Mediocrity

You feel lackluster.

Current tourist is progressing.... not high enough to do the quest, but pretty good stat-line (at least until that rust monster gave me the business.)  The problem is that he doesn't excel at anything.  18/14 strength... pretty good but not out of line for his level.  AC -7... meh... and that includes a 5 AC bump from offering to priests.  I haven't really found any great gear.  AoR in sokoban (which I had to wrestle off a stupid werewolf,) bag of holding in a shop, but no decent armor drops and no wishes anywhere.  Seriously, the best armor I've found was dwarvish mithril, and my short stint as a winter wolf cub destroyed both that and my t-shirt.

I have gotten two gifts by sacrificing.  First Cleaver (sigh... thank you so much The Lady) and then Vorpal Blade.  I need to level before I can improve longsword, so I can't hit squat with it.

So I progress.... pressing forward knowing that I'll be outclassed pretty quickly but too far along in the game to think about stopping.  I just soldier on.

Memory Lapse

I just launched Nethack again, took a look at my inventory, ate some food, then proceeded down the stairs that were next to me.

Words are burned into the floor..... uh oh.

This is deadly bones level you better run..... oh, crap.

It touches you.  You are covered in frost.  You die.

Not again.... sigh..... I just hope this bones level is gone forever.

ARE YOU %$@&* KIDDING ME?!!?

Really, Nethack?  Really?!!?  I mean, I understand last game.  Sometimes you have a little fun and rough us up a little.  It's fun for you.  We get it.  But to throw the same invisible Arch-Lich at me in two consecutive games is like shelling out $60 so that Peter Molyneux can savage me repeatedly.

Well, at least I got to capture the "deadly bones" message.  Plus, I'm not dead but I have no idea how I'm going to get past this.  Maybe the Gnomish mines entrance is accessible.  If it's not, I'm boned.

Some Days.....

Some days this game has it in for me.  I'm only playing as tourists now, so any significant success in the game gets my enthusiasm up.  This game, it seems like the game was toying with me.

First off, I found an artifact weapon in a weapon shop on level 2.  Magicbane?  Mjollnir?  Frostbrand?  No, Trollsbane.  Yay.

Next, I find another artifact on a corpse.  Firebrand?  Vorpal Blade?  No, Cleaver.  Double yay.

I cleared out the Gnomish Mines shop level without finding anything of note and ascended back to the Dungeons of Doom.  One level down, and what do I get?  Something about burning bones and I'd better run.  What?  I don't remember any message like that before.... One step into the room and suddenly there's an invisible Arch-Lich using touch of death on me.  Then there are two.  Then I am dead.

Could I have escaped?  Perhaps.  I might have had a wand of digging, come to think about it.  Meh.  This game had it out for me this time.  Time to start over.

This Will Make a Great Picture

Wandering down the hall as a tourist.....  suddenly, an Owlbear jumps out and grabs me!

"You are being crushed."  I know I have only a few turns left before dywypi.  I check my inventory for possible life-saving-ness.  Camera!  Could it work?

a. apply what?  an expensive camera.  Direction?  Right at the stinking owlbear.

Next turn the owlbear is nowhere to be seen.  Blinded by the flash, he wandered off into the darkness.  I found him later in another room and fed him +2 darts until he died.

Let the New Era of Nethack Begin!

Okay, maybe that's a bit optimistic.  Paul, Josh and I are trying to get the "new guys" to play Nethack, with mixed results.  At least one expressed "hatred" for the game, and has tried to play it again.  Another has told us that he doesn't cope with frustration well.  Consider Nethack an exercise in character building then.

I have abandoned our local server to play on telnet:nethack.alt.org now.  The ability to watch other people play is kind of cool.  I have my options file set to only play tourists.  I currently have a co-aligned altar on level 1, and am consuming a bag of tricks to sacrifice on it.  So far tons of sacrifices and no goodies.

I Think I'm Gonna Be Sick

I have many, many other screenshots but I just can't muster the energy to post them.  I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach.  It happened so quickly.  Where did my Amulet of Life Saving go?  Why didn't I use the 4 wishes I had left?

Why is this game so awesome that I keep coming back to it after it savages me?

Start of End Game - The Plane of Earth

I'm so scared, but I have to ascend a Tourist.  It will be the culmination of 25 years of Nethacking.

No return!?  What if I need to go back down and fetch something important?  Oh, man....

Yay!  "Well done" means I win, right?  Whoa, what's this about a Test?

Can I get a third option?

Oh, great.  Look who's back. Well, at least I have my ring of conflict on.  Have fun with that minotaur or titan or whatever.

Well that was pretty easy.  I got confused and read a scroll of gold detection to show traps, so I knew where the level teleport was, then used 3 charges from a wand of digging to get to it.  What's next, air?  Air is the worst.  Hopefully the ring of conflict will keep the air elementals busy.

My Short Stint as a Silver Dragon

So I'm tooling through the dungeon, laughing madly as everything thrown at my bounces harmlessly off my silver dragon scale mail, when I step on a polymorph trap.  Rrrrrip... I become a silver dragon, shredding most of my armor but leaving me a silver killing machine.  You hit!  You hit!  You bite!  I was unstoppable!  Until I got to that cockatrice.  I attacked it without thinking, and before I knew what was going on I was a statue of a silver dragon.

Games and games later, I come across "a statue of a silver silver named Gouda" on a bones level.  I play on a multi-user system, so I can't say I was expecting to find my earlier game's bones level.  Hmmm, it sure would be nice to have all the gear that I was carrying when I became a silver dragon (and which I was still carrying at time of death.)  Thinking, thinking.... hey!  I have an idea.  I blasted the statue with force bolt and all my prior possessions come pouring out.  Thank you, Dev Team.

My Unassailable Cowardice

Okay, you go ahead and give me one good reason why I shouldn't try and ascend this Tourist.  Go ahead.  Nope.  Sorry.  I'm still too scared.

Here we see that my stat line is pretty darn good.

I've got quite the ascension kit going on...

and a fair assortment of wands to fall back on.

...and I even have a magic lamp waiting for me.

And yet I am still too scared to climb above level 1 and brave the elemental planes. Sigh.

HACK first

This whole adventure started in 1986 when a friend at Michigan Tech showed me HACK on his PC-XT.  The computer had a 20MB MFM hard drive, which was magic to me at the time after using exclusively floppies.

I can't say I remember exactly what HACK was like.  It clearly had classes/races (and like earlier Nethack, some classes were races and all others were human) and I clearly remember wishing (from fountains? magic lamps?)  The whole cursed/blessed/uncursed thing was a mystery to us, as was the randomization of potion/scroll/amulet/ring names.  You wouldn't believe how many times we tried to write down what each meant, only to be perplexed next game.  I don't think the scroll names have changed since HACK.

ASCII symbols ruined my life

Nethack.... I love you.  I hate you.  When I met you, my future glowed black for a moment.  New moon... I feel lucky tonight!

I'm feeling faint from hunger.

Do you want your possessions identified?

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