Fort Ludios

Fort Ludios
Location	Level 1 of Fort Ludios
Bones	No
Mappable	Yes
Teleportable	No
Diggable floor	No
Diggable walls	No

Fort Ludios is a branch of the Mazes of Menace in NetHack, consisting of a single special level. The code internally refers to the level as Fort Knox. Fort Ludios is ineligible to leave bones files, and is a no-teleport level.

The branch is accessed through a magic portal found in a vault between dungeon level 10 and Medusa's Island. Any vault generated in this range has a ¹⁄₃ chance of containing the portal to Ludios, if it has not already been generated - the Rogue level and the Big Room cannot contain vaults, and a vault on the quest portal level will never contain a portal to Ludios. As such, it is accessible in 74.9% of all games.

Within Fort Ludios lies the riches of Croesus, who guards them zealously with a series of traps and hordes of monsters, including many Yendorian army fighters.

Map

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Entering Fort Ludios through the magic portal will place you on the other end at the bottom-left of the map, which is also used to exit the level. As soon as you enter the floor, an alarm will sound, waking up all monsters on the floor - this will continue to happen every time you enter until Croesus is dead.

The zoo (with inhabitants marked "z"), fort, and barracks are lit; the other areas are unlit. All walls and floors are undiggable, but all walls and the solid rock at the outside of the level are phaseable.

The barracks and zoo have typical monster and item generation for those room types, as does the central throne room - the inhabitants are marked with "t", and Croesus himself sits atop the opulent throne. The door leading to the courtyard is locked, and there is a secret passage between the zoo in the southwest and the room in the northwest, which contains a single stone giant. Additionally, 16 soldiers and one lieutenant are generated in the courtyard around the fort; four dragons are placed around the moat, with one for each cardinal direction; and four giant eels are placed within the moat, with two on each side.

The secret door into the throne room, Croesus on his throne, and the secret door to the treasure room each have an independent 50% chance of being shifted up one square. The four corner rooms of the fort contain precious gems: rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and amethysts. The left half of the fort is filled with gold (600–899 zorkmids per square), but also with traps. Each square has a ¹⁄₃ chance of containing a trap; of those that do, ²⁄₃ are land mines and ¹⁄₃ are spiked pits. There are no other traps anywhere on the level.

Strategy

Using the door to your advantage (DECgraphics are enabled)

It may be prudent to obtain reflection before entering in order to better handle the hordes of monsters, particularly the dragons and the Yendorian Army fighters armed with wands. If you have a strong pet, such as a vampire lord, you may choose to whistle it across walls to have it fight the zoo monsters and soldiers without exposing yourself to them - monsters will not use their wands or other ranged attacks against your pet, preserving the wands' charges, though doing this will also make it difficult to monitor their health.

You can also use a source of conflict to have the zoo monsters and/or soldiers thin their own ranks - be careful not to get your pet caught in the crossfire, and mind your own health as well. A scroll of stinking cloud is also quite useful from a reasonable distance. Leftover wands from clearing out the soldiers can then be used against the giant eels in the moat, as can any leftover polearms and lances. See also Movement tactics § Doors for other general crowd-control tactics.

The fort has no drawbridge, so you will need some means of crossing water:

• Fill the moat with boulders using a spare scroll of earth. The guaranteed giant in the stone passage also has a 50% chance of generating with a boulder, though you will want to draw them away from the north wall if you plan to push it into the main area.
• If you are jumping across, you can blast through the door from afar with a force bolt from the spell or a wand of striking, or raze the door with the spell or wand of digging. Additionally, if you detect the door with a wand of secret door detection or the detect unseen spell, one of the throne room inhabitants will open it shortly after.
• Use a wand of cold to freeze the surrounding water. The soldiers are likely to have at least one spare wand, though it may prove difficult to obtain them before all the charges are used up.
• Levitation or flight (e.g., using a flying steed) can carry you across fairly easily - in the former case, be mindful of any remaining giant eels and potential rays of lightning if using the ring of levitation.

Croesus can be a difficult opponent, especially if you are not unencumbered: he hits hard in melee combat and moves at 15 speed, and the throne room monsters accompanying him can be quite dangerous and tough themselves - depending on when they were generated, the horde can include powerful trolls and dragons. The tactics mentioned above can be useful in clearing out the throne room, and Croesus himself can be dispatched with ranged attacks via wands or polearms from across the moat, as indicated by the map to the upper right. Alternatively, you can use a wand of cold to form a bridge, then melt it with a source of fire, e.g., a wand of fire, as he crosses to attack you - beware that his speed may allow him to cross the ice before you can melt it.

