NetHack.

Chagen

Holy fuck this game is difficult. But really fun.

I was playing a knight and was doing so well....

Then I somehow got insta-death'ed from poison....

Myrmidon

Poison immunity. The most important thing in the world.

DYRE

Be a Valkyrie.  They're relatively easy to play as.

That said, I absolutely suck at Nethack.

Chagen

Played as Valkyrie.

Got killed on floor 2 by a bat.

You were aligned.

You were cold resistant.

You were stealthy.

You are dead.

----

a shrieker

2 goblins

2 rabbits

3 grid bugs

a lichen

a newt

10 creatures vanquished.

---

Voluntary challenges:

You followed a strict vegan diet.

You were an atheist.

You were illiterate.

You never genocided any monsters.

You never polymorphed an object.

You never changed form.

You used no wishes.

You remained celibate.

DYRE

>You were an athiest

If nothing else, you probably could have lived somewhat longer by #pray'ing. Though if you were killed on floor 2 I guess it doesn't matter much anyway.

Chagen

Yeah, I know, but it happened really quickly.

I'm playing Slash'EM, by the way.

Myrmidon

I played as either a Tourist or a Knight.

Tourist made me actually carefully consider my actions and not blunder around like a fool, which increased my survival rate.

GuyInWhite

If you want to see what the rest of the game looks like, try explore mode. Just don't mention that you played explore mode to a Nethack forum, they will tear you to shreds.

glennmagusharvey

I love playing as a tourist since they completely suck.

I also love playing as a rogue.  My high score is with Valk but rogue is far more fun.  Sure, I have to run and turtle and Elbereth, and I can't melee unicorns, but it just makes it so much more satisfying when I do kill them.

Plus I have a sack for bagging all my coins so I can melee lepers leprechauns with impunity.

And throwing my stack of daggers is one of the best things ever.  Also, having a potion of poison to start with.  Find dart trap.  Untrap.  Get 50 darts.  Dip in poison.

Saigyouji

I'm playing Slash'EM, by the way.

Do you enjoy pain? Slash'EM is even harder than vanilla Nethack.

On the note of tourists, tourist was actually the class of my first ascension.

glennmagusharvey

I don't like SlashEm mostly because I prefer the original flavor first.

Chagen

I play Slash'EM because it has the best Ipod port.

On another note:

Played as Neutral Monk.

Got to Level 2.

Saw Chaotic artifact.

Grabbed it.

Died.

Icalasari

I started with a transformation wand (it's been a while, so I forgot the name) and found a wand of wishing on the second or third floor

Holy hell was that epic as hell

glennmagusharvey

I have been killed by system shock before.

Well, my nethack character at least.

glennmagusharvey

Oh, there was one time when I had a tourist.  And a pet, of course, and found a polymorph wand.  I somehow got it to polymorph into an arch-lich.

Apart from it casting invis on itself and me lacking see invis, it was pretty awesome.  I ended up quaff-testing an entire store of potions because I had such a powerful pet nearby and it killed the shopkeeper.

However, I still died pretty early in the game.  For unrelated reasons.

Chagen

Too bad it wasn't an Archon.

I kinds wish nethack didn't require such strict ways to win. I wanna ascend with a harem of pet Succubi, dammit!

.....Okay, a harem of pet Succubi and pet Angels (female of course).

TheMightyAnonym

^^^^Wand of polymorph.

@Chagen: you might want to use this.

Some random tips:

• THe fun of NetHack is its grandiose  complexity coupled with the ability to sit there and think about it. Hard. Because death is permanent.
  
• #Engrave Elbereth liberally. Like, EVERYWHERE. Wands of fire and Athames are preferred.
• As mentioned before, #pray when you are in trouble.
• Neutral alignment is often the easiest to play as, for reasons such as having the best options to wish for.
• Pets can steal from shops (don't know if you knew that). After cleaning out a store, drop your gold in it and have your pet steal it for credit.
• ALWAYS eat the corpses of shriekers, floating eyes, gelatinous cubes, stalkers(twice, the second time to see invisible), grid bugs, newts and black dragons. Other good choices include most elemental monsters, like red molds. Mmmm mold. This is to gain intrinsics.
• Think things through, damnit.
  

That's just for starters. Also, be prepared to incest oodles of time.

glennmagusharvey

No, don't use that site.  It has the shitty wikia interface.

Go to the site that they actually moved to: http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

Also, to get tame succubi and angels, blessed scrolls of taming and cursed scrolls of genocide might be useful.

Chagen

I was kinda joking, guys....

One thing that does bug me is that this game uses a huge amount of battery power on the Ipod. I don't get why.

EDIT:

"
That's just for starters. Also, be prepared to incest oodles of time.
"

WAT

TheMightyAnonym

Oops, I meant invest.

But incest works too...

Chagen

AUGH

WHY IS THIS GAME SO HARD AND YET SO ADDICTING

glennmagusharvey

Because it always feels like you could have done better.

TheMightyAnonym

^^It looks extremely easy, and it is... so long as you are prepared for everything and avoid dumb mistakes.

glennmagusharvey

i usually get to a point where I am desperately trying to fend off monsters every few minutes, and then I either die of starvation or die while trying to eat or get zapped by something random.

Well, no, I don't die of starvation; I pray to my god at that time and keep running on Elbereth-engravings until I really run out or do something stupid.

Well, stupid stuff or random stuff usually happens far before I run out of resources.

Sometimes it's because I'm too busy trying to steal from a shop or I'm burdened from collecting a large number of unidentified potions.

TheMightyAnonym

I usually die via starvation, and more rarely by kicking down a door that belongs to a shopkeeper. Kicking down doors is invaluable for the purpose of training strength and attracting monsters to kill for experience, but every once in a great while this happens.

glennmagusharvey

Play a rogue.  Pick locks.

TheMightyAnonym

Dexterity is nice too, although lock picks tend to break for me. Plus I don't like playing as a rogue. Even more importantly, rogues could use a strength bonus so kicking doors is better for a while.

Then there is the fact that kicking down doors is something that you can constantly do even when a door isn't locked.

glennmagusharvey

Wait, lock picks break?

Never had that happen.

Are you playing slashem or something?

Wicked223

I once died in Nethack by kicking a door until my foot exploded.

Fuck that game.

glennmagusharvey

^ Ow!  That hurts! -more-
Dumb move!  You strain a muscle.

TheMightyAnonym

I just got my monk killed by a baby dragon.

And I was doing so well! It was really stupid too...