Game 186: Hack (1984)

Hack [v. 1.0.3]

Independently developed on Unix systems from 1982-1984; ported to DOS in 1984

Date Started: 20 April 2015

Date Ended: 24 April 2015

Total Hours: 7

Reload Count: 6 characters; 16 reloads on final character

Difficulty: Hard (4/5)
Final Rating: 30

Ranking at Time of Posting: 101/184 (55%)

Here's one reason that roguelikes are awesome: while anyone reading this post could identify a roguelike in an instant, to the uninitiated (which, let's face it, is most people), they don't look anything like games. They look like work. An average person glancing at my monitor thinks I'm using some kind of retro graphing calculator or an early DOS version of AutoCAD. He thinks, "Man, I always knew Chet was smart, but whatever that is is hard core."

All week, I've been in a series of meetings and events that didn't exactly require my full concentration but had people hovering around my computer frequently. The Savage Empire was definitely out, as were most of the other games on my upcoming list. I needed a roguelike. Since I kicked Angband to 1993, the next obvious choice was the original Hack.

I can't remember why I missed Hack when I first passed through 1984. I probably looked for it but couldn't find it or didn't try very hard. Having already played Rogue and the first generation of NetHack, I rather expected that Hack would be an obvious evolutionary step, perhaps halfway between the two. (Reading the posts on both will greatly assist roguelike novices in understanding this one.) Instead, I was surprised to find a game that was almost indistinguishable from the first versions of NetHack. By the time of its DOS release, Hack had left Rogue far behind, and the improvements made between this game and early NetHack are few and subtle.

The opening screen from an early version of NetHack. Note how similar it is to the screenshot at the top of this post.

     
Some history is in order. Rogue was created by Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold on Unix systems at a couple of University of California campuses in 1980. My understanding is that they didn't intend for it to be open-source software; in fact, they eventually marketed it through several companies, with varying degrees of success. But other programmers found it easy enough to knock off, and they generally made their creations open-source. This led to the entire roguelike genre.

A fortune cookie message hits a little close to home.

       
A game known as Hack was first programmed in 1981 by Jay Fenlason and other students at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Massachusetts. [Ed. This sentence originally said 1982, but El Explorador de RPG confirmed a 1981 date in his coverage.] By most accounts, the game was essentially identical to Rogue except that it featured more monsters. (Some sources say that it had shops and pets, but Andries Brouwer says those were his additions.) In any event, Fenlason et. al. released Hack with an open-source license a compilation tape from the nonprofit group USENIX. This tape found its way to Andries Brouwer, a mathematician, computer scientist, and professor at the Mathematisch Centrum in Amesterdam. Brouwer greatly improved the game from its Rogue roots and introduced most of the elements that distinguish it from earlier incarnations, including:

• Multiple classes that start with their own inventories
• Shops
• Pets
• Intrinsic attributes gained by eating corpses
• Complex interactions between monsters, items, and the character, such as a dragon's breath hitting other enemies in your path or destroying your scrolls
• Ability to backtrack to previously-visited levels
• Special rooms like vaults and "treasure zoos"
• Ability to write on the floor
• "Bones" files 
• Fortune cookies with associated "rumor" messages
• A special set of levels on which the Amulet of Yendor is found

The adventurer stumbles into a killer bee hive.

There's still plenty of opportunity for later development by Mike Stephenson and the rest of the NetHack development team. The item and monster lists are about half of what modern NetHack aficionados are used to; there's only one way up and down; you don't get the option to identify your possessions or see your intrinsics when you die; there's no "blessed" status or altars; there are no spells or spellbooks (making the wizard class a dubious choice); and while "pray" exists as an option, the manual is quite frank that it doesn't do anything. But the basic structure of NetHack is here, and it's clear we need to credit Andries Brouwer as the most important founder of the game.

Shops are a particularly welcome addition.

Brouwer released the game on Usenet in December 1984. He offered a patch a month later, an updated version (1.0.2) in April 1985, and a third version (1.0.3) in July 1985. The three versions show as much evolution as we see from Hack to the first NetHack. Adjustment of luck based on phases of the moon first appeared in 1.0.2. Designation of the lower levels as "Hell" (and the need for fire resistance) also appeared in 1.0.2, as did the Wizard of Yendor in a special square in the middle of a level (in the first version, the Amulet of Yendor was found under a rock). Version 1.0.3 first required players to reach Hell via teleportation, and it also introduced "wizard mode" for the first time.

In October 1985, Hack 1.0.3 was ported to DOS by Don Kneller, who would later port Moria. Kneller didn't seem to know Brouwer by name, crediting the development of the game only to "several people at the Stichting Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam." Reading his notes on the game, we come across this shocking paragraph:

Saved games have no special protection, so you can save a game and make a copy of the save file. Then, if you die trying something risky, you can use the copy to restart your game from the same place.

     
Folks, this is the author of the first PC port of Hack telling us that it's okay to save-scum. Imagine the time I could have saved myself with NetHack a couple years ago.

Hack offers six character classes: tourist, speleologist (later replaced by the more common term "archaeologist"), fighter, knight, cave-man, and wizard. Version 1.02 introduces the ability to specify sex. There are no attributes other than strength. I played a little with each class and finally settled on a knight to go for the win. Having already won NetHack 2.3e and NetHack 3.0.9 legitimately, I didn't feel any particular compulsion to do this one the hard way. I backed up my save file before each new level and ended up reloading 16 times.

If my adventurer is killed in Hell, where does he go?

I didn't find it very difficult to survive within the first 15 levels as long as I took my time. Beyond Level 15, as the monsters get harder, the game becomes a lot deadlier--particularly since the game caps the character at Level 14 (a liability that continues through the early versions of NetHack). It's important to improve strength as much as possible through Potions of Gain Strength and eating Royal Jelly (from killer bee hives) or spinach, as well as weapons and armor through Scrolls of Enchant Weapon and Scrolls of Enchant Armor. Eating the right creatures conveys fire resistance, frost resistance, regeneration, invisibility, and other intrinsics. I was never able to get poison resistance, and I'm not sure what other intrinsics are available since you can never see them and never get confirmation of their acquisition.

Strength increases a point.

There are fewer options for getting yourself out of tight situations than in NetHack, and I learned to prize various wands and scrolls, including Wands of Teleportation--which send monsters off to a random location--and Scrolls of Teleportation, which do the same thing for the character. While you can get ESP by eating floating eyes, there are no blindfolds in this version, so the ESP only helps when you get temporary blindness from eating rotten food or getting blinded by yellow lights. As with later versions, teleportitis and a Ring of Teleport Control are the most important intrinsic/item pair in the game.

