NetHack: Difference between revisions

** Least downplayed in the End Game. {{spoiler|The [[Elemental Plane]]s can only be entered with the real Amulet of Yendor, and a means of portal detection outside of the Amulet is highly recommended. The Plane of Earth requires you to dig your way to the portal, with implements helpfully provided by the first few enemies you encounter - including [[Resurrective Immortality|a guaranteed reappearance from the Wizard of Yendor]], who helpfully carries a spellbook of dig should you need it. The Plane of Air requires a method of flight or levitation if you plan to move with any amount of reliability, while the Plane of Fire becomes much more bearable with fire and poison resistance. Finally, the Plane of Water forces you to stay inside the giant air bubbles that float through it - unless you have a means of magical breathing, you'll drown if you end up outside one.}}

* [[Absurdly High Level Cap]]: The experience level cap of 30 is considered this, as you can easily ascend with around half of that (note that you must be XL 14 to enter [[The Quest]]).

* [[Acquired Poison Immunity]]: And many other types of immunities besides, acquired through various means.

* [[Action Bomb]]: The sphere class (<code>e</code>) consists mostly of these type of [[Mooks]]. Gas spores explode upon dying normally, which can easily kill low-level players, and spheres attack by exploding directionally at the player character. Lights are a class of monster (<code>y</code>) that can also explode at the player to impair their sight.

** If you try tinning any of the {{spoiler|Riders'}} corpses, you get this message: {{spoiler|"Yes.. but War does not preserve its enemies."}}

* [[All There in the Manual]]: The in-game guide is a remarkable collection of quotes and information, not all of which is entirely accurate in describing game mechanics. There is also an encyclopedia that can be used to look up interesting quotes associated with certain monsters. Local installations of NetHack also provide you with a handy guidebook in PDF form, which is also accessible from ''NetHack''{{'}}s official site.

** The NetHack site's [https://www.nethack.org/download/index.html archive page] has the source code for all versions, and their [https://www.nethack.org/common/index.html main page] has download links going back all the way to 3.2.3/3.3.0. Both [https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/ the official repository] and [https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Source_code the wiki] have annotated codies of the code that can reveal other things about the setting, monsters and characters (e.g. the fact that {{spoiler|the player character is War, one of the [[Four Horsemen]]}}).

* [[All Trolls Are Different]]: They come with enhanced [[Regenerating Health]] and [[Resurrective Immortality]] that lets them come back to life as long as any part of their flesh remains. They also tend to generate with polearms.

* [[Ambiguous Syntax]]:

** {{spoiler|The phrase "Who do you think you are, War?" may occur if you chat with one of the Riders (9/10 chance with Death) or else look in a mirror while on the Astral Plane - it can read as either [[Tomato in the Mirror|calling you War]], or else as a [[Pretender Diss]]. A source code comment and some other dialogue clarifies that it's the former.}}

* [[Amplifier Artifact]]: The Magic Mirror of Merlin exclusively gives Knights double damage to most of their spells in addition to its other intrinsics.

* [[Anachronism Stew]]: Let's see... playable characters include an [[Indiana Jones]]-inspired [[Adventurer Archaeologist]], a [[Conan the Barbarian]]-style [[Barbarian Hero]], a [[One Million BC|caveman]], a [[samurai]], and a [[Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist]] complete with a credit card (used to pick locks). Items and enemies include traditional staples like [[Our Dragons Are Different|dragons]], [[Our Demons Are Different|demons]] and [[Our Giants Are Bigger|giants]], but also included are things like [[Tron|grid bugs]], [[Genius Bonus|quantum mechanics]], and [[Jabberwocky|jabberwocks]]. Finally, plastic, while fairly uncommon, isn't unknown either.

* [[And Your Reward Is Clothes]]: T-shirts, Hawaiian shirts and regular gloves are among the many types of armor you can encounter. Not that they're any less useful; enchanted shirts can provide a light and nifty source of extra AC, and this also holds true for gloves.

** {{spoiler|Asmodeus}} has a special cold ray attack similar to the cone of cold, which has a melee-range variant that does devastating cold damage, potentially enough to kill all but the most powerful characters in one strike!<ref>The maximum possible damage is 180!!</ref> The attack is completely nullified by cold resistance, thankfully.

