What I’d like to know is how to open a locked box/chest. applying the lock pick or the key doesn’t work (at least not for my archaeologist (who’s since died, but I’m gonna try again)), as all it does is tell me there’s no door in that direction. I know I used to know this, but it’s been years since I’ve played nethack.
Lynn Bodoni, I’m supposed to be in bed sleeping so that I can get to the doc’s tomorrow bright and early so I can get OUT of the doc’s early enough to get to a job interview I have that’s a goodly distance away from the office. It is your fault I am up at this hour, playing this game. All your fault.
Heck, I just kick the damn thing until it pops open. I do sometimes break stuff inside - but what I get will be more than I’d have if I never get it open.
I always Kick it til it opens, too. Kicking seems to improve your strength and/or dexterity, as well, so there’s another reason to kick boxes and doors. Again, don’t kick open doors unless you KNOW that there’s no shopkeeper on the other side of it.
Picking a locked chest, or forcing it open with a bladed weapon both work towards improving dexterity. Forcing it with a blunt weapon (smash the bugger 'till it opens) improves strength, I’d assume kicking it would do as well.
The lockpick/dagger approach doesn’t break potion bottles inside, however I have broken a dagger or two that way. Daggers are a lot cheaper and more plentiful.
As to smashing down a shop’s locked door… Oops. I’ve done that in haste, as well. But I think there’s always a sign (or it’s written on the floor in front of the door) to the effect that the place is closed for inventory.
Breaking the door down pisses off the shopkeeper, as you’ve learned, but…
Picking the lock is fine, and he’ll happily do business with you after you’ve shown him you can pull off a B&E with a little finesse.
[sub]And never, never, never mess with Izchak, owner of the lighting store in the Gnomish mines. Just don’t.[/sub]
Credit cards work to pick locks as well. So the Tourist can B&E all he wants too.
On an unrelated note: Anybody know what Vampires eat? My cat got polymorphed into one and he’s not eating his corpses. I don’t want him looking at my jugular when he starts getting peckish…
** No, they don’t. The spoiler guides explain almost everything… and the information they don’t contain is so basic that if you don’t have it, you’re not capable of playing the game.
No, you don’t. If you did, you would have listened to me when I suggested you search for a guide to Nethack online.
Hmm, this thread has claimed yet another victim. A friend gave me a copy of Falcon Eye(nethack v.3.3.1 with an isometric graphic interface) almost a year ago and at the time I didn’t quite get it, after reading this thread I am close to hooked.
I’m enjoying me some elven wizards but despair at their cargo capacity. Which leaves me to wonder, can monsters move boulders? If I lack a key to lock doors or chests can I use a boulder to seal a room or hallway to keep my extra stuff safe or will some dwarf come a long and rob me blind?
Umm, not all spoiler sites are so kind. Those which I have seen, while providing a lot of info do so from a more experienced perspective and presume a certain amount of background knowledge. Perhaps if you have the time you would be kind enough to point out some of the better written sites for our edification.
BTW, are their any opinions of Falcon Eye? Is it just nethack with graphics or is it significantly different from the 3.3.1 version it claims to be? Will the nethack faithful throw cream pies and cockatrice eggs at me for straying from the ASCII purity of the game?
Pets polyed into monsters don’t need to eat. Don’t worry about your pet neckbiter getting hungry. But the flip side of that is that he won’t accept treats, either.
But don’t let him go feral, though, or he’ll no longer be your pet. Don’t leave him behind for very long when you change levels, or he may go feral and attack you upon your return. Unfortunately, later in the game, you will need to levelport, and so this will become a burden. You can shut him in an out of the way room, and block the egress with dropped, cursed items, since some poly’d pets can open doors.
But before you do that, do this: Hang out in a store with lotsa goodies (like spellbooks or wands) and wait. Sooner or later, your pet necksucker will attack and kill the shopkeeper. Don’t help! Just wait it out. Heal your pet if you can, but don’t attack the shopkeeper. Eventually, all the stuff in the shop will be yours for the taking… This only works will really, really powerful pets.
Mine recently got transformed into a Marilith… something like six attacks per round, with two of those weapons, and an armor class of a monster with three times its level. Almost too powerful…
Giants and titans can pick up boulders and carry them around, and throw them. I also once had a large pet cat pick up a boulder! But it only moved it one square, and I’ve never seen it happen before or since.
But note that a dwarf with a pick-axe can always dig around the boulder, even if it can’t dig through. (I don’t know why a dwarf couldn’t dig through a boulder, but I’ve never see one do it either.) If you want to protect your stuff then you’re probably just as safe or safer leaving the boulder on top of the chest instead of blocking a door.