Below Level 25, the levels become a series of mazes. Paradoxically, the game becomes a little easier in the maze section because each level has a dead-end in which a Wand of Wishing lies beneath a boulder. You have to have a pick-axe or a Wand of Teleportation to get rid of the boulder (there might be other ways), but a couple of those wands goes a long way towards finishing your ascension kit. Unfortunately, there are no Scrolls of Recharge in this version.
 

After Level 30, the maze levels are designated "Hell," and you need fire resistance (either a ring, or by eating a dragon) to survive. You also have to find a way to teleport into it. There are no down staircases after Level 29, so the only way to reach Hell (and the Amulet of Yendor) is via level teleportation. Later versions of NetHack give you several ways to accomplish this, including Cursed Scrolls of Teleportation and level teleportation traps, but in this version, the only way I could find to reach Hell was to read a regular Scroll of Teleportation while confused and in possession of a Ring of Teleport Control.

The Wizard of Yendor and the Amulet of Yendor supposedly appear at a random level between 30 and 40, but I found him right away on 40. He's surrounded by a wall, which is surrounded by a moat, so you need some mechanism of getting past the water and the walls. I found that a Wand of Fire evaporates the water and a Potion of Levitation lets you cross over it. As for the wall, a Wand of Digging or a pick-axe do the trick.

The Wizard is a pushover in this version, since there's no real magic or magic resistance. I killed him quickly with my sword, and grabbed the Amulet from his body. This version's Wizard doesn't resurrect and harass you all the way to the exit.

Once you have the Amulet, the rest of the game--just as in the first versions of NetHack--is a breeze. All of the up staircases are in the same location in the maze levels, so once you find it on the Wizard's level, you just have to keep hitting CTRL-period to quickly pass through all the other Hell and maze levels. Once you get to Level 25, you have to navigate from staircase to staircase, but the game remembers the maps from previous visits, and if you have teleportitis, it's a simple matter to just teleport yourself from the down staircase to the up staircase.

When you go up the staircase from Level 1, the game tells you your score and number of moves.

For someone who has played a later version of NetHack, Hack feels fairly primitive. But just as I noted with Moria in the previous year, Hack was undoubtedly the most complex, tactical game of 1984. It's not until 1985-1986 that regular RPGs start to rival roguelikes in the complexity of their mechanics, and as late as 1990, no commercial RPG has come close to the Hack/NetHack line in the complexity of inventory and inventory interactions.

On a GIMLET, this game gets:

• 0 points for not even the slightest description of the game world in the manual.

• 3 points for character creation and development. The selection is limited and the level cap is a huge turn-off.

• 2 points for NPCs. You know what gets those two points? The pet. I forgot to reward other versions for this addition. I typically abandon the pet because I find it annoying to constantly maneuver around him, but it's still a unique and interesting element of the game.

• 5 points for foes: a terrific variety of monsters with special attacks and resistances.

I wouldn't have minded if this had waited for a later version.

• 4 points for magic and combat. The combat system is deceptively sophisticated with all the item-based tactics you can use, but there's no magic system to speak of.

• 6 points one of the best varieties of equipment that we've seen to date, and the ability to use items in complex (but logical) ways to solve puzzles.

A mid-game inventory shot.

• 2 points for the economy. You might get a store on an early level, might not. If you don't get one, there really is nothing to do with the money you find except score extra points.

• 2 points for a main quest with no decisions or branches

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface, all for the interface, which is intuitive and well-documented.

• 4 points for challenging gameplay that, while linear for each game, offers a lot of replayability.

The final score of 30 is better than anything else in 1984 so far, but a little lower than the 36 I gave to the first edition of NetHack. The variance actually surprises me a little because I feel like it played about the same, but looking through my notes, I see that NetHack offered enough features to get an extra point here, an extra point there. In any event, it's hard to recommend Hack for modern players with more advanced versions of NetHack available, but I'm glad I played it for its historical value.

I hope to get back onto a regular schedule next week and continue on with The Savage Empire. I have no idea why I have this kind of lull every single April.

*****

For further reading: Check out my posts on Rogue, this game's antecedent, and my posts on NetHack v. 2.3e (which followed Hack) and NetHack v. 3.0.9.

NetHack Version 2.3e: Ascended!

 

NetHack (early series; version 2.3e)

The NetHack development team 

The series includes 4 public releases between July 1987 and April 1988

Date Started: 3 January 2011
Date Ended: 26 November 2013

Total Hours: 62
Difficulty: Hard-Very Hard (4.5/5)
Final Rating: 36
Ranking at Time of Posting: 76/121 (63%)

Okay, here's how this happened: a few months ago, when I was bored waiting somewhere with no Internet access, I started fiddling with the NetHack app on my iPhone. I had remembered not liking it before, and I still didn't really like it. It isn't the app's fault; the iPhone screen just isn't big enough to accommodate much of the dungeon, nor many of the common commands.

But the whole experience gave me a NetHack jones. The good thing about NetHack is that it's perfect for small blocks of time, especially when you're half-doing something else. Its minimal graphics, no sound, and ability to pause indefinitely between moves makes it an ideal supplement to boring conference calls, webinars, bus rides, TV viewing, and whatever else. If I'm sitting in an airport with five minutes to kill before my flight, I'm not going to fire up Wizardry VI or Legend of Faerghail; it takes that long just to get the game running, map sheets and note pages open, and all the windows positioned right. But a five-minute NetHack session is just fine. In fact, I'd argue that NetHack probably should be played in small bursts of time, so you don't lose your level of alertness and make mistakes.

If I was going to play more NetHack, I wasn't going to waste time playing the version I'd already ascended, and I didn't want to jump the line by going to the 1992 version, so I decided to go backwards and mess around with 2.3e, the last of the "early NetHack" series, which I played for a while back in January 2011.

I was surprised to note how primitive this version seemed compared to 3.0, which I ascended back in June. Early NetHack had no rogue class, no alignments, no attributes other than strength. Classes don't have names associated with their levels. The screen doesn't display your current condition--blind, hallucinating, confused, and so forth--so you have to note what's happening and when it goes away. There are no NPCs (oracles, guards, friendly creatures, priest) or any command to talk to them even if they existed.

Apparently someone thought this was funny.

The dungeon structure is also a lot more primitive. There are no special levels except the idiotic one featuring the Three Stooges that only appears in this edition. There's no castle level, nor does Vlad's tower appear in the levels of Hell. There is a division starting around Level 30 between dungeon levels and the mazes of Hell. The Medusa is present in this early version, on the last level before Hell, and she was responsible for the deaths of two of my characters. Instead of a Wand of Wishing in the castle, you get one hiding under a boulder on the first level of Hell, a fact that caused no end of frustration when my characters lacked any way to bust up that boulder. More on that below.

And the maze levels oddly use hyphens instead of pipes to mark vertical walls.