* [[Anticlimax Boss]]:

** The #tip extended command was introduced in 3.6.0 and allows players to empty out the contents of a container onto the floor - its primary purpose was to provide a means for player wielding [[Stuck Items|a cursed two-handed weapon]] to still access stashed items in spite of lacking a free hand.

** Seven candles are needed towards the late stages of the game in order to {{spoiler|light the Candelabrum of Invocation}}, but there are very few guaranteed sources of candles outside Izchak's shop in Minetown, and even then he may not stock enough of them (whether due to bad luck or bones). As of 3.6.0, the top level of Vlad's Tower now contains two stacks of 4-8 candles and is ineligible for bones, meaning that there will always be enough candles.

* [[Anti-Magic]]: Magic resistance is a rare and valuable property that nullifies most of the damage and adverse effects from many magical sources, though it doesn't protect your inventory from them. It does, however, nullify [[One-Hit Kill|rays and touches of death]], and protects you from many trap effects.

** The cancellation effect can rob most monsters of their magic and some other special abilities, and turns some items into their mundane equivalents while removing enchantments (including blessings or curses) from others.

* [[Arbitrary Skepticism]]: The [[Self-Imposed Challenge|atheist conduct]] [[Flat Earth Atheist|requires absolutely no interaction with religion or the gods whatsoever]], despite them very definitely existing in-universe and the goal being {{spoiler|to obtain the Amulet of Yendor and ascend to godhood yourself}}. Ironically, the Priest role is best suited for the conduct, since they start the game with holy water (an atheist Priest with holy water, [[Fridge Logic|try and figure that out]]) and have intrinsic knowledge of whether items are blessed or cursed without needing to use an altar.

* [[Armor Is Useless]]: Averted - better quality armor tends to have a higher AC stat which lowers monsters' hit rates and damage against you. Even more mundane items such as gloves can be handy for additional defense. That said, ''if'' a particularly strong monster manages to land a hit, you can still take loads of damage - minotaurs have been known to pulp valkyires with more than -20 AC and their half-damage quest artifact!

* [[Artifact of Death]]: Downplayed - artifacts can "blast" players that are not of the correct role or alignment for them (''especially'' if they're intelligent), which can potentially instakill weaker characters.

** ''NetHack'' variants often add an additional spin on the cockatrice and its kin, and some even introduce its close cousin in the basilisk.

* [[Bear Trap]]: Appears as one of the many traps, and tripping one damages the victim and holds them in place for a while or until they're freed. {{spoiler|Special messages occur if a bugbear or owlbear is caught in one.}}

* [[Big Red Devil]]: The default tileset portrays many of the demons as this. {{spoiler|And strangely, [[Our Dragons Are Different|Ixoth the red dragon]] as well.}}

* [[Big Creepy-Crawlies]]: Most of [[Fan Nickname|Team a]] and <code>s</code> monster classes are composed of unreasonably large multli-legged insects and arachnids. Ants, bees, beetles, spiders, you name it!

* [[Chess Motifs]]: Knights have the intrinsic ability to jump to other squares in the same way as the knight chess piece, and unicorns will attempt to keep a knight's jump away from players. Neither can jump through or over other objects, though.

* [[Chest Monster]]: Mimics lurking in stores sometimes disguise as chest-like "strange objects", and are common killers of unwary low-level characters.

* [[Combinatorial Explosion]]: Plenty of items have interesting tandem uses, with some being literally explosive.

** Once you know a scroll or spellbook, you can write more copies with a magic marker on a blank scroll or spellbook. On the other hand, magic markers are hard to come by and often have to be wished for.

* [[Curse]]: Some cursed items have their beneficial effects weakened or else exchanged for normally-undesirable effects - though a cunning player can easily turn all but the worst ones to their advantage.

* [[Damage Discrimination]]: Averted - if you're facing a mob of enemies, anyone between a missile-user and theri target (up to and including dragons) stands a chance of getting hit. Also, if you wear a ring of conflict, any nearby creatures will start attacking each other.

* [[Deader Than Dead]]: That [[Auto Revive]] up there? It doesn't work if you {{spoiler|genocide your own species or class, or get your brain eaten.}} Well, technically it does, but you just die ''again''.

