Nethack




                      Game System:
                                                             PC
                      Cheat Category:
                                                             Hint
                      Game Company:
                                                             Unknown
                      Game Category:
                                                             Unknown
                      Hint, Cheat, Walkthrough:
                                                              



                      A Guide to the Mazes of Menace

                      Eric S. Raymond
                      (Extensively edited and expanded for 3.0 by Mike Threepoint)
                      Thyrsus Enterprises
                      Malvern, PA 19355



                      1. Introduction

                      You have just finished your years as a student at the local
                      adventurer's guild. After much practice and sweat you have fi-
                      nally completed your training and are ready to embark upon a
                      perilous adventure. To prove your worthiness, the local guild-
                      masters have sent you into the Mazes of Menace. Your quest is to
                      return with the Amulet of Yendor. According to legend, the gods
                      will grant immortality to the one who recovers this artifact;
                      true or not, its recovery will bring honor and full guild member-
                      ship (not to mention the attentions of certain wealthy wizards).

                      Your abilities and strengths for dealing with the hazards of
                      adventure will vary with your background and training.

                      Archeologists understand dungeons pretty well; this enables
                      them to move quickly and sneak up on dungeon nasties. They start
                      equipped with proper tools for a scientific expedition.

                      Barbarians are warriors out of the hinterland, hardened to
                      battle. They begin their quests with naught but uncommon
                      strength, a trusty hauberk, and a great two-handed sword.

                      Cavemen and Cavewomen start with exceptional strength and
                      neolithic weapons.

                      Elves are agile, quick, and sensitive; very little of what
                      goes on will escape an Elf. The quality of Elven craftsmanship
                      often gives them an advantage in arms and armor.

                      Healers are wise in medicine and the apothecary. They know
                      the herbs and simples that can restore vitality, ease pain,
                      anesthetize, and neutralize poisons; and with their instruments,
                      they can divine a being's state of health or sickness. Their
                      medical practice earns them quite reasonable amounts of money,
                      which they enter the dungeon with.

                      Knights are distinguished from the common skirmisher by
                      their devotion to the ideals of chivalry and by the surpassing
                      excellence of their armor.

                      Priests and Priestesses are clerics militant, crusaders ad-
                      vancing the cause of righteousness with arms, armor, and arts
                      thaumaturgic. Their ability to commune with deities via prayer
                      occasionally extricates them from peril-but can also put them in
                      it.

                      Rogues are agile and stealthy thieves, who carry daggers,
                      lock picks, and poisons to put on darts.

                      Samurai are the elite warriors of feudal Nippon. They are
                      lightly armored and quick, and wear the dai-sho, two swords of
                      the deadliest keenness.

                      Tourists start out with lots of gold (suitable for shopping
                      with), a credit card, lots of food, some maps, and an expensive
                      camera. Most monsters don't like being photographed.

                      Valkyries are hardy warrior women. Their upbringing in the
                      harsh Northlands makes them strong and inures them to extremes of
                      cold, and instills in them stealth and cunning.

                      Wizards start out with a fair selection of magical goodies
                      and a particular affinity for dweomercraft.

                      You set out for the dungeon and after several days of
                      uneventful travel, you see the ancient ruins that mark the en-
                      trance to the Mazes of Menace. It is late at night, so you make
                      camp at the entrance and spend the night sleeping under the open
                      skies. In the morning, you gather your gear, eat what may be
                      your last meal outside, and enter the dungeon.


                      2. What is going on here?

                      You have just begun a game of NetHack. Your goal is to grab
                      as much treasure as you can, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and
                      escape the Mazes of Menace alive. On the screen is kept a map of
                      where you have been and what you have seen on the current dungeon
                      level; as you explore more of the level, it appears on the screen
                      in front of you.

                      When NetHack's ancestor rogue first appeared, its screen
                      orientation was almost unique among computer fantasy games.
                      Since then, screen orientation has become the norm rather than
                      the exception; NetHack continues this fine tradition. Unlike
                      text adventure games that input commands in pseudo-English sen-
                      tences and explain the results in words, NetHack commands are all
                      one or two keystrokes and the results are displayed graphically
                      on the screen. A minimum screen size of 24 lines by 80 columns
                      is recommended; if the screen is larger, only a 21x80 section
                      will be used for the map.

                      NetHack generates a new dungeon every time you play it; even
                      the authors still find it an entertaining and exciting game

                      despite having won several times.


                      3. What do all those things on the screen mean?

                      In order to understand what is going on in NetHack, first
                      you must understand what NetHack is doing with the screen. The
                      NetHack screen replaces the ``You see...'' descriptions of text
                      adventure games. Figure 1 is a sample of what a NetHack screen
                      might look like.


                      The bat bites!

                      ------
                      |....| ----------
                      |.<..|####...@...$.|
                      |....-# |...B....+
                      |....| |.d......|
                      ------ -------|--



                      Player the Rambler St:12 Dx:7 Co:18 In:11 Wi:9 Ch:15 Neutral
                      Dlvl:1 G:0 HP:9(12) Pw:3(3) AC:10 Xp:1/19 T:257 Weak

                      Figure 1


                      3.1. The status lines (bottom)

                      The bottom two lines of the screen contain several cryptic
                      pieces of information describing your current status. If either
                      status line becomes longer than the width of the screen, you
                      might not see all of it. Here are explanations of what the vari-
                      ous status items mean (though your configuration may not have all
                      the status items listed below):

                      Rank
                      Your character's name and professional ranking (based on the
                      experience level, see below).

                      Strength
                      A measure of your character's strength, one of your six
                      basic attributes. Your attributes can range from 3 to 18
                      inclusive (occasionally you may get super-strengths of the
                      form 18/xx). The higher your strength, the stronger you
                      are. Strength affects how successfully you perform physical
                      tasks and how much damage you do in combat.

                      Dexterity
                      Dexterity affects your chances to hit in combat, to avoid
                      traps, and do other tasks requiring agility or manipulation
                      of objects.

                      Constitution
                      Constitution affects your ability to withstand injury and
                      other strains on your stamina.

                      Intelligence
                      Intelligence affects your ability to cast spells.

                      Wisdom
                      Wisdom comes from your religious affairs. It affects your
                      magical energy.

                      Charisma
                      Charisma affects how certain creatures react toward you. In
                      particular, it can affect the prices shopkeepers offer you.

                      Alignment
                      Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic. Basically, Lawful is good and
                      Chaotic is evil. Your alignment influences how other mon-
                      sters react toward you.

                      Dungeon Level
                      How deep you have gone into the dungeon. It starts at one
                      and increases as you go deeper into the dungeon. The Amulet
                      of Yendor is reputed to be somewhere beneath the twentieth
                      level.

                      Gold
          