Slash'EM Extended

SLASH'EM Extended - sometimes written as Slash'EM Extended, and also known as "Sadistic Levels of Endless X-Citement" or SLEX for short - is a variant of SLASH'EM version 0.0.7E7F2, created by the user known as Bluescreenofdeath - alternately known as AmyBSOD, or just Amy.

SLASH'EM Extended contains several new roles and races for the player to choose from, several new special levels, a lot of new monsters, and other changes. The main dungeon is even longer in Slash'EM Extended than in SLASH'EM, with the upper Dungeons of Doom being 50 levels in length followed by 50 levels of Gehennom, meaning that Moloch's Sanctum is on dungeon level 100. After claiming the Amulet of Yendor, the player also needs to complete a 100-level bonus dungeon before the actual ascension run begins, greatly increasing the length of the game.

But where many variants of NetHack tend to run with a different aspect of its Fantasy Kitchen Sink full of Anachronism Stew - such as the later EvilHack's adapting traits from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons to the NetHack mold, and FIQHack increasing monster/player congruency - SLASH'EM Extended focuses on a few other things:


 * 1) Nothing is off limits. If Amy overhears an idea she likes, she'll Throw It In.
 * 2) Nothing is off limits. No matter how unusual, unorthodox, or downright weird, if she wants to add it, she'll find a way.
 * 3) Harder is better. The game is designed with the idea that the player should be in danger of dying at any moment, even in the late stages of the game - but SLEX's philosophy handles this far differently from something like EvilHack.
 * 4) Unfair =/= unbalanced. Not every game will be 100% winnable; Amy is something of a stickler for preserving the more chancey elements of the game and considers SLEX players being screwed by the Random Number God fair play, since a similar element of risk already existed in the base game.
 * 5) Unbalanced =/= unfair. On the other hand, she also does her best to make it so that the player has as many viable options as possible without one being overwhelmingly stronger than any of the others - traps and monsters with the most dangerous and game-ruining qualities are ideally extremely rare until the late game.
 * 6) You can never have enough fleecy bundles. No, really. Amy isn't shy about showing off her interests, as players will quickly discover.

The end result is a variant that is... extremely weird and unique, and decidedly isn't for everyone as it can be justifiably off-putting in many ways&mdash;but Slash'EM Extended still displays a form of creativity that results in an experience not seen in many other variants of NetHack, if not most roguelikes in general.

SLASH'EM Extended can be downloaded for Windows via this link here. The GitHub repository for SLASH'EM Extended shows all the individual changes applied since version v97. It can be played online at em.slashem.me and at hardfought.org; the former server also offers BIGslex, which is basically the same game as regular SLEX but with huge dungeon levels.

The subreddit can also be used for discussion about the game, and Freenode has the channels #em.slashem.me and #slashemextended among a few others for SLEX discussion. Amy herself can usually be found in NetHack IRC channels as well, and is more than willing to guide new players.

Slash'EM Extended has a "sub-variant" named SlashTHEM.


