Post by The Cheshire Cat on Oct 8, 2010 10:11:43 GMT -5
Anyone else play these? They are a real lifesaver for dealing with boredom at work.
For those not in the know: NetHack is a classic roguelike RPG that's been in "continuous" development since the late 80's (I say "continuous" because the last release was in 2003, though allegedly the project is still ongoing). It's relatively simple to play, but incredibly deep, and notoriously difficult. I've been playing NetHack for years and I've only ascended (beaten the game) ONCE.
The key aspect that makes it so difficult is the fact that, as a roguelike, when you die it's actually "game over" - your character and save is deleted and you have to start over from the beginning. You'd think this would be frustrating, but character generation is a 5 second process that can be made even quicker by setting up automatic character settings in the configuration file. Losing the game when you've made a lot of progress doesn't feel like a waste of time, because although the character is gone, you can learn from every death and hopefully avoid the same thing in the future; NetHack players call it YASD, "Yet Another Stupid Death", when they die from something they should have known better about.
SLASH'EM on the other hand, is for people who don't think NetHack is difficult enough. It's basically a stand-alone expansion pack for NetHack, adding a whole shitton of stuff to the game, generally in the form of new and wonderful ways to reduce your adventurer into a fine red paste. It also adds a bunch of interesting new features as well, like "Techniques", which are basically class skills you can use on a cooldown, as well as a bunch of new classes and races that have their own techniques and gameplay modifications themselves, like the vampire race that can only feed on fresh corpses of non-plant based monsters or blood potions (This makes the game VERY HARD).
Lately I've been playing SLASH'EM, even though I'm not particularly good at normal NetHack, since thanks to the NetHack wiki I already kind of know everything there is to know about NetHack, and I want to try tackling all the new stuff from SLASH'EM without spoilers. I don't recommend trying to play NetHack with no spoilers at ALL though. There are some things you can do that are very helpful but there is little to no indication about them in game. Hell, just getting stats on weapons is worth spoiling, since there's really no in-game way to tell what kind of damage a bec-de-corbin does compared to a lucern hammer, or that a war hammer is a surprisingly worthless weapon (SLASH'EM does have a config option to show the numerical damage you deal on each hit, but only for certain classes that gain the "quantify damage" passive).
*Edit* Oh, I forgot to mention: They are 100% completely FREE.
For those not in the know: NetHack is a classic roguelike RPG that's been in "continuous" development since the late 80's (I say "continuous" because the last release was in 2003, though allegedly the project is still ongoing). It's relatively simple to play, but incredibly deep, and notoriously difficult. I've been playing NetHack for years and I've only ascended (beaten the game) ONCE.
The key aspect that makes it so difficult is the fact that, as a roguelike, when you die it's actually "game over" - your character and save is deleted and you have to start over from the beginning. You'd think this would be frustrating, but character generation is a 5 second process that can be made even quicker by setting up automatic character settings in the configuration file. Losing the game when you've made a lot of progress doesn't feel like a waste of time, because although the character is gone, you can learn from every death and hopefully avoid the same thing in the future; NetHack players call it YASD, "Yet Another Stupid Death", when they die from something they should have known better about.
SLASH'EM on the other hand, is for people who don't think NetHack is difficult enough. It's basically a stand-alone expansion pack for NetHack, adding a whole shitton of stuff to the game, generally in the form of new and wonderful ways to reduce your adventurer into a fine red paste. It also adds a bunch of interesting new features as well, like "Techniques", which are basically class skills you can use on a cooldown, as well as a bunch of new classes and races that have their own techniques and gameplay modifications themselves, like the vampire race that can only feed on fresh corpses of non-plant based monsters or blood potions (This makes the game VERY HARD).
Lately I've been playing SLASH'EM, even though I'm not particularly good at normal NetHack, since thanks to the NetHack wiki I already kind of know everything there is to know about NetHack, and I want to try tackling all the new stuff from SLASH'EM without spoilers. I don't recommend trying to play NetHack with no spoilers at ALL though. There are some things you can do that are very helpful but there is little to no indication about them in game. Hell, just getting stats on weapons is worth spoiling, since there's really no in-game way to tell what kind of damage a bec-de-corbin does compared to a lucern hammer, or that a war hammer is a surprisingly worthless weapon (SLASH'EM does have a config option to show the numerical damage you deal on each hit, but only for certain classes that gain the "quantify damage" passive).
*Edit* Oh, I forgot to mention: They are 100% completely FREE.
