Nethack. Tips for the first fifty steps

I hope the last introductory article about the game Nethack prompted many to download and install this wonderful toy. And the veterans, after reading it, again killed a dozen or two characters. As I write these two articles, I keep score on dozens of entries in the nethaka fame book.
I am sure that your character has suffered from sudden death more than once, and the heels of coyotes lead you into confusion. Cheer up, novice adventurer! Together we will go to the end!

Let's try to give advice to a newbie in netkhakovskih dungeons. Here, run. Enter the name. What's next?


Ask questions! Nethack does not apply to intuitive games. I will say more - nethak refers to intuitively incomprehensible games. How to guess yourself that the corpse of a basilisk can be used as a weapon? Or the fact that the book thrown at the enemy also causes harm? Right! Ask questions.
')
What is this krakozyabra? Every character on the screen means something. True, the characters are few, therefore, color - additional marking. Due to the similarity of the characters, you can skip the book, which lies in the doorway (and the door and the book are +).
Check for suspicious bugs on the screen. It is very simple to learn the decoding of a symbol: press the colon (:), select the character position with the cursor, press the dot (.). Note that the colon is used to mean shift +;
Also, keep in mind that in one cage there can be more than one object and only one monster.
For example, in the fortress of Ludios there are a lot of soldiers . After stripping, I had twenty-two (!) Screens of things in one cell ( usually the character carries only two screens of things with him).

Do not rush down below. On the first ten levels of the character, the rule works: the number of the floor coincides with the level of the character. Do not climb into the hell at once - your hero and so sweetly do not have to.

Chess! With this word, I emphasize the need for a strategic approach in dangerous battles and unpredictable intrigues. If it smells fried, count the moves. A strong hobbit, for example, can be a serious threat to an elf mage with exhausted forces. But here comes to our aid, oh miracle tactics! The base speed of the hobbit is two times lower than the speed of an elf. Thus, for each of your two moves, the hobbit makes one. It turns out that the winning tactics against Frodo will hit in the first move and move away in the second. The main thing to get into the rhythm. With the right approach to the situation, he will not take away your strength and health from you at all. Probably still need a little luck :)
One more example. In the simplest situation, your character can move his feet to one of the eight squares around. You can move using [cursor keys] and home, end, pgUp, pgDown or play an additional keyboard (if you have one, of course) - where the number is five, there is your character. Exceptions are sokoban levels, and doorways. Being directly in the doorway to the character is not available diagonal cells. Only front. You can take advantage of this and not let the monsters enter the room all at once - only through your character in the aisle. By the way, shop owners do this - they won't let you out without paying (p).

Decide on the type of character. Monks are naturally vegetarians - they cannot eat meat and, accordingly, the corpses of dead enemies. But then, the monks initially see the invisible and unbreakable . It is difficult for a barbarian to read and write, so books are useless :) An acquaintance playing for a barbarian set himself the goal of learning to conjure. The simplest spell magic arrow he managed to use (shift + z). Although the barbarian is much more confused with a double-edged ax in his hands. The knight is a good rider. The wizard is the best magician of various witchcraft. A tourist is unusually charismatic - he is guaranteed a discount in any store . In addition, depending on the type of character , from his religion , an artifact is chosen as a reward for the quest. Examine the artifacts and quests to determine. Although, I think your character is not very quickly get to the quest.

Boy or girl The gender of the character affects solely the behavior of the succubus and incubus . And the boy from the incubus needs to wait for an unambiguous reaction - with this in the game everything is traditional :) However, I would also recommend the opposite sex, if the character is still a first grader. In general, the fukubus is a godsend. Try not to kill him, even if he is aggressively set up - run and hope that the next time your new girlfriend will not have a headache.
As Comrade Exabiche suggests , the floor also affects the ability to lay eggs during polymorph in someone egg-laying. Although it will not be useful to you soon;)
It is also worth mentioning about the race . Elves are more fragile than humans, but more dexterous. Orcs are fierce, and the dwarves are excellent miners (surprised? :). Humans are the most neutral race. I would recommend to start playing man. So familiar and least of all surprises :)

Examine inventory. Things at the beginning of the game are distributed with some randomness and depending on the type of character. Suppose the wizard at the beginning of the game are given two rings, which by default are in the inventory (key i or shift + i). Examine your rings and put on ("shift + p") if it is useful! It is also useful to know what scrolls your character has.
By the way, the most useful scroll at the beginning is the teleport scroll . One day he will save a life! Read it (r) when it is very tight and you need to reel the fishing rods.

Move carefully. Do not clamp the movement button to move faster (I’m talking about sticking buttons)! You can not notice the dangerous enemy and "oh! died! " To accelerate the movement, press shift + [direction]. The character will move in the indicated direction until it reaches an obstacle, until it gets hungry, or something else happens.

Once again, be careful. A useful command is search (s button). The character carefully examines neighboring cells in one move, and can besiege the enemy (a snake or a spider , for example), secret doors (on the card as a plus sign) or a trap (on the map as ^). Or, for example, skipping a move (space) - we restore health in a natural way. If you need to make ten passes (or look around carefully), press (and release - this is not a combination of keys) n, then specify the number (10 - use the main keyboard), and then press the command (space). By the same token, we tell the character to make ten passes. If suddenly something prevents us, the monster will appear in the field of view, for example, then the cycle will stop. Thus, we will respond to the situation in time.