Like the 3.0 series (but unlike later versions, I think), the Wizard of Yendor has the Amulet in his possession, and he's located on some random level of Hell (between 30 and 60). There are no down stairways on the Hell level, meaning that you have to find some way to get to the bottom and begin working up.

But enough was the same that I had my bearings. In my final rating for the 3.0 version, I bragged that, "now that I've won, now that I know how the entire dungeon maps out, now that I realize what's possible and how to do it, I think I could ascend... at least once every 20 characters." Well, that nearly held true. I think I fielded 27 or 28 characters before I ascended, and about 18 of them made it past dungeon level 15. When I look back on my early posts, I can't believe how many characters I lost for dumb reasons on the first few levels.

In many ways, early NetHack is harder than the 3.0 series. (Since I haven't played it, I can't compare it to the current version.) Some reasons:

• There are intrinsics, but they're a complete mystery: you get no hint that you've acquired the intrinsic when you eat a corpse. This means if you eat something that grants poison resistance, the only way you'll know it works is the next time something tries to poison you. There isn't even an option to see your intrinsics when you die.

• I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think classes start with intrinsics, and certainly not all the ones they get in later versions. The barbarian isn't immune to poison, for instance.

• The game is much fonder of swarming you with multiple foes at once--including extremely frequent orc hordes and killer bee colonies--than the later version.

These guys were right at the bottom of the stairs.

• There are no helpful messages that indicate the presence of monsters, shopkeepers, throne rooms, and such.

• Dipping potions in fountains doesn't dilute them, so you can't make plain water that way to later turn into Holy Water. Even if you could, there are no altars to make Holy Water. This is fine, though, because dipping things in Holy Water doesn't bless them. There are no blessed items in this version, just regular ones and cursed ones. 

• The lack of altars also means that you don't have an easy way to test the cursed status of items.

• There are unicorns, but they don't leave horns, meaning you don't have instant ways to cure hallucination, confusion, and the like.

• Although blindfolds and pick-axes exist, I never encountered them as items in the dungeon. The only way I ever acquired them is by either starting with them or wishing for them.

• The enemy AI actually seems more intelligent in this early version. They don't necessarily come charging at you, nor to they stand in one spot during your combat. They'll dance around and move aside to allow their allies to flank you instead of, say, stubbornly standing in doorways.

• The cool weapon/artifact Excalibur is not immune to damage as in later versions.

• Perhaps most notably: there's a level cap at 14! Between regular combats, Potions of Gain Level, and wraiths, this is extremely easy to achieve.

• Wishes seem rarer. Thrones and fountains are very reluctant to give them up, and there are no Scrolls of Charging to help you get more out of the occasional wand.

• I don't have the quantitative evidence, but I felt this version had a lot more traps, including "mine traps" that not only damage you but screw up your legs and reduce your encumbrance capacity for a time.

• There are no items of magic resistance or reflection. No amulets at all, in fact (except the Amulet of Yendor). No cloaks except the Elven Cloak. No boots.

• The dungeon consists of 60 levels instead of just 50.

• Enemies have no trouble following you upstairs, so you can't use the "stair-scumming" trick.

• There are a billion ways to directly get your strength drained from both monsters and corpses, at least until you finally get lucky and get the "resist poison" intrinsic. Potions of Restore Strength are some of the most valuable objects in this game.

Balancing these challenges was a series of things that made it a little easier, at least in parts:

• Spellbooks were a lot more plentiful, and genocide actually appears in this version as a spell that you can acquire. I hardly used spells in 3.0, but in this version, they were key to my success.

I just about fell out of my chair when I saw this. But you do still have to be a fairly high level to cast it successfully, and it fades fast.

• Identification scrolls also seemed more plentiful. Between acquiring the "identify" spell and identification scrolls (along with the various tricks I'd picked up during my 3.0 series play), I rarely didn't know what things were.

• Though Excalibur is weaker, since there are no alignments in this game, any class can acquire it very easily by dipping a longsword into a fountain. 

Not quite how it happened to King Arthur, but we'll go with it.

• No soldier ants. No liches. If you can genocide dragons, you don't have any heavy-damage spellcasters to worry about. This balances the lack of any magic resistance items.

• "Genocide" automatically works on every monster type in a class, just as "blessed genocide" does in later versions.

• Elven cloaks protect against rust monsters, so they aren't the same menace they are in later versions.

• Though there are no altars, you can "sacrifice" and boost your luck anywhere.

• Although none of the Hell levels have down staircases, all of the up staircases are in the exact place that you arrive from the level below. This makes it absurdly easy to both find the Wizard (just put on the blindfold on the 60th level, find the staircase, and hit "up" until you seen him) and to escape the Hell levels after finding the Amulet.

• There's no "final level" after you leave the dungeon. Winning is just a matter of getting back to Level 1 and going up the stairs.

Because this version lacks so many of the items (particularly magic-resistant and reflection ones), the "ascension kit" ends up being quite small: a blindfold and the "telepathy" intrinsic, a Ring of Teleport Control, a Ring of Fire Resistance to survive in Hell, a Potion of Levitation to get across the Wizard's moat, (there are no boots), and some way to get down to Level 60 and start searching for him. The latter bit ended up being the hardest. It's tough to find level teleport traps after you have a means of teleportation control. There's no Unholy Water so no way to curse a Scroll of Teleportation to get you there when you're ready to go. I ultimately got there by reading a regular Scroll of Teleportation while confused, but you have to get lucky to find the items in the right order.

Without telepathy and a blindfold, you couldn't scope the Wizard like this. You'd have to go looking for him at the center of every level. That would get old fast.

After a series of characters who died both honorable and stupid deaths (eating tainted corpses, stumbling into water while confused, acquiring teleportitis before teleport control and warping into the middle of a treasure zoo, stumbling on the Medusa unaware), I won with Chester the Archaeologist. I decided to go with that class because he starts with a pick-axe, one of the few items I consider absolutely essential. On the way down, I found a Ring of Teleport Control and Ring of Fire Resistance fairly early, both within a massive shop on Level 2.

Look at all this stuff. I was testing things in here for hours.

I cleared out several throne rooms on the way down and, after taking care to boost my luck by sacrificing fresh corpses, sat in them. In one of them, I got my strength elevated to 18. On another, I got the option to genocide a creature, and I chose dragons. Later, with a spell of genocide I acquired, I did away with vampires, too. I used the Wand of Wishing on the first level of Hell to get a blindfold, then zoomed down to Level 60 and started working back. I found the Wizard and his pet Hellhound on Level 40, in a closed chamber surrounded by a moat.

Chester acquires the last item he needs.

I had found out the hard way from a previous character that you don't want to use the Wand of Death on the Wizard in this version. It just bounces off his wall and kills you:

Well, that sucks. Gideon the Barbarian was moments from winning.

