in the hassling though.

I do this when I play monk, because I play monk with full restrictions (vegan, no wielded weapon, no body armor, no shield). Lack of body armor really constrains the character build. I use an amulet of reflection, a robe, and the eyes of the overworld for magic resistance. During the Rodney phase, it is not safe to rely on my quest artifact for magic resistance. So I swap out the robe and wear a cloak of magic resistance. After I expel Rodney, I swap back to robe, and rely on the eyes of the overworld for magic resistance for the rest of the game.

End Game

Leave the Sanctum in Style

After picking up the Amulet of Yendor, I like to stand on the altar of Moloch, break a wand of digging (does not destroy the altar but I try), bag test the Amulet, and quaff a cursed potion of gain level. This avoids a lot of anticlimactic walking and fighting. As a bonus, I do not have to cross the fire traps and moat created by the invocation.

Dlvl 1 Upstairs

Leave your junk behind

When you reach the upstairs on dlvl 1, take some time to drop things. You will never use scrolls of teleportation or a ring of teleport control again. Drop them. You will never use the invocation tools again (except maybe the Candelabrum, if you actually use its light for jumping.) Drop them. Same with a lot of wands. I actually use: death, digging (plane of earth and doors on astral plane), light, probing, speed, teleportation, wishing. Everything else gets left behind.

Some of this junk does add to score. Score is not important. It does not matter if you ascend with 4.4 million points or 4.5 million points. And if you have chosen to go for a high score, killing more monsters is much better than carrying more objects.

Bag test the Amulet of Yendor

The very last move I make before ascending the upstairs is put the Amulet of Yendor in a bag. If I can't find the Amulet, then I get the hell off those stairs and rethink. If the Amulet actually goes into the bag, then I get the hell off those stairs and rethink. If I get a message "The Amulet of Yendor cannot be confined in such trappings", then I am good to go.

If something happens during this test, or I remember something to do, then I re-do the bag test. My screen says "The Amulet of Yendor cannot be confined in such trappings" when I hit the < key.

Plane of Earth

Previously, I have identified all my wands of digging to find the good ones. I bring 3 wands of digging with 22-24 charges. I have never used more than 10 charges.

If you haven't identified some good wands of digging, bring about 5 wands to be sure you have 10 charges.

Drop the unused wands (and your pick-axe if you still have it) before leaving this plane.

Plane of Air

Use a bugle

The Plane of Air has the hardest hitting monsters and the freest travel for them to reach you, which also means the freest travel for them to run away from you.

Plane of Fire

Turn off the sparkle option if you haven't already.

The Plane of Fire is notorious for voluminous messages. I like to wear a towel or a blindfold and then track the monsters via monster detection (either a blessed potion or a skilled-or-higher spell). Some players use telepathy or warning instead.

Plane of Water

Use scrolls of magic mapping

After you discover the portal once, a scroll of magic mapping will show you its current location, as well as the current position of all the bubbles.

Prep for Astral Plane

Use the peace and quiet of the bubbles to get out any amulets, wands, potions, scrolls, cameras, missile weapons. Once you go through that portal things are going to happen fast.

Eat some food and get satiated.

Check your amulet to be sure it's the amulet you want for astral plane. If you use amulets of life saving, carry all the spares in open inventory, not in your bag. Because when the first one crumbles, you want to get the second one around your neck as soon as possible.

Check your armor, too.

Drop any junk you won't be using on Astral Plane. You should already be unburdened, but the lighter your load, the better you will be if your bag of holding gets cursed.

Astral Plane

Get your equipment out of your bag

Lethal attacks come fast on the Astral Plane. If you have reflection, then your objects are safe in open inventory. So get out your amulets of life saving, a couple of potions of full healing, your wands of death and teleport, and anything else you will need in a hurry. (You can even do this on the Plane of Water before stepping through the portal.)

Besides saving a turn when you need it later, going over your objects will help you as a player be psychologically ready to use them.

Use blessed potions of monster detection

Better than a blindfold.

