NetHack [3.1]: Seen the End! (with Summary and Rating)

If not for those dilithium crystals, I would have escaped with no wealth at all.

       

NetHack [3.1 series]

United States

Independently developed and released in four versions between January and July 1993

Date Started: 11 February 2024

Date Ended: 27 March 2024

Total Hours: 34

Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)

Final Rating: 48

Ranking at time of posting: 465/508 (92%)

      

Summary:

 

NetHack 3.1.3 is not quite the version of the roguelike that modern players experience, but it's the closest that I've covered so far. While still including the superior roguelike mechanics for which the series is famous, it tries to be a bit more like a traditional RPG with more background story, a branching dungeon, a personal quest, and a more complex endgame. While most of these changes are welcome, they add significantly to the length and thus create a more difficult experience than earlier versions.

The strengths of this series remain eternal, however, including very large libraries of monsters with special attacks and defenses, inventory items with special uses, and complex interactions between them. The game's complex rules and physics create unique tactical scenarios not only for each player but for each character. Except for graphics and sound, NetHack is perhaps the most sophisticated CRPG of its age.

   

****

    

I have now seen NetHack 3.1's winning screens but have not "won" it in the traditional sense, as I did not adhere to permadeath. My experience with the game is not over, as I intend to field new characters on and off for the indefinite future, and I will report occasionally on my progress. I would like to try to win it legitimately, but I cannot have my entire life subsumed to it.

    

When I left off last time, I was already on two reloads, one from eating a cockatrice egg, and one because I lost track of Vlad the Impaler. I probably would not have taken the second one if I had not already been forced to reload once. I would have tried harder to find the vampire among the game's 55 levels. But since I'd already given up my ability to win legitimately, I didn't have the patience for it. That kind of scenario is going to recur.

      

Leaving the dungeon for good.

      

I ended the last session at the stairs, preparing to leave the dungeon and enter the planes. Once you have the Amulet of Yendor and climb up the Level 1 stairs, you still have five levels left to complete: the Planes of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water (in that order), and the final Astral Plane. The program simply displays these areas as "End Game."

  

I arrived on the Plane of Earth to find the Wizard of Yendor right in front of me. As usual, I blasted him away with a Wand of Death--down to 5 charges now. This time, he left a corpse, which I thought might be a good sign. I ate it just to be on the safe side. It turns out that leaving a corpse doesn't make him any "deader" than when he doesn't, but it was still satisfying.

          

Thankfully, my Wands of Death held up.

         

I was in a small chamber with no exits, but a minotaur (who I caught in the same blast as the Wizard) had a Wand of Digging, so I used it to blast a corridor northward. It took me to another small chamber where I stepped into a magic portal, and I was suddenly on the Plane of Air. I hoped I hadn't missed anything on Earth.

  

"It's hard to walk in thin air," the game said. I guess that's why there were no features around me. I put on my Ring of Levitation immediately. Dragons and air elementals attacked, the latter engulfing me and doing reasonable damage to my hit points. I found out the hard way that apparently Potions of Extra Healing (not to mention the spell) barely do anything in the endgame. I nearly died inside an air elemental and had to retreat quickly to avoid death at the hands of nearby allies. I was relieved when the magic portal appeared next to me on the east side of the map, and I got out of there.

        

I got lucky finding this the first time.

       

The Plane of Fire came next. At first, it didn't bother me. Fire elementals, fire dragons, and pit fiends can't really hurt me. But, blood and ashes, they never ended. I literally couldn't walk a step in the place. And for every one of my attacks, there were 25 of theirs, with dragon breath flying this way and that, shots from wands, special attacks from elementals that have their own special animation. I was relieved every time a fire vortex engulfed me; he couldn't damage me faster than I healed, and I got a break from all the chaos.

       

I violate NetHack rule #1 and let myself get surrounded.

     

But if those enemies weren't tough, the archons were. They kept approaching, spouting things about how I would bow to their god and I wasn't worthy of the Amulet of Yendor. They had artifact weapons like the Sunsword. They blinded and stunned me constantly, and in the end, surrounded by other enemies and unable to move, teleport, drill down, or do anything, I died to their attacks.

Analyzing that death, I decided that I needed to clear out some space on the planes. I restored from Level 1 (if you're keeping track, that's three reloads now), zapped my last wish, and wished for 2 blessed Scrolls of Genocide. It worked. I read the first one and took care of all dragons, except the chromatic one and "Ixoth," apparently. I read the second one, hit "E," and found out I'm not allowed to genocide elementals. Goddamn it. Archons, either. Or demons. I thought I had it all figured out. I wasted my last wish on killing dragons and what turned out to be giants because I couldn't think of anything else that had swarmed me on those levels. 

      

This felt bad. I kinda like dragons.

