NetHack Tips & Strategy for New Players (Let's Play NetHack!)
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- Опубліковано 12 жов 2018
- Here's a Let's Play style video I did to demonstrate some early game tips and strategy for newer players. The audio cuts out at the end of some sentences, hopefully it isn't too distracting.
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Really helpful. Several folk at my place of work in 1991 became obsessed with nethack, and I'm still learning how to play it. Awesome game!
I'm an occasional player that never made it farther than level 4. I didn't even know about using the pet to find if something is cursed or not. Now my Barbarian has an AC of -4 thanks to this video. Subbed.
That was something that I had undervalued for years, but it's definitely one of the best tips to safely raise your AC early!
51:15 Pay close attention to the character's Strength attribute here. Notice that it goes from 18 -> 17.
What happened is that the Valkyrie lost strength due to Abusing their Strength too much, specifically from being in the Weak condition. Every turn spent while Weak Abuses your Strength, eventually causing it to drop.
This is related to an unseen system for a character's attributes called Exercise and Abuse.
For those new to the game, some actions and status conditions quietly raise or lower your base Attribute scores by doing broadly good or bad things relative to that attribute, though some of these interactions can be pretty obscure. (Intelligence and Charisma have no known Exercise/Abuse activities though they can still be permanently altered via other means)
As a new player you should AVOID doing what was demonstrated and try to Eat (or Pray) BEFORE reaching Weak. Doing so will not only avoid the Strength abuse from Weak status, but it will Exercise your Constitution a bit. Even if you aren't training a stat to improve it, it's still beneficial to have that Exercise as padding against future (unintended) Abuse.
This is especially useful in early levels because your Strength and Constitution are your two most important attributes at that time. Strength in particular lets you haul/equip more stuff and the early game of Nethack has a LOT of loot management.
My dad showed me this game when I was a kid and now I just kinda remembered it in a dream and thought I'd learn about it since I found it on steam.
That's awesome, enjoy the journey!
By the way NetHack is a free game so I'd try the download from nethack.org/common/index.html or the browser version at hardfought.org/hterm/ before giving money to the people trying to charge for it. But playing NetHack is better than not playing NetHack so enjoy it however you'd like :)
Why do they even charge for it on Steam? It's a free and open source game.
Hey I just started watching your videos a couple of days ago. I'm a intermediate player I guess, I've ascended a couple of times, the first one being a monk, and the second one a wizard. The master Kaen fight I had during the monk's game was just epic. I was totally not prepared for it, I thought I was farily advanced but nearly killed me with such ease I thought I was doomed. I can't really remember how it went, because this happened in 2015, but I polymorphed into a black dragon at some point, and tried shooting death ray beams at him, only to find out that he was really hard to hit with them, he almost killed me as a dragon but RNG favored me that time and finally I could hit him with a death ray. Damn, Master Kaen is brutal. The wizard nemesis is, as they say, really simple to beat.
I logged in to give you a tip on pets. Tin whistles are useful for bringing pets to you, they just don't come magically as they do with a magic whistle, but as soon as you use it, they start walking towards you.
There's a youtube channel with which I learned a lot back in the day, it's "lseths" (Lord Seths), the healer ascension is much better in terms of in game knowledge. He has a couple of non graphical playthroughs which are really good too.
Looking forward for more nethack videos.
Thanks for sharing that story! I think Master Kaen has the lowest base AC in the game (tied with disenchanters), so it's not surprising that he dodged so many of your dragon breath attacks. He is by far the most difficult quest nemesis in the game and you always need a good plan for dealing with him. Sometimes I levitate over lava or hide in a boulder fort on the stairs and zap him with wands. In newer versions of nethack (3.6.0 and later), he actually respects the scroll of scare monster, so dropping one on the stairs and fighting is the easiest way to deal with him.
You are right about the tin whistles, I make use of them sometimes when using pets. Also having a "treat" in your inventory helps (like a tripe ration for dogs and cats).
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check out Iseths content :-)
I took a break due to the November tournament but I'll be uploading some more youtube-specific content over the next few weeks. There's a lot of nethack stuff on my twitch channel right now from my tournament games if you are looking for any videos in the meantime. Thanks again for the feedback!
Great video, thanks!
Wish I could find someone playing the Android version. Thank you for this though. Will help out. 👍🏼
Love the game, starting to get the hang of it a bit now.. do you prefer to play without any tilesets?
Sorry I somehow didn't see your comment until now. I learned to play with ASCII, probably because I defaulted to server play which didn't really support tilesets (although as of a few days ago, apparently hardfought.org supports them). I've been playing in ASCII long enough that I don't really notice the characters and instinctively translate them to their in-game meanings. I actually prefer base ASCII nethack over the popular Curses interface, if you'd believe that! I've just been playing that way so long that I'm most comfortable with it. I think tilesets give slightly more information because in a few instances the tiles are more descriptive than their ASCII counterparts.
Nowadays when I pick up a new roguelike to play, I almost always default to tiles, so it wouldn't surprise me if others prefer to do the same with nethack, and there's nothing wrong with that.
