Branch

In NetHack, branches are paths you can take within the Mazes of Menace that will lead you to various useful (and often optional) rewards. Branches are not to be confused with special levels, though most branches contain one or more special levels. For example, the Big Room is a special level which is part of the Dungeons of Doom. The monster frequency of randomly-generated monsters in dungeon branches may be biased toward specific alignments.

Below is a list of dungeon branches:

• The Dungeons of Doom, which contains the following dead-end branches:
  • The Gnomish Mines, which is eight or nine levels deep and biased toward lawful alignment.
  • Sokoban, which is always four levels high and biased toward neutral alignment.
  • The Quest, which is 5-7 levels deep and contains your role's quest artifact as well as the Bell of Opening.
  • Fort Ludios, which may be accessible through a magic portal found in a vault.
• Gehennom, which contains the following dead-end branch:
  • Vlad's Tower, which is always 3 levels high, contains the Candelabrum of Invocation, and is biased toward chaotic alignment.
• The Endgame, consisting of the four Elemental Planes and the Astral Plane.

The Wizard's Tower is not considered a dungeon branch, though it behaves similar to one for purposes of level teleportation.

Variants

UnNetHack

UnNetHack makes some changes to existing branches and adds several new ones to the dungeon - see UnNetHack § Branch changes for full details.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack, and notnotdNetHack some minor changes to the layout of the map are made, and four new branches and two additional possible branches are added. See dNetHack's map of the Mazes of Menace for a visual representation of these changes. dNetHack uncludes a few new methods of branchporting as well.

The basic structure of the Mazes of Menace in dNetHack is as follows:

• Dungeons of Doom
• Gnomish Mines
  • Windowless Tower
• Sokoban (dNetHack)
• Quest
• The Lost Tomb
• The Sea
• The Temple of Moloch
• Ludios
• Law quest
• Neutral Quest
  • Lost Cities
  • Shrouded dispensary
• Chaos Quest, which has three possibilites, determined at the start of the game
  • Chaos Temple (chaos1)
  • Mithardir (chaos2)
  • Mordor Ruins (chaos3)
• Gehennom (dNetHack)
• Elemental planes

See also

• The Eye of the Aethiopica, which can be invoked to teleport between dungeon branches.