Part I
NetHack IAP Class, Session 1

1  What is NetHack?

NetHack is a game where you are the at sign and you push j to move south and then get killed by a newt.

–Pete Elmore

NetHack is a Roguelike dungeon crawling game. What that actually means is up for debate on Usenet, but NetHack, like most roguelikes, has the following qualities:

• The majority of the game is randomly generated. While the structure remains the same, knowledge from one game does not always carry over to the next game.
• There is no such thing as a save point; when you die, you start over from square one with a new character.
• While there are graphical interfaces, most people play the game in a terminal.
• The game's design is predicated on your having access to its source code.

This last bit is, to me, the most interesting. While NetHack and most roguelikes are designed with the idea that they be theoretically finishable without source access or spoilers, they are also designed to be difficult and engaging even with source access and spoilers. This class assumes that you want to win the game, so by the end of the class, we'll be going through a pretty large selection of spoilers, but hopefully we will ease you into them, as the fun of discovering things — from spoilers or otherwise — is part of the point.

1.1  Class Schedule

Today we'll be talking about the history and community of NetHack, going over the basics of control and movement, and then just playing around with the game for a bit. In the next three classes, we'll be covering:

• Basic tactics: How to take advantage of the map, how to deal with individual monsters, and how to handle various common situations.
• Basic strategy: What you need to win the game, what order you should get them in, and the different ways you can assemble your ascension kit.
• Cute tricks: Various ways to (ab)use the game engine to make your life easier, harder, or just more interesting.
• Recent Advances: TAEB, Interhack, Sporkhack, and, because I can get away with it, a teaser for Crawl.

1.2  NetHack history

http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Game_history is the best resource. Some salient talking points:

• Rogue!
• Rog-O-Matic: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/ appel/papers/rogomatic.html
• Started off as Hack in 1987: the twentieth anniversary was this past year
• DevTeam formed in 1992: They've been releasing new versions ever since! (…)
• Letters used to be the first letters of things (j for jackal, like Crawl)
• Copyright issues — Beholder, &c.
• Three Stooges!
• Spellbook of genocide: “too unbalancing”

1.3  NetHack Culture

Talking points:

• Competitions! MIT came in third last year. http://nethack.devnull.net/archive/2006/runnerup.shtml Competitions help foster new developments in ideal nethack strategy as well as pushing people to crazy conducts and conduct combination. The devnull tournament pushed eit_brad, an MIT alum, to overflow the score buffer for the first time.
• Izchak! He even has an MIT connection! http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Izchak_Miller
• NAO! http://nethack.alt.org It's where all the cool kids play when they aren't playing on http://nethack.mit.edu. Its dgamelaunch software lets you watch games in progress and even correspond with the players of those games.
• RGRN! (rec.games.roguelike.nethack) It's where all the really old and stodgy people argue about their preferred pet changes to the game, and about each other. Still, it's the best place to get updates on lots of things, and plenty of serial ascenders hang out there and will give advice if asked nicely.
• #nethack! (freenode.net) It's where all of the internet kids hang out to talk about NetHack. A good conversation there is incredibly helpful and a bad conversation there is about what you'd expect from an internet that brought us lolcats.
• Patches and Variants! You might have heard of Slash'EM (http://slashem.sourceforge.net) but did you know about Sporkhack (http://sporkhack.com) or the NetHack Patch Database? (http://bilious.homelinux.org) Being open source means that anyone can — and anyone does — modify NetHack. Some of the changes in variants have even ended up finding their way into later releases of the game!
• http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/msg/1bb9e46ef6db1bf7 L's post about Crawl! There are other roguelikes too — if NetHack is wearing on you, try DoomRL (http://doom.chaosforge.org) for a quick game or if you're on the move, try POWDER! (http://www.zincland.com/powder/) The Classics include Angband (http://www.thangodorim.net and ADOM (http://www.adom.de) and, of course, my favorite, Crawl. (http://crawl.akrasiac.org)

2  OK so I want to play already dude.

Great! You haven't left yet!

2.1  What the characters on the screen are

Check out http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/. Also, use the / and ; commands. But here are the basics:

• @ : You! (or another human, elf, soldier, and so on)
• . : A map square!
• < and >: Stairs up and down!
• | and -: Walls! (or opened doors)
• +: Doors!
• {: Fountains!
• #: Hallways or sinks!
• ^: Traps!
• _: Altars!

Everything else you can either pick up or kill.

2.2  Controls

Use the handy handout! I will hand it to you. Redhanded. (http://yiff.mit.edu/nethackclass/refcard.pdf)

2.3  What should I play?

Valkyries are burly. Barbarians don't starve. Wizards have lots of toys. Rangers have ranged combat. Choose the one that appeals to you. (Not starving will sound way more appealing after a few games; don't worry if that sounds lame right now.) Some general tips for each:

• Valkyries: Valkyries can be lawful, which gives them easy access to Excalibur in the early game. They have great skills, get fast quickly, and are guaranteed a strong artifact from their god to boot. The best class for pure melee, with a strong ranged option as well.
• Barbarians: The burliest of the classes, barbarians can eat more corpses than most classes and can absorb and dish out damage with the best of them. They have a simple start: Hit things with a sharp pointy thing.
• Wizards: Wizards start with magic (magic! yay!) and lots of magical items. Use them when you need them, or you'll be leaving them behind in a bonesfile for some lucky valkyrie. One of the most fun classes, but not the easiest to start at all.
• Rangers: Rangers start with bow and arrow, and are more adept at slinging artillery than any other class in the game. How can they kill you if they can't even get near you? Since lots of early monsters can only attack you when standing next to you, rangers are a natural novice choice.

2.4  I died!!!

Yes you did! You will die many many times. If you're lucky, you'll even die many times today. If you're really lucky and you put your corpses under your pillow, I'll even tell you what you could have done differently.

3  Puzzles

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/msg/0d72b82410ab1402 contains some I've written. There are more later in the thread.

This document was translated from L^AT_EX by H^EV^EA.