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Yup.

65 (12.2%)

Not even close.

391 (73.4%)

Almost . . . but didn't

26 (4.9%)

Maybe managed halfway

51 (9.6%)

Total Members Voted: 530

[Gunner-Chan]

I had no idea that you ascended that long ago Josh... XD Oops.

[JoshuaFH]

I started up a neutral human wizard, just because, and I'm doing AMAZINGLY well.

Long story short: I found a randomly generated wand of wishing, and squeezed a PYEC, an Orb of fate, SDSM, and a spellbook of polymorph. Then I got a wish off a throne, which I used for a scroll of genocide.

I also have a magic lamp, but I haven't used it for anything yet.

Then sacced for magicbane, and now I'm doing VERY well, about to do the quest. I feel I wasted a read on the book though, as I've been trying to train matter spells by casting polymorph over and over, which I can't do because of my 100% failure rate, then I found out that you CAN'T TRAIN spells that way. Wasted like 10,000 turns due to retardation.

I have wizard lock though, an easier matter spell, so it should be ok.

[Jude]

I'm used to playing Angband and this game seems like Angband on acid. I don't know if I can handle it.

[Sowelu]

I'm used to playing Angband and this game seems like Angband on acid. I don't know if I can handle it.

No, Angband is like Nethack WITHOUT the acid.  How can you handle that, is the real question!

[JoshuaFH]

What's Angband like?

Anyway, my neutral human wizard is doing so well, it looks like I might ascend again pretty soon. I'm too afraid to touch my Samurai.

Got polymorph to work, and it's a dream, I've used 6 scrolls of genocide thus far (Bye bye, m, n, L, h, c, and ;!) and I'm saving an extra one just in case... I also got a t-shirt, and plenty of scrolls of enchant armor, and I used a cursed scroll of genocide to Nurse dance in Sokoban (got an extra 83 hp for my troubles), and I'm currently trying to get crowned so I'll get a blessed spellbook of finger of death.

I have like -30 AC at the moment, and a +6 magicbane.

Also, found a amulet of life saving and ring of conflict, just lying around.

With polymorph, also, it's easy to get TONS of valuable gems.

I only have one thing I really want, and that's an amulet of unchanging. Which is what the wand of wishing in the castle is for.

[inaluct]

Does anyone else here use Hearse?

Also, don't play Angband. Play Guild. It's like Angband, but you have a band of drunken peasants running around in the dungeon, instead of hardened warriors.

Or play MAngband. It's multiplayer online Angband in real-time.

But seriously; Angband's strength lies in the novelty of it's variants. Vanilla Angband is more useful as a metric for understanding the variants than it is as a standalone game.

[JoshuaFH]

Aw man, Failures and tribulations have resulted in great deals of laughter on my part.

Altar camping to try get crowned as soon as possible resulted in my losing my concentration as one point and praying two times in a row, which resulted my losing all 9 points of my divine protection! That was a real pain in the ass, since I only managed to get back 4 of them. However, I finally got crowned and received my spellbook of finger of death!

Learning that, I went down to the castle, busted down the gate, and promptly FoD'd a path inside. Man, I can't describe how cool it is to use FoD and BAM BAM BAM BAM four soldiers dead. That's comedy gold, cause I was laughing the entire time.

Got the wand of wishing (out of trapped chest too!) and wished for my amulet of unchanging. Then after poly'ing into a VL and killing the dragons and checking the store rooms, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel on ideas, so I wish for a blessed greased fixed +3 cloak of protection, which replaced my cloak of displacement quite nicely.

Charging the wand back up (with a scroll of charging I found), I'm sort of befuddled as to what to wish for next. I'm thinking magic marker, so I can fireproof all my stuff with scrolls of enchant armor, then maybe more amulets of life saving, in case the first one ever gets used up.

[Sowelu]

Core Angband's philosophy is that the dungeon is a very survivable place as long as you follow somewhat simple rules.  There's way less randomness in it, and it's way more possible to grind.  Example:  You can go back up the stairs to town whenever you want, and you can buy 'return' scrolls in town that will take you all the way up to town again, or down to your lowest visited level, with only a ten turn delay (so it's not so great for an instant escape).  Whenever you re-enter the dungeon, the level is randomized--which means infinitely farmable loot, and a quick and permanent escape from a level full of bad stuff.  The stores in town sell infinite food, and pretty cheap too.  Also, you can mine for gold (and other stuff that translates directly to coinage) in the randomly-generated-in-infinite-numbers dungeon.  Your danger level is based on how bored you are; if you don't get bored, you can slowly prepare forever with almost no danger.  There are bots that play Angband, and they play it REALLY WELL.

