Forum:YAFAP: My Story, NetHack, and the Wiki
TL;DR: Dwarven Valk, first ascension, 3-conduct (artiwishless, polyless, "true" [à la no "you feel like a new dwarf"] polyselfless) + bonesless + survivor + celibate. https://www.alt.org/nethack/userdata/h/hewsos/dumplog/1767265461.nh367.txt
Featuring: recovering from accidentally wresting out the Castle WoW before charging.
So in September 2024, I was a master's student, struggling with boredom between coursework and research. And then I saw the famous Stack Exchange "cooking" question of "how do I know which corpses are safe to eat?" I looked over some more NetHack questions and –– wow –– it completely blew my mind. I was never a video gamer, but from what I saw, this is different... I found a world of complex interactions, encyclopedic variety, and extremely unforgiving demand for mastery. So I tried out. And died. And kepted dying for many months, and eventually for over a year. The challenge quickly became personal. I saw this as my research project. I want to prove myself, and I want to prove I have studied everything thoroughly. So I died and died. Stepping on rubber chicken while blindfolded in Sokoban? Check. Exploding my BoH? Twice. Got an early wand of wishing and thus a basically guaranteed ascension but ragequit due to frustration with amnesia? ... yes. I have to admit a lot of dying was also due to using the protection racket –– from my personal experience, it was 100% not worth it, at least for dwarven Valkyries. Today –– I, now already a doctoral student, finally ascended, after 4 days of playing on and off.
I don't have a Reddit account (Reddit is too hostile to new users) and I don't know how to use Usenet, so I thought I'd just write this here as a thank-you note to the Wiki, for all the extremely detailed and inspiring knowledge and suggestions it provided me with. Thank you so much!
The Run:
At the time of writing NAO has not produced the files yet, so this is all from memory.
I started the game run with subpar strength but decent constitution. The run to Minetown (grotto variant) was lackluster except I got an early mithril coat. I also got my starting cat killed by the watch (I had 3 other pet cats after this, all were killed by random monsters very quickly). After price-id, altar BUC, and finding a can of grease in a shop (!) I dived into Mines' end (wine cellar variant), and this was where I got closest to YASD in the entire run: either a mumak or a leocrotta (forgot which...) trimmed my HP to a single digit. I was not taking chances so I prayed and survived (in hindsight this meant I could have gone Elberethless –– I never really needed Elbereth).
Anyways in the mines I found TWO magic lamps! I used the coaligned altar I found on level 3 to make holy water, and blessed them, but saved the wishes. My strategy was to let Sokoban dictate the overall build: if I get the amulet, I go for GDSM + CoProtection, and if I get the BoH, I go for SDSM + CoMR. I got the amulet, so I wished for GDSM and the BoH. Experiences in this run, however, made me wonder whether GDSM + CoProtection + "oRef is the optimal solution anyways –– if you need the amulet slot for life saving, it means you could die, and if you could die, then you would likely die again anyways after using up the amulet.
The early wishes made my run to the castle extremely easy. I also threw the gems I got from Mines' end at a unicorn in the Big Room for maxed out luck. I also had a ring of invis, and the Big Room had a stalker, so I got permainvis (I think invisibility is underrated –– I feel like it's worth at least an additional 10 AC, especially for crowd control). I also had a magic lyre, which I considered my escape item. I also highly valued silver sabers, which the watch captain had –– I think the silver damage meant it was basically an artifact against demons. I initially tried to kill him with a cat, but he killed the cat, so after finding 4 floating eyes from the levels leading to the Castle I decided to take my chances and killed him myself (his saber was also cursed -1... dealt with that later). Turns out I had to kill all 4 eyes before one left a corpse. This run has had extremely bad luck in general in the main dungeon: I also dried up many many fountains –– including all the Oracle ones and several more, before getting Excalibur. Another bad thing is that there was only one shop in the main dungeon –– and it was an armor store very early on, from which I got leather gloves and ww boots but nothing else. So price id was difficult.
The Castle was easy, and the lyre allowed me to find the passtune, but either the drawbridge responds with some weird latency or someone blew it up, anyways I did not manage to crush monsters with it, so I just filled the moat with boulders and pushed through. The only noteworthy thing is that I lost my aklys while trying to deal with the sea monsters, and eventually I got bored and just meleed them (I had grease anyways). Turns out from here on I never killed anything with ranged attacks (except /oD) successfully: even when I'm not supposed to melee, melee somehow always turned out to be extremely effective, without consequences. I also tamed a disenchanter (with the lyre) because I did not want to fight him, but he later turned hostile; I think I eventually meleed all four I met during the run without consequences, and later genocided them because I was unhappy with the anxiety.
My wish priority for the Castle Wand was: ?oCharging > ?oGenocide > CoProtection > Marker > =oConflict > =oLevitation > GoP. My eventual genocides were L, ;, disenchanters, and master mfs by the way. But I decided to not follow the seemingly-paranoid suggestion of identifying the wand first from this wiki (I thought I was running low on identification), and Murphy the Angel of RNGesus promptly smote me: I wrested out the last charge. That meant I was heavily lacking in kit: I can't think of a way to get through the endgame without the marker and the two rings. But wait –– I quickly found ANOTHER magic lamp from the Castle maze! I thought the RNG was trying to make it up to me, so I ran back to the closest co-aligned altar, made further holy water, blessed the lamp, and... the ungrateful genie said "you freed me!" without giving a wish!
