Also read the hilarious account how neglecting the integer range of parsing a number lead to a config that gives you an almost invincible character from the start:
https://dpmendenhall.blogspot.com/2020/03/nethack-366-or-how...
In short, there’s plenty of ways to die in NetHack!
Wait, what?
[0 I know there are some people who managed to ascend (win) without reading up, but they are probably in the < 0.01% so it's definitely not the norm.
Having all the rules right there for thinking through from one turn to the next was really compelling to me. (I've ascended almost every role now, but that started only like four years ago!)
It's definitely a throwback to an era of gaming where it was hard to have a lot of content, and so time was often spent on mastering challenges.
In my own case, I found the reading of the spoiler documents to be nearly as interesting and fun as playing the game.
I assumed it never ends.
And publicly too: https://alt.org/nethack/top-3.6.php
In nethack it's easy to just grind until you're invincible (barring YASD/"yet another stupid death", a death usually brought on by inattention rather than bad strategy or tactics) and then the endgame is a cake walk.
In Brogue (at least at the skill level I'm at), dashing through the last few levels to the amulet using up a lot of resources to survive and escape is very common.
Very neat what it has done with ASCII-style interface too
Different types of information (inventory, map, monster info, etc) can all be put in separate windows, so my screen is plastered with Angband windows when I play. Makes for great immersion, and the windows all retain their position and size between program starts.
It may even be older than Nethack.
Angband is one of those games that are about endless grind, trying to get those rare item drops that allow you to descend a bit further by offering some form of elemental resistance you lacked. And then you can continue grinding. Also, later on, many fights with unique monsters with extremely powerful attacks.
Nethack is much more about getting a collection of items and then trying to figure out how to identify them until you have enough of the important ones,and not running into random deaths. And a lot of fun because all the obscure interactions that can happen.
Rather, you want to dive as deep as possible, pick your battles very carefully, and get loot off the ground or from occasional fightable monsters. Hilariously, people have found that Ironman play (never leaving the dungeon, and always descending) is easier because it forces you to play like this.
When grinding, you will still run into out-of-depth monsters that will wreck you, so there is no way to play the game safe.
One of the main draws to DCSS for me has been its autoexplore feature, which makes exploring the dungeon much less of a chore than it was in Nethack. It also has much better use of color in text mode (the only mode I play both games in). Then it has an enormous variety of gods, powers, races, classes, and spells.
Unfortunately, it does have some downsides compared to Nethack. The interactions with gods, shops, and pets tends to be richer and more complex in Nethack. The things you can do to and with items is as well. The trend in DCSS has been to kind of dumb it down over the years, taking away friction points that made it more complex and thus (arguably) less fun for a certain kind of player. My own taste is for more complexity and more options, so I'm not a huge fan of going in that direction, but I still stick with DCSS because it's great despite that.
You can play and watch other people play the game by ssh'ing in to crawl.akrasiac.org, with a username and password of "joshua" (a reference to the classic 80's hacking movie Wargames).
Another game, in some ways very different but in other ways very much in the spirit of both of these games that I've really enjoyed has been Path of Exile.[2] It's not minimalist like Nethack or DCSS, but it definitely has a lot of roguelike elements and is pretty complicated for a mainstream, modern game of this sort, and is a worthy successor of both of these games, in my eyes. It's free to play too, so if you have the slightest interest, give it a go.
Agreed about all of these except for gods. In NetHack you can't easily choose your god during the game (though you can sometimes not-easily choose your god during the game) and the difference in behavior from one god to the next is minimal. In Crawl, you can usually choose your god and thereby get different abilities, status effects, and effectively mini-conduct challenges based on what each god disapproves of. I think that's more interesting than the NetHack religion stuff, although it's true that NetHack has a slightly more complex model of gods' feelings toward you.
I've been gradually writing up a document about differences between Crawl and NetHack and I think the items behavior you mention is a huge one.
NetHack has a substantial minigame about item identification, plus various ways that items can be damaged, destroyed, or modified (beyond magical enchantment), plus ways that they can be combined with one another (including an entire "alchemy" system of mixing potions to get other potions), plus ways that one item can be turned into another item. Also, some items give status effects when carried, while others must be equipped, or applied or invoked. Also, some items have a nonintuitive or humorous use -- one of many examples is that some harmful potions can be used offensively by throwing them at monsters or by hitting the monsters with them. Monsters can also often make intelligent use of items against you.
In Crawl, every item has essentially one and only one appropriate use, and every item is immediately fully identified when used or equipped. (Item identification is still not completely trivial because some items are harmful to use, or are consumed by use, so you might not want to use everything you find.) Items can never be permanently changed¹ except by enchantment or curses, and items can't be damaged, nor can they be destroyed except by using them up or dropping them into deep water or lava. Also, monsters make comparatively minimal use of items and don't pick them up.
You can see where various people might prefer one style or the other!
¹ The one counterexample I can think of is the dragon-slaying lance that becomes more powerful every time it kills a dragon.
In Nethack you can do a ton of different things at altars. In Crawl altars are useless except for converting to that god's religion. After your conversion you can pretty much safely ignore altars in Crawl unless you want to change your religion. The options are much greater in Nethack.
Path of Exile on the other hand has only gotten more and more baroque, which is awesome if you love the theorycrafting aspect of it
There's so much stuff to learn, I'd love to chat with an experienced players while they are venturing deeper into the dungeons.
ssh nethack@alt.org
I'm sure there's an extension or some such, and I know there are a lot of admin portals that have ssh accessible from the browser.
edit: for instance here's is one such extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell-app/p...
Another entertaining talk from that event, more focused on the code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y_IAdOwaYs&t=1258s
All of the talks (if you like roguelikes, gamedev, or programming in general): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKv_QzXft4mD6TXmQBZtzIA/vid...
The public server with most forks hardfought.org. Info on how to connect is on https://www.hardfought.org/nethack/
You can watch in your browser: https://www.hardfought.org/nethack/hterm/
There are 3 servers in Europe, the US, and Australia.
Most people are in various channels (e.g. #nethack, #hardfought) on Freenode but the #hardfought channel is also bridged to a channel on the Roguelike discord server (https://discord.gg/xUPxRe).
He goes by MCDM on twitch and youtube.
There might be some Twitch streams, but I am not sure.
I've just checked my bug report, where I wrote:
Demonstrating this bug is quite challenging as it involves:
* Finding pizza.
* Eating the pizza and having a two in three chance of your message (getenv( "CRAWL_PIZZA")) being used.
Fun memories; I should audit some more code soon.
And as far as mobile games go, can't think of any others that offer so much depth, gameplay and replayability without iap's and bullshit for free.
Sorry if this sounds like an ad, but I love nethack and getting to carry it around in my pocket and have it play well is just fucking awesome.
Brogue — https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ — colorful, user-friendly rogue-like available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Streets of Rogue — https://streetsofrogue.com/ — with online cooperative play also available for Mac, Windows and Nintendo Switch.
https://crawl.develz.org/ -- is my personal favorite. Good combination of punishing but easier to pick up.