But as I said earlier, this version's Wizard is a pushover. I killed him with Excalibur, grabbed the Amulet, and headed up quite quickly given the way this version of Hell handles stairways. As in later versions, the Wizard occasional returns and dogs you on the way up, but he's no more difficult than he was in his lair.

Yes, and I'm pretty sure I can do it again.

Between my existing maps and teleportation, I was able to clear the way back to the surface almost too easily.

I never found an Elven Cloak with this character, so my equipment took a pounding from rust monsters.

Although not all the spoilers I'd previously learned helped, the overall approach did: move slowly, think, be cautious. Don't go nuts chasing nymphs around to recover things you don't need. Don't feel like you have to explore every room and kill every creature. Don't feel inadequate if you ignore throne rooms and treasure zoos.

I absolutely do not have to prove myself in here.

When I ascended in 3.0, the winning message indicated that I'd become a demi-god. The winning shot for this version is more akin to Rogue, where getting out with the Amulet simply added points to your final score, but the position on the leaderboard was ultimately more important than "winning" the game.

Now that I've experienced the totality of the game, some adjustment of the original GIMLET (which I completed almost three years ago) is in order. Version 3.0 improves so much on this one that it deserves to be ahead by more than 2 points.

• Character creation and development goes down to 4 (I originally gave it 6). With no alignments, the opening choices makes less of a difference, and the inability to see intrinsics develop means that it's hard to enjoy that aspect to leveling. 

• Encounters and foes goes to 5. The next version more solidly deserves the 6 that I previously gave to this version, with a greater selection of enemies with special attacks, and more special encounter locations.

• Equipment gets docked a point to 7. This version lacks the full breadth of 3.0's gear, and it doesn't have the options to mix and match them in so many cool ways.

• By giving this game a 7 on gameplay originally, I was being inconsistent in how I usually treat elements of difficulty. The same score I gave 3.0, 5, would be more consistent.

• Everything else stays the same: game world at 1; NPC interaction at 1; magic and combat at 5; economy at 4; quests at 2; graphics, sound, and inputs at 2.

This brings the score for NetHack 2.3e down to 36 from the 42 I assigned originally. When I first rated it, I was giving it too much credit for what I hadn't seen. This new score makes this version scale much better with the 44 that I gave to version 3.0.

This little endeavor added another 42 hours to my gameplay time on this version, added to the 20 I spent on it back in 2011.

Despite the more primitive nature of the gameplay, this version satisfied my roguelike cravings for the moment, so it's time to get it together and get back on track with the main list. Thanks for indulging me in this diversion.

***

Further Reading:  My first, second, third, fourth, and GIMLET postings on this version of game from January 2011; my ascension from 3.0 and my GIMLET for that version; a rundown of the 2.3e version from Wikihack. Later, I went back further in time and played the original Hack, which precedes this version.

NetHack 3.0: Final Rating

Hey, that's how I roll.

NetHack (3.0 series)

United States

The NetHack development team 

The series includes 11 public releases between July 1989 and February 1991

Date Started: 24 June 2012
Date Ended: 12 June 2013

Total Hours: 262
Difficulty: Hard-Very Hard (4.5/5)
Final Rating: 44
Ranking at Time of Posting: 76/96 (79%)

In the 1990s, I had a six-year enlistment in the U.S. Army Reserves. When I first joined at the age of 17, I was weak and pudgy. I had never done any serious exercising or bodybuilding in my life. Shortly after signing the enlistment paperwork, I read in the literature that on the first day of basic training--three months to come--I would need to perform 20 pushups; otherwise, they'd send me to a remedial physical training course for some extra weeks. I didn't like the sound of that.

I dropped to the floor and did pushups until my arms were exhausted and I physically couldn't lift them anymore. Specifically, I did four pushups. After that, I got up and began scanning my paperwork for any loophole that would get me out of my enlistment.

It's not that I didn't realize there was such a thing as training; it's just that the distance between 4 and 20 seemed so vast--my body so exhausted after those four--that I couldn't conceive of a time in which, no matter how much training I did, my body would be capable of 20 pushups, let alone the 52 I would have to do to pass the physical fitness test at the end of the 13 weeks.

But, having no way out of it, I worked at it, and in the next three months, I built myself up to the point that I could easily do 20 on the first day, and after that to the point that I was able to do not 52 but 80 in the final test. After that, pushups didn't seem so hard. I haven't done any in over a year, but  I just dropped and managed to coerce my old, out-of-shape body into 28 of them.

That should have been a lifelong lesson, and yet it still surprises me how often in life we mentally deem things as "unachievable" until we actually achieve them. Upon achieving them, it's like our brains instantly re-wire, showing us maps and paths and patterns where we couldn't see them before. It's like those "magic eye" pictures where until you cross your eyes the right way, you can't believe there's a 3D image in there, but once you find it the first time, you almost can't stop doing it.

While I was doing pushups, every time I hit a new record--10, say--my mind interpreted it as "the most I'm able to do right now, and perhaps the most I'll ever be able to do." But when I hit that goal of 20, 10 just became "the halfway point." Essentially the same thing happened in NetHack. My brain rendered every new achievement as, "Okay, I've reached the highest level I've ever achieved. Now when am I going to die?" But now that I've won, and I can "see" the game in its totality, it doesn't seem that hard.

Last year, blithely getting to character level 10 and dungeon level 13 would have seemed unthinkable. Today, I accomplished it while screwing around just to take screen shots for this posting.

It seems absurd to say this only a few weeks after comparing myself to a monkey who would never ascend given infinite time, but now that I've won, now that I know how the entire dungeon maps out, now that I realize what's possible and how to do it, I think I could ascend (in this version, at least) at least once every 20 characters. (Maybe if I kept at it, I'd get so good that I'd have to play with "conducts" like never eating meat or never killing another creature directly. These strike me as insane the same way that ever ascending at all struck me as insane a month ago.)

Many commenters had been explaining these realities about the game for the entire year, but there's a difference between "knowing" something and "getting" it. Reading over my old NetHack postings makes me cringe a bit. I wish I could send comments back in time to myself. I've been thinking about what I'd say to ensure that 2012 Chet really gets the game, and this is what I've come up with:

1. A character with greater than 17 strength or dexterity, more than 70 hit points, less than -10 armor class, telepathy, poison resistance, a blindfold, a decent stock of throwing weapons, and a unicorn horn is essentially invincible for the first 25 levels. Immediately work towards these at the outset. Of these, poison resistance is probably the most important, so you don't have to worry about what you eat, and thus don't have to worry about starving.

The intelligence delivered by telepathy and a blindfold was vital to my ascension. Here, I see a squad of "Mordor orcs" coming through the doorway.