I altar-farmed a bit using wands and scrolls of create monster, but got nothing but Mjollnir (the only time I used it in this run was to kill a disenchanter). I also did some wraith luring, and used a cursed ?oGen on wraiths as well, to no avail. But I eventually got to quest level and steamrolled through with exactly zero difficulty (I already had fire res). I thought I'd do one last wish before I enter Gehennom... and got crowned. It wasn't very annoying to me, though, because ringless shock res seemed nice, and see invis was a nice bonus.
Excalibur + the silver saber + MC3 was extremely effective. I expected the major demons to be hard, especially with my measly ~15 AC (both of my wished enchantments failed), but in the entirety of Gehennom, nothing ever lowered my HP by more than 20 points (and with my maxed out constitution that meant I was untouchable). Navigation was tedious, but all the demons were pushovers, and I even got Orcus's wand with 4 charges left! And the navigation was worth it: I found all four wiki-recommended ascension rings (conf, lev, free, telecon) in the first few layers
I made a terrible bad move in Orcus town by trying to convert the unaligned altar. I did hesitate, but I Googled instead of consulting the Wiki (forgive me wiki for I have sinned...), and a very misleading forum post said that I can do so. I don't even know what I was thinking –– I knew you couldn't pray in Gehennom so holy water wasn't an option, so what's the point of converting the altar? So now Tyr was angry at me (thankfully I was in Gehennom so I didn't lose protection, or else maybe I would ragequit). I used the Orb + =telecon to get back to my altar base, and camped a bit to reconcile with Tyr (I wanted the prayer as a last resort escape item). I also threw all the castle gems at the Big Room unicorn for luck (turns out only one was real). I then got back and carried on. The only noteworthy thing about the unique monsters was that Vlad had a long sword, and since it was his that meant it had at least a +1 enchantment, so that was my ascension kit offhand weapon. Meanwhile, despite all the hassle I found no magic marker and my hope was getting dimmer and dimmer...
<ShivanHunter> RNGesus, who art in glibc, cryptographically secure be Thy name, give me a goddamn fucking magic marker already (citation: https://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/cjohyg/yaap_11conduct_game_foodless_atheist_wishless/)
... but I eventually found it! I immediately went back to being lazy and mapped everything. And then I started finalizing my ascension kit. (foreshadowing: my plans went horribly wrong due to my stupidity, so I didn't know how well my kit would have worked; comments will be very appreciated!). My plan:
- Main Kit: +6 Excalibur + Vlad's sword, "oRef; armor: CoProt, GDSM, leather gloves, speed boots (found in Gehennom), elven leather helm, Hawaiian shirt (also found in Gehennom, but never managed to enchant). I had around -20 AC.
- Defensive Kit: Rubber Chicken (3 cursed ?oGeno, but 1 is for purple rain), 2 "oLS (one from Vlad, one I picked up randomly) to prevent chicken YASDs, Perseus's shield for reflection instead, armor same as main kit.
- Escape Items: 18 Full Healing pots (from alchemy), 1 ?oSM in a panic button sack, 1 holy water also in the sack (for re-blessing the BoH), 1 cursed !oGL (for the Sanctum), 1 /oD (from Orcus), 1 /oTele, prayer.
- Food: mainly K-rations (fast food), a few food rations for early on, some tripe for gold detection.
- Astral Plan: Rubber Chicken (see defensive kit) + Purple Rain.
- Ring Plan: Free + Conf most of the time, Lev to cross water.
(note how this is actually completely and entirely a spellcasting build... and I indeed had very high intelligence and wisdom for a Valk! except this is pure coincidence –– I never gave spellcasting any thought because melee was too effective).
Everything in Gehennom was extremely smooth. I actually saved a ?oGeno because I found a cockatrice in the Wizard's zoo, and I used the /oD to directly kill Rodney. The mysterious force was indeed a bit harsh but there was no major issue, and my plan worked out perfectly (I especially enjoyed using the cursed !oGL to escape the Sanctum). But at the Castle I forgot lev... and I dropped into the moat!! I lost nearly everything –– all my full healing pots; all my important scrolls (it hurts –– I would especially have loved to see how purple rain works out!!)... I am left without an Astral plan, and without any way to heal.
I carried on nonetheless. Each time Rodney reappeared I /oD'ed him; except on the Plane of Water he cast double trouble the first and only time, my /oD missed, and I just meleed him because I wanted to save the WoD for the Riders and my ?oCharging was blanked. The elemental planes felt extremely easy (except the plane of water was extremely annoying –– I also put on magic breathing there just in case), and I finally arrived on Astral. My heart was beating extremely fast... this is it!
Astral was comparatively harder than the rest. It's the only place after Sokoban where I lost more than 20 HP... and actually at one point lost more than half. But the riders were way easier than expected –– Famine was a joke, Death touched me exactly once, and Pestilence didn't even TRY to attack before I meleed him in two rounds (speed boots are underrated!). I followed the altar order Famine -> Death -> Pestilence, and it turned out only the last altar was the right one. Anyways very fast speed and insect summons meant I can often easily clear out paths through the insects. I also ditched reflection for "oLS (I didn't bother to use the shield), which caused me to lose a lot of stuff (including, eventually, all my rings and all my wands), but at this point I don't care.
So... I, the Hand of Elbereth (I like the crowning title), ascend! With 3 official conducts and 3 unofficial ones –– not bad!
Thank you for reading! I have a lot of workload piling up so I'll take a hiatus. But I think I'll return to the Mazes of Menace again, sooner or later...
Edit: I looked at my dump log and for some reason I mistook the touchstone at Mines' end for the luckstone. Well... that was embarrassing