      

I went up the stairs to try again. The Plane of Earth took me a little longer because the teleporter wasn't in the same place, but I got a Scroll of Enchant Weapon and blessed it. I read it and got my Grayswandir up to +7. The Plane of Air was a little easier without the dragons, and I found a Potion of Gain Level after I killed a djinn, which got me to Level 29. It took me a lot of systematic exploring on the air level to realize how lucky I'd been the first time. I'd been fleeing a bunch of monsters, and I'd just stumbled upon the portal. This time, I had to go back and forth in rows, killing the Wizard twice, before I found it.

      

Fire was a bit easier this time. The lack of dragons made it harder for enemies to surround me, and I took the entire thing more cautiously. It was harder to identify the portal because the level had so many traps, and I had to circle a couple of times. Finally, I found it near the center of the map and entered.

   

The Plane of Water was weird. Every square was water except randomly-moving "bubbles" that threw off my attempts to navigate systematically. Water elementals and other water creatures attacked constantly. But I got lucky. I figured the portal would be on the opposite side of the screen from my arrival, so I made a beeline to the east to start systematically exploring there. I stumbled upon the portal almost immediately and got out of there.

     

In a bubble on the Plane of Water.

     

"You arrive on the Astral Plane!" the game said. "You sense alarm, hostility, and excitement in the air!" Immediately, a voice (my god) whispered, "Thou hast been worthy of me!" and I got a pet angel to help me, which I almost immediately lost track of.

The level had three rooms with altars--one lawful, one neutral, one chaotic. Each required a different path to get there, and each area in between was swarming with archons, angels, and priests. Some of them were friendly. There were also three special enemies named Death, Pestilence, and Famine. 

      

In the final level, I frequently lost track of which @ was me.

    

The worst part is that the priests kept summoning huge swarms of insects--giant ants and beetles and such. Soon there were so many that practically every free spot was filled with them. They posed no danger at all, but it's a huge pain in the ass to cleave your way through dozens of them, having to acknowledge every single attack that a couple dozen enemies are making against you for every step that you take. It made me realize that this game really needs an area damage spell. I wished I'd saved a Scroll of Genocide for the insects.

   

I first fought my way north to the central room. The game told me that it was an "aligned altar," but I took a save right in front of it just to be sure. I guess "aligned" meant that it was aligned with something (not neutral), because it wasn't aligned with me. When I sacrificed the Amulet of Yendor on the altar, the game said that: "Aerdrie Faenya accepts your gift, and gains dominion over Erevan Ilesere. Erevan Ilesere is enraged. Fortunately, Aerdrie Faenya permits you to live. A cloud of orange smoke surrounds you . . ." And that was it. The game showed me my inventory, intrinsics, and kills as if I had died, told me my total score (2,077,441), and entered me in the hall of fame. But I clearly hadn't "ascended."

     

Well, you should have put your altar in a more convenient location.

    

Reloading (that's four), I fought back to the south and then to the east, killing Death and Famine along the way. I then ate his corpse just to see what would happen, and pretty soon I had reloaded for the fifth time.

       

But what a flex, right?

    

I resumed my fight to the east but found that the altar was neutral. Of course. So now I needed to cross all the way to the other side of the map with a billion ants, priests, angels, and so forth in the way. I was so out of patience by this point that I stopped trying to do it carefully and just forced my way through the crowd. It took probably longer, again because of all the messages I had to acknowledge between moves. Then, with the western altar in my sight, the Wizard of Yendor appeared and stole the Amulet!

       

I didn't get a screenshot of the moment, but it was somewhere around here.

      

I suppose the proper thing to do would be to chase him down and get it back? I don't know. But instead I went to bed, reloaded the next day, and took it much more slowly. I killed Pestilence this time. I reached the altar and sacrificed the Amulet.

       

You offer the Amulet of Yendor to Erevan Ilesere. An invisible choir sings, and you are bathed in radiance. The voice of Erevan Ilesere booms: "Congratulations, mortal! In return for thy service, I grant thee the gift of immortality!" You ascend to the status of Demigod . . .

   

And then it was back to identifying items, intrinsics, etc., only this time my final score was 4,281,164. It only took six reloads.

    

My kills.

      

But it was a good experience. Now that I know the entire picture of the dungeon, I can see many ways I could have done things differently--how I will do things differently on the next play:

    

• Now that I know what's at the bottom of the Gnomish Mines, I'll just grab it on my first visit rather than having to go back a dozen times.

• I'll take the time to get all the way to Level 30 and to max out my armor class. There's no reason to go into the endgame with those values less than perfect.

• I'll experiment a lot more with spells, at least for strong spellcasting classes. My elf got an insane number of spells (but never "Identify!") but barely used them. I'll also store my spellbooks in a central location so I can refresh my spell knowledge when it starts to fade.

      

My list of available spells towards the end of the game, most of them never cast. I'm not even sure what the numbers mean.

         

• After the game ended, I read some more spoilers and realized that Stormbringer might have been a stronger option in the endgame, as it drains health and conveys them to the wielder. It also level-drains the enemy it hits. Apparently, you can level-drain the Wizard of Yendor down to nothing and make him a non-threat. I probably won't have this weapon specifically, but I'll analyze my weapons better.

• I'll genocide insects.

