Arqade Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [nethack]

NetHack is a single player roguelike, featuring an extremely complex item system. First seen in July of 1987, the game is licensed under the General Public License (GPL), and updated as time progressed. The current version of the game (3.6.0) was released in December of 2015. Use this tag only for NetHack, and not for any of the games that have spin off it.

NetHack is an open source roguelike game originally published in 1987. One of the most distinctive features is its extensive item system; items can behave differently based on the character's status, the item's blessed/uncursed/cursed (BUC) status, the player's form or the surroundings. It is often said that the dev team thinks of everything.

The latest version, 3.6.0, was released in December, 2015; the open license has triggered a number of forks, the most notable being SLASH'EM () and Unnethack.

General Information

  • Release Date: July 1987
  • Developer: The NetHack DevTeam

Links

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How can I tell if a corpse is safe to eat?

I am a human wizard, and I just killed a monster, leaving a corpse on the ground. How do I tell whether it is safe to eat the corpse? I left the monster unspecified because I am interested in "how can I figure out whether this is edible," rather…
Larry Wang
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How do you safely pray to your god?

Can somebody please give me a good overview of the prayer system in NetHack? From what I understand, you can pray once and your god is more than happy to help you out, but if you pray again, you get punished pretty severely for being so needy. …
erik
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How to identify items without getting killed

In NetHack/Roguelikes you run across wands/rings/potions/etc. that you need to identify before you can know what they do. Is there a safe or recommended way of handling these items without turning myself into a puddle of goo?
Kelly S. French
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How can I kill puppies without consequences?

The starting pets can sometimes get quite annoying, since they keep getting in your way. Those little dogs keep blocking my path! Therefore, I quite reasonably want to slaughter them brutally. But of course I want to do this safely. I've noticed…
Doorknob
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Why did my dog just eat my cat?

I was carrying around a tripe ration in an effort to keep my dog close, when I found a nice housecat that was in need of a good home. So I fed it my tripe ration, and a very happy heart appeared over its head. I named him Katt, and he purred and…
erik
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How can I kill myself in Nethack?

I've made it a personal goal to kill myself on the first turn with every character. I've done it with Knight(by riding the pony) and Wizard(by shooting myself). How can I do it with the other ones?
ThisMustBeHalo
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My character keeps jumping around in NetHack. Why?

I've spent quite a while on my NetHack game (for me), and I've managed to get up a few levels. However, my character has (annoyingly) started to randomly jump around to different parts of the level - which is both a blessing and a curse. Why does…
Lucas Jones
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My pet is a public menace, what did I do wrong?

In my current attempt at nethack I'm playing a dwarven samurai with a dog pet, so most dwarves I've encountered are peaceful. However, for some reason, my dog has been going beserk on every friendly dwarf we meet and I'd like to know why. Since this…
Malabarba
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What's a good role and race for a Nethack beginner?

I've just started to play Nethack (games you can play in a shell are useful). What is the easiest role and race to start with?
C. Ross
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What happens if I genocide my own race?

I picked up a Scroll of Genocide while playing and it asked which race I would genocide. I was wondering what would be to happen if I used the Scroll on my own race. However, I don't want to attempt this by myself as I am the furthest that I have…
Non-Master Race
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How can I progress further when there are no stairs down?

I'm very new to Nethack, and essentially have read nothing but the list of commands I can use in game. I've had the game randomly generate my characters for me so far as I just try to get a hang of the basics. I know that everything in the game is…
Invader Skoodge
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Flowchart(s) for indirect identification

There are a lot of different ways of identifying items (as expounded here), and often it seems that several steps are required. I know there are lots of tables of this information on the NetHack wiki and elsewhere, but I am looking for one or more…
sjohnston
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Can Vegans eat Jewelry?

I am a Vegan. Would it break the conduct if I eat jewelry? The Vegan conduct states that I can eat: food rations, cram rations, K-rations, C-rations and lembas wafers melons, oranges, carrots, pears, apples, bananas, kelp, eucalyptus, garlic,…
Justin
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How do I eat a ring?

I have seen some vague references to eating rings as a means of permanently gaining their power. I initially assumed this involved using Stone-to-Flesh to turn a stone ring into a meat ring. However, the wiki article makes it sound like meat rings…
sjohnston
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Why do I stop eating corpses? Should I keep eating them anyway?

Occasionally, when I try eating a corpse, I get the message The {monster} corpse tastes terrible! You stop eating the {monster} corpse. Why does this happen sometimes? All corpses "taste terrible," but usually the character doesn't stop eating…
Doorknob
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