2. Once you get these things, or at least most of them, The first half of the dungeon is your playground. Go up and down liberally, kill whatever you can, and start to tick off items (both equipment and intrinsics) on your "ascension list." Once you're down to only a few items, you can head to the Castle and use the Wand of Wishing to get the rest.

3. Carefully note locations of altars (especially co-aligned altars), fountains, sinks, and shops. You will return to them throughout the game to test the blessed/uncursed/cursed status of items, figure out what different items likely are, and create holy water. (Incidentally, to me most potions are worth more diluted and turned into holy water than fulfilling their original functions.)

Sacrificing a Potion of Object Detection to make a Potion of Water.

4. The most important intrinsic/extrinsic combination to acquire is teleportation/teleportation control. It will get you out of a ton of jams and make navigation much easier (and this was before I knew about CTRL-T!).

5. Don't obsess about not being able to identify things. With the exception of weapon bonuses, almost everything in the game can be identified through some combination of careful testing and noting the results. As far as weapons go, your level and strength matter much more than the type of weapon you have. (I ascended without even knowing what I was carrying.) Don't start thinking about suicide every time an acid blob corrodes your sword.

6. Items don't generally disappear. Make caches for yourself, using boxes when you can. Backup weapons, missile weapons, food, armor, pick-axes, and unicorn horns will all become extremely valuable once the Wizard of Yendor starts cursing your stuff.

7. Once you exhaust the possibilities of the shops, stop hauling around gold. It just takes up weight you need for other stuff. Cache it if you really want it, but it's hardly necessary to win the game.

The nature of randomness in NetHack can't be overstated. I think everybody understands that the levels are random, so they never look the same from game to game, and the distribution of equipment is random, but simply stating that doesn't convey how this randomness fundamentally changes the game from character to character. I've had games where I found blindfolds on Level 1 and games where I never found one and had to wish for it; games in which I've quaffed six "Potions of Gain Level" before reaching the castle, and games (including the last one) in which they never appeared; games with shops on every level between 3 and 7, and games with no shops at all; games in which I never found a co-aligned altar; games in which I've found enough wands to crack the world in half, and games where wands were a rarity. Whether you encounter the Wizard on Level 50 or Level 41 (as I did) makes a huge difference as to the difficulty returning to the surface.

Chester gets lucky with a blindfold on Level 2.

Despite its randomness, we have to observe, with something approaching marvel, that NetHack is an extremely "tight" game. There are tons of items in the game, and thousands of different ways in which they can interact with each other, but the developers seem to have anticipated every potential interaction. Consider the way that you can bash or pry chests with weapons, dilute potions and "blank" scrolls in fountains, make pets out of enemies by throwing food at them, and throw potions at enemies (with a chance that they'll splash back at you!). The developers not only bothered to program different effects for scrolls based on their blessed, uncursed, or cursed statuses, but also have a different effect for reading each scroll while "confused." The self-polymorphing system allows you to turn into just about any monster and gain their special attack and defense skills while doing so. You can turn enemies to stone while wielding the corpse of a cockatrice as a weapon, something only possible while wearing gloves.

This logic unfortunately also applies to death. When I first started this blog and announced it on Reddit, I knew nothing about NetHack. Some of the commenters started talking about it, and one of them remarked:

I made it to the plane of fire before drowning in lava because I took off my ring of levitation to eat a corpse...To be fair, that was an extremely stupid mistake on my part. I had plenty of food in my pack, but I wanted to eat a fire giant to gain some more intrinsic strength that I didn't even really need.

Can you imagine what this sounds like to someone who hasn't played the game? I remarked that it sounded "terrifying." Imagine trying to keep up with all of the possibilities hinted by those couple of sentences. And all in a game where everything is represented by ASCII characters.

These combinations--and hundreds more--make each game of NetHack essentially unique, with the exception of a few fixed levels and of course the endgame. They make hearing about each character's experience, even deaths, relatively interesting.

Given all of this, I can see how people become addicted to NetHack. Every time you step into the dungeon and start exploring the first level, you wonder, "What am I going to find? What unique challenges will the game throw at me this time?"

But ask me if I really "enjoyed" the 262 hours I spent over the past year ascending, and I don't know how to answer. Part of me says that it's a crime, really, that a game this clever, this innovative, this engaging turns off so many players with the specter of permadeath. I realize permadeath is a staple of roguelikes, and most roguelike players wouldn't trade it, and that it introduces a tactical depth to the game that wouldn't exist otherwise, and that it makes the final ascension all the more exhilarating...but let's be frank: someone shouldn't have to invest more than 250 hours in a game to win it. That's just crazy. Imagine what else I could have accomplished in that time. I certainly could have finished any of the numerous books I have half-started. I might have been able to make a good dent in my dissertation. At worst, I could have watched every film on IMDB's "Top 100" list, and still had 62 hours to spare.

All right. This has been a very long intro. Let's see how the game rates on the GIMLET. I should mention that I already rated the "early NetHack" series in January 2011, having experienced much less of the game, but I'm not going to look at that while compiling the scores here.

1. Game World. I've never experienced a roguelike in which the story, lore, and history was well-defined. It's not generally the priority of the genre. In NetHack, you're not really told anything about the game world, and although there are some vague hints in things like the names of gods, they never come together in any kind of "story." (At least, not in this version.) Score: 1.

2. Character Creation and Development. The creation process isn't much--name and class--but the development process is pretty satisfying. Rewards for leveling up, which happens very swiftly in the early game, are welcome and tangible, at least through about Level 10 (after that, the experience requirements get so large that you essentially need to find Potions of Gain Level or to eat wraith corpses). Perhaps more important are the aspects of development that come from eating corpses to gain intrinsics (fire resistance, poison resistance, teleportitis) and those that improve statistics. Unfortunately, there aren't many ways (in this version) to improve anything other than strength, which is admittedly a pretty important one. The whole point of the game is to make yourself more powerful, and it offers you plenty of opportunities to do so.

Chester gains the "resist cold" intrinsic.

The game could stand to do a little more with class-specific role-playing. The character choice determines starting attributes and equipment, and I suppose this choice still matters late in the game to the extent that it's hard to get a high intelligence score unless you start with it. There are a few alignment-based conducts that affect luck (e.g., lawful characters shouldn't use poison arrows). But overall, it doesn't feel like class "matters" much in this version. I understand that changes later with class-specific quests. Score: 6.

3. NPC Interaction. There really aren't that many in the game. The "chat" command is woefully under-utilized. There's the occasional shopkeeper, the Oracle, and some priests that can matter, but your interactions with them aren't very deep. I suppose it deserves a few points for the bonuses you get from the priest and the things you learn about the game from the Oracle. Score: 2.

Chester "chats" with a friendly orc.

