Nethack Notes

• Notes are based on the 3.6.x version of NetHack

• Official NetHack 3.6.5 Guidebook
• NetHack Wiki
• PC Gamer: NetHack from aaaa to Zruty (YouTube Playlist)
• On most Linux installs the guide book is located in /usr/share/doc/nethack/Guidebook.txt

• Press the # key and type quit
• You will be prompted a few times to show stats
• If you want to quit immediately press q

• Enter the extended menu with # then type help
• You should be able to view most of what you need to know from this menu
• You can also press ? to see the help menu

• Find the amulet of yendor and exit the dungeon
• When you first load into the game there is a staircase leaving the dungeon
• If you go up that staircase without the amulet you will forfeit the game
• If you have the amulet when you go up the stairs, you win
• NetHack is a "learning" game where the fun comes from discovering all the mechanics

• The player is the @ symbol

• You will die frequently
• Try to understand why you died each time it happens

y k u
 \|/
h-.-l
 /|\
b j n

• The < means a staircase going up
• The > means a staircase going down
• Use the greater than or less than symbols to go up or down a staircase
• Pets will only follow you down the staircase if they are adjacent to the player

• When you encounter a locked door you can sometimes kick it down
• To kick use the #kick command or press Ctrl-D
• It will ask you for a direction afterwards so push the movement key in the direction of the door

• You will be granted a pet at the start of each game
• Pets can level up, with each enemy they kill

• Each time you move, the world moves as well
• This typically only applies to the floor you are on
• So if you are on floor 2 enemies on floor 1 do not move when you interactive with floor 2

• When you enter a level (or floor) it is generated, the level did not exist until you entered the floor
• When a floor is generated this also generates the enemies
• The strength of enemies is based on the floor as well as the player strength
• It might advantageous to generate levels as soon as possible to minimize the enemy strength scale
• You cannot clear out all the enemies on a level
• They will continue to spawn
• When they spawn they will take the player level into account

• Press the ; key to move the cursor around
• Highlight something and press , to see information about it
• Alternatively you can press / to bring up the look menu
• If you press / again from the look menu you can continue to look at things without exiting look mode after pressing ,

• Press the i key to open your inventory
• When over an object you want to pick up press the , key
• Each item in your inventory gets a letter assigned to it
• You can view that letter here (also when you are doing the command they will sometimes let you peak at your inventory with ?
• By default auto pickup is enabled, so when you walk over an item it will be added to your inventory.
• Use the @ key to toggle auto pickup

• Wielding means to equip a weapon like a sword
• Press the w key to wield an item
• Press the x key to switch to off-hand weapon
• If you are able to dual wield you can enable it with X

• You can throw any item with the t command
• If you have arrows but are not wielding a bow you can still throw them
• If you are wielding a bow they will go further and do more damage
• You can quiver an item with Q and quickly fire it with f
• Using quiver and fire saves you the step of picking which item to throw

• Press the W key to wear an item
• It is dangerous to put on equipment that hasn't been identified
• Cursed equipment cannot usually be taken off

• You can read scrolls
• Press the r key to read a readable item

• You will eventually get hungry and need to eat
• You can sometimes get nourishment from corpses you have killed
• Some enemies are poisonous (Kobolds) so be careful eating just any old corpse
• Food rations provide the most amount of nourishment
• Eating food does not restore HP, instead it nourishes you

• You need to identify items to know if they are cursed or not

• If you want to advance the turn without moving press the . key
• This is sometimes handy when you want to wait for a pet to be in an adjacent location before ascending or descending a staircase

• Sometimes there are hidden items around you
• Press the s key to search around
• This will advance the turn similar to . but it will also search
• You might find a hidden door

• In the HUD you will see the Armor Class abbreviated as AC: <SOME_VALUE>
• The lower the Armor Class value the better the protection
• 10 is the worst armor class value
• Armor class values can go into negative numbers

• Press the A key to see a menu for items that can be taken off

• When you press the inventory screen you will see which key maps to which item
• If you would like to adjust the key you can by press # to enter the extended mode
• From there type adjust
• This will prompt you for which inventory you want to change the key and what key you want to change it to