Use a camera

A camera can blind a Rider, who will then wander around not attacking you.

Use multishot projectiles

These are for the Riders. Riders have devastating melee attacks, no ranged attacks, and a relatively small number of hit points.

You have to prepare the projectiles throughout the game. You have to pick a projectile appropriate for your role, enhance it to maximum skill, gather the projectiles, enchant them, rustproof or fireproof them, and bless them. Optionally, you can poison some projectile types; Riders have poison resistance, but a surprising number of other monsters do not. In particular, the player monsters on the Astral Plane do not have poison resistance.

A dagger does 1d4 damage. However, a +7 dagger does 1d4+7 damage. A +7 dagger thrown by a hero with 18/** strength or 25 strength does 1d4+13 damage. Three or four of those will kill a Rider.

Beware of Vorpal Blade

A player monster with Vorpal Blade can instakill you. There are several defenses.

• Acquire Vorpal Blade yourself before you enter the Astral Plane.
• Wear an amulet of life saving.
• Use a wand of probing on each player monster to see their inventory.
• If a player monster not known to be safe gets within melee range, teleport them away.

Do not use Mjollnir

Mjollnir does 1d4 damage to large monsters, plus 1d25 shock damage. Most of the monsters on Astral Plane are immune to shock damage. You can tell this by noticing the lack of messages about shock damage.

Use wands of teleport freely

I like to kill everything between me and a Rider, blind the Rider with a camera, kill the Rider safely with ranged attacks, advance to the tile with the Rider corpse, and then use a wand of teleport to clear the next couple of monsters. That way I can get far away from the Rider corpse before it revives.

Rubber chicken

Some players like to wish for a blessed partly eaten chickatrice corpse and wield it. This is particularly effective on the Astral Plane because there are no traps (unless you create them yourself).

Beware that the Riders are immune to stoning.

Purple rain

Bring a cursed scroll of genocide. Read the scroll and summon purple worms. Tame the purple worms (spell, scroll, or magic harp). Optionally, break a wand of speed to speed up the purple worms. Then break a wand of teleport to disperse the worms throughout the Astral Plane.

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.

However, when I play monk, I turn off autodig. This helps me preserve weaponless conduct.

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

!sparkle

The sparkle option is fun for a while, but the game will go a little faster when you turn it off.

statuslines:3

statuslines can be set to either 2 or 3, with a default value of 2. Set statuslines:3. This makes important status information more readable.

Player psychology

In NetHack, there is a player: the human being or bot who is playing the game. And there is a hero: the character inside the game who fights monsters, becomes more powerful, and seeks the Amulet.

A lot of tips, including mine, are directed towards the hero. Such tips assume that the player is calm, rested, and thinking carefully about each turn. This is true if the player is a bot. It is often not true if the player is a human being.

Planner!Me versus Execution!Me

There are two versions of me. Planner!Me figures out goals and strategies. Execution!Me actually plays the game.

Planner!Me can figure out how to ascend without a bag of holding, or indeed, with no bag at all. Execution!Me has been known to 'e'at a cockatrice corpse instead of 'w'ielding it.

It helps only a little to tell Execution!Me to be more careful. Therefore, Planner!Me has adapted my play style so that Execution!Me has less chance to screw it up.

• I have a lot of fixed inventory letters.
• I check the '*' command a lot, especially when a cockatrice or a cockatrice corpse is around.
• I rarely use cockatrice corpses. (They don't work on Riders anyways.)
• When enchanting weapons that are not my primary weapon, I drop my primary weapon on the floor.
• If a monster the same race as me dies on an altar, I move that corpse before I sac any more.
• I avoid picking up a second bag of holding or a bag of tricks. If I need them for polyfodder, then I put them in my secondary sack.
• I avoid the 'A' selector. The 'unknown beatitude' selector is better.
• I mentally tell myself 'wand ops' when I put wands in my stash, I go slow, and I don't select all wands.
• When I play monk, I turn off autodig, and I mentally tell myself 'pickup ops' when I am pick-axing. So my pick-axe speed in turns-per-minute is very slow. But I have gotten good at not hitting monsters with a pick-axe.
• When I play monk, I bring a lot of wands of digging to Gehennom. Safer than a pick-axe.
• I check my AC from time to time, because I am bad at remembering to put on armor after a foocubus encounter.
• I explicitly bag-check the amulet before leaving dlvl 1.
• I check my inventory before leaving the Plane of Water.