4. Encounters and Foes. The game throws a dazzling array of obstacles in your path to ascension, including curses, various debilitating conditions, and dozens of monster types organized into a handful of classes. These monsters have enough strengths, weaknesses, and special attacks to make the game reasonably tactical, and it even has nice one-paragraph descriptions of certain special monsters. I love the variety of the encounters: floating eyes freeze you, leprechauns make off with your gold, nymphs seduce you and steal your equipment, were-creatures can give you lycanthropy, fire elementals can cause your scrolls and potions to catch fire or boil. Every new letter occasions a rush to your notes or the NetHack wiki to figure out how to best deal with it. There are deeper encounters with vault guards, Keystone Kops, the Wizard of Yendor, and other situations that are rare but fun. There just aren't many role-playing options in all of this. Score: 6.

I had my gold ring stolen Monday, Wednesday, and twice on Friday...

5. Magic and Combat. The magic system is underpowered in this version, even for spellcasting classes. You rarely find spellbooks, and you need multiple readings to get very proficient with the spells. Even then, they fade after you cast them a few times. Combat, on the other hand, is enormously tactical despite only a single "attack" option. Knowing when to attack, when to use a spell or item, and when to flee is both an art and science, and it takes dozens of hours of study to figure it all out. There's even some limited use of the "terrain" in combat, such as finding choke points where only one enemy can attack at a time, luring enemies into traps, shoving boulders into their paths, and locking doors to keep them from getting to you. Pets add an entirely new dimension that I never explored. Score: 7.

6. Equipment. Easily the best and most well-written part of the game. There are so many things to find, use, wield, and wear that it's hard to keep track of them all, and the game features a highly original system by which you either have to identify the items (via spell or scroll) or intuit what they are through practice or experimentation. I love games that give you lots of armor options, and this one has armor, helmets, shields, boots, gloves, and cloaks to keep me happy. The testing process can sometimes be laborious; some of my least-fond memories involving killing an entire barracks full of soldiers, lieutenants, and captains, then hauling loads of their gear to the nearest altar to ensure it's not cursed before systematically testing it for its effects on my armor class.

Chester won't be wearing that cap.

The whole blessed/uncursed/cursed process adds even greater depth to the equipment system. Scrolls of Genocide wipe out monsters; blessed Scrolls of Genocide wipe out entire monster classes; cursed Scrolls of Genocide create the specified monster. The latter isn't always a bad thing. Also notable is how armor and weapons can increase in level or degrade through various scrolls and monster attacks.

Equally important, as I noted above, is the way in which the different items you can find work together. You can dilute potions into potions of water, then turn them into holy water by placing them on an altar, then use them to bless or un-curse your items. A Ring of Teleport Control with a Cursed Scroll of Teleportation can take you anywhere in the dungeon. Magic markers can create scrolls if used with blank paper. I'm sure I didn't find even half of the possibilities. Only a lack of in-game item descriptions keeps NetHack from a perfect score here, but otherwise it's the best equipment system of any CRPG so far. Score: 9.

7. Economy. Not so good. Gold can be useful in the early stages at shops--if the game bothers to generate any--and in donations to a co-aligned priest--if he appears. It's useful when you encounter the Oracle (again, if you find one in your game). Otherwise, all it affects is your final score. The game has piles and piles of gold everywhere, and I wish there was more to do with it. Score: 4.

Teleporting out of a shop without paying floods the dungeon with "Keystone Kops" while the shopkeeper obsessively follows you around, demanding his two dollars.

8. Quests. The game has a single main quest which isn't even very consistent, since you never hear of the "Adventurer's Guild" again after embarking. I think there's only one outcome to the main quest, and this version doesn't feature any side-quests. No real role-playing and not the strongest part of the game. The Amulet is basically a MacGuffin, and the plot is all about personal gain. Score: 2.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Inputs. I've said this before, but I don't see anything particularly appealing or noble about the "raw purity" of a soundless ASCII game, and everything I liked about the game, I would have liked better with a proper tile set and sounds. In fact, I'd vastly prefer actual sounds to the messages describing what you hear--messages that flash too fast while you're moving around. I know some developers have created proper graphics applications to sit on top of the game, and I may try one in the next version.

The interface is good enough. I don't like having capital and lower-case versions of the same letter do different things, but there's really no way around it in this game, and for the most part, the commands were intuitive and easy to remember. I had constant annoyances with having to hit SPACE to continue messages, and I know I could have solved this by frigging around with the configuration options, and I just never bothered. Score: 2.

10. Gameplay. NetHack seems linear at the outset, until you realize you're not really constrained to rushing inexorably forward. The dungeon levels aren't large enough to create a truly "open" gameworld, but it's relatively open within its confined space. It goes without saying that the randomization of the dungeon, distribution of equipment, and distribution of special encounters (including the location of the Wizard of Yendor) makes the game extremely "replayable" except in the sense that it's so hard to win that you never fully play it during each excursion.

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. Score: 5.

I note that the final rating of 44 is 2 points higher than I gave the previous version. My understanding is that future versions will develop more in the quest, character development, and encounter categories.

Despite ascending, I still don't feel like I "mastered" the game. There are a host of things I didn't experience or didn't think about until after I won. Here are some:

• I never made use of a pet. They were always too annoying to me. I realize the watchword in this game is "patience," and juggling a pet is the ultimate test of patience, but I'm not that patient.

• I finally read up on how to use scrolls of blank paper and magic markers to create scrolls, and I was looking forward to it, but I never found a single magic marker among my last eight or nine characters.

• Never did much with luck. I realize that sacrificing corpses on altars and throwing gems at co-aligned unicorns increase your luck, but as I never found a luck stone (I'm not even sure they exist in this version) to preserve it, it seemed like a waste of time.

• Never did much with artifact weapons. I think maybe a couple of my characters found a special axe once or twice, but I'm not even sure special weapons like "Excalibur" exist in this version.

• I realized very belatedly that it would make a lot more sense to delay getting the Amulet of Yendor until I'd explored all of the maze levels and found the paths between the stairs--in fact, I should have used my pick-axe to hack shorter paths between the stairs before getting the amulet.

• Spells strike me as incredibly useless in this game, and I never did much with them. You exhaust them after a few castings, you rarely find spellbooks, and you have to read the same spellbook multiple times to get the spell to a high enough "level" to be useful. But it's possible I missed something and should have concentrated more on spells.

• I stayed away from self-polymorphing, even though I understand there are some cool effects you can achieve with it, including the ability to eat rings as a rust monster and turn them into intrinsics.

• I used ELBERETH on occasion to save my life, but there are other ways you can use it to confine and route monsters, and I never really explored that.