@@tonehack im stil playing every now and then and im just completely accustomed to the stock tiles. Kind of like the graphics now. Grows on you
I think Geoduck is the perfect balance.
Enjoyed the video. Can you share how you got the bright green square cursor and what graphic set you are using? Was that set in config file or in some other way?
In this video I'm using PuTTY software to SSH into the nethack@hardfought.org NetHack server, so that's where many of these options are set. Under PuTTY I'm using a "block" cursor appearance and Courier New font at 22-point size, and also have OPTIONS=IBMgraphics set in my config file. I hope this helps, I can give you more details if needed :)
This is great information but listening the words cutting in and out kinda drives me nuts. Thanks though
Yeah, not sure what happened when I recorded this. I don't think this is an issue in any of the other nethack vids at least.
Last time I tried to play Nethack, I spent a good ten minutes deciding on my race and class and a good name. Then when the game started, I took my first step off the stairs and into a dart trap. Which hit me and then turned out to be poisoned, killing me instantly on my first step. Do not pass GO, do not collect 200 zorkmids.
I took this as an ill omen and decided not to play Nethack that day; the RNG god clearly was in a bad mood..
ha, that's an extremely rare event, but still within the realm of possibility as you learned that day :)
@@tonehack Tell me about it. I once stepped right and had my monk crushed by a boulder.
Say, do you know of any guides to Nethack 4? I feel like trying that one first because someone recommended it to me
iirc it should play pretty similarly to NetHack 3.4.3 except for some QoL and UI/UX stuff, and maybe a few minor gameplay changes but probably nothing that would stop any 3.4.3 advice from being helpful. I don't have any NH3.4.3 recommendations off the top of my head, and I think my earliest videos are still NetHack 3.6 stuff. A lot of the 3.6 stuff should still be very transferrable between the versions but you might run into a few differences (particularly stuff like Elbereth and the speed systems)
Didn't even watch the video but I subscribed don't disappoint me
I appreciate the sub, I'll be uploading a lot more videos in the next few weeks so I hope they are to your satisfaction ;)
@@tonehack don't have to be to my satisfaction as long as your having fun
@@tonehack also your voice is very nice so that instantly makes it better to watch
I know this video is a couple of months ago now, but I noticed - that first gold spellbook you had, you said it had a 200 value but the shopkeeper said 100. Was that just a mistake? Or is there some mechanic where shopkeepers won't offer you the base price?
When you sell something in a shop, the price that is offered is half the base price, so when the shopkeeper offers 100 gold, we know the base value is actually 200. Also when selling, sometimes they reduce their offer price by an additional 25%, so another shopkeeper might have offered us 75 gold for that same book.
is there a part 2 at all for this new player series?
Nope, it basically evolved into the current "Let's Play" series that I'm doing, after realizing the futility of trying to condense so much nethack knowledge into relatively short improvised videos. At some point I'll revisit a lot of topics into shorter more specific videos, but for know I want to wrap up that Tourist game from the LP.
Is "losing" your pet a common problem? I know mine follows me closely enough for at least the first few floors, but I feel like I've always lost tabs by floor 4 or 5 and never see them again for the rest of my short life. Am I just moving too fast?
It can be, a few tips:
- Pets can get stuck moving away from you in corridors, so if you get too far away in a corridor they may turn back and have trouble getting back to you. This is because there's an "anti oscillation" check for monsters to make sure they don't "oscillate" back and forth between to tiles, but this is overridden when a pet is near you.
- Pets will follow more closely if you have a "treat" in open inventory. Tripe rations are the most common treat for most pets.
- Pets will follow very closely if you feed them immediately after they drop an item next to you. So if you have a tripe ration ready and throw it at them the same turn they drop an item next to you, it will boost their "apport" score which controls how closely they follow. If you do this a few times they should follow very closely for quite a while.
- Even a normal tin whistle will supposedly help your pets follow more closely for a short time after use.
I hope this helps!
why didn't you engrave-test with Elbereth? Isn't that a strictly better use of a charge? Am I missing something?
You are correct, it really is a strictly better use of a turn spent engraving. I think I've gotten into the habit of just engraving "x" though because it preserves both illiterate and elberethless (only tracked on certain servers) conducts. I'm usually not very concerned about these, but the wisdom exercised and having an Elbereth engraved in dust on that tile is usually pretty negligible as well. But I do think it is optimal, as you say!
Do you know a game like pixel dungeon but easier? 🤣 I cannot beat the game.
Theres easier versions of pixel dungeon out there modded to make it easier. I beat the original pixel dungeon with lots of luck and life saving moments with items. I have yet to beat nethack though
Shattered is better.
"I'm gonna pick the valkyrie here"
Disappointing. Every single god damn person always goes valkyrie because valk is so god damn OP.
If you are looking for more difficult roles, I have an ongoing series in a similar format to this video which showcases the Tourist role as I add commentary tailored for less experienced players. I also have full ascensions uploaded for monk, caveman, wishless wizard, etc.
holy shit your audio is awful. cuts in and out.
horrible for new players. you should do something more scripted