Nethack in all its ASCII beauty

The best game ever is the venerable Nethack on OS X (and every other platform!)

Nethack is a terminal-based adventure game of incredible complexity and engrossing minutiae- metal objects rust in water, objects bounce off walls, pet dogs steal, tripe tastes awful and bad things happen when you offend the gods. But all this complexity has a certain innate logic- consider the cockatrice : if you touch a dead cockatrice you are turned to stone- if you wear gloves you can pick it up and wield it as a weapon turning monsters to stone (at least until it rots away)- now that is the basic description of what can happen with a cockatrice the full spoiler runs to 2000 words and covers what happens when you choke on a canned cockatrice!
The true power of nethack is that it is randomly generated- though each new dungeon follows a few basic rules- so every game is different and after a YASD (yet another stupid death) you can start a new game and almost be sure you’ll die in a new unexpected way…

Installation

Mac OS X Nethack Terminal Installation

The terminal version (IMHO) is the only one worth playing. Get the OS X version here. It comes as a package so simply double click on the package and install (you need to be an administrator). (i had some problems with the .sit file when expanded by Stuffit Expander- apparently Stuffit Expander version 10.0 has a few little problems so update to 10.0.1 or open Stuffit Expander and open the preferences and unclick the ‘Continue to expand if possible’)

Note:
There are some problems with the installer which must be rectified by some command line magic.
In 10.4+
This workaround is reported to get nethack running on 10.4.1 (Tiger):
sudo chgrp staff /usr/games/nethack
sudo chmod g+s /usr/games/nethack
(Note that you will need an admin password for this procedure.)
In 10.3+ (clean installs not updates)
An administrative user needs to run the following shell command once for each player:
sudo niutil -appendprop . /groups/staff users FOO
where FOO is the login name of the player’s account. More than one player can be specified by separating the login names by spaces.
(Note that you will need an admin password for this procedure.)

Once you’ve got Nethack installed on your mac I suggest you download my nethack.term file- it’ll start up nethack and set the terminal colour scheme to white on black and set the options to something decent. Just double click on the file and it’ll start up a Nethack game.

Unix and Windows

Many other versions exist for many platforms. Packages exist for most unix distros: debian. If you don’t feel like installing a copy yourself you can play online at the alt.org server http://alt.org/nethack/. Before long you won’t be able to put it down- the sooner it’s ported to iPod unix the better!

Game Play

You are an adventurous @ wandering in a harsh unforgiving dudgeon (why can’t these terminal-based games ever be based outside in the sunshine?). You have a trusty sidekick, either a small dog d or cat f. Basically, you wander around killing things and going deeper into the dungeon, acquiring things (figure out whether they’re cursed before you try them out) and trying to avoid another pointless death. Keep an eye on your hit points HP and make sure they stay above 0. pick up everything and try it out. > is a staircase down to the next level- press > to go down it.
it takes a while to learn the keys but eventually they become second nature.- here is a commands crib sheet take from the help which would be good to print out and have when playing. It takes a while to get used to wearing W some armor and wield w a weapon.

Navigation:
  7 8 9
   \\|/
  4-.-6
   /|\\
  1 2 3
numberpad  

Some useful commands
• ? = help- explains most of the game
• X = explore mode (can’t be killed)
• , = pickup object
• s = search (for hidden doors)
• S = save game for later
• / = explains what a map symbol represents
• o = open door

Play a few games in explore mode (start a game and press X) trying out the different character types- try not to dwell in god-mode because it’s the constant fear of YASD that makes the game interesting, should i drink this unidentified potion, read this unidentified scroll or eat floating eye corpse? Do the wrong thing and that character you’ve been nurturing drops dead…

I usually play as a Dwarf Valkyrie (a pretty tough character class, who doesn’t seem to die quite as often as the tourist who comes armed with an expensive camera- the flash momentarily blinds monsters- credit card- accepted nowhere but useful for opening doors- and a hawaiian shirt). I’m no master at Nethack and I’ve wasted days playing it- My not-so-sophisticated strategy is to let my dog kill everything in sight (bad fido!) and steal lots from shops; a little bit of feeding and trial and error and you’ll have them dragging expensive items out of the shop for you (bad fido!).

If worst comes to worst (and it often does) try engraving (E) Elbereth onto the ground- i’m not sure how ethical this means of escape is but it will give you a breather and might save a character you’re quite attached to.

The guide will tell you all you want to know about how to play- written by the author of The Cathedral & the Bazaar an open-source touchstone.

Nethack links

steelypips- Yet Another NetHack Site - great resource lots of information
when you start being addicted you might try the what Nethack monster are you?

Falcon’s Eye 3D graphical Nethackversion
A Salon article “Nethack the best game ever”