Read all the letters. During the game, what is happening is described in the left upper status bar. This may be in response to your actions (“As you kick the door, it crashes open!” - the door was broken). Or maybe not yours;) “You hear a door open.” - aha! someone poking around the floor. "You are a faint wave of psychic energy" - "Aaaa !!! Hide. Somewhere near the brain eater ! ". In general, read and understand all the letters. Useful messages are much more than useless.
I note that wearing a thing, not knowing what kind of thing is also not very good. Wearing iron armor mage is tantamount to suicide - can not conjure. But you can try to wear a small leather shield.
Obviously, water walking boots are only useful on water, and wearing them just is less useful than speed boots . But in the boots of levitation you will not be able to go down the floor below.
Not all rings are good to wear without understanding their properties. The ring of hunger is useful when you need to digest a huge troll or dragon. And we put the ring of conflict in the crowd.

Eat right . In the lower right corner of the written state of your hero. Whether he is blind (blind), drunk or disoriented (conf), hungry (hungry) - all in the right corner. We carefully monitor the stomach and eat properly. If you don't eat, first weakness, then slowness, then death. Eat everything that is edible: food ration (food), tripe ration (food for animals, maybe whiskey), corpses, fruit. Do not eat cats and dogs (god does not like this), unicorns have one faith ( black , white , gray, respectively, chaotic, law-abiding, neutral), do not deal with canibalism (people and elves, if a person or an elf), basilisks (turns into stone everything touches). Do not overeat - you can choke and die.
It must be remembered that the corpses of dead monsters are edible only for a while, and then rotten. Carrying corpses with you prozapas - not a very good idea. Carry fruit, food rations (a bunch of species), canned food (oh yeah! You can still make them from meat), and plant corpses ( green mold , for example). Eat corpses immediately or do not eat at all!
It may seem strange, but zombies, ghosts and mummies are also not edible :)

This thing is cursed! All things in nethack have karma (I don’t know how to translate it into Russian!): Sacred (blessed), ordinary (uncursed) and cursed (cursed). Holy things have a number of enhanced characteristics, relatively ordinary. Damned things are bad things. First - they can not be removed. Secondly, they, as a rule, change characteristics in the wrong direction. By themselves, these two points make us be careful when seeing a new thing. But that is not all! Amulet of Strangulation becomes damned when a character puts it on. Just so you can not remove it ("shift + a"), but he also choking. Almost certain death! Loadstone (translation is not invented) is always initially damned. You can pick it up, but you can't throw it away. And he is very heavy! The runes on damned books are erased faster than on ordinary ones, and the number of readings is limited.
When you see a thing for the first time, its karma is unfamiliar to you. How to define it? Easy! Put a thing on the altar of any faith, and the god of God identifies you to it. Be careful only in the case of amulets. The rest of the uncursed things can be safely tried on.
Separate story with loadstone. It can not even lift. Initially it is designated as gray stone , and this is either very good or very bad. Hit the stone with your foot (k, and then [the direction of the impact]). Did the stone fly away? So not loadstone - you can safely raise. And if the character got hurt (“Ouch! That hurts!”), It means loadstone.

Ask God . Basic requests to God: “feed me”, “treat me”, “bless me”. Use them wisely. In all three cases you need to pray (alt + p). Neatly! God does not like being asked often, so we turn to him as little as possible. If you feel that your character right now slaughtered gopnik goblins, or nothing to eat, but really want to - pray.
If suddenly you decide to take a chance, and put on the damned thing, then prayer is a great way to make the thing uncursed and take it off. Just make sure that the character is full of health and full, for god you can misunderstand :)

Please God . Found the altar at the beginning of the game - an extraordinary joy! And no matter what kind of God this altar. Any altar can help you determine the curse of things. And any altar can be “repainted” :) Sacrifice your enemies on the altar (alt + o) and the deity will be unspeakably happy about it. In this way, old sins can be forgiven, or new sins in absentia :)
If your deity is filled with emotions, you will receive a reward sweetmeat fashion artifact.

Altose. Those commands that use alt have an analogue in the form of shift + 3 (this is the # character) - and then we write the command completely. # pray or # rub. There are also such cases when by pressing the alt a window menu appears, and the commands do not work.
Solution with idle alt by dying_sphynx

Paranoia will save a life. To wait for a trick you need from everywhere. The dwarf in the dwarf mines holds the death wand in her lap, the polymorph's trap turned the beetle into a black dragon, the accidentally knocked door was the entrance to the store, this little hobbit had read the scroll before death - now monsters are teeming with teems. I once had that one peacefully gremlin spoiled one floor for me. I had to genocide! Or, it happened in sokobane when someone who was cunning and big blocked my way to a happy life.

Die with your head up and with empty pockets. After the death of the character can remain a corpse with all things and a ghost . Things will be a gift for the next adventurer, but he will still need to kill the ghost. This is necessary because all things at the time of death are likely to become damned. But those that lie on the floor - no. Therefore, if death is inevitable - throw away all things for posterity.

Windows 7.
For old school graphics under win7, you need to install the DOS version .

questions in the comments
- tamed animal is lost
- After you are dead bodies
- Pro shops
- About protection from fire and water.
- Bundle of links from @ tishka87
- Basic commands in pdf
- Pet knows about the karma of things

Actually, everything

Basic tips, as far as I imagine them, are described. I suggest that veterans of nethack add advices to newcomers - with a comment, a personal message. Only I beg you - beginners. For veteran veteran advice, I think I’ll need to take a separate article. Therefore, advice on how best to use holy water, and how to properly prepare the dragon in its own juice, let's leave it next time;)
Also, comments are welcome to beginners with questions. Ask, do not hesitate. Your questions will not only allow you to get answers, but also expand the basic list of tips.