You have a sad feeling for a moment, then it passes

Context, for non-Nethack players:

Nethack is one of the original "roguelikes," back when that meant a text-console game based on `rogue`. It's an RPG where your character kills monsters, picks up loot, and descends into the dungeon. If you die, that's it -- you can't just load a save; you have to start all over. It's legendarily unforgiving.

In Nethack, most (all?) roles start with a pet, e.g. a puppy or a kitten. In the early game, your pet is often stronger than you; it follows you, fights monsters, etc. It's useful in many ways beyond fighting: it won't walk over a cursed item, it can "fetch" items from stores without angering the proprietor, and so on. Your pet gains experience and levels up (puppy -> dog -> large dog), and after a certain point you're prompted to give your pet a name.

The message "You have a sad feeling for a moment, then it passes" is displayed when your pet dies while out of sight. It's pretty difficult to keep your pet alive all through the endgame, so much like any real-life pet owner, there will come a time where you have to say goodbye, one way or the other.

Pets also feature strongly in the late game. Two of the best items in the game are a scroll of taming (converts nearby monsters to pets) and a magic whistle (summons your pets). Eventually there's no point in fighting yourself; blow your whistle and let your pet dragon army clear the room.

I remember the first time I played, my dog walked into a trap and died within the first 10 moves. It can avoid cursed items but was clearly helpless against my cursed gamer "skills".

Pets can also sometimes be a problem when you're running out of food and they eat the monster you have slain before you get a chance...

Purple worms also make magnificent pets. Genning up a fleet of pet purple worms and teleporting them away can make life a lot easier on the Astral Plane.

Burrrrp!

I love the family dragon army! But why bother using taming scrolls when you can polymorph control yourself into a dragon (taking off your armor first!) and then sitting to make eggs where they are actual family! Blood may be thicker than water, but dragon scales even thicker than blood!

What's worse, your pet can die while you're blind and you attack it without realising who it is. Thankfully this will only happen once in the game. You learn the lesson afterwards. Hopefully.

Had a hunter with a blue crab named Seafood in World of Warcraft for years.

He was somewhat famous on the server at the time. Eventually got rid of him because he had no benefits compared to other pets. No logical reason to keep him.

Huge regret. I grieved for that damn crab for months. Finally stopped playing that class all together.

And then you find another little kitten in the next level that you (C)all "Falling rock trap III"

> If you die, that's it -- you can't just load a save; you have to start all over. It's legendarily unforgiving.

Ehum...

( $ cp -r /var/games/glhack/saves/1000user /home/user )

( ...suddenly a wild fire ant called Rita appears )

( # cp -r /home/user/1000user /var/games/glhack/saves/ )

( # chown -R user:games /var/games/glhack/1000user )

( $ echo "muahahaha im alive, stupid fire ant" | glhack )

( Pssst, Don't tell it to anybody )

Are three still text based roguelikes being made? For me these were one of the most endearing features of the games back in the day. I was a big ADOM fan and it captured my imagination in an almost book like way because everything in the world was rendered only symbolically.

Check out http://roguebasin.com/index.php/Category:Roguelike_games , there should be at least a few you find interesting

As a fellow WoWer, I always opted for aesthetics, writ large, over optimization. I get that folks seek out competition, either vs environment or other players. But adhering to a personal aesthetic Code is another option.

See also, I suppose, conduct runs in many roguelikes.

I've retained the same nightsaber on my Night Elf rogue that I adopted in the beginning of the game. It feels wrong to let him go.

Well, technically you're no longer playing nethack. You're playing a new game, comprised of nethack and cp.

> Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new "features".

-- Doug McIlroy

And it feels so good...

Nethack is notoriously unfair with the player, and not a really winnable game. The player can be killed at any moment without allowing a single defensive move. If I think that the game was cheating, I act accordingly.

The other option is the exploring mode (X), when you can't be killed, but I find that is boring.

The game is notoriously fair, given the fact there are players who have runs of some hundred ascension or so.

I hacked the code, built my own version so I wouldn't take damage. I still kept dying of starvation. That game does not mess around.

Oh it is a winnable game, I ascended several times after reading a lot of detailed spoilers. You just need a lot of strategy (and spoilers) or an early wand of wishing. Preferably both.

Neutral Wizard blessed PYEC, blessed Orb of Fate, blessed magic marker, +3 blessed greased SDSM, BoH, +3 fireproof speedboots, +3 greased fireproof cloak of magic resistance, write out +ID, ?charging, get your Magicbane or better Greyswandir, etc.

ADOM had a fancy re-release on Steam recently! It just showed up in my Steam queue.

Check out Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Feels like a much more modern Nethack, with convenience features (`o` autoexplore, `tab` autofight, etc.) and less of a focus on one-and-done intrinsic immunities in favor of tradeoffs ("this armor comes with cold resistance but vulnerability to fire").

For more of an "explore the world" feeling, Caves of Qud is on Steam and has a ton of depth.

> not a really winnable game

It’s totally winnable! The player almost always has a chance to avoid death. Deaths are usually due to missing knowledge or laziness/impatience. The knowledge is really really hard to gain without wikis, and I absolutely wouldn’t have ascended without wikis, but reading them added another layer of fun for me.

Oh, sure: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Save_scumming I wrote "nhsave" and "nhload" scripts when I was a kid and didn't know you weren't supposed to do this ("they didn't include a save/load function? how dumb").

