This comment along with this picture reminds me all too well on my closest Nethack adventure.
I was basically immune to any sort of instant death, had over 500HP (as a tourist) was decked out with a crysknife/magicbane +6/armor/items/healing/wishes/ect.
Was 100% ready for the end, but I said to myself “I want to 100% this game, lets do Fort Ludios!”
So I do it, everything is just dropping life flies and then…I die…just randomly, I’m cutting through waves of enemies, everything dies…yet I died…I check my health and everything…I’m healthy…I have 480HP left…no way I could of died! I even made sure I killed that cockatrice ASAP to make sure he couldn’t stone me!
I then read the game log…turns out, some asshole elf (IT’S ALWAYS THOSE BLOODY POINTED EARED BASTARDS!) PICKED UP THE COCKATRICE CORPSE, without gloves mind you, and SMACKED ME OVER THE HEAD WITH IT! Turning me to stone over 5 turns…while turning him instantly to stone…and people wonder why I hate elves…
Worst part about it? I had a lizard corpse SPECIFICALLY FOR SOMETHING LIKE THIS! Just in case I was getting stoned, I had one of these…I only let me guard down once I killed the cockatrice. Never in a million years would I of expected the game to be smart enough to allow it’s creatures to pick up a cockatrice corpse, knowing how deadly it is, and use it as a weapon. There were swords/axes/etc on the same space! Nope, that corpse is just the weapon I need!
Not a single game has EVER managed to surprise me like that again…not a single one…which still makes Nethack one of my all time favorite games.
The sheer complexity of the game is such that even to this day I have not played a game that presents more options to the player. Modern WRPGS like Skyrim are large in scale, but compared to the plethora of commands and options in Nethack they are almost laughably simple. And it was made in 1987, more than 25 years ago.
Did I mention this game is really really hard? Because if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing at every moment the game will be bending you over.
Nethack requires patience above all else, and to even stand a chance of survival you need to plan for every possible danger. And even then, there’s a good chance the game will catch you off-guard and kill you, such as falling into a pit of lethal toxic spikes and dying instantly. I’ve been playing Nethack for almost 5 years and I still haven’t beaten it.
If you really want to see the end of the game, you can enable Explore Mode, which prevents your character from dying, but it arguably destroys the whole point of the game, the challenge.
Beating Nethack is a true test of gaming merit: you must brave the Dungeons of Doom, fight through demons and devils in the infernal realm of Gehennom, retrieve the all-powerful Amulet of Yendor, go back through Gehennom and the Dungeons of Doom, travel through the Elemental Planes of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, become the Rider of War, outwit the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and ascend to the status of an immortal demigod!
It’s actually a “Roguelike,” a dungeon-crawling game where everything is graphically represented by ASCII characters. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is an example of a mainstream roguelike with visual graphics.
Roguelikes are unique in that death is permanent, and you’re forced to create a new character upon death. If you’re lucky, though, you can find the ghost of you’re old character and steal his stuff, though most of it will be cursed.
On a scale of 0 to 10 on the bullshit meter, that’s a solid 255.
F**k that noise, I use Nevandra.
Sigh~
This comment along with this picture reminds me all too well on my closest Nethack adventure.
I was basically immune to any sort of instant death, had over 500HP (as a tourist) was decked out with a crysknife/magicbane +6/armor/items/healing/wishes/ect.
Was 100% ready for the end, but I said to myself “I want to 100% this game, lets do Fort Ludios!”
So I do it, everything is just dropping life flies and then…I die…just randomly, I’m cutting through waves of enemies, everything dies…yet I died…I check my health and everything…I’m healthy…I have 480HP left…no way I could of died! I even made sure I killed that cockatrice ASAP to make sure he couldn’t stone me!
I then read the game log…turns out, some asshole elf (IT’S ALWAYS THOSE BLOODY POINTED EARED BASTARDS!) PICKED UP THE COCKATRICE CORPSE, without gloves mind you, and SMACKED ME OVER THE HEAD WITH IT! Turning me to stone over 5 turns…while turning him instantly to stone…and people wonder why I hate elves…
Worst part about it? I had a lizard corpse SPECIFICALLY FOR SOMETHING LIKE THIS! Just in case I was getting stoned, I had one of these…I only let me guard down once I killed the cockatrice. Never in a million years would I of expected the game to be smart enough to allow it’s creatures to pick up a cockatrice corpse, knowing how deadly it is, and use it as a weapon. There were swords/axes/etc on the same space! Nope, that corpse is just the weapon I need!
Not a single game has EVER managed to surprise me like that again…not a single one…which still makes Nethack one of my all time favorite games.
Bloody elves…
Go Team Ant!
Unless you’re playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. In which case, Go Team Bee!
Ants are god in that game. They will find you, and they WILL kill you.
Be warned, Nethack is hard.
The sheer complexity of the game is such that even to this day I have not played a game that presents more options to the player. Modern WRPGS like Skyrim are large in scale, but compared to the plethora of commands and options in Nethack they are almost laughably simple. And it was made in 1987, more than 25 years ago.
Did I mention this game is really really hard? Because if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing at every moment the game will be bending you over.
Nethack requires patience above all else, and to even stand a chance of survival you need to plan for every possible danger. And even then, there’s a good chance the game will catch you off-guard and kill you, such as falling into a pit of lethal toxic spikes and dying instantly. I’ve been playing Nethack for almost 5 years and I still haven’t beaten it.
If you really want to see the end of the game, you can enable Explore Mode, which prevents your character from dying, but it arguably destroys the whole point of the game, the challenge.
Beating Nethack is a true test of gaming merit: you must brave the Dungeons of Doom, fight through demons and devils in the infernal realm of Gehennom, retrieve the all-powerful Amulet of Yendor, go back through Gehennom and the Dungeons of Doom, travel through the Elemental Planes of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, become the Rider of War, outwit the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and ascend to the status of an immortal demigod!
Well that sounds fun!
The more you know!
It’s actually a “Roguelike,” a dungeon-crawling game where everything is graphically represented by ASCII characters. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is an example of a mainstream roguelike with visual graphics.
Roguelikes are unique in that death is permanent, and you’re forced to create a new character upon death. If you’re lucky, though, you can find the ghost of you’re old character and steal his stuff, though most of it will be cursed.
It’s a reference to the game Nethack. You can it for free here: http://www.nethack.org/