• I'll wear the Amulet of Yendor in the planes; apparently, it makes the portals easier to find.

• I'll approach the Astral Plane with a better strategy than just "hack through everything because I'm sick of the game."

   

Now, my experience of nearly 30 hours with one character is probably on the high end, but I still think that the extra content added to this version at least doubles the amount of time it takes to ascend from 3.0. While I enjoyed parts of the new material, I didn't enjoy the extra length. The key problem, as I see it, is that the monsters in Gehennom are so hard that you need to be "ascension-ready" before you even enter the place. That means that almost all your development has been accomplished in the first half of the game, and you have much less to look forward to as you go through the interminable mazes. And frankly, the Astral Plane alone would have been enough at the end.

   

Nonetheless, I expect the GIMLET to rank the game slightly higher than the previous version:

    

• 1 point for the game world. Some extra background for your character isn't quite enough to move it up a notch from its predecessor on a 10-point scale. A consistent and original world is not the game's strong suit.

• 6 points for character creation and development. A solid character creation system with a lot of options. The choice of character is more meaningful here, as it defines the class-specific objective and the class-specific artifacts. Development is reasonably rewarding and the level cap is high.

      

My intrinsics at the end of the game.

     

• 2 points for NPC interaction. They exist, but interaction is mostly limited to one line of dialogue. Again, those that show up for the quest are a bit more verbose.

• 7 points for encounters and foes, which is about as high a score as a game can get without more non-combat encounters and puzzles. The number of enemies in this game, along with their special attacks, defenses, and even uses to the character, is beyond any commercial RPG of the era. And now they pick stuff up and use it! Looking at enemies gives you detailed descriptions.

• 7 points for magic and combat. It's hard to think of a commercial RPG with a more complex combat system, with so many ways to fight, use items, protect yourself, hide, flee, teleport away, and so forth. Enemies can damage each other or themselves in fun ways that create epic gameplay stories. I continue to find the spell system a bit under-developed, alas.

• 9 points for equipment. Again, a major strength. There are so many potential items to wield, wear, use, enchant, drink, eat, throw, loot, invoke, and a dozen other commands that you could play the game for years and not master all the potential interactions. Consider the ability to blank scrolls, write new ones, dilute potions, tin corpses for rations, and even change the navigable dungeon space. No commercial RPG is offering anything like it.

• 5 points for the economy. The game has a reasonably strong economic system with several stores and other features like shrines and the Oracle to serve as money sinks. Like everything else, it gets lost in the last third of the game.

• 4 points for quests, including a main quest and a required sub-quest, including a class-specific quest. There's even an "alternate ending" of sorts.

      

That's so much better than just joining the Guild.

       

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. No roguelike is ever going to excel in the first two categories, although I found the graphics perfectly functional. I still like the keyboard interface, but man the game has got to do something about the way it handles messages of more than one line, particularly in combat.

• 5 points for gameplay. It's non-linear and offers a lot of replayability. The difficulty level is somewhat fair, even for permadeath. But this entry simply lasts too long, and almost everything that happens after you enter Gehennom is a boring slog. I liked the personal quest and Gnomish Mine additions. In my opinion, the authors should have then cut about 20 of the final dungeon levels, though, and I'm not sure the four "elemental" levels at the end added anything but time and frustration.

         

That gives us a final score of 48, four points higher than I gave the last version. Looking over the GIMLET for that game, I'm not sure why I even offered a score of 1 to the kitchen sink game world with its minimal backstory. The other scores are comparable, except for "quests," which is where this version gets its major boost. I expected the "gameplay" score to be lower because I felt this one dragged the ending a lot more (and took a lot longer), but it was exactly the same. However, I also offered this paragraph in 2013:

     

With respect to legions of fans who feel otherwise, permadeath just sucks. I wouldn't mind limited save points--even extremely limited save points, like once every 4 hours or something. I wouldn't mind deaths that cost you dearly and take a long time to recover from. But you have to be extremely masochistic to burn through 262 hours and a few dozen characters in your effort to win the game without "save-scumming," and I'm not sure it's worth it. This will always be a complaint of mine with roguelikes, and I'll likely never rate them particularly high in this category for this reason.

    

The vitriol in this paragraph is clearly a product of how long it took me to win the game honestly. I've made peace with that and didn't take away as many points for "difficulty" as I have in the past. 

   

It also interests me that I offered, in that same entry, a bulleted list of 8 things I never quite mastered. I did better with most of them this time, making extensive use of magic markers and blank scrolls, luck, altars, artifact weapons, and mapping the maze levels. I used ELBERETH more often but not to "confine and route monsters." I still never made use of the pet or self-polymorphing.

   

The pull remains strong.

     

We next check in officially with NetHack with the 3.2 series in 1996, but like I said, I'm going to keep pecking at this version. It's a good late night game, when I want to kill half an hour before bed but I've run through all the New York Times puzzles for the day. I just started a new game, picked a random character, and was assigned a rogue. There are three fountains on the first level. What do you bet one of them will give me a wish?