[Mr.Person]

Core Angband's philosophy is that the dungeon is a very survivable place as long as you follow somewhat simple rules.  There's way less randomness in it, and it's way more possible to grind.  Example:  You can go back up the stairs to town whenever you want, and you can buy 'return' scrolls in town that will take you all the way up to town again, or down to your lowest visited level, with only a ten turn delay (so it's not so great for an instant escape).  Whenever you re-enter the dungeon, the level is randomized--which means infinitely farmable loot, and a quick and permanent escape from a level full of bad stuff.  The stores in town sell infinite food, and pretty cheap too.  Also, you can mine for gold (and other stuff that translates directly to coinage) in the randomly-generated-in-infinite-numbers dungeon.  Your danger level is based on how bored you are; if you don't get bored, you can slowly prepare forever with almost no danger.  There are bots that play Angband, and they play it REALLY WELL.

When I try using the borg, it just sucks. Still, I think I'll make it my screensave again. I found a screensaver that SHOULD play saved Nethack games, but I can't get it to install.

Anyways, I ascended a neutral wizard (easy mode) awhile back, so I've vowed to never touch the game again. I won because I found a /oWish on Dlvl1. Wished for 2 blessed scrolls of charging, Blessed fixed greased Orb of Fate, blessed +3 fixed greased The Staff of Aesculapius (got it), blessed +3 silver dragon scale mail (got +0), recharged, blessed +2 speed boots I think, maybe +3, a blessed BoH, and a blessed /oDeath to escape a shop. The last one was a "Damnit, ?oScare Monster, fuck fuck fuck. Oh nice, I saved a wish." I had like -7 AC on Dlvl:1 with fast regen and half HP and MP damage. After kicking several sinks and playing with the succubuses and pudding farming a little bit, I was set. The rest of the game was ridiculously easy after that, especially The Dark One. He died in 3 hits.

[JoshuaFH]

Yeah, I'll admit that neutral wizard is the closest thing Nethack has to an easy mode, but why would you vow to never play it again?

I'm not sure if I'd like Angband at all, I might try it out if I get bored however.

[Jude]

Angband and Nethack seem to have radically different design philosophies. Angband is all about challenging you to manage your tactics, inventory, and what information you have at your disposal in order to overcome fights. Nethack...just seems to be about being unpredictable and strange.

[deadlycairn]

Oh GOD, this game hates me so much, the RNGod is out to get me, and its a freaking full moon!

Did the game designers intentionally make the game impossible without spoilers? Cause seriously, every time a promising character has died, its been due to me doing something stupid I didn't know about at the time. Like my latest valkyrie, sticking an unidentified wand (of cancellation) inside the bag of holding.

Secondly, bones levels suck. I have had to fight my way through one bones level with TWO seperate ghosts on there, and their pets, then go down the stairs to find ANOTHER bones level. With soldier ants. End of story.

Short list of stupid ways to die: Have every piece of armor you own stolen by a nymph who then teleports away, never to be seen again. Pick up a loadstone before you knew they existed. Put on an unidentified ring in a temple (ring of conflict), try to convert the altar in a temple (ok that one was my bad), and finally, get trapped on d lvl 2 trying to find the stairs down, and despite spending over 500 turns searching, fail to find them.

Note most of these end in slow drawn out deaths, apart from the priest ones. Im like the freaking manual for YASD.

[umiman]

Haha, it's how Nethack is.

All the above happened to me the past few weeks as well. Don't get too beat up about it. Just move on to the next character.

I play Nethack on my DS when on the train or on the throne, so there's no chance to check spoilers and whatnot. It's always a pleasant surprise to discover things the hard way.

[JoshuaFH]

I don't like to think of the wiki as spoilers. I like to think of it as the instruction manual.

[deadlycairn]

The development team were Gods to come up with all this stuff. Seriously, I keep running into scrolls I'd forgotten (or never knew) existed. Not to mention that I only ever found about five scrolls of identify my entire game last time, and the blessed one failed to identify my stuff (if it had, I may have won, seeing as I would've realised the cancellation was a BAD THING)

Oh well, onto the next Samurai.