I look forward to exploring these options more, and seeing the game progress, in the 3.1 series. My understanding is that it's the first edition to feature dungeon "branches," a series of elemental planes, and special levels of Hell (renamed Gehennom). Mind flayers and some other monsters appear for the first time. There are more options to improve (and degrade) attributes. Getting the Amulet is tougher, requiring multiple sub-quests; most notably, the Wizard of Yendor no longer has the amulet himself.

I'll reach this version in 1993, which might not occur for another three or four years in my current rate of play. I don't know how I'll feel by then, but right now, it's almost impossible to imagine investing another 262 hours in the game. (Though in accordance with my boast above, I suspect I won't need to.) We'll see then whether I insist on playing honestly or play on "explore" mode long enough to experience the changes and then move on.

I accomplished my NetHack goal of ascending within a year, but there's no way I'm going to make my second goal of finishing all 1989 games within a year. Perhaps without my side-trips to NetHack, though, things will go a little more quickly. Let's move on to The Land and see what happens.

That is, I'll move on to The Land after Chester the Barbarian dies. I created him just so I'd have someone to create screenshots with for this posting, but he's doing pretty well.

NetHack 3.0: Ascended!

I don't know why it highlights the Amulet of Reflection specifically. I was wearing lots of stuff.

If I die tomorrow, I want my obituary to read:

Chester Bolingbroke died yesterday at his home in Salem, Massachusetts. He was 40 years old. Chet recently ascended in NetHack after spending more than 250 hours over the past year trying.

It very nearly didn't happen. After Ellasar's death at the hands of the Wizard of Yendor, I engaged the game with renewed vigor. A switch had turned in my mind, I feel like I "got" the game for the first time, and my entire playing style changed. My next character, Amalek (I continued to play elves) got to Level 24. Reuben, just after him, made it to Hell. I had maybe a dozen characters who still died in the teens, but for the most part I was able to make it much further than before.

Then came Jo'Ash. By the time he got to the castle level, he had a near-perfect ascension kit. He'd received wishes from both a fountain and a throne, which had granted him a Ring of Teleport Control and a Cloak of Magic Resistance. He had found two Scrolls of Genocide, which were blessed and ready to go. He had every possible intrinsic except for teleportitis. The wand of wishes awaited him in the castle. He was on his way.

While trying to fight the sea monsters in the castle's moat, he blundered into the water and drowned.

I'd absolutely had it at that point. I was resolved never to play NetHack again, and I got a "final rating" posting half-typed. But a couple days later, I was waiting for a routine to process on my computer, and I thought, "what the hell." I fired it up again and selected the next name in my biblical list: Gideon.

Gideon turned out to be my first character to defeat the Wizard of Yendor, my first character to place his hands on the Amulet of Yendor, and my first character to ascend--all at once. It's like I spent a year struggling to play "Frere Jacques" on the piano, and then all of a sudden I blazed through Rachmaninoff's piano concerto number 3. Does this happen for a lot of people? Does the game generally get easy after you get the Amulet, or did I just play a lot more carefully?

I didn't take my first screen shot for Gideon until the castle level, but I recall that by the time he made it to the castle, he had all the intrinsics I wanted except shock resistance, teleport control, and invisibility. But he had rings for all of these things. He'd received the Ring of Teleport Control as a wish for sitting on a throne. Naturally, he had telepathy and a blindfold, a unicorn horn, a pick-axe, and several wands of fire, lighting, and digging, all of which could be used for ELBERETH. He had found a ton of Scrolls of Enchant Armor on the way down, so though he was wearing his original mithril chain, he had an AC of -17 (some enchanted gloves, boots, cloak, shield, and helmet contributed to that, too). He was up to Level 16 thanks to some wraiths he'd defeated and eaten somewhere. Oh, and he'd already found a Scroll of Charging and blessed it.

I didn't have a Scroll of Genocide yet, so I couldn't clear out the liches in the castle courtyard, but I did have a Ring of Levitation. I used it to attack from the rear, killing the enemies whose bodies and equipment I wanted to save, but leading others (like liches and rust monsters) into the trap doors. It worked like a charm.

Adios, jackass.

When I got my hands on the Wand of Wishing, it turned out to have two charges. I used them for an Amulet of Reflection and a Cloak of Magic Resistance. Then I recharged the wand with my scroll and wished for Speed Boots and 3 Blessed Scrolls of Genocide. The latter was a bit of a risk, but I got them all.

I thought I was ready to head into the depths at this point, but I decided to explore the level below the castle to see if I could get some final potions, scrolls, and what have you. The moment I arrived, I put on my blindfold and saw all the liches and rust monsters I'd just finished flushing down the trap.

Rather than waste time thinking about it, I genocided both classes. I still had one blessed Scroll of Genocide left.

After exploring the level, I used a cursed Scroll of Teleportation to level-teleport myself down to Level 50, where I'd found the Wizard of Yendor the last time. When I checked my telepathy, it appeared to be the same layout as the previous journey, with a little chamber in the middle of the level surrounded by a moat, but instead of the Wizard of Yendor, a demon called Demogorgon was there.

I was confused, but I thought maybe this version occasionally replaced the Wizard with a demon. I hacked my way into the chamber and soon found myself on the verge of death. Despite my magic resistance and reflection, Demogorgon was capable of causing deathly illness. My teleportitis saved me, by whisking me away from him, but to cure the sickness that was only a few moves from killing me, I had to waste one of the Potions of Holy Water I'd been saving to bless or uncurse things.

I tried to genocide demons, but I was told that wasn't possible. The game still forced me to use the scroll, so I chose to apply it to vampires instead.

At last!

While Demogorgon blundered around looking for me, I sneaked into the chamber and found the "Amulet of Yendor" in the middle. I was psyched. I finally had my hands on it! But something about the process bugged me, so I Googled around until I found some information specific to this version, and I discovered what you probably already know: it was a fake. This version has several levels with chambers near-identical to the Wizard of Yendor's, but with demons inside instead of the Wizard. The Wizard doesn't automatically appear on Level 50. It was just a coincidence last time.

So, no problem. I started exploring until I found the stairs, and began working my way up the levels. On each new level, I put on my blindfold, and if I saw a demon in the center instead of the Wizard...

The demon is the ampersand. Note that there's no vampire with him because I genocided them.

...I kept moving on without bothering the demon.

Always nice to find the up staircase on these lower levels.

Some things happened while I was moving upward that probably made my later ascension possible. First, I got the invisibility intrinsic from an invisible stalker and the shock resistance intrinsic from a gelatinous cube. This freed up that ring hand for a Ring of Protection. More important, I found another Wand of Wishing. Stupidly, I didn't use my first wish for a Scroll of Charging to ensure I got at least three wishes out of it, but it did have two. I received a Wand of Death and two more blessed Scrolls of Genocide. I later ended up somewhat wasting the scrolls on puddings and umber hulks, but the wand was vital.