• Press the a key to enter apply mode
• From here press the inventory key for the item you want to use

• You can pick up too many things and become encumbered
• Encumbered state makes it harder to move
• You will gain a status effect "Burdened" when you have too much stuff

• As a last ditch effort you can use the extended menu (#) to pray
• This could turn the tide in your favor
• Your role (job) and alignment determine which deity you pray to
• You should not depend on praying, you can anger your Deity

• When you die on a level, the game will persist this information in a bones file on the host computer
• The game could then use this file to expose cursed items or the player corpse in a future run
• If you play on a shared server there could be a lot of bones files from many previous runs by other players
• Sometimes on bones level you will encounter a ghost of a previous player
• Possessions of deceased players are probably cursed

• Sometimes you are prompted for a direction
• Press the . to indicate the tile underfoot

• Press the d key to drop an item, or the D to multi drop
• If you drop items in the dungeon, you can come back to them later and pick them up again

• Use the extended (#) command enhance to view your current proficiency in the various skills
• As you use skills more you will gain the option to increase the proficiency
• You will need to manually advance your skill to the next level
• The reason for this is that there is a limit to the total amount of things you can have skills in

• Press S to save your game
• This will exit the game and create a save file
• You can only have one save file at a time so the next time you start NetHack it will resume where you left off

• When you visit a room and it is no longer in your direct line of sight it will be on your map but marked as "dark"
• The details you see on the map are just your memory of the room, the actual state could have changed if you return to it

• Press the 5 key followed by a direction to move in that direction until you encounter something interesting
• Press the _ key to move the cursor to where you want to go
• The player will then move until they reach that location

• To buy items in the store pick up the item with , the pay with p
• You can pick up multiple items before paying
• The shop keeper will block the exit of the door until you have paid for all the items that you have picked up
• You can drop things in the store to sell them
• Selling unidentified items and seeing how much the shop keeper offers for it is a good way to deduce the value of a unidentified item
• The shopkeeper might not be interested in the items you drop

• Any item that you don't know if it is cursed or not you can drop on an altar and it will reveal its cursed state
• If you pray near an altar something good might happen, especially if the altar matches your alignment
• If you use multi-drop D you can select items pf unknown B/C/U status
• You can make an offering at the altar, typically this would be an enemy corpse
• Use the extended (#) command and offer to make an offer

• You can use the C key to name items
• You can either name a particular item or all items
• This is useful when you are pretty sure you know what an item is but haven't identified it
• For instance you are in a scroll shop and deduce that the cheapest scroll is more than likely a scroll of identify, so you want to name it as such to make it easier to view the items in the store

• Use C-p to view the message history

• Use C-x to view the player stats

• Sokoban is a puzzle section of the dungeon
• They are block pushing puzzles where you want to push boulders into pits in order to get to the next floor
• Rather than descending you are ascending the Sokoban section
• You can get a lot of good items in the Sokoban level (especially food rations)
• This makes it a good candidate for early in the game to not die of starvation
• There are a total of 4 levels of Sokoban
• If you are on the second floor or above in Sokoban and you fall into a pit, you will land on the lower floor
• If you get stuck it is worth moving any boulder you can to see what is underneath

• If you are a priest you will know if items are cursed or not
• If you drop an item on an alter you will then know if the item is cursed or not
• You can use your pet to know if an item is cursed or not. Pets only move on cursed stacks "reluctantly" if you place a stack of non-food items down and the pet just walks on them, its probably not cursed.
• Scroll of identify will tell you if an item is cursed or not
• You can curse or uncurse items with holy or unholy water
• Dipping #dip items in a fountain can sometimes tell you if they are cursed or not, and potentially remove the cursed status if they are. Make sure that exposing the item to water is OK.

• Use E to start the engrave command
• If you type "Elbereth" that will cause most monsters to stop attacking

• Valkyrie, Dwarf, Female
• Because it is a Dwarf, the gnomish mines will be friendly

• Don't melee attack a floating eye
• You will get paralyzed and killed by something small like a newt or grid bug
• You should try killing it at a range