Typo

[Janis Papanagnou]

It's frustrating how a typo with help of the RNG can ruin a game.

My wimpy healer had a hard time trying to get past the early game.
He started with only Pw:3, so he was incapable of casting healing.
A co-aligned altar on level 1 didn't give any artifact, even after
tons of sacrifices, so I eventually gave up (due to food problems)
and entered the (lit) mines. No problems there. Accidental deaths
of my cat were undone with a random wand of undead turning. A drum
(found quite early on the floor) could scare monsters if necessary.
The minetown level had a bones heap with a cursed T-shirt (and not
much more, nothing interesting, that is). My healer got attacked a
lot during his way through minetown, but with maxHP:67, Pw:49, and
some mithril armour (AC:-2) he felt okay, stripped occasionally
to cast healing at self. At one point somewhere in the mid of the
town I intended to apply something (that I don't recall any more)
but mistyped and triggered the drum, which, of course, had been
that rare drum of earthquake[*]. On my way to the tools shop which
seems to have had interesting loot (magic marker, a whistle (hope
for magic), two bags, and more that I don't recall) I suddenly got
shot from that shopkeeper with a wand of striking; obviously my
drum from distance created a pit beneath the guy and he got mad at
me. So I've to abort the procedure at the moment, I have no chance
to buy or let my pet steal that fine stuff. - My pet! Where is it?
It probably may have fallen through a trapdoor... - and so it had
been. Descending deeper one level I got attacked again; low on HPs
I zapped the gnome king with my fairly unused wand of sleep; the
sleep ray *hit* the gnome king, the gnome king hit me! - DYWYPI?

Janis

[*] What is that item useful for? BTW.

[ais523]

Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> but mistyped and triggered the drum, which, of course, had been
> that rare drum of earthquake[*]. On my way to the tools shop which

[snip]

> [*] What is that item useful for? BTW.

Its main use is waking up monsters at the other end of a level. (This is
especially useful with quest nemeses, as it means that you don't have to
leave the upstairs to wake them, and thus can stop them teleporting
there, cutting off the covetous AI straight away; and it can also be
useful with the Wizard of Yendor, luring him out of his tower without
needing to actually enter the tower yourself.)

--
ais523

[Janis Papanagnou]

This is more of a special application useful only in a specific single
type of game context, somewhat comparable to the invocation artifacts.
So there is no other (more general) use for that drum?

Janis

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 26.02.2012 12:13, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> It's frustrating how a typo with help of the RNG can ruin a game.

> [...]; the

> sleep ray *hit* the gnome king, the gnome king hit me! - DYWYPI?

There are signs that seem to tell you; "Don't play nethack today!"

Next game... (T:843, Dlvl:2, location: on the down stairs)
I descended...

The white unicorn butts!
The white unicorn kicks!
The white unicorn butts!
The white unicorn kicks!
You die...

WTF?! - Another cursed bones level with a hostile unicorn adjacent
to the stairs not allowing me to do anything but dying!?

I'll stop playing now.

Well, maybe just one more game...

Janis

[Capt. Cave Man]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:13:24 +0100, Janis Papanagnou
<janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>[*] What is that item useful for? BTW.

Ever get surrounded by monsters with no way out?

Bury them alive, if they can't run away fast enough!

[Capt. Cave Man]

You are playing what? As what? That was so fast we didn't see any char
or game stats... :-)

We need to start declaring version now, or is the NitroHack the same
3.4.3 code, or does a different rng engine make a different game?

I noticed more selector toggles in "options".

Unicorn on DL3 is very early, IMO.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 26.02.2012 20:03, Capt. Cave Man wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:03:00 +0100, Janis Papanagnou
> <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The white unicorn butts!
>> The white unicorn kicks!
>> The white unicorn butts!
>> The white unicorn kicks!
>> You die...
>

> You are playing what? As what? That was so fast we didn't see any char
> or game stats... :-)

Vanilla as archaeologist with stats

St:18 Dx:8 Co:11 In:17 Wi:15 Ch:7 Neutral
Dlvl:3 $:65 HP:0(21) Pw:9(9) AC:9 Xp:2/33 T:843

> [...]

>
> Unicorn on DL3 is very early, IMO.

That can happen in the Mines if the original (bones) game had its first
mine level on dungeon depth 5 (with entry from level 4) and the followup
game (my game) with entry on dungeon level 2. The unicorn was certainly
originating from an advanced game where the former player already got
deeper down in the dungeons before dying on the first mines level.

Janis

[Scott Wood]

On 2012-02-26, Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> It's frustrating how a typo with help of the RNG can ruin a game.

It's even more frustrating when you mix in a hostile user interface. I once
lost a fairly advanced wizard (in SLASH'EM, but the mechanic appears to be
the same in vanilla) who was slinging fingers of death all over the place,
when I typoed the direction. Now, if I were to have typed a different valid
direction, it'd be totally understandable that I'd end up with the
consequences of that -- nobody wants "are you sure" after every single
action. But this wasn't a valid direction. The game decided to respond to
that by choosing a random direction[1].

In this case, that random direction was "shoot self". Bypasses reflection
(picking a random direction for the reflection would be reasonable...).
Bypasses magic resistance (!). No reason to do it other than a "most unique
deaths" trophy. And the game thought that was an appropriate reaction to
invalid input.

If I had the "cmdassist" option enabled (which annoyingly pops up every time
you hit 5 twice in a row with numpad on), it looks like I would have gotten
a pop-up explaining valid directions[2] -- before it proceeded to use the
direction from a previous command.

-Scott

[1] At the time I thought it was determined by the RNG, but upon source
diving it loooks like it's the last direction you entered to a previous
command. This may be a bug rather than outright hostility -- a variant of
C343-11?

[2] I am amused to see that this help display updates the set of valid
directions based on whether the player is currently a grid bug.