EvilHack

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So you thought NetHack was a punishingly tough game that took ages to clear for the first time?

You haven't seen anything yet.

EvilHack is a NetHack variant created by Keith "K2" Simpson, owner of the Hardfought NetHack server. Initially based on NetHack 3.6.2, the variant has since diverged into its own relatively unique take on the old-edition-Dungeons & Dragons-like world that NetHack began life with, while merging in interesting-enough changes from later versions of NetHack as it is developed (along with other variants).

EvilHack was designed from the outset to be a much more difficult game to win; while not at all impossible to ascend, several aspects of this game that the player might take for granted from vanilla NetHack have been changed and can easily end a promising run. In general, monsters are tougher and have more hit points, they can fight more intelligently, and they can and will use a variety of items and spells against you that previously only the player could use. While plenty of improvements have been made for the player as well, EvilHack still present a significant challenge for even the seasoned player.

The variants GruntHack and SporkHack are cited as major inspirations, incorporating many of the same features that make those variants difficult in their own right. Elements from other variants (e.g. Slash'EM, SpliceHack, UnNetHack, and xNetHack) as well as from later and newer versions of the vanilla NetHack are included; while some of those features have remained many have been altered to set them apart and provide the player with a new experience, and there is also a significant amount of custom content not found in any other variant, with much more to be added in the near future.

Work on EvilHack first began on October 20th, 2018, and it was released for public play in April of 2019 on the Hardfought public NetHack servers. The Github repository for EvilHack can be found at https://github.com/k21971/EvilHack; a direct link to the change log can be found here, and is updated on a regular basis.

The game can be played on Hardfought, and the official releases, which include Windows binaries, can be found at this link. This page lists the players that have successfully ascended.

Important Note: As with NetHack, spoilers are easily accessible via the wiki and IRC, but there is always the difference between knowing of something and experiencing it for the first time - even so, in the spirit of being as new-player friendly as possible, spoiler tags are used on this page. The NetHack community defines "spoilers" as not just including plotline spoilers, but gameplay-related ones as well. The plot itself usually has far less direct impact on the game than its various mechanics, so if you wish to experience as much of the challenge as possible, read with caution and mind the spoiler tags and links.

Tropes used in EvilHack include:


  • Acquired Poison Immunity: Played with from the original NetHack; most intrinsic resistances acquired from corpses are now obtained and measured by percentage as opposed to NetHack's binary "have or don't have" approach. Depending on the corpse, you can gain anywhere from 5% to 50% of a given resistance.
    • All orcish monsters now have this, the same as player orcs.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: In addition to the vanilla game's instances, EvilHack allows shopkeepers to be a variety of different species, and pricing can be further affected by how your player character's race is regarded by theirs.
  • Adaptational Badass: Everyone, including the player.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Regular clothing and armor can now be gifted by your god, among various other things. Great if you get a solid set of magical gloves or a shirt as a gift - not so great if you get a pair of fumble boots...
    • EvilHack also integrates modified versions of the popular "object materials" and "object properties" patches to increase the variety of types of clothing and armor you can encounter in the game, ranging from mundane materials such as cloth and plastic to more exotic ones such as dragonhide.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Monsters cannot read genocide scrolls, as that would render the game a complete Luck-Based Mission.
    • Players can auto-unlock doors and chests with an unlocking tool if they have one, saving time and keystrokes normally spent on the 'a'pply command.
    • Gehennom mazed are replaced with Gnomish Mines-style levels that have lava running through them, and all demon lords are guaranteed to spawn with their own lairs - this is done in order to make it far less of a Scrappy Branch.
    • The mysterious force that would interfere with ascension runs has been removed - the game is much harder in general, which more than compensates for the force's Artificial Difficulty.
    • Angering your quest leader no longer renders the game Unwinnable - you can still enter if you manage to kill them.
    • A couple of major changes are made to the Bag of Holding. You can add Magicbane to the list of items not to stick in a Bag of Holding, since its cancellation effect now has a chance to trigger and destroy it. On the other end of things, such bags in general no longer completely destroy their contents - just a lot of them, including the explosion-triggering item that was placed inside, any fragile items that are sent flying, and the rest of its former contents (each subjected to a 1/13 chance of being lost).
  • Anti-Magic: Cancellation is further buffed so that the wand and spell can actively draw magical energies from monsters and possibly cancel some parts of their inventory; doing so with a wand auto-identifies it. This also becomes a secondary passive effect of gray dragon scales.
  • Artificial Brilliance: Every single intelligent monster now has a greater capacity for item usage - all monsters now have the same armor class damage reduction as players, and intelligent monsters can use many more items against the player or for their own benefit - making use of bags and taking them back out, obtaining wishes and using them, activating figurines, unlocking and looting locked containers, wearing most rings, reading scrolls of remove curse to uncurse items, recharging wands using scrolls of charging, utilizing more powerful wands against the player...
  • Attack Reflector: Downplayed from the original - reflection can still minimize the effects of rays, but will no longer negate them altogether. On the other hand, it now also comes in the form of a spell, specifically one of the two new additions to the 'matter' school.
  • Bag of Holding: A new artifact bag is added, and bags of holding are beneficiaries of Anti-Frustration Features per that entry.
  • Bandit Mooks:
    • Hobbit rogues are a newly added monster that can steal items from the player.
    • From the list of returning monsters, leprechauns are upgraded and will now attempt to steal anything made of gold from the player. Player monster rogues also share most of the role's abilities, including the newly-added thievery skill. And all player monsters now covet the Amulet of Yendor.
  • Bear Hug: Elder minotaurs are capable of this now.
  • Blade of Fearsome Size: A pair of new artifact two-handed swords are added. And Vlad is the owner of one of them.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing:
    • Alhoons have quickly become infamous for being more deadly than even the arch-lich of NetHack fame - they do not have as many tentacle attacks as their mind flayer brethren, but they can still drain your intelligence and cast powerful spells, and enjoy all of the strengths and weaknesses associated with being undead.
    • Elder minotaurs are stronger, Gehennom-exclusive variants of the already-fearsome minotaurs that have an additional crushing attack that can pulp you disturbingly quick - and they can't be tamed, either, removing one common method of handling normal minotaurs. Their monster difficulty is rated as 29, equal with the vanilla arch-lich - and the aforementioned alhoon is rated just above it at 30.
    • Vorpal jabberwocks are the strongest of the jabberwock class, and each of its many claw attacks is just as capable of beheading you as Vorpal Blade is of beheading anything else - and it can't be genocided. It can, however, be One-Hit Killed by Vorpal Blade.
    • Vampire mages - all the viciousness of vampire lords, amplified and augmented with powerful casting and high magic resistance. They can be tamed, but good luck pulling it off - though they make great pets for those who can pull it off.
    • Shambling horrors play with this trope depending on what features and abilities they generate with.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: As with NetHack, though demon lords that can be bribed will start asking for a lot more.
  • Call Back:
    • Gehennom and one of the new Sidequest branches, the Ice Queen's Realm, will deal constant fire and cold damage to the player respectively, which can be reduced or even negated with enough of the appropriate resistances. These double as Spiritual Successors to Hell from the earliest versions of Hack and pre-3.1 versions of NetHack: entering Hell without fire resistance, or else losing fire resistance while in that realm, would kill you instantly.
    • Several Dummied Out features from the original NetHack are implemented in EvilHack.
  • Beholders are one of the most dangerous creatures in the game... while awake. They spawn asleep 80% of the time, and even once awake, they move slowly and their worst attacks can be avoided by blinding yourself. However, they are immune to any form of Danger Sense besides warning (which always shows them as a 5)[1] - the only other way to see it is to view it directly, and its many gaze attacks will prove that to be a Very Bad Idea. Even if you blind yourself, it still has a powerful bite to watch out for, and they can't be tamed or genocided.
  • Cold Iron: Elves now have an aversion to iron, and wearing or wielding anything made of iron causes actual damage on contact; player elves cannot passively regain HP while iron touches their skin, and wielding an iron weapon without gloves incurs a Luck penalty. This also applies to being hit with iron, which does bonus damage to elves.
    • Inverted(?) with orcish monsters, who are now completely averse to mithril (which operates in the same exact fashion).
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: As with the original; some changes are made to make monsters easier to distinguish from each other.
  • Combinatorial Explosion: It is a NetHack variant, after all.
  • Cool Horse: Player monster Knights may be generated on horses. The newly added lesser nightmare acts as an Evil Counterpart Race - they are the starting pet for chaotic Knights, and their nightmare and Cauchemar forms are equivalent to the horse and warhorse.
    • The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are generated on powerful horses matching the description of their folkloric steeds - and if you reach the Astral Plane with a good enough alignment record, you are recognized as War and given the Red Horse as your steed.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: Expanded from the original game. All quest leaders and nemeses, along with all demon lords and princes, are now immune to magic-based scaring.
  • Crowned Mook: Their names are changed to the gender-neutral "leader" and "ruler/tyrant" due to being given "queen" counterparts - monsters are given the appropriate title for their gender, and receive more perks such as enchanted weapons. Vampire rulers are introduced as well.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: The demon lords from NetHack are all buffed and given their own special levels, meaning that there's no longer any Optional Bosses among them. Hope you're prepared to take down Demogorgon!
  • Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Expanded from the original game - elves now have an aversion to Cold Iron, and orcs can't stand the touch of mithril.
  • Detect Magic: Wizards now have a similar ability to Priests that grants them innate knowledge of whether or not an object is magical in nature.
  • Difficulty Spike: Even the most seasoned veteran NetHackers will have their hands full.
  • Dracula: Vlad's back, and like most of the other upgraded returning monsters, he means business.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Shambling horrors are monsters whose basic stats and qualities change from game to game.
  • Enemy Summoner: Monsters will actively use a bag of tricks to bolster their numbers if they're losing a fight against you.
  • Epic Flail: Yeenoghu now has his trademark triple-headed-flail, named Butcher, as an artifact weapon.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Not anymore, they don't!
    • ...okay, that's not completely true, but the gloves are very much off this time. For example, per Artificial Brilliance above, monsters will play a lot more unscrupulously in their attempts to kill you. What do you mean that soldier wished for a cockatrice corpse!?
    • In a straighter example, however, almost every monster will try to kill zombies as soon as possible, even if only to avoid being infected themselves.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: If you thought NetHack had it out for you, think again!
  • Interface Spoiler: The Sokoban prize tool items are designed to avoid this, as their contents cannot actually be seen unless you have a means of object detection or a scroll of magic detection.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: EvilHack adds a heavily modified variant of something known as the "grudge patch", which causes monsters with enmity between each other (such as elves and orcs, or everything and zombies) to fight among themselves.
  • Master Swordsman: The Knight's skill tree is adjusted to improve their proficiency in all types of swords; their peak skill level in available spells is also lowered from Skilled to Basic, pushing them towards the more physical side of the Magic Knight scale.
  • Mayincatec: Archaeologists lean heavier into this than before, with the addition of the ability to train up to expert in spears. Their new quest artifact, Xiuhcoatl, is an atlatl (or "spear thrower") named for the spirit form of an Aztec fire deity, and can inflict massive fire damage.
  • Medusa: Returns from the base game and gets her own taste of the Adaptational Badass pie. For example, she'll try to shield her eyes from her own reflected gaze constantly.
  • Mirror Boss: Player monsters are far more frequent and can now spawn in the main dungeon, including as part of bones files, and will have kits similar to what an average player would be expected to have at their level. Wishing for artifacts not tied to a quest leader or nemesis has a chance to summon a player monster holding said artifact.
