I’ve been on a Nethack phase for some time now. SLASH’EM phase, to be more precise.
Few days ago, I was playing with a… Valkyrie, I think. Pretty much the beginning of the game - level 5 in the Dungeons of Doom or something like that. Game had been going reasonably well - nothing special, but pretty good. I had found a ring of levitation or possibly levitation boots or maybe quaffed a levitation potion - in any case, I was levitating. Then I found a shop. Nice medium-sized shop. I open the door and enter. The shopkeeper complains about my pick-axe. Entirely reasonable. So I do what I usually do in a situation like that and throw my pick-axe out.
:smack:
Yes, you guessed it. The pick-axe flies in one direction and my (still-levitating) Valkyrie in the other. And hits the shopkeeper. Shopkeeper gets angry. Let’s just say my character wasn’t quite in the shopkeeper-slaying phase yet.
I was recently (I’m on a Nethack binge right now, too-- the older one) on the Medusa level struggling to knock off a frikking Titan. He was cursing objects left and right, I suppose, and I was struck blind (couldn’t see zombies, then) and confused and stunned, but luckily ended up on the staircase up. I got upstairs and applied my unicorn horn a few times to try to help. Had no idea it was cursed or that a cursed unicorn horn would make you deathly ill.
The game provides so many means of ignominius demise, and I’ve tasted most of them, so where is there to begin?
I’ve been cursed by my god for sacrificing a werewolf on an altar, not realizing it would count as human. Having not quite realized my peril, I did not see any cause to fear using a scroll of genocide against a lich. Sic transit Johnny the Digger mundi.
When the tin you get off of a poor sod’s corpse opens like magic and smells like Wizard of Yendor meat, your next keystroke is very important.
Wearing gauntlets of power, you could easily end up not realizing that your strength has been drained to 3, and when you take the gloves off to change out a ring, you could find yourself unable to move, and indeed crunchy and good with ketchup.
When beating a hasty retreat by zapping a wand of digging at your own feet, keep in mind that your leash may snap, and your pet dragon may not remember you when you come back to collect it.
Succubi cease to be useful companions when you cross into Gehenna. In fact, they tend to cease to be. “Succubus whispers in Zombie Lord’s ear. Zombie Lord hits Succubus. You feel a wave of sadness as Succubus dies.”
It sounded like fun, so I downloaded the game. When I went to set my settings, Windows asks what program to use to read the file. Can anyone tell me what I need to read the file?
If you’re doing the manual configuration, any text editor will do. But probably you’ll want to just start the game first. Most everything you’d want to mess with in the config file can be adjusted in-game, and then you’ll at least be able to see what they do.
I once tried to walk down a set of stairs. On my horse.
Then there was the time when, on level 10 or 12 of the dungeon, blind, starving, poisoned, stoned, out of food (The last of which is what resulted in my being stoned and poisoned), no healing items, I prayed to my god. And again. And again. He didn’t like being pestered any more than I liked being smote.
Throwing eggs at my horse.
Eating the half-rotten corpse of a were-jackal I’d been hauling around for the last 5 or 6 levels of the dungeon.
Add to that the ever painful fate of being turned to stone because you forgot to wear your thick gauntlets before attempting to wield your cockatrice corpse.
Aye, forsooth, my deaths have been many and varied. The stupidest (as in, I really shoulda’ read what the sign said) was just a couple nights back. Wandering around the 2nd-4th levels of the DOD. Found a “closed for inventory” shop, but I was in such a hurry, I’d already kicked the door in before the sign registered with my brain.
Stupidest…let’s see. Not a *hack, but a *band. I was travelling between towns in Zangband. Got sick of repeatedly hitting . + direction to fast travel, so I just held down the direction. Wound up dying…looked back through my logs and found I’d been pecked to death by a bird. What a lovely image…
The version of SLASH’EM I’m currently playing has a nice tin feature - you often don’t quite recognize the smell of the food in the tin.
10 points and a parrot mark for the first to guess what my very very promising Valkyrie died of. That’s right, schezuan cockatrice. Must have been one terribly carefully prepared dish.
This was particularly dramatic back when computers were much slower, so you’d be happily walking along with everything clicking along peacefully. Then…
“You step on a trap. A dart hits you”
and then the stupid floppy disk accesses for 5 seconds or so, and you know that the next time a message pops up it will be “the dart was poisoned. The poison was fatal. Do you want to see a list of what you were carrying? (y/n)” That pause just made it all the more frustrating.
However, if you really want an embarassing death involving a cockatrice, three guesses as to how you get your name on the high score listed as killed by an unwise tinning decision?
Can anyone tell me what I need to read the file?