Has anyone won this game honestly? I've patched the C code and only got so far. I tried savefile hacking and that didn't get me to the end. I was only able to win by compiling a version with debug symbols and playing inside the debugger. (eg. find the flag for the Wizard of Yendor's invisibility status and clear it.)
I won 14 times, back in high school when I had way too much free time. Once with every class, plus an illiterate barbarian.
One of the big thing is knowing enough to recognize when you're in danger, before you're in danger. Stuff like "That q is too tough for me to take right now", or "I'd be screwed if that n steals X", or "I don't have poison resistance yet, so I better not fight those o at range," or "It's dangerous to be in the mines with this AC and no source of light." This comes with experience.
Another big part of it is understanding the sequencing, and how to build an ascension kit. Do you want to try to get to minetown early to grab a magic lamp? When is it safe to go to mines end, and do you need magic resistance to do it? What's the earliest you can take on a unicorn?
There are lots of other tricks (identifying wands, potions, etc), clearing the big room safely, finding the portals on the elemental planes, stealing from shops, what gives resistances, maximizing wishes, etc.
Ultimately, Nethack got boring for me because the late game is too long, and doesn't differ much between different classes. Ascension kits tend to be very similar (GDSM + silver shield or SDSM + CoMR?). I really liked what Derek Ray did with Sporkhack, and I never managed to win that, although I died on astral a couple times.
I've been playing for almost 30 years, and I think I've ascended about 40-50 times total. My latest 3.6 install, I've ascended 11 times so far, as Wizard, Monk, Knight, Archeologist, and Samurai. Pretty sure I ascended in the high 20s on previous install w/ 3.4, and I know I have ascended at least once with every character in 3.4 (Tourist was easier than I thought it would be). Can't remember my install before that.
I concur with others. Elbereth was useless w/o a wand of fire in 3.6.0. Taught me to learn new survival habits, like staying much closer to my pet and making sure I can always go from burdened to unburdened by dropping only a sack.
Ascending is mostly luck and discipline, and the discipline comes from practice and focus. I find playing nethack calming, and it's a good way to measure how well I'm able to stay in the moment. If I die stupid, it's usually because I'm not all there.
If I'm doing something new, and I am uncertain about what my odds are, I'll read the source code.
I've only modified the source in 3.6.0 to create a general random number generator using a more robust (and more consistent) algorithm than is likely used in most libc variants. My interest there was mainly in perfect cross-platform state reproducability given the same key sequence.
There's only one person known to have won without spoilers (that is, without reading the source code or information derived from the source code). However, you can see lots of experts playing live on nethack.alt.org and they regularly win.
I've personally won four times (with Valkyries and Barbarians, two of the easiest classes) and once got a Priest to the Astral Plane and died there. :-( Recently I've switched to Crawl, also a great Roguelike with a very different philosophy.
Watching other people play on NAO and/or asking people for help or advice should really improve your NetHack skills!
That is quite a modern concept. Back in ye olden times, people just played local versions of games, and won, and didn't announce their achievements to the world. I am sure there is a plethora of people who won and just didn't brag about it.
Winning Nethack games is just like any other hard accomplishment; you have to plan, know what's needed to win, and have patience. It's an unforgiving game, but winnable with no cheating. I have ascended a couple of times as a Valk and Wizard. I stopped playing a decade ago because it's very hard to play casually; you just get so involved. I am in awe of people who do mind-boggling conduct ascensions like the one here :
Unless you require "honestly" to avoid having ever read the source code. This is one of the rare games where I think understanding the source actually improves the gameplay. There are soooo many interactions that you can't possibly factor it all in; you just sort of get a sense of the programmers' philosophy and that guides the rest of your play. You would have to spend your whole life playing NetHack to develop a thorough understanding of the game rules; you only have to spend 1/10 of your life reading the source to get an equivalent perspective.
It's the only game I can think of where spending 1/10 of your life developing a perspective on it is actually time well spent. The source code (and the comments!) are a joy to read.
It might have been 20 years ago, or even 10, but today there are a lot of popular roguelikes which are still challenging but have fewer unavoidable deaths and less reliance on spoilers. Dungeon Crawl is a good example, but there are a lot of roguelikes even gentler than that.
The linked post is from 2014, and specifically mentions DCSS being "lower headroom". I expect a significant issue here is different use of "forgiving"; IIUC proponents of DCSS would tend to stress YASDs as being "unforgiving", but the focus of the linked article is more on flexibility in play style - forgiving somewhat-less-than-optimal play, forgiving outright recklessness, and occasionally killing you regardless of your behavior are all three somewhat different things.
Perhaps for a very specific and arcane definition of "forgiving." (Or maybe you just mean "more forgiving than Rogue," which is not saying much.) NetHack is famously brutal, and the people who beat it tend to sink hundreds if not thousands of hours first.
> "The game's strategy should not be dependent on spoilers." This is a request to increase the headroom
Not necessarily. You can give players enough information to theorethically enable deduction of the correct choices, will still making the deduction hard. Mixing up my genres, Go is like this, where the rules are very simple and it's just that deriving good gameplay from them is a tricky problem that takes a long time.
Yes — won once, and died another time on the Plane of Fire. (I meant to zap down, not at myself! Damn. Learned to think before acting. NetHack is not as real-time as it feels when you're in a sticky situation.)
3.6.0 is hard thanks to Elbereth being significantly nerfed. I've ascended a few times, but it was much more luck-based due to the early game being much harder. 3.6.1 should be significantly easier due to its reboosting of Elbereth.
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Read the excellent wiki, spam Elbereth as much as possible, don't get trapped in open rooms, establish good playing habits, and go slow. Much of Nethack's late game is dependent on good habits.
I've won, exactly once. It was the first time I got a knight into the quest (I can pretty regularly get barbarians and Valkyries near gehennom) and it turned into my first time to the wizard, my first invocation ritual, and ultimately my first ascention. I have since got the amulet once, but then had my brain eaten.
Not remotely recently, but my friends and I played a lot of NetHack back in the 90s. I Ascended once or twice with no cheating (and with low-to-no use of Elbereth), and had a couple of good runs that could plausibly have worked out but didn't due to either bad fortune or (in one memorable case) very poor life choices involving a Ring of Conflict.
IIRC, we didn't even really read up on anything spoilery until we were getting down to the castle occasionally. Learning to survive the early-game was a journey both fun and frustrating.
With 3.4, I got to the point where I could probably win at least 1 in 5 games (and did so with every class). 3.6 got more difficult but I'd guess I could win roughly 1 in 10.
(None of that came without playing a lot of games where I did poorly over months and months, along with some liberal use of explore mode, and reading a lot of spoilers. It's a time investment for sure, not necessarily a wise one.)
I've won lots of times in 3.4.3. It feels “easy” but formulaic once you get the hang of it, so you challenge yourself. Best conduct I ever did was just blindfolded through the whole game (from first turn to last).