Edit: If you really want this, you can always enter explore mode (e.g. with `nethack -X`), which makes death optional. It doesn't make the rest of the game any easier, though.

It's perfectly fair. Merely unforgivingly difficult (I've never quite gotten my hands on the actual amulet). You can always read the source.

> The player can be killed at any moment without allowing a single defensive move.

Technically true, but there are always moves you could have done prior to avoid being in that situation. Part of the game is knowing what protections you need to have before advancing deeper into the dungeon.

>not a really winnable game

Um, it's quite winnable. It's much easier to win once you've been thoroughly spoiled (either via investing a large amount of playtime or reading spoilers), but it's quite possible to Ascend (win) through extensive preparation and brute force. The number of truly unavoidable, single-move deaths, particularly in the mid-to-late game is a very tiny part of the whole gamespace (as witnessed by the many, many players who win without anything more than knowledge of the game). And wearing an Amulet of Life Protection will save you from most of those.

Veteran players (at least, back when there was Usenet), would regularly refer to Yet Another Stupid Death (YASD), called such not because it was unavoidable, but because it was avoidable if the player had not made an easily avoidable mistake.

This made me chuckle with a dash of acknowledgement and compassion. Poor Seafood... Heh. :)

Dwarf Fortress has Adventurer mode, which, although less developed than the more famous Fortress mode, is still really deep, under slow but active development, and has the unique value prop that you can build a fortress, leave it on autopilot, create an adventurer, go visit the same fortress, chat with the locals, maybe go kill some monsters in the caverns. You can retire an adventurer, switch back to fort mode, see your old character become one of your citizens, and so on.

With the exception of the legendary early gnome with a wand of death - sometimes the game just hates you.

Some players just need killing.

> there will come a time where you have to say goodbye, one way or the other.

Or zap it with a wand of polymorph and hope for the best!

You can #pray for your god to fill your stomach if you are Weak or worse.

Gods are notoriously stupid though when "helping" you. C'mon Thoth, uncursing of the stupid boots? I'm dying of hunger here!

Huh? I've ascended quite a few times, and I am soo far from being the best player.

It's totally winnable. It's your job as a player to avoid getting into situations where you don't have 'a single defensive move'.

(It's not the best game ever, nor is it the most fair game ever. True. But almost all games of Nethack are winnable, if you are careful enough and learned enough about the game.)

If ascended a tourist and a healer and an archaeologist and quite a few of the easier classes, too.

Wizard isn't even the easiest class to ascend.

Wizard just has perhaps the easiest endgame, but that part tends to be easy enough with any class for a well-spoiled player. Wizards have a relatively hard early game.

Just play in explore mode?

Eh, depends on what class you have. Pets are a bit of a hassle to get up and down the stairs. If you do enough damage yourself, it's usually less annoying to do the fighting yourself.

New versions of Nethack are still coming out, too.

Somebody is trying some trickery here...

checkout cataclysm dda if you're into cyberpunk

I had a go at adventure mode, but I must admit I found it hard to create a narrative for myself. It was fun wandering around and hearing what monks thought life was a bout, but I wasn't quite sure where the adventure was.

It blew me away how much attachment I had for what essentially amounted to a letter on a screen controlled by algorithms. I wrote a blog post about it 10 years ago:

https://marzzbar.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/awesome-game-exper...

> "It seems that you are having a hard time eating this yeti corpse? stop eating?"

No

> "You choke on your food and die after 20200 moves"

> "It seems that you are having a hard time eating this dragon corpse? stop eating?"

Hum... yes?

"You choke on your food and die after 40678789 moves"

Well, this is simply ridiculous.

In the last 20 years playing nethack, consulting the oracle, reading the wiki, and learning, I reached gehennon... once. This is like the 30% of the game or so. Don't even reached a quest. After a while, solving sokoban and gnome mines by the 800 time is just... meh; Wesnoth is better.

The game would greatly benefit of something like: You lose 70 of your 71 points just descending the stairs into a bones level and become stressed, unable to move and surrounded by enemies. This is your last point, do you want to try something?

Yeah, but they're the best for ascending an early !oW I think.

If that's what is killing you every time, then get a blessed tinning kit and stop eating random corpses like that. Or at least wear an amulet of magical breathing while you eat.

Or if you want to be really fun, polymorph into a Xorn or whatever and eat a few amulets of magical breathing to gain it as an intrinsic.

https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Amulet_of_magical_breathing

Generally just go through your death list and find what is killing you then look at how to avoid that. Eating random corpses late game is pretty much always a mistake, you should have normal food to rely on in your bag of holding and a blessed tinning kit from the mines for intrinsic granting corpses.

Well, is a long list...

I think that I was even killed by a lichen once

Yes, there are a ton of ways to die. Part of making an ascension kit is checking them off one by one. You can see that my wizard would have reflection, MR, grease to avoid mindflayers and drowning monsters (though blessed ?geno on LhV; makes life much easier), etc. Naturally I'd use that blessed magic marker to write every spellbook, the PYEC can recharge all the things and I take half damage. If I get Greswandir from sacrificing, I can get up to basic proficiency, otherwise I'd best stick with magicbane which is easy to get.

Get your levels up, your stats up, your resists covered and it's mostly just a slog at the end because turns take forever when 30 monsters want a piece of you.