Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)
I've been playing NetHack on and off for maybe four years, and although
I've never been shy about reading spoilers, the only time I even saw
the Quest (before this game) was the time I got a wand of wishing
around dungeon level 3. Recently, I've been playing Monks a lot, making
sure to start with a spellbook of healing, which I (ab)used
extensively. But I decided it would be nice to be able to use armor and
weapons for once, so I switched to Valkyrie.
After two false starts, Catherine III seemed to be going fine. I soon
found a handy +3 bronze plate mail lying around in the Dungeons of
Doom. Upon entering the Gnomish Mines, however, I felt a "wave of
psychic energy" and a resultant sinking feeling. The downstairs were
conveniently located one square northwest of the upstairs, so I just
went down. Fortunately, the temple in Minetown was neutral. After
getting to XL 10, I went back up to deal with the mind flayer. It was a
master mind flayer, in fact, and stole quite a bit of Intelligence and
memories before my +1 long sword could snuff it out.
Mine's End was not very harrowing. I did pick up the loadstone, but my
high Strength kept it from being too much of a problem until Odin
uncursed it for me. Back in Minetown, I blessed my new luckstone as
well as a magic lamp I found in Izchak's shop, and got some boots of
speed from the djinni. After plenty of sacrificing, I got Mjollnir and
Magicbane. The former was my primary weapon for the rest of the game,
but I only used the latter to engrave Elbereth once or twice.
Many happy dungeon levels passed by. That subtle and ingenious strategy
known as "Valk smash!" served me well. The RNG did its greatest favors
in my whole game with intrinsics: I got poison, sleep, and shock
resistance the first times I tried for them, the former from a queen
bee and the latter two from gelatinous cubes. I also picked up magic
resistance somewhere along the line, plus an amulet of magical
breathing and rings of levitation and teleport control. (Identification
was made easy with a couple of magic markers and holy water.) I didn't
get a bag of holding, though, and was quite irritated about it- in
fact, when I found that my version of Sokoban was the one with the
amulet of reflection, I stormed away in a huff without getting it. I
used the temple in Minetown as my base and treasure hoard, despite its
inconvenient location.
The Quest was a snap with fire resistance and Mjollnir. I ate giants
until my strength was 18/20-something and fireproofed some of my armor
with scrolls of enchant armor and a forgotten spell. Surt didn't take a
lot of hits, thankfully, and the Orb of Fate meant I could ditch my
luckstone and quickly travel to my base and back.
By the time I was at the Castle, I was feeling pretty cocky and
beginning to consider the idea that I might ascend. The biggest problem
so far had been mind flayers stealing my memories of items, and that
was just an inconvenience. Odin hadn't had the decency to give me the
drawbridge tune, and the only instrument I'd seen so far was a horn
that was still rotting away in the dungeon somewhere, and I didn't feel
like playing Mastermind anyway. So I used a wand of opening to open the
drawbridge and let the monsters come to me. Once I got my paws on the
wand of wishing, I wished for gauntlets of power (replacing the +2
gloves I'd gotten from one of my Monk bones in the mines), a bag of
holding (finally!), two scrolls of genocide (bye-bye "h", and "L",
too- they were bound to give me trouble eventually, though they
hadn't yet), gray dragon scale mail (of course), a shield of reflection
(I got one earlier, but Medusa's titan disintegrated it), and a cloak
of protection (mostly for the magic cancellation). I saved the one last
wish for a rainy day. (For headgear, I just used an unenchanted dwarven
iron helm and replaced it whenever it got rusty.) Come to think of it,
is the Castle's wand of wishing guaranteed to be fully charged? If not,
I guess I was lucky in that way, too.
It was more or less smooth sailing from then on. Whist mindlessly
bashing monsters in the Valley of the Dead, I got raped by an incubus
before I realized what it was. I killed it dead in retribution and
remained otherwise celibate for the rest of the game. Hell was
hellishly boring, but hell, that's hell for ya. When I came to
Juiblex's Swamp, my wand of digging was still back in Minetown, and I
planned to go back for it and use it to kill Juiby after exploring the
area a bit. Then I discovered that "&"'s can teleport even on
no-teleport levels. Suffice it to say that I ended up inside JB without
a wand, but good ol' Mjollnir killed it with a minimum of fuss.
Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Orcus, and Yeesupercalifragilisticexpialidocious
(summoned by Orcus) went down similarly.
Somewhere along the line I got the idea that a black dragon would make
a good pet. Back in Minetown, I turned into one myself and laid a few
eggs. My stupid kids killed the priest and a shopkeeper, as well as
being a pain to bring up staircases, so I decided I'd ascend petless
this time. (Speaking of which, who was their father? The incubus?)
In Moloch's Sanctum, I began to fear for my safety for the first time
in quite a while, despite my two fresh amulets of life saving. I
blundered into a dumb position and got surrounded by "a"'s and "&"'s. I
managed to grab the Amulet and escape without dying once, but when I
had low hit points, I stupidly forgot myself and prayed. Moloch hit me
with his thunderbolt/disintegration ray combo attack. I had resistance
to both, but my GDSM and cloak turned to dust, and my protection
disappeared (though I bought some more from the priest of Moloch in the
Valley).
The journey upward was lengthened by the "mysterious force", as always,
but I didn't bump into the Wizard once. I supposed I'd been led to
believe that he shows up more often than he really does. Just as well.
I took a chance and went back to Minetown to double-check my stashes
for anything that might help with the endgame. It was then that Rodney
decided to show up. I killed him easily, but that must be one of the
few times he's ever graced Minetown with his presence.
Before I took the upstairs to the Elemental Planes, I recharged the Orb
of Fate and used my saved-up wish, plus a magic lamp I'd found in
Gehennom, to get a new set of GDSM and cloak of protection. Then I went
to the Plane of Earth. Rodney died for the third and final time. The
minotaur's wand of digging got me to the portal quickly (I found it and
all the subsequent ones with the Orb). My stay the Plane of Fire was
also brief. The air elementals on the Plane of Air harassed me so much
I had to drink a potion of full healing, but I persevered nevertheless.
And I got through the Plane of Water without even getting my feet wet.
(Levitation is your friend.)
Then I was in the Astral Plane. I felt quite giddy, as you can imagine.
I showed up on the right bend, so I decided to try the closest altar.
Famine was slain once (or maybe twice) by my wand of death. The angels
packed me in and once again I feared for my life. But my wand of
teleportation got them out of the way, and I reached the altar. It was
neutral! I #offered the Amulet, ascended to demigoddesshood, and lived
happily ever after. Even if I never did meet Pestilence or Death. I've
heard they're not very sociable, anyway.
I play NetHack in windowed mode, so I couldn't copy and paste my
endgame stats, but I took some screenshots, and with the magic of OCR
and my hazy memory, I give you this:
Farvel Catherine the Swashbuckler...
196 max HP, ~80 max Pwr, Str 25, Cha 14, all other ability scores 18
(go potions of gain ability!), XL 20, $24646, 61904 moves.
Creatures genocided: hobbits, dwarves, bugbears, dwarf lords, dwarf
kings, mind flayers, master mind flayers, liches, demiliches, master
liches, arch-liches, rust monsters, and disenchanters, 13 in all. (Oh
yeah, I genocided "R" somewhere along the line.)
I never wished for an artifact or polypiled. (Not that I was aiming for
either conduct.)
I was carrying 10 citrine stone, 10 aquamarine stones, 9 emeralds, 8
rubies, 7 opals, 7 jade stones, 6 black opals, 6 amethyst stones, 6
agate stones (I would've had about twice that, but I gave some to
unicorns), 5 turquoise stones, 5 amber stones, 4 diamonds, 4 jacinth
stones, 4 jet stones, 4 chrysoberyl stones, 4 obsidian stones, 3 topaz
stones, 3 garnet stones, 2 fluorite stones, 1 dilithium crystal, 1
sapphire, and 1 jasper stone.
My score was 3,946,958.
Next on my list... I think I'll try to ascend a Wizard, or perhaps a
Monk. At any rate, I'll take a break from NetHack.
But one more thing: I'm sixteen years old. This doesn't make me the
youngest person to ascend, does it? Surely there's some NetHack prodigy
who ascended a pacifist wishless genocideless Tourist at the age of
seven out there somewhere.
No, wait, I have another question. Why aren't foocubi genocideable?