* [[Death by Sex]]: If you're not careful when you initiate an encounter with a foocubus, you may suffer such [[Yet Another Stupid Death|stupid deaths]] as: [[Taken for Granite|turning to stone]] because {{spoiler|you were wielding a footrice corpse and had your gloves removed}}; {{spoiler|attempting an encounter at level 1 and getting [[Stat Death|level drained]], having monsters around after you're done and left without your armor on...}}

** This is a common method of dealing with early ghosts - they're very hard to hit for many starting characters, but are incredibly slow and deal little damage with their touch attack. Players who don't want to leave them for later can instead ''kick them to death'' - successful kicks will do at least 1-2 HP of damage, and eventually you'll have punted them to the afterlife.

** Attacking a floating eye in melee can result in you suffering one at the hands of whatever happens across your paralyzed form.

* [[Demon Lords and Archdevils]]: Several of them ({{spoiler|Asmodeus, Baalzebub, Juiblex, Orcus, and many others}}) await you in Gehennom.

* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]:

** Do ''not'' kill a unicorn of your own alignment, even if chaotic, or you might not live to regret it. {{spoiler|You'll suffer a -5 Luck penalty (plus any additional applicable penalties if they were peaceful). By itself, this isn't unsurvivable, but it'll take *quite* a while to make up - better not try any wishes in the meanwhile!}}

* [[Everything's Better with Samurai]]: Not only can anyone get a [[Katanas Are Just Better|katana]], but a bunch of items are renamed in [[Gratuitous Japanese|Japanese]] if you play as the Samurai role.

* [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]: '''Oh are they ever.'''

* [[Evil-Detecting Dog]]: Any non-undead pet has the innate ability to detect cursed items, and will try its best never to step on them, or to do so only "reluctantly". Also, when leashed they will whine or act nervous whenever there's a trap nearby.

* [[Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor]]: Most hostile demons will frequently utter maledictions when battling you, such as the following gems:

* [[Genie in a Bottle]]: In magic lamps, as well as actual bottles. {{spoiler|(Specifically smoky potions.)}} They're a possible source of a wish if handled correctly.

* [[Genius Bruiser]]: Players inevitably tend towards this style of play as they progress - in ''NetHack'', picking your battles wisely and having creative solutions for disposing of baddies is 70% of the final grade.

* [[Gods Need Prayer Badly]]: Inverted - your god will be cross with you if you call on them too ''much''. {{spoiler|Yeenoghu is a notable aversion, as his encyclopedia entry explicitly states that his followers were wiped out.}}

* [[Golem]]: Various types serve as enemies; they are notable for being impossible to genocide, and can result from polymorphing piles of like items.

* [[Inventory Management Puzzle]]: For sufficiently advanced and/or paranoid players, most of the difficulty (and/or tedium) will come from this. You can carry a lot of swag with the right items, but eventually you'll have to start stashing; to be as certain as possible of not losing a cache, you can {{spoiler|put it in a pit and push a boulder on top of it}} or {{spoiler|put it in a (preferably locked) chest, on a scroll of scare monster, on a dungeon tile which has "Elbereth" engraved on it. If it's not a permanent Elbereth, peaceful monsters can wander across it and scuff it out. [[Paranoia Fuel|Then the gelatinous cube shows up...]]}}

* [[Invisibility]]: Available through [[Invisibility Cloak|a cloak]] and a ring, as well as intrinsic invisibility conferred by wand (permanent), potion or spell (temporary). Note that it doesn't make you completely undetectable; monsters will try to guess your location and attack where they think you are, and some monsters can see invisible creatures soutright. All of the above items can also be used by monsters, making the "see invisible" intrinsic important.

* [[Just Add Water]]: Several types. For example, alchemy can be used to mix potions and generate more-useful ones.

* [[Katanas Are Just Better]]: They use the same skill as the long sword, but have slightly higher damage against small monsters and are +1 to hit. Snickersnee is an artifact katana that serves as the first sacrifice gift for Samurai.

* [[Magic Pants]]: Subverted - if you change into a much larger form, then the armor you're wearing will be torn apart and destroyed. If you turn into something exceptionally weak and puny, you'll be half-squashed by the same armor and find it harder if not impossible to move.

