Planes done fast
Rast
In the spirit of Shawn Moore's "An instructional ttyrec about the
drawbridge", I present my semi-instructional ttyrec about doing the
Planes quickly: http://rast2.com/nethack/planes_in_140.ttyrec
Even when a fast ascension is not a goal, spending less turns on the
Planes increases one's chance of ascending, just as driving 5 hours at
70mph is safer than driving 7 hours at 50mph.
Items I use:
- Conflict, so the monsters will fight each other instead of moving to
block my path.
- Stacked spell of haste self (same speed as speed boots).
- Ring of levitation on Air, Fire, and Water
- Jumping boots for Earth and Astral.
- Wands of teleport and death, to clear monsters out of the way.
- Extra portal detection for Water.
- Helm of opposite alignment, so I can ascend at the first altar.
--
"Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness. Then I
am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a precious
commodity is so much misery." -- Jack Vance
Grett...@gmail.com
> In the spirit of Shawn Moore's "An instructional ttyrec about the
> drawbridge", I present my semi-instructional ttyrec about doing the
> Planes quickly: http://rast2.com/nethack/planes_in_140.ttyrec
Excellent, thanks for this.
A few things:
- In Shawn Moore's ttyrec, he "narrated" by typing a # and then
whatever he wanted to say. I found this incredibly useful. Not that I
expect you to re-record this ttyrec now that it's done, but maybe for
future ones, if you do any? Sometimes I had no idea why you were doing
what you were doing. For example, why did you eat a tripe ration, a
lizard corpse, and a cream pie at the beginning of Earth?
- Similarly, I think Shawn must have very carefully trimmed his
inventory so that he only had exactly what he needed for the ttyrec.
I'm not sure where the rest of his loot was; in a stash, maybe, or in
an alternate bag of holding? Not that you had an overwhelming amount
of stuff, but that helps keep the ttyrec clear.
- Does the ttyrec reflect the actual speed that you typed the keys in
real-time? If so, a little slower through the menus would be nice, so
the viewer can see what you are selecting.
- Also, I am new to this ttyrec thing, so the problem may be on my
end, but there sure were a lot of funky characters in your recording.
Lots of vowels with accent marks. Is this my fault, your fault, or do
you actually play nethack with a really strange character set?
- A strategy question: why did you wait until the planes to write
your cursed scrolls of confuse monster? Why not write them before
entering the planes? Is this a way of keeping your options open? Why
not use booze or a forgotten spell instead? As long as we're trying to
spend as little time on the planes as possible...
Again, thanks! I do appreciate these intermediate-to-advanced lessons
people are giving. Nothing like watching experienced players play the
game.
Gretta
Shawn Moore
> - In Shawn Moore's ttyrec, he "narrated" by typing a # and then
>whatever he wanted to say. I found this incredibly useful. Not that I
>expect you to re-record this ttyrec now that it's done, but maybe for
>future ones, if you do any? Sometimes I had no idea why you were doing
>what you were doing. For example, why did you eat a tripe ration, a
>lizard corpse, and a cream pie at the beginning of Earth?
That was the exact same comment I made to rast in #nethack when I saw
this thread. :)
Eating tripe has a chance to confuse you, which is required for one of
the ways to detect the portal.
> - Similarly, I think Shawn must have very carefully trimmed his
> inventory so that he only had exactly what he needed for the ttyrec.
> I'm not sure where the rest of his loot was; in a stash, maybe, or in
> an alternate bag of holding? Not that you had an overwhelming amount
> of stuff, but that helps keep the ttyrec clear.
All of my stuff was in my carried bag of holding. I always play like
that (when I have a container, of course). It helps keep things clear
for me.
> - Does the ttyrec reflect the actual speed that you typed the keys in
> real-time? If so, a little slower through the menus would be nice, so
> the viewer can see what you are selecting.
ttyrecs are very accurately timed, so that is his actual play speed.
Whatever you're using to play ttyrecs should have an option to slow
down or pause playback.
> - Also, I am new to this ttyrec thing, so the problem may be on my
> end, but there sure were a lot of funky characters in your recording.
> Lots of vowels with accent marks. Is this my fault, your fault, or do
> you actually play nethack with a really strange character set?
He plays with a modified IBMgraphics set. To get it to display normally
you may have to go through some hoops. Look in your terminal's options
for a "code page" setting.
> - A strategy question: why did you wait until the planes to write
> your cursed scrolls of confuse monster? Why not write them before
> entering the planes? Is this a way of keeping your options open? Why
> not use booze or a forgotten spell instead? As long as we're trying to
> spend as little time on the planes as possible...
I'm sure his thought process was along the lines of "I can write my
confuse monster scrolls now, or I can wait until the last minute to see
if I find a source of confusion." If he found a source of confusion,
great, he saves a few turns (and marker charges) he would've otherwise
spent writing confuse monster. If he didn't find a source of confusion,
oh well, no net loss (except it makes his planes adventure a few turns
longer).
You forget spells 20,000 turns after reading the book. Rast usually
ascends well before turn 20,000. :)
> Again, thanks! I do appreciate these intermediate-to-advanced lessons
> people are giving. Nothing like watching experienced players play the
> game.