You need to find yourself some boulders to push. Sometimes you can find a stretch of hallway where you can move around the boulder in a couple of areas, so you can push it this way and that. Make sure you have enough to eat, and start shoving that boulder around! Eventually, you’ll increase your strength. Also, be on the lookout for Tins. If you find a tin of Spinach, gobble it on down, unless you’re Satiated. It’ll boost your strength immediately and permanently. I THINK that it boosts regular strength a couple of points (which is very handy when you’re only average strength) and it boosts percentile strength a few percentile points. Of course, when you have extraordinary strength (18/01 and above) you can probably carry more than your backpack can hold, but you still want to max out your strength for the bonuses to hit and to damage critters.
If at all possible, you want to increase your strength on the first couple of levels. This will give you both carrying capacity early on, and will probably help you level up. I find that it’s helpful to be at LEAST a couple of levels higher than the current dungeon level…that is, I try not to descend to the third floor until I’m at least fourth level, and preferably fifth. This is minmaxing, but I just die too quickly if I don’t spend the time to level up. Barbarians and Valkeries can usually go down to the level of their level, but most other classes are just not tough enough.
It’s more a matter of decorum than difficulty. Type / n Izchak for a full explanation. This command can be used to get information on other creatures and objects in the game.
Don’t really have much to add. But just wanted to put my name out there as a member of the community.
I first played almost exactly 11 years ago and have logged hundreds of hours since. Only ascended once, though. I’m currently holding a tournament to see which of my LiveJournal friends are the mightiest (I’m naming a chaotic human wizard after each).
My only advice I might give Lynn is that she might be waiting too long to go into the gnomish mines. I find that if I get to level 6 before entering I have about a 70% chance of making it out alive. Once I’m in I just plummet as fast as I can to the Mine Town (by stairs, wand, or pickaxe), get myself situated there and then start exploring the other levels of the Mines.
Once it is apparent you are going to survive the mines, don’t forget to buy a handful of candles at the lighting store. You probably won’t need them, but if you proceed far enough you will.
And of course, it’s always nice to throw some busines Izchak’s way, for the sentimentalists.
Once I’ve got the mines “cleared out” using the method obfusciatrist describes, I find I tend to buy him out, for those mostly unlighted levels you run into in the deeps of the dungeon.
Unless I’ve got the spellbook, and capacity to cast, Light, I generally put it all to good use. And there is a concrete unavoidable use for six (or is it seven) candles, should you make it far enough.
And re: Elven Wizards
The biggest problem with Elves of any stripe is the maximum strength of 18, with no exceptional bonus. I find that I tend to have an easier time in the midgame with a character with higher intelligence and charisma. Those seem to be the two stats hardest to improve.
Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution all get improved by general dungeon Hacking, and Wisdom gets boosted by finding hidden doors, and, provided a high enough Intelligence, memorizing different spells, whether useful or not.
Blessed potions of Raise Ability, and rings of Enhancement, are pretty few and far between.
MwaHahaha, I scraped my old copy of Raven Eye in favor of the latest version of vanilla NetHack. Too many of the tips and tricks available both here and elsewhere didn’t seem to translate to RE. I just finished my first real game of nethack, Willard the wizard made it to level 8 (in experiance) and dungon lvl 7, though he did have to eat the ocasional rat to get there. My beloved pet cat died not long after doing a briliant job of shop lifting the general store and supplying me the with gauntlets of power needed to overcome the typical elven weakness that Skeezix just mentioned.
But on lvl 7 and after fighting some dust vortex I sudenly found myslf with a pet jaguar with whos help I killed many a monster includeing the gnome king himself. Sad to say a grey unicorn mistook the gems I was throwing at him as a hostile act and in this case luck was not what I recieved from the exchange (ouch).
Thank you to TVAA, his sites were helpfull. Willard the second’s revenge will have to wait for tomorrow, it’s ten till two and works early. I’d like to thank you all for makeing my typical insomnia a little more pleasant.
I just figured out a little tactic that got me through a heap of levels. If you get a saddled pony, you can #ride that baby to carry more stuff! Jimbo the knight wielded his +1 lance and went on a rampage across a heap of levels. I saw a lot of special attack messages, too: “You joust the <blank>” and such. I don’t know if that makes a difference in damage, and I’m leery about wading into those spoiler sites to find out (in case I learn more than I want to).
Of course, at level 12 he got off the horse, dropped his gold, took off his armor, read a spellbook…
…and was teleported into the middle of “Daniel’s Treasure Zoo!” It was not pretty.