I've been playing NetHack on and off for maybe four years, and although
I've never been shy about reading spoilers, the only time I even saw
the Quest (before this game) was the time I got a wand of wishing
around dungeon level 3. Recently, I've been playing Monks a lot, making
sure to start with a spellbook of healing, which I (ab)used
extensively. But I decided it would be nice to be able to use armor and
weapons for once, so I switched to Valkyrie.
After two false starts, Catherine III seemed to be going fine. I soon
found a handy +3 bronze plate mail lying around in the Dungeons of
Doom. Upon entering the Gnomish Mines, however, I felt a "wave of
psychic energy" and a resultant sinking feeling. The downstairs were
conveniently located one square northwest of the upstairs, so I just
went down. Fortunately, the temple in Minetown was neutral. After
getting to XL 10, I went back up to deal with the mind flayer. It was a
master mind flayer, in fact, and stole quite a bit of Intelligence and
memories before my +1 long sword could snuff it out.
Mine's End was not very harrowing. I did pick up the loadstone, but my
high Strength kept it from being too much of a problem until Odin
uncursed it for me. Back in Minetown, I blessed my new luckstone as
well as a magic lamp I found in Izchak's shop, and got some boots of
speed from the djinni. After plenty of sacrificing, I got Mjollnir and
Magicbane. The former was my primary weapon for the rest of the game,
but I only used the latter to engrave Elbereth once or twice.
Many happy dungeon levels passed by. That subtle and ingenious strategy
known as "Valk smash!" served me well. The RNG did its greatest favors
in my whole game with intrinsics: I got poison, sleep, and shock
resistance the first times I tried for them, the former from a queen
bee and the latter two from gelatinous cubes. I also picked up magic
resistance somewhere along the line, plus an amulet of magical
breathing and rings of levitation and teleport control. (Identification
was made easy with a couple of magic markers and holy water.) I didn't
get a bag of holding, though, and was quite irritated about it- in
fact, when I found that my version of Sokoban was the one with the
amulet of reflection, I stormed away in a huff without getting it. I
used the temple in Minetown as my base and treasure hoard, despite its
inconvenient location.
The Quest was a snap with fire resistance and Mjollnir. I ate giants
until my strength was 18/20-something and fireproofed some of my armor
with scrolls of enchant armor and a forgotten spell. Surt didn't take a
lot of hits, thankfully, and the Orb of Fate meant I could ditch my
luckstone and quickly travel to my base and back.
By the time I was at the Castle, I was feeling pretty cocky and
beginning to consider the idea that I might ascend. The biggest problem
so far had been mind flayers stealing my memories of items, and that
was just an inconvenience. Odin hadn't had the decency to give me the
drawbridge tune, and the only instrument I'd seen so far was a horn
that was still rotting away in the dungeon somewhere, and I didn't feel
like playing Mastermind anyway. So I used a wand of opening to open the
drawbridge and let the monsters come to me. Once I got my paws on the
wand of wishing, I wished for gauntlets of power (replacing the +2
gloves I'd gotten from one of my Monk bones in the mines), a bag of
holding (finally!), two scrolls of genocide (bye-bye "h", and "L",
too- they were bound to give me trouble eventually, though they
hadn't yet), gray dragon scale mail (of course), a shield of reflection
(I got one earlier, but Medusa's titan disintegrated it), and a cloak
of protection (mostly for the magic cancellation). I saved the one last
wish for a rainy day. (For headgear, I just used an unenchanted dwarven
iron helm and replaced it whenever it got rusty.) Come to think of it,
is the Castle's wand of wishing guaranteed to be fully charged? If not,
I guess I was lucky in that way, too.
It was more or less smooth sailing from then on. Whist mindlessly
bashing monsters in the Valley of the Dead, I got raped by an incubus
before I realized what it was. I killed it dead in retribution and
remained otherwise celibate for the rest of the game. Hell was
hellishly boring, but hell, that's hell for ya. When I came to
Juiblex's Swamp, my wand of digging was still back in Minetown, and I
planned to go back for it and use it to kill Juiby after exploring the
area a bit. Then I discovered that "&"'s can teleport even on
no-teleport levels. Suffice it to say that I ended up inside JB without
a wand, but good ol' Mjollnir killed it with a minimum of fuss.
Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Orcus, and Yeesupercalifragilisticexpialidocious
(summoned by Orcus) went down similarly.
Somewhere along the line I got the idea that a black dragon would make
a good pet. Back in Minetown, I turned into one myself and laid a few
eggs. My stupid kids killed the priest and a shopkeeper, as well as
being a pain to bring up staircases, so I decided I'd ascend petless
this time. (Speaking of which, who was their father? The incubus?)
In Moloch's Sanctum, I began to fear for my safety for the first time
in quite a while, despite my two fresh amulets of life saving. I
blundered into a dumb position and got surrounded by "a"'s and "&"'s. I
managed to grab the Amulet and escape without dying once, but when I
had low hit points, I stupidly forgot myself and prayed. Moloch hit me
with his thunderbolt/disintegration ray combo attack. I had resistance
to both, but my GDSM and cloak turned to dust, and my protection
disappeared (though I bought some more from the priest of Moloch in the
Valley).
The journey upward was lengthened by the "mysterious force", as always,
but I didn't bump into the Wizard once. I supposed I'd been led to
believe that he shows up more often than he really does. Just as well.
I took a chance and went back to Minetown to double-check my stashes
for anything that might help with the endgame. It was then that Rodney
decided to show up. I killed him easily, but that must be one of the
few times he's ever graced Minetown with his presence.
Before I took the upstairs to the Elemental Planes, I recharged the Orb
of Fate and used my saved-up wish, plus a magic lamp I'd found in
Gehennom, to get a new set of GDSM and cloak of protection. Then I went
to the Plane of Earth. Rodney died for the third and final time. The
minotaur's wand of digging got me to the portal quickly (I found it and
all the subsequent ones with the Orb). My stay the Plane of Fire was
also brief. The air elementals on the Plane of Air harassed me so much
I had to drink a potion of full healing, but I persevered nevertheless.
And I got through the Plane of Water without even getting my feet wet.
(Levitation is your friend.)
Then I was in the Astral Plane. I felt quite giddy, as you can imagine.
I showed up on the right bend, so I decided to try the closest altar.
Famine was slain once (or maybe twice) by my wand of death. The angels
packed me in and once again I feared for my life. But my wand of
teleportation got them out of the way, and I reached the altar. It was
neutral! I #offered the Amulet, ascended to demigoddesshood, and lived
happily ever after. Even if I never did meet Pestilence or Death. I've
heard they're not very sociable, anyway.
I play NetHack in windowed mode, so I couldn't copy and paste my
endgame stats, but I took some screenshots, and with the magic of OCR
and my hazy memory, I give you this:
Farvel Catherine the Swashbuckler...
196 max HP, ~80 max Pwr, Str 25, Cha 14, all other ability scores 18
(go potions of gain ability!), XL 20, $24646, 61904 moves.
Creatures genocided: hobbits, dwarves, bugbears, dwarf lords, dwarf
kings, mind flayers, master mind flayers, liches, demiliches, master
liches, arch-liches, rust monsters, and disenchanters, 13 in all. (Oh
yeah, I genocided "R" somewhere along the line.)
I never wished for an artifact or polypiled. (Not that I was aiming for
either conduct.)
I was carrying 10 citrine stone, 10 aquamarine stones, 9 emeralds, 8
rubies, 7 opals, 7 jade stones, 6 black opals, 6 amethyst stones, 6
agate stones (I would've had about twice that, but I gave some to
unicorns), 5 turquoise stones, 5 amber stones, 4 diamonds, 4 jacinth
stones, 4 jet stones, 4 chrysoberyl stones, 4 obsidian stones, 3 topaz
stones, 3 garnet stones, 2 fluorite stones, 1 dilithium crystal, 1
sapphire, and 1 jasper stone.
My score was 3,946,958.
Next on my list... I think I'll try to ascend a Wizard, or perhaps a
Monk. At any rate, I'll take a break from NetHack.
But one more thing: I'm sixteen years old. This doesn't make me the
youngest person to ascend, does it? Surely there's some NetHack prodigy
who ascended a pacifist wishless genocideless Tourist at the age of
seven out there somewhere.
No, wait, I have another question. Why aren't foocubi genocideable?
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