Following the Rules

Suppose a hero encounters a wraith corpse, but they are satiated. What to do?

Planner!Me has a rule: do not eat while satiated, unless my hero has unbreathing or life saving. Execution!Me is good at following this rule. I have zero choking deaths on NAO.

As of this writing, https://alt.org/nethack/top60d.html shows 33 deaths by choking (out of 2000 games). Some of them are execution lapses, but some of them are players deciding that getting an intrinsic is worth taking a chance. Human players are peculiar this way. If an action has a reward, but a small chance of a bad outcome, some humans will take the risk. But over the length of a NetHack game, taking small risks is going to hit the bad outcome quite a few times.

So when I make a rule for myself, I work conscientously to follow it. I do miss out on valuable corpses, but I also miss out on choking deaths. And it affects my play style for the better. Look, there's a graveyard, better go rest up and de-satiate myself before killing six wraiths and having to waste the corpses (or play wraith corpse roulette.)

Autopilot versus Turn-By-Turn

For most players, it takes 10,000 to 100,000 turns to ascend a game of NetHack, over a duration of 5 hours to 100 hours. Most human beings cannot concentrate on a turn-by-turn basis for that long. We have to play much of our games on autopilot.

For example, consider how hard it is to play a weaponless monk and not accidentally hit a monster with a pick-axe. It would be easy to program a bot to maintain this conduct, but a human has to pay continous attention, and that increases the cost of auto-piloting.

But if you stay in autopilot at critical moments, then you will quickly lose the game.

As a player, you have to train yourself to recognize signals to turn off autopilot and drop down to turn-by-turn play. Here are some of my triggers:

• Appearance of a nymph
• Appearance of a cockatrice
• Appearance of a rust monster (if I am wearing or wielding any rustable objects)
• Appearance of a lich
• Appearance of a disenchanter
• Finding a wand

Sometimes I use the '# omg' command'. '# omg nymph!!'. NetHack says 'no such command'. From the point of view of the hero, this is nonsense. But from the point of view of the player, it is valuable for shaking yourself out of autopilot.

What am I trying to achieve?

Nethack has a difficulty spike around xp 6, where monsters such as giant ants and leocrottas are dangerous. After the end of the difficulty spike, and before the Castle, there is a lull where hardly any monster is dangerous. Some players (including me) fall into this lull and just bounce around with xp 12 to 14, basically gathering death drops.

I find that it helps to set the next goal, such as: clean out Ludios, get the wand from the Castle, or finish the Quest. Then I focus on that goal. If my hero is not strong enough for that goal then I figure out what they need and pursue that more actively, or I change goals. But always have a goal.

Practice a lot of techniques

How many ways can you deal with a monster?

You could hit it with a melee weapon. You could kick it. You could throw projectiles. You could zap a wand. You could cast a spell. You could pacify or tame it with a scroll. You could build a boulder fort. You could tip a scroll of scare monster onto the ground. You could pray. You could engrave Elbereth. You could lead it over a trap. You could flash it with a camera. You could jump. You could teleport yourself. You could teleport the monster. The list goes on and on.

Learning more techniques is the easy part. You have to practice the techniques so they are in your working set. Then, when an out-of-pocket monster appears (as they do), and you take yourself out of autopilot mode (as you should), then you can use some resource to survive. The more techniques you actually can use in crisis mode, the higher your chances of survival.

Always have an escape plan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znVW3lImO44

And go ahead and use it. A lot of players splat because they do not use their escape items early enough.