** Despite the amount of slots available, there are no ''mention'' of pants in the game whatsoever. If you sit on a cockatrice corpse, however, you don't turn to stone, so you must be wearing pants. Since they don't tear apart or anything, [[Exact Words|the pants are thus magic, but it's averted with the rest of your clothing.]]

* [[Magic Wand]]: Wands can be found in the dungeon that have various magical effects, ranging from offensive rays to self-buffs to utility effects.

* [[Magikarp Power]]/[[Lethal Joke Character]]: Arguably, all the "weak" character classes have this to some extent - but it's most noticeable with the Tourist, who might (arguably) be the easiest role to win with if you survive past [[the Quest]]. But that's usually [[Nintendo Hard|a ''big'' "if."]]

* [[Mailer Daemon]]: A literal one - it delivers messages from other users when playing on a server. The daemon normally appears and disappears within one turn without giving the player a chance to interact with it. However, a [[Crazy Prepared]] player [[Lord British Postulate|can kill it]], [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|rendering it extinct and preventing further messages from being delivered]]. {{spoiler|To do this, the player needs to stone-to-flesh a statue of a mail daemon, which is not something that occurs naturally but needs to be wished for, and have enough speed and powerful enough weapons to kill the daemon in one turn - too slow and it disappears with a cry of "I'm late!"}}

* [[Make a Wish]]: The most certain, and in some cases only, way of getting some desirable rare items. On the other hand, it may be much more useful to wish for an item with an important [[Mundane Utility]].

* [[The Many Deaths of You]]: There are many (''many'', '''many''') ways to die, leading to a lot of [[Trial and Error Gameplay]]. Some can only realistically be obtained by deliberately setting out to collect them.

* [[Medusa]]: Appears as a boss on her own unique level which has elements that allude to her myth, such as a statue of Perseus.

* [[Mighty Glacier]]: Many quadrupeds qualify as this.

** Rothes are an early game example that move somewhat slow, but get 3 attacks per turn, and often generate in herds. They are usually among the earliest instances where a player will have to employ crowd control and kiting to avoid being battered to death.

** The wumpus is extremely slow and often generates asleep, but its sole bite attack can deal solid damage.

* [[Minigame Zone]]:

** Some players will do the inverse and "start scum", repeatedly starting and quitting the game until they get a favorable set of starting equipment or stats. This is usually done with wizards, due to the ridiculous (and pre-identified!) magical items a lucky wizard can start the game with. A little over 50% of all NAO games are turn-0 quits, and a good portion of those are wizards. Whether or not it's acceptable depends on the circumstances - for what it's worth, even the best start in the world won't matter if the player is subsequently terrible or else just plain unlucky afterward.

* [[Schizophrenic Difficulty]]: Despite dangers like arch-liches, mindflayers, and {{spoiler|Rodney chasing you}}, the game gets much, ''much'' easier after the first dozen levels or so due to the necessity of being [[Crazy Prepared]] for early monsters considered to be [[Demonic Spider|vastly overpowered]], such as soldier ants, leocrottas, and chameleons.

* [[Sdrawkcab Name]]: Yendor. The Wizard of Yendor is [[Fan Nickname|affectionately referred to as]] Rodney as a consequence, [[Captain Obvious|which is Yendor backwards.]] The origin is part-[[J. R. R. Tolkien]] inspiration and part ''Rogue'' allusion (Rodney is the default name of its player character), among a few other possible sources.

* [[Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere]]: Vaults can be found on random levels and accessed by digging to them or teleporting there, which can happen by accident. A guard comes along to check it occasionally, and can even help you escape if you have no other means to (though you'll have to drop your gold first). However, you can fool them through a few means.

* [[Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness]]: Somewhat subverted, both for good and ill as far as the player is concerned.

* [[Spell My Name with a "The"]]: Used for some of the artifacts (e.g., The Eye of the Aethiopica, The Heart of Ahriman and The Magic Mirror of [[Merlin]]) and quest nemesis monsters (e.g., The Cyclops, The Dark One).

