Joel Gluth pontificates
"Avrom Faderman" writes:
> drendite wrote in message
<SNIP/>
> >Starting over really bites. Something bad
> >always happens to me and I end up quitting until
> >the game decides to give me a chance again.
>
> How bad is "bad"? You may be giving up
> some promising characters a bit too early.
<SNIP/>
Too true. People were discussing successful Nethack approaches a while
back, and came up with a couple of constants. One was to milk every
advantage you can find - engrave, hassle your Quest leader off the
throne, bless, lure (except at the Castle ;p), run away, count prayer
timeouts, whatever. NH is harsh, but there are always plenty of ways
to maximise your situation. The other thing is - never give up! I've
seen it posted here by so many people it's almost a mantra: treat each
character as though it was going to Ascend, and more of them will.
Not wanting to sound too Zenny (or is that Zorkmid? (duck)) about
it, but I just love my current game, whatever stage it's in. So you're
polymorphed into a Gelatinous Cube (bursting your Elven Mithril and
digesting half your gear). Ah well - cool! Never did that before.
Let's go engulf some stuff! Or you fell through a hole in the Mines,
and can't reach the stairs? The story of finding that Dwarf while you
were fainting from hunger, eating his corpse and using his pickaxe to
escape will look good in the YAAP. The RNG giveth, even though the RNG
taketh away in truckloads. So your early-wished-for GDSM got
disintegrated?
er...
bummer.
Anyway, I'm starting to sound like some kind of Mr. Motivation
Cheerleader Guy here. The point is, Nethack is continually dropping
you in surprising situations. This is Good. Enjoy your game, and never
quit, because you might miss something nifty. The next game will still
be there when you inevitably die YAAD ;)
When the RNG hands you a lemon, #apply it and see if you can make
invisible ink or something.
Hack on hack on hack on,
--
Joel Gluth // Software Engineer, N-space.
"Can't catch me, I'm content free." -- Kim Gordon
Jason Henry Parker follows up with
IMHO, the flip side is that your actions should always be restricted
by a conservatism in how you play: don't quaff from fountains until
you can take a bunch of water moccasins; don't try to loot chests
until you have a key or a credit card---you'll just bust up your
weapon or the contents!; don't read unidentified scrolls, you can
usually manage minetown without them and get hints about what's what;
don't bother with unblessed potions until you've got a unicorn horn to
dip in them; don't try on unidentified armor until your pet steps on
it, and never try on unidentified helms unless you're feeling lucky;
and so on and so forth.
Sometimes you just have to break the rules to stay alive, but most
of the time they get you into the right frame of mind to not get
into nasty situations.
But above all else, yes, never, NEVER give up. You just may learn
something new.
jason
(BTW, Joel: congratulations. ;)
--
____
\ _/__ ``When the RNG hands you a lemon, #apply it and
\X / see if you can make invisible ink or something.''
\/ -- Joel Gluth on rec.games.roguelike.nethack
|