The Wizard of Yendor finally appeared on Level 41. I carved my way into his chamber and immediately blasted him with the Wand of Death, killing him in one hit. At last, I had killed the Wizard, and I had my hands on the real Amulet of Yendor!

I soon found some of the "features" of possessing the Amulet of Yendor. Level teleporting no longer works, but balancing that, the Amulet occasionally lets you see parts of the level you haven't explored, making it easier to find the stairs. Most important--and worst--the Wizard comes back to life and dogs you all the way to the surface, alternately attacking you and cursing your stuff from afar. I soon began to realize that my stuff was getting cursed. My unicorn horn started stunning me instead of curing blindness and confusion (it was during one of these episodes that I decided to genocide umber hulks to avoid any more confusion). I could no longer put my sword down. My food turned rotten. It sucked a bit.

The Wizard appeared in person a few times, but I just used the Wand of Death to blast him out of existence again. This worked until it ran out of charges on an upper level. Even then, I didn't have much trouble killing him with my sword, though he had an annoying way of jumping around and summoning allies.

In the high 30s, I found myself in the tower of Vlad the Impaler. It was a needless detour. I discovered that I couldn't climb higher than Level 38 from within the tower, so I had to go back down to 40 and find another staircase. Vlad himself was embarrassingly easy to kill. His chambers held all kinds of treasure chests, but I didn't have a lockpick or any extra weapons to risk forcing the chests.

Vlad's chambers.

Once I got to Level 30, though, I'd already explored and mapped them, and I knew where the stairs were. I think in later editions of the game, you "forget" the upper levels after you get the Amulet, but not this one. Moving up from that point was a breeze, especially with my teleportitis kicking in now and then. I stopped at a lawful altar on the way up, got some holy water, and uncursed my sword, but for the most part I made a beeline for the exit. (Would anything have happened if I'd offered the Amulet in sacrifice on this altar?)

The Wizard appeared again on Level 1, just at the stairs, but I decided to climb out rather than fight him.

I knew that this game wasn't like Rogue, where it ends the moment you climb the Level 1 staircase, but part of me still hoped. Instead, I found myself on a level tagged "EndLevel" with a host of nasty creatures--dragons, trolls, ogre lords, giants, nagas, and lots of others--in between me and the end.

The thing was, by now, with my hit points over 100, armor class at -15, and what turned out to be a +4 longsword, none of these creatures was particularly intimidating. I'd already genocided the tough ones. My invisibility kept them from all rushing me at once, so I could dance around and take them on individually. In fact, the only thing I really worried about was the Wizard of Yendor showing up and either killing me or cursing my stuff. I had to kill him twice on the level before the end, and he had me down to 6 hit points at one place.

I also had to be careful not to do what Jo'Ash did and fall into the moat. These sea monsters have a way of suddenly moving while you're attacking them, and if you're not paying attention, you'll "attack" an empty square and end up moving into the water.

The last real "battle" of the game was with a room full of ogre lords, which is a really pathetic monster at this point, although I suspect there would have been a room of liches if I hadn't genocided them all.

Ogres? Please.

The end of the level presents you with three altars (I assume; I never made it down to the chaotic one), and you have to offer the Amulet on the one that matches your alignment. (What happens if you offer it on a contrary one?) Once I identified the right altar...

And killed the succubus next to it...

I stood atop it and "offered" the Amulet to Solonor Thelandira. This was the end game text:

An invisible choir sings, and you are bathed in radiance. "Congratulations, mortal! In return for thy service, I grant thee the gift of Immortality!" You ascend to the status of Demigod.

The game gave me a look of my equipment and intrinsics, and then it was all over.

So...wow, right? I was so excited that I called Irene at work to tell her. Her reaction was...not satisfying...so I leave it to you.

Looking back at my NetHack career, I can identify six mistakes I made that needlessly prolonged my ascension:

1. I had been playing with a Rogue mentality, always feeling that I needed to drive forward. If I found a shop on Level 3 but didn't have enough gold to buy all the stuff I wanted, I never came back. I used altars for anything I had at the time, but left them behind in my relentless drive downward. Only in the last couple months did I come to realize that until I reached the castle level, the entire dungeon from Level 1 to Level 28 was my playground, and nothing said I couldn't go back and forth as my heart desired, killing respawning enemies, finding loot, and making use of shops and altars throughout the game.

2. I prioritized the wrong stuff. I was in the usual CRPG mold, always worrying about the best weapon and such. As far as I'm concerned, the most important things in NetHack are 1) a blindfold and telepathy; and 2) a Ring of Teleport Control and teleportitis. With these items and abilities, you can evade and escape any monster.

3. I was always expecting to die. I succumbed to my fears and expectations of roguelikes, and every time I entered a dungeon, I was poised to record my level and method of death. I didn't believe that every character could ascend. This perversely made me almost impatient to die with certain characters. I'd avoid really thinking about my situation and finding creative ways out of death because I assumed if my character wasn't skilled enough to pummel the red dragon to death, he'd just die somewhere else anyway.

4. I tried to kill everything. Again, I was playing with a normal CRPG mentality. I didn't yet realize that discretion is the better part of valor. No reason to run around trying to slay every last leprechaun, or to engage nymphs that aren't actively seeking to kill you.

5. I waited too long to cave and look at spoilers. If I hadn't looked at spoilers, this posting would have been about Gideon dying at the hands of Demogorgon or something. Spoilers were vital in telling me what to eat, how to test for various types of unidentified equipment and conditions, how to effectively wish, how to use the altars, and so forth. It would have taken me four times as long or more if I tried to figure it all out on my own. For regular CRPGs, I'm still very anti-spoiler, but I recognize the wisdom of capitulating on this one.

6. I wasn't patient enough. My rule towards the end of the game--especially on the last level--was a full breath in between every move. No matter how many times I said it to myself, I had trouble internalizing that this is not a game where you can just go charging down corridors.

I didn't make any of these mistakes with Gideon, in particular the last one. In real life, three days passed from the time I found the Amulet of Yendor to my ascension. I forced myself to play very slowly and carefully, and only for about 30 minutes at a time, lest I get impatient and do something stupid.

The name "Gideon" now has a special place in my world. Gideon the Demigod. He'll be my default character from now on.

That I finally ascended this week is not a coincidence. When I first posted about this version of NetHack last year,  I set a goal to ascend within a year, and I've made that goal with 13 days to spare. It's only because I saw this deadline coming that I've invested so much time in NetHack over the past three weeks. Ironically, I was only recently making fun of someone for simply "deciding" to put in the time and ascend. I suggested that the randomness of the game would naturally thwart such plans. It's amazing how much of a difference a few weeks makes in one's perspective.

Looks like I have two GIMLETs to do now!