* [[Spikes of Doom]]: You fall into a pit! You land on a set of sharp iron spikes! {{spoiler|The spikes were poisoned! [[One-Hit Kill|The poison was deadly...]]}}

* [[Stat Death]]: If your Intelligence drops below 3 (usually by mind flayer attack, although there are other ways to do this), you "die of brainlessness". This can also occur for some other stats as well.

* [[Stuck Items]]: Cursed armour can't be removed, and cursed weapons can't be unwielded. There are several ways of dealing with these problems, though only one ("[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|remove curse]]") will seem obvious.<ref>For example, if it's made of stone, you can cast stone-to-flesh and eat it. Eating cursed food will make you slightly sick, but at least the bigger problem is dealt with.</ref>

* [[Stupidity-Inducing Attack]]: Mind-flayers have an attack that reduces intelligence.

** The [[Enemy Scan|stethoscope]] can be freely applied once per turn - applying it again directly after that uses up the turn.

* [[Technical Pacifist]]: See [[Pacifist Run]] above, and note that the requirement is that you don't ''personally'' kill anything. Leading an army of high-level pets through the dungeon and letting them slaughter everything you meet is just fine.

* [[Tech Points]]: You need both "skill slots" (gained through [[Experience Points]]) and a certain number of successful uses of the item/spell in question to advance a skill.

* [[Teleporters and Transporters]]: Teleport and level teleport traps randomly send you to another tile or level. Vaults may have dedicated teleporters that send the user directly into them. Teleportation is also available via scroll and wand; both teleportation and teleport control also have ring and intrinsic forms, with the latter allowing you to select specifically where you end up. Certain characters can obtain teleport control via leveling up, and all playable characters can teleport at-will upon reaching XL 12 if they have teleportitis already (unless they're a wizard, who gets it at XL 8).

** [[Unwinnable by Insanity]]: In fairness, both of these are things you essentially have to go out of your way to do in most scenarios, or else have a very unfortunate series of accidents.

* [[Useless Useful Stealth]]: Averted - stealth can be a very good intrinsic to have, especially when clearing out monster-filled zoos such as the one in Sokoban. Even in a scenario where kicking or causing something to explode wakes the entire room of monsters up, you still have plenty of other crowd control skills you can fall back on. Stealth also has multiple sources (including some elven gear and even a godly gift), and some roles gain it through leveling up.

** Wands still operate on this logic, requiring no magical aptitude to use but possessing a limited number of charges. Scrolls are similar as well, allowing one casting of a given spell per scroll read, and many wands and scrolls have a spell counterpart (e.g. cancellation, fireball, identify, remove curse).

* [[Veganism and Vegetarianism]]: ''NetHack'' tracks [[Self-Imposed Challenge|conducts]] for both vegan and vegetarian diets. The [[Warrior Monk|Monk]] role in particular is expected to maintain at least a vegetarian diet, with small alignment penalties occurring each time they consume meat.

** For non-chaotics, murder penalties only apply if you kill "always peaceful" humans (e.g. watchmen, shopkeepers, etc.); many other peaceful non-human monsters incur a minor alignment penalty in comparison unless they were coaligned or you killed them without angering them.

** On that note, player characters are generally forbidden from [[Human Sacrifice|sacrificing]] members of their own species (unless Chaotic) or [[I'm a Humanitarian|eating corpses of their species]] (unless the player is an orc or Caveman). Every other being they come across - including many sentient and even sapient monsters? Fair game!

* [[With This Herring]]: The Tourist class is the most obvious example, but several other classes qualify.

* [[A Worldwide Punomenon]]: Levitating characters will sink if they float over a sink. Drinking a cursed potion of gain level causes a character to move up a dungeon level. Scrolls of mail, on UNIX systems, are delivered by a ''mail daemon''. If you try to identify a wand of ''striking'' by engraving something on the floor, you'll receive a message that it "unsuccessfully fights your attempt to write". And that's just for starters! Boy howdy, [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]].

* [[You Will Not Evade Me]]: Once you've found him and woken him up, The Wizard of Yendor will reappear periodically wherever you are, and taunt you for thinking you could elude him (if he was alive and on a different dungeon level). {{spoiler|This applies even after you've killed him, with a slightly different taunt applied.}}

** {{spoiler|The Riders implement this in an unusual way - trying to teleport them or their corpses away has a 12/13 chance of warping them right next to you.}}