Forum:Just a new player passing through

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I am a relatively new player, and I have played a few (unlucky) Games. On of which I died before I could even control my character. Is there an expert to inform me of the basics of this game? Just a few things that I must know before playing again. Maybe also tell me the pros and cons of each character and a few things about what monsters I should look out for.

Well, I'm an up-and-coming player, about five years into my "Nethack career," and just beginning to hit my prime. I'm no expert, but I remember being a beginner, so I'm very familiar with the kind of mistakes you're liable to make and I'm still very concerned with avoiding them myself.

On the first level, there'll be on average two or three monsters that have a fair chance of killing you if you're not careful. It sounds strange, but run from kittens. Until your Exp level is 5, avoid them like the plague. When the gods of the TrueDevteam wove together Nethack, they made kittens a little less high then the Aleaxes. The reason is so that your own kitten can protect you while you're still weak in the first two or three levels.

But you won't encounter too many of those. Kobolds aren't too challenging, but they'll throw darts at you, which will kill you if you don't watch out. Get close quickly and kill them fast.

If you see an orc before your Exp level is three or four, run. Anything represented by '@' is also pretty tough. Newts are fine, lichens seldom ever kill players, and grid bugs are pathetically weak. Use these to rack up Exp points to level up. When newts, geckos, foxes, jackals and other weak enemies (NOT Kobolds, they're toxic) leave corpses, eat them. Hunger will kill you, or something else will while you're passing out from hunger. Always collect all the food you can find, and drop money or gems before food if you're carrying too much.

Don't go in the mines until you're at least Exp level 5, maybe 7 if you don't have good armor. Read about the mines here: Gnomish Mines

Always try and get something to throw or shoot, and hurt enemies before they can hurt you.

And mostly you should play Valkyries and maybe Samurai until you get the hang of the early levels. There's no such thing as beginner's luck in Nethack, so you'll need the strongest characters to cut your teeth on. And remember, we women are so great that the Devteam made the toughest character exclusively female. Valkyries: use them.

Signed, J. Marie Stanton, professional Valkyrie JMarieStanton (talk) 17:50, 22 September 2017 (UTC)