I agree. :) Next time I make it to Master Kaen I'm going to show how to
kill him very safely, with the spell of drain life.
Shawn M Moore
S
>
> my semi-instructional ttyrec about doing the Planes quickly
Cool stuff. Thanks.
> Items I use:
> - Helm of opposite alignment, so I can ascend at the first altar.
How does this work with a neutral character, though? If the first altar
isn't neutral, there's a 50% chance that the Helm will change your
alignment to the alignment of the altar. If you lose the gamble, you've
lost 10 or so protection points on the Astral plane and you still have
to go to another altar.
Is there something I'm not seeing here? Or is it just a question of how
much risk (in terms of lowered AC) you want to take, compared to the
risks of being on Astral for X additional turns?
-S
S
> ra...@hotmail.com says...
> > Items I use:
> > - Helm of opposite alignment, so I can ascend at the first altar.
>
> How does this work with a neutral character, though? If the first altar
> isn't neutral, there's a 50% chance that the Helm will change your
> alignment to the alignment of the altar. If you lose the gamble, you've
> lost 10 or so protection points on the Astral plane and you still have
> to go to another altar.
>
> Is there something I'm not seeing here?
And I can answer my own question. If you have enough holy water, it's
just a question of staying at that altar and uncursing the Helm and
trying again (and again, and again, and again, as needed).
OTOH, I can't see a way for lawfuls or chaotics to guarantee one
altar-- a neutral first altar means they'd have to go to one more
before using the helm.
-S
Shawn Moore
> OTOH, I can't see a way for lawfuls or chaotics to guarantee one
> altar-- a neutral first altar means they'd have to go to one more
> before using the helm.
It may be possible to convert self to neutral with that high altar.
Other than that possibility, yes, you're right, you can only guarantee
a two-altar run (unless you have some way of detecting which altar is
which or something crazy like that, heh..)
Of course, being neutral has many other benefits. The ability to wish
for great quest artifacts like The Eye of the Aethiopica is huge.
Shawn M Moore
nyra
>
> ra...@hotmail.com says...
> > Items I use:
> > - Helm of opposite alignment, so I can ascend at the first altar.
>
> How does this work with a neutral character, though? If the first altar
> isn't neutral, there's a 50% chance that the Helm will change your
> alignment to the alignment of the altar. If you lose the gamble, you've
> lost 10 or so protection points on the Astral plane and you still have
> to go to another altar.
>
> Is there something I'm not seeing here?
Yes: uncurse helm, remove, put on again. It switches you to either
lawful or chaotic, and which it will be is randomly determined
everytime you put on the helm. Usually you don't have to try all that
often until you get the alignment you want.
--
Een koe is een merkwaardig beest; wat er ook in haar geest moge zijn,
haar laatste woord is altijd boe.
Rast
Grett...@gmail.com says...
> Rast wrote:
> > In the spirit of Shawn Moore's "An instructional ttyrec about the
> > drawbridge", I present my semi-instructional ttyrec about doing the
> > Planes quickly: http://rast2.com/nethack/planes_in_140.ttyrec
>
> Excellent, thanks for this.
>
> A few things:
> - In Shawn Moore's ttyrec, he "narrated" by typing a # and then
> whatever he wanted to say. I found this incredibly useful.
I'll definitely do that next time.
> For example, why did you eat a tripe ration, a
> lizard corpse, and a cream pie at the beginning of Earth?
I was hoping to get confused by rotten food or tripe.
> - Does the ttyrec reflect the actual speed that you typed the keys in
> real-time? If so, a little slower through the menus would be nice, so
> the viewer can see what you are selecting.
Yes, sorry.
> - Also, I am new to this ttyrec thing, so the problem may be on my
> end, but there sure were a lot of funky characters in your recording.
> Lots of vowels with accent marks. Is this my fault, your fault, or do
> you actually play nethack with a really strange character set?
Yes to all three questions. I do play with a strange character set, but
they are various extended characters, not random accented vowels. They
show up properly in Termplay.
sqrt symbol= weapon
+/- symbol = altar
> - A strategy question: why did you wait until the planes to write
> your cursed scrolls of confuse monster?
I forgot to pick up the booze from my stash.
Colin
I found a ttyrec program via Google, but it looks like it needs to be
compiled, something I'm not familiar with. Is there an executable
version available? i'm running a Mac, for whatever that's worth.
Philipp Lucas
I cannot help you with Mac binaries, but maybe search for other programs:
"ttyplay" is a general ttyrec play-back program.
--
Philipp Lucas
phl...@online-club.de
Pasi Kallinen
The ones I know of are:
playttyrec.c by Jilles Tjoelker: (obviously requires compiling, but it
should be pretty much POSIXy, and works on FBSD, Linux and Solaris)
http://www.stack.nl/~jilles/games/playttyrec.c
IPBT by Simon Tatham:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/ipbt/
ttyplay and ttyrec by Satoru Takabayashi:
http://0xcc.net/ttyrec/
TermRec for Windows by 1KB:
http://angband.pl/termrec.html
Unfortunately I can't help with Mac binaries either, but I'd try to
compile playttyrec.c, it's probably the easiest one...
--
Pasi Kallinen
pa...@alt.org
http://bilious.homelinux.org/ -- NetHack Patch Database