  • Mounted Combat: Made available to all roles. Other monsters are now capable of this as well, and some may even attempt to mount other compatible monsters in the middle of combat, turning them hostile as well if they weren't already. Furthermore, many new and returning monsters can be generated riding steeds of some kind. Up to and including the actual Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And yes, that means you, as War, get one upon reaching the Astral Plane if your alignment is good enough!
  • Multiple Head Case: Cerberus, formerly a deferred feature in the original game, now appears. He guards the entrance to Gehennom, and cannot be beheaded by Vorpal Blade.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: Don't let any of the player monsters on the Astral Plane steal the Amulet, or else they might ascend with it.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: There are far more variations, existing ones are buffed, and almost all of them can now engulf and digest the player and other smaller monsters, similar to purple worms. Dragon scales also take a page from SporkHack's book, possessing new secondary abilities based on their element. Unfortunately for the player, that now also applies to the dragons themselves. It also applies to mail made from their scales (e.g. sea dragon scales and scale mail grant magical breathing and the ability to swim, and black dragon scales and scale mail may passively disintegrate attackers).
    • Knights are now incapable of taming dragons, as they are considered natural enemies.
    • Of particular note is the pseudodragon, with this incarnation primarily adapted from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - it resembles a "true" dragon in appearance but is smaller and far more docile on average, making it more suitable as a familiar. Wizards can start with a tiny pseudodragon, and they can grow to rival "true" dragons in size and power.
  • Our Liches Are Different: Alhoons. They're the result of mindflayers attaining a form of lichdom. In the Dungeons & Dragons setting they were pulled from, this makes them immune to psionic powers, and as such are feared even by other mindflayers (ho are already xenophobic to begin with) - and players with the misfortune of encountering one will learn exactly why.
  • Our Zombies Are Different:
    • Probably the most significant monster change in EvilHack, and one of the key changes that makes this variant so difficult. Zombies now have poisonous 'claw' attacks and disease-inducing bites that target the head and can cause amnesia. Both attacks alone can more then easily end an early-game character - and they can rise from the dead repeatedly! There is a reprieve - you'll be encountering them a fair bit later than you would normally as a result.
    • Being killed by illness from the latter (or else eating a raw zombie corpse) turns the player into a zombie unless it's cured. If a player is unfortunate enough to lack a cure, there's a small chance that the game will allow them to continue playing - but they'll be stuck in that form for the remainder of the game. The same can happen to other monsters, who will also fight off the zombies and take other necessary precautions to cure potential infection.
    • The same strategies that apply to dispose of other monsters that revive from their corpses also apply here, as well as some other newer strategies: You can drop the bodies in a lava forge, stuff them in a container, tin them, leave them for a gelatinous cube to engulf... You can also kill zombies permanently by beheading them, e.g. with Vorpal Blade.
  • Pegasus: Encountered at the end of one of the new branches.
  • Psychic Radar: Telepathy is buffed so that you can see the position of telepathic monsters, which now includes spellcasters - and they can sense you in return.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size: One of the new creatures added to the other large rats within the "rodent" class - giant rats can now grow up into enormous rats, which in turn can become R.O.U.S.
  • Shapeshifter Mode Lock:
    • Some tamed shape-changing monsters, minus vampires and were-creatures, will revert back to their original form if "killed" in their polymorphed form, and cannot change form again once this happens.
    • Tame vampires themselves invoke this, never shifting into their animal form.
  • Sidequest: Many new branches are added.
  • Squishy Wizard: Illithids (playable mind flayers) have absurdly low strength and constitution caps of 10 and 12 respectively, as well as a charisma cap of 16, but in return have far higher-than-average caps for dexterity (20), intelligence and wisdom (22). And of course, they can be played as actual wizards.
  • Swallowed Whole: Several monsters are capable of this now, including elementals and dragons.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: Mostly averted as in vanilla NetHack, with notable changes below.
    • Played straight with Orcus's wand - it's now an artifact heavy mace that he drops upon his defeat. It can't be picked up by the player, and will harm them if they try.
    • Downplayed with certain artifacts that cannot be wished for; these are mostly associated with bosses you are guaranteed to encounter, and thus do not count the towards the number generated for purposes of wishing for others. And the ones that can be wished for just might bring their owner with them now...
    • There are new monster-exclusive spells, and in an inversion monsters can use the cancellation spell now, averting this for the player.
  • Up to Eleven: If you hadn't guessed by now...
  • Useless Useful Spell: Averted with the "cure sickness" spell, which is now directional like other healing spells. You and your pets'll need it with the upgraded zombies around, too.
  • Video Game Stealing: The Rogue now has an actual thievery skill that can be trained.
  • Villain Protagonist: One of the new roles added is the Infidel - based on another user's original patch, the Infidel is an unaligned servant of Moloch that offers the player a role reversal of sorts. As an example, they start with the Amulet of Yendor, and their first main objective is to return it to Moloch's Sanctum.
  1. ↑ The highest possible rating on the game's warning scale.
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