 * Acquired Poison Immunity: Enhanced so that having both an intrinsic and extrinsic source for a given property or resistance "doubles" it, making that effect stronger.
 * Artistic License Biology: Goats that lay eggs, horses that can wield weapons, fishes in plate mail, and more.
 * Author Appeal: The variant author has many loves that she inserts into the game, but among her foremost ones are fleecy things and shoes, especially high heels. The latter's even a weapon you can use!
 * Baleful Polymorph: The mould and ungenomould playable species are saddled with "polymorphitis", and cannot gain control over it in any way.
 * Biblical Motifs:
 * One of the many available artifacts is The Sling of David.
 * Blessed with Suck: The Activistor starts with random intrinsics, which are usually good, but one of the possible intrinsics makes them grow hungry more quickly. This results in the early game becoming even harder, as food is usually scarce for starting characters.
 * Bonus Boss: Many, e.g. demon lords that can only be gated in by other demons. Arguably the most dangerous foe in the entire game is the Elder Priest of Moloch, who has plenty of attacks that can easily off an endgame-capable player character, but a player who manages to beat him gets a cool robe.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Spacewars Fighter quest giver tells you that you're playing NetHack, and talks about your character's hit points.
 * Deader Than Dead: If your ungenomold character runs out of hit points, not even can prevent your death.
 * Death by Sex: Your love interest can betray you and use a nasty attack after stripping you naked; not only is the act described with excessive graphic detail, there is even a unique death message if it successfully kills you.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: Invisible invisible badguys are just one example of many.
 * Even Chaotics Have Standards: A chaotic Jedi might not be punished for murder, but attacking a peaceful being is a violation of the way of the Jedi regardless of alignment.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Item types that are safe to use in vanilla NetHack can turn out to be dangerous, e.g. when a random box turns out to be a box of digestion that eats the valuable items you put into it. Malicious terrain is abundant, including stalactites that hurt players who fly into them, rain clouds that rust the player's iron equipment, or moorland that deals damage while the player swims through it. And triggering the wrong trap can cause the interface itself to try to screw you over!
 * Extreme Omnivore: In addition to what humans can usually eat, the Activistor can eat lithic and metallic objects.
 * Fake Difficulty: Still present in some forms.
 * Get Back Here Boss: Vlad the Impaler is an especially annoying example, spawning with scrolls that allow him to teleport to any random dungeon level. Have fun searching for up to 100 dungeon levels to get the MacGuffin he's holding. And if you do find him, chances are he's got another one of those scrolls.
 * Groin Attack: Some monsters are capable of hitting you with this, and it can paralyze you even if you have free action!
 * Harder Than Hard: Not to unplayable levels, but you'll develop a grudging respect how committed the Random Number God can be to screwing you when it wants to. And if you play difficult roles like the Courier or Bleeder, the game can seem almost impossible.
 * Helpful Mook: Sentient "trove" monsters are usually harmless, drop solid items upon defeat, and their corpses can even provide useful resistances!
 * Interface Screw: There's a set of "nasty" traps that can do this. Effects include, but are not limited to: making your display line invisible, preventing you from opening your inventory list, and causing everything to display in shades of grey.
 * Invisible Monster: A far wider variety than before, and monsters can become "double" invisible, requiring multiple sources of 'see invisible' to uncover them.
 * Joke Character: An overwhelming amount of monsters in the game that weren't ported from another series or else already present in NetHack and SLASH'EM were added for the sake of humor.
 * Kamehame Hadoken: The #kamehameha command lets you use the actual technique at the cost of some magical power.
 * Loads and Loads of Races and Roles: Holy shit, are there ever!
 * Luck-Based Mission: Far more so than the vanilla game. Various optional areas are characterised by the fact that whether or not their reward can be obtained is randomly determined at the start of a game. If the RNG is not on the player's side, it can turn out to be a complete waste of time to enter certain dungeon branches. Also, when the player character is created, the game may decide to make specific items, intrinsics or skills impossible to obtain.
 * The mould and ungenomold races are capable of polymorphing into monsters with no way to control it. You may be lucky and polymorph into a powerful black dragon, or end up as a slow-moving lichen that can't equip anything and deals no damage when attacking an enemy.
 * Nintendo Hard: There are so many ways to die that it's highly unlikely to avoid them all and win the game. Later in the game, almost every enemy monster has something bad going on, which will screw up players who don't pay attention constantly.
 * Pokemon-Speak: Especially if the player chooses to play as a Pokemon and makes it to their quest. Hostile angels and demons also sometimes use literal quotes from Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal as taunts.
 * Random Number God: Already a fact of life in NetHack, in Slash'EM Extended they've taken the wheel almost completely, to the point of randomly deciding which items just aren't spawning in a given game.
 * Respawning Enemies: And the longer a game goes on, the higher the respawn rate will rise. If you hurry up and get to the Amulet of Yendor quickly, the respawn rate will be maxed out for the remaining game anyway. There is also a trap that causes monsters to respawn somewhere on the current level when killed.
 * Self-Imposed Challenge: The game includes several classes and races that are purposely made extremely difficult to play.
 * Shout-Out: Where to begin...
 * Schizo-Tech: Even more prominent than the original SLASH'EM. Firearms, frag grenades, crossbows, lightsabers... and don't get us started on the shoes!
 * Tom the Dark Lord: The Courier has a quest nemesis called Some Random Guy.
 * Unusable Enemy Equipment: Downplayed. Monster starting inventories have a chance of not dropping upon that monster's death; the chance is rolled individually for each item carried by the monster, and does not apply to anything they pick up after spawning.