NetHack/Nightmare Fuel: Difference between revisions

You're probably thinking, "What could possibly [[Nightmare Fuel|be scary]] about a game made of numbers and letters?", you're probably thinking. Good question! WhyWhile not takegeared aas ganderheavily fortowards yourselfthe atspooky theas surprisingmost frightsother roguelikes, ''[[NetHack]]'' still has surprising frights to offer. Why not take a gander for yourself?

* The idea that [[What Measure Is a Mook?|you can eat any sapient or sentient being you kill as long as they're not the same species as you]] is... [[Fridge Horror|harrowing to contemplate at length]]., especially considering that no one actively takes issue with you eating a fresh kill in front of them.

* There are lots of "used armor" shops scattered throughout the dungeons. Sometimes these shops contain cursed armor, which [[Stuck Items|can't be removed except by certain methods]] such as uncursing it. Now [[Fridge Horror|where do you think the shopkeepers got their inventory from?]] Dying while in a shop confirms it outright - the shopkeeper takes all your possessions in that event (which amounts to making them part of the shop's inventory). Seems reasonable enough... but if you directly steal from the shop (e.g. teleporting out with unpaid items, digging out...), the shop owner will try their damnedest to chase you down. If you should die after that point, guess who comes for ''all'' of your loot?

* Master liches and arch-liches are [[Demonic Spider]] (if not [[Boss in Mook Clothing]]) levels of frightening to encounter in normal gameplay, and it's even worse when a monster's polymorphed into one (which occurs with shapeshifters and polymorph traps that can spawn below dungeon level 7). Imagine you finally make it to DL 10 after a long and arduous series of splats, and as you're exploring something invisible warps towards you and starts destroying your armor, cursing your inventory - or worse, priming the infamous ''[[Touch of Death]]''. Even if it isn't nearly as likely as other outcomes, the fact that something can potentially teleport to you and [[One-Hit Kill|render you a corpse with no warning]] will leave you [[Paranoia Fuel|double-checking every move you make]].

* Chameleons - in real life they're bizarre and unusual animals, but generally no threat to the average person. In ''NetHack''? They're [[Hollywood Chameleons]] that can randomly turn into one of several eligible forms every few turns or so - including ''[[Demonic Spiders|several more powerful forms that would be completely out-of-depth for a player otherwise!]]'' If you're especially unlucky, you might just encounter one [[Oh Crap|in the form of the aforementioned master/arch-lich above...]]

* [[All Trolls Are Different|The trolls]] found within the dungeon are [[Demonic Spiders|incredibly strong and persistent]] for midgame foes - not only do they frequently generate with polearms that canto swat you with if you try to put another monster between you and them, but they have a nasty melee-range bite! To make matters worse, theythen have [[Regenerating Health]] abilities that put werecreatures to shame. Even if you manage to put them down, their corpse [[Resurrective Immortality|will often revive as soon as possible]], [[Came Back Strong|restoring it to full health]] and likely leaving any adventurer that struggled to defeat it just once at its mercy. If you're not prepared for them, your best option is to pull out the wands and spells, or else just run.

** Even disposing of the corpse isn't always guaranteed to get rid of it -: it's incredibly heavy, meaning you'll have to lug a lockable container over if you want to stuff them in, and spending turns carrying one heavy object to the other just increases the risk of it coming back to life. Eating the corpse seems most intuitive, but also carries the risk of it resurrecting with each turn spent, right down to [[From a Single Cell|the very last bite]]. (Strangely, carnivorous pets don't seem to have the same issue.) It's entirely possible to satiate yourself from low nutrition trying to finish eating a single troll corpse! Out of the other "permanent kill" methods - stoning, disintegration, drowning, tinning, etc. - most of them might not be an option unless you have specific items, so you'd better hope the [[Random Number God]] is smiling on you.

* '''You.''' Yes, ''you'', the [[Horror Hunger|corpse-eating]], gold-stealing, magic-abusing [[One-Man Army|One-@ Army]]! With the blessings of your god, you'll be wreaking havoc upon the dungeon and its denizens. Sure, [[Everything Trying to Kill You|most of them are trying to kill you]] first]], but what of the ones who aren't - did that peaceful dwarf deserve to be robbed and killed just because you ''really'' wanted to borrowhave their pick-axe? Is it worth [[Kick the Dog|kicking every <code>d</code>]] you come across? Even without leaning heavily on moral angles, the sheer amount of killing and eating (usually involving the things you just killed) that you have to do would be thoroughly off-putting in anya lot of other contextcontexts.

** And that's before the discovery that ''discovering you're War of the [[Four Horsemen]]''. Attempting to tin the corpses of the other Riders gives a response that "War does not preserve its enemies". If the ''Riders'' were your 'enemies', then what were all the other monsters you faced? Obstacles? Inconveniences? SteppingOr were they just stepping stones as part of a test for you to come into your true self?