Come with a bag of holding if you plan on leaving with all of the gold. Fort Ludios contains around 50,000zm on average, which is about half of a strong character's total carrying capacity. Levitation will allow you to locate the traps with relative safety; otherwise, it is recommended to search all squares before moving in that area.

History

Fort Ludios first appears in NetHack 3.1.0. The secret passage and the stone giant dwelling in the room on its other end are added in NetHack 3.6.1.

The level was subject to a bug where entering with a lit candle lit up the entire entry room except for a corner spot beyond the candle radius; other spots further away than this corner were lit up as well. This was fixed in NetHack 3.6.2.

Messages

You have penetrated a high security area!
An alarm sounds!

You entered Fort Ludios while Croesus was present. The message will no longer print once he is killed.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, the four dragons generated can also include baby dragons as well as any of the newly added species, such as the life-draining deep dragons - drain resistance will prove quite important for characters entering the branch. The building containing the barracks is made into a graveyard with headstones, though there are no undead and the soldiers are still generated inside as normal; the tombs have no loot, but generate a corpse or an undead monster as normal if dug up.

Soldiers in SLASH'EM carry firearms and throw frag and gas grenades, making them quite a bit more dangerous and likely requiring fire resistance and poison resistance to deal with. The grenades can also set off other grenades on the ground or in other soldiers' inventories, causing a chain reaction that can destroy both the enemy soldiers and potential loot. While much of the strategy used in vanilla NetHack also applies here, those looking to maximize their gains from Ludios should pick up and throw armed grenades far from groups of soldiers and/or their loot.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, the portal is much more likely to generate as of version 5.1.0: it will always be in the first vault generated below level 10, provided that floor does not contain the Quest portal. As of UnNetHack 6, a portal to the branch will generate on Medusa's Island if one does not appear in the main dungeon branch.

Beginning in version 3.5.1, there are two new possible maps for the level:

• knox-2 (Winterly Fort Ludios)
• knox-3 (Minas Tirith?)

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The first new map has a near-identical structure on the western end of the level to that of the original NetHack map, including the zoo and portal room. The courtyard of the level is unlit as before, but is also divided by a river of water that is partially frozen, with the ice forming a small bridge across the water. The barracks have been relocated to the southeastern portion of the map, with the fort to the north of it; the fort's structure itself is unchanged.

In addition to the standard sixteen soldiers and lieutenant in the courtyard, there is a second lieutenant placed in front of the icy river, with a wand of fire on their square; one of the four dragons stationed around the fort is instead placed next to the river near the northern end.

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The second new map also has a near-identical western structure which opens up into a courtyard divided by a pair of ringwalls; the entire level is lit unlike the other two maps. The map is internally named for the city of Minas Tirith, a fortress-city located within Gondor in the setting of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

Sixteen soldiers and two lieutenants are stationed between the entrance room and the first ringwall. Both ringwalls are filled with outposts surrounded by iron bars and blocked off by moats; as the level is undiggeable, the iron bars cannot be destroyed (though they can be phased through). These outposts are each populated by random hostile centaurs, with eight in the first ringwall and sixteen in the second; each centaur also has a ¹⁄₂ chance of a wand being generated on their square, which they will use alongside their bow and arrows to shoot at you from their outposts. Each ringwall also has three pairs of closed drawbridges that block passage between the sections of the courtyard.

The fort beyond the ringwalls is redesigned as well, with the barracks situated to the north and south of an open area that has a tree surrounded by fountains in the middle; four dragons are placed in this courtyard at level creation. A long hallway connects the two barracks, and is populated by various hostile elves: five Grey-elves, five Woodland-elves, three Green-elves, an elf-lord, and Elvenking. A secret door on the southern half of the hall leads into the throne room of the fort itself - both it and the treasure room in the north are more trapezoidal in shape. There are also six treasure rooms instead of four spread between the north and south portions of the fort, though only the four corner rooms will contain valuable gems as usual.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, the portal to Fort Ludios is also placed in the first available vault generated below level 10, similar to UnNetHack. EvilHack also uses the same selection maps for the level as UnNetHack, with the addition of the secret passage and stone giant from NetHack to the maps imported from UnNetHack. The third Fort Ludios map also replaces two of the Woodland-elves stationed in the hall between the barracks with elven wizards.

The centaurs are a much bigger danger to crossing, since their bolts and arrows can have object properties, and they are able to use more wands against the character, including the wand of slow monster and the potentially devastating wand of polymorph.