A request for my noble companions of the Citadel...

[Kassil]

Click here - vote for Nethack as a Great Adventure RPG!

Gamespy is running a contest of which is the Greatest Adventure RPG of All Time. Right now Zork and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are in the lead - but Nethack deserves some fame. So please, click the link and support real gameplay in a computer game.

And for those curious about Nethack... I off THIS...

[ephemeralstability]

Mmm...addictive!....I'm supposed to be working, not dungeoneering!

ephe!

[Kassil]

You have no idea, Eph. Wait until you start trying weird things - like #chatting to random monsters. There's an entire Usenet newsgroup dedicated to this game - rec.games.roguelike.nethack - and people have all kinds of discussions and arguments due to it.

It's a fine point that when I get tired of my video games, bored with EverCrack, and too lazy to write anything... I always return to Nethack. Simple to play, but impossible to master...

[Iain]

It is indeed very addictive! So far I've died in all kinds of bizarre ways, including being poisoned by various kinds of meat, being turned into a werejackle whilst staring helplessly at a floating eye and putting on a cursed amulet of restful sleep which resulted in me falling asleep all over the place!

[Kassil]

Some advice:
Don't eat meat that's more than about 40 turns old, as it will rot.
Poisonous creatures (most insects ('a' and 's'), kobolds, and some demons) can be lethal, or just have debilitating effects. If you can get a unicorn horn, you can (a)pply it to youself to cure yourself of unhappy effects. It might not work all the time, though, and it works better if blessed.
Priests, by the way, can automatically know the blessed/cursed status of items. Barbarians are immune to poison, and thus can eat any fresh corpse that didn't come from an undead - undead corpses are always rotten. Valkyries are cold-resistant. Tourists come pre-stocked with plenty of food and a credit card you can use to #force locked items. Monks shouldn't eat meaty corpses - although Lichen corpses never rot - as they're vegetarians and will recieve an alignnment penalty for eating meat.

Also, you can hit / to examine anything in the area. This can be helpful to let you know to run away screaming.

If anyone wants more Handy Tips, feel free to PM me.

[Kassil]

Siren, by the way, was the one to introduce me to this game.

[Siren no Orakio]

Was it before, or after I managed to starve to death by standing in one spot for 40 thousand turns, too busy to deat because I was fighting? You know it's a bad sign that you don't get a chance to take a step forwards after breaking a wand of death over your knee in a deliberate attempt to create a self centered ball of death spell. Rodney shall burn for that, I swear it!

Anyway, beyond Kassil's little list, every class has a unique little trick. Some are better than others. Tourists, for example, are generally considered the game's 'hard' mode. Some classes start with stuff pre-identified, others don't. If you want to actually ascend, paranoia is key: I always seem to get impatient. Each class has a unique Quest, and an artifact associated with it. Like the knacks, some Artifacts are better than others, but all of them are useful.

This is not a game you should feel guilty about reading spoilers for. A long time ago, GameSpy made a comparison between Diablo and Nethack that resonated rather well with me. Diablo is the back-yard kiddy pool to Nethack's Marianus Trench. This is what happens when a game is supported for 15+ years. And always remember.. the Devs have thought of everything.

[manfred]

Now, I personally like ADOM more. So much on the topic of way too addictive games.

[Kassil]

ADON, like Nethack, is a Roguelike. Most decent Roguelikes are addictive. I just find Nethack more addictive than the others.