Completely new at NetHack

[mardi]

As the title says, i'm completely new at NetHack. I have to say that from what I've played so far, although I have been failing terribly, I'm really addicted and I want to see what more this game has to offer. I understand that there is an Explore mode for people like me. So my question is: Is it recommended that I try to play through the game in Explore mode? Or is it meant to simply teach me how to go about my business in the game? Any help would be greatly appreciate.

:D

[rpresser]

You will find it difficult, or at least tedious, to play through an
entire game in Explore mode. Being asked if you want to survive
death 15 times in one turn gets tiresome. But you can indeed become
more comfortable with the game when death is less of a worry.

[mardi]

Thanks for the tip. From what little I've experienced so far, difficult and tedious would describe the normal game well. I can imagine how much so Explore mode would be.
Anyways, I'm pleasantly surprised to see a game so old with an active community. I'm planning on having a lot of fun with this game and this group.

[Janis Papanagnou]

You will have fun and the group as well if you follow some basic posting
conventions on Usenet. First understand that even if you access the Usenet
newsgroups through a web-interface that gives the impression that this is
some web-forum, it isn't. Usenet posts should be self-contained and carry
all necessary information, including quotes. A few concrete hints...
Reply to the article you are referring to, not to the original article as
you've done here.
Quote those parts of the article you are referring to, so that folks see
to what post and what context you are replying, and post below the quoted
parts.
You can find papers on Usenet Netiquette with hints and explanations.[*]
Or inspect the posting history[**] to get a feeling about adequate posts.

Janis

[*] See for example http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/
[**] Sadly, more and more postings get worse lately, specifically since
newbies and google users flooded Usenet.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 07.04.2013 03:09, mardi wrote:
> Is it recommended that I try to play through the game in Explore mode?

Since you're new to the game I'd say that (though technically possible)
you won't be able to play *through* the game; there's too much skill and
knowledge necessary and confirming death a dozen times per turn will
make that effectively useless at some point. There's also the inherent
problem that you may get used to cheat death instead of thinking about
those concrete situations and trying to find solutions for any trouble
you have in a game.

So I suggest to use Explore Mode for two purposes. First to play into
the game to get some feeling what you will have to expect beyond what
you can reach with your current skill; this will not lead you very far
at the moment, but you will get impressions of dangers, and in your real
games you may take advantage of those, learning from your explore mode
deaths. Then you may encounter objects in one game, and you may want
to try them out for other specific situations; the wand of wishing that
you get in explore mode helps to check out things, objects and game
behaviour.

Other starting tips depend on how much you want to get spoiled; you
should certainly read the Guidebook that comes with Nethack. There's
also a Wiki with a lots of tips and information; but spoily. Reading
(and posting to) this group will also help you proceeding; may be
spoiling as well. What I also firmly suggest is to follow how others
play that game of Nethack; there's the NAO server[*] where games can
be viewed live (and downloaded for offline-replay if you want); you
need just to telnet nethack.alt.org.

Janis

[*] http://alt.org/nethack/

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Sun, 2013-04-07, mardi wrote:
> As the title says, i'm completely new at NetHack. I have to say that
> from what I've played so far, although I have been failing terribly,

As you probably know, that is to be expected. There's a learning
curve.

> I'm really addicted and I want to see what more this game has to
> offer. I understand that there is an Explore mode for people like me.
> So my question is: Is it recommended that I try to play through the
> game in Explore mode? Or is it meant to simply teach me how to go
> about my business in the game? Any help would be greatly appreciate.

After thinking for a while (I haven't used Explore mode for almost 20
years):

I think /some/ minimal Explore mode usage can be good for you (e.g.
you can learn that old corpses are lethal, and move on without having
to start over and maybe lose interest).

But when you feel it is what carries your game and you die over and
over again, you'd better quit. It's an unnatural situation, where
you're undereqipped or use the wrong technique. You won't learn much.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

[jim in austin]

The wiki at http://nethackwiki.com is indeed spoiler-laden but the game is difficult and complex enough to still kill you with ease on a regular basis. You will simply die better informed and more instructive deaths...

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 07.04.2013 14:19, jim in austin wrote:
> [Wiki]

> You will simply die better informed and more instructive deaths...

LOL!

Janis

[mardi]

I am both a newbie AND a google user, sadly. I appreciate the tolerance and helpfulness. Is this the correct way of posting? I have never actually used Usenet and don't have a very clear understanding of exactly what it is and how it differs from the internet.

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 09.04.2013 00:15, mardi wrote:
>
> I am both a newbie AND a google user, sadly.

Not bad per se. But google's UI seems to foster bad habits and it has
some bad properties (at least in its default mode).

> I appreciate the tolerance and
> helpfulness. Is this the correct way of posting?

Have a look into the existing papers for thorough explanations. It's
good that you quoted text, good that you did not top-post, good that
you kept quotations right with naming the originator. What you could
enhance is; trim those parts of original postings from your quoting
that are not necessary to understand your contribution, restrict your
line length to something like 72 columns per line. Another bad part
are the spurious empty lines that had been inserted after every other
line of original text. I suppose that this is an effect of using the
google UI to access Usenet; you may want to consider switching to a
Real Newsreader and access the groups through a Usenet server.[*]

> I have never actually used
> Usenet and don't have a very clear understanding of exactly what it is and
> how it differs from the internet.

Not sure what you think "the internet" is. (You can look up most of
those terms, though; wikipedia or google is your friend for that.)

Simply put, the Internet is basically a way how to connect systems
and let them interoperate using various protocols for various
applications. You know email that uses SMTP protocol, application
management with SNMP, time information exchange with NTP, web pages
access with HTTP, and last but not least Usenet with NNTP.

In the current case, Usenet news applications will directly access
and communicate with the Usenet news servers through the protocol
specifically designed for that purpose. A Real Newsreader will be
designed to provide functions well suited for handling Usenet news.
This is different to a web-access, like google, where the Usenet
protocol NNTP must be transformed in HTTP and vice versa in some
inferior way, losing functionality and accuracy. And with google
and HTTP a general web-browser, designed to present web-pages must
somehow be made capable of handling the Usenet functionality. That
said; I think it's possible to create a better UI than google's
current version, but sadly it's not existing (deliberately or not).
A part of the problem seems to be that google has some interest to
camouflage Usenet as one of [their] web-forums. This *may* be part
of a "unified view" approach. But actually it taints Usenet that
(in case of those thousands) Usenet groups is still the effective
infrastructure below the web-interface that you see when using
google.

Hope I could make a few things clear by my of-the-top-of-my-head
explanations.

Janis

[*] For example new.aioe.org or any other (free) service. Any free
Real Newsreader should do a better job than google's web front-end.

[mardi]

On Monday, April 8, 2013 6:59:35 PM UTC-4, Janis wrote:

> This is different to a web-access, like google, where the Usenet
> protocol NNTP must be transformed in HTTP and vice versa in some
> inferior way, losing functionality and accuracy. And with google
> and HTTP a general web-browser, designed to present web-pages must
> somehow be made capable of handling the Usenet functionality.

I think I understand a bit better now.
Usenet isn't seperate from the Internet at all, correct? It just
communicates with its servers differently than the services
I'm used to seeing in a web browser?

[jim in austin]

On Monday, April 8, 2013 6:09:36 PM UTC-5, mardi wrote:
> I think I understand a bit better >

> Usenet isn't seperate from the Internet at all, correct? It just
> communicates with its servers differently than the services
> I'm used to seeing in a web browser?

The internet predates the web by almost a quarter of a century. I can still remember seeing the announcement on USENET that CERN had this hypertext thing they were releasing that might one day actually challenge GOPHER. If you are thwacking away on the *nix command line and using slrn, elm, tin, mutt or even pine to read this group you will have few problems with formatting. But if you are like most of us and use the web through Google Groups (they do maintain the archives you know) then you will have to take a bit more care to maintain the proper, non-offending format your elders seem to prefer... =)

[Prometheus77]

mardi wrote:

> I am both a newbie AND a google user, sadly. I appreciate the

> tolerance and helpfulness. Is this the correct way of posting?

I'm a Google user *and* I do this mostly from my iPhone (gasp!) So in order to keep the locals happy, I:

1) paste the original post into my Notes app
2) add '>' and line breaks to the quotes by hand
3) paste the result back into my reply on Google groups

It's a mite tedious, but you really do get better responses from people here if you're mindful of etiquette. And for the most part, you'll find that the regulars are helpful, interesting people that are fun to associate with.

Happy exploring!

Prometheus

[Martijn Lievaart]

Now if you could limit your lines to 72 characters.....

GDR,
M4

[Jorgen Grahn]

Yes. He (and mardi, in his most recent posting I think) does an
admirable job of avoiding Google's bugs, but still stuffs whole
paragraphs into a single line.

Perhaps it's not even possible to avoid ...

[jim in austin]

On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:32:24 AM UTC-5, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
> Yes. He (and mardi, in his most recent posting I think) does an
> admirable job of avoiding Google's bugs, but still stuffs whole
> paragraphs into a single line.
>
> Perhaps it's not even possible to avoid ...

Google Groups, like most web editors, assumes wildly varying
displays and the ability to wrap text so it doesn't automatically
insert line feeds at some set width. But, when I remember, it
is possible to emulate the effect by eyeballing existing fixed
width messages and manually terminating my lines. Some attempts
are more successful than others so your mileage may vary...

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Thu, 2013-04-11, jim in austin wrote:
> On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:32:24 AM UTC-5, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
>> Yes. He (and mardi, in his most recent posting I think) does an
>> admirable job of avoiding Google's bugs, but still stuffs whole
>> paragraphs into a single line.
>>
>> Perhaps it's not even possible to avoid ...
>
> Google Groups, like most web editors,

Some would say that that is the cause of its problems -- that it
believes it's a web editor.

> assumes wildly varying
> displays and the ability to wrap text so it doesn't automatically
> insert line feeds at some set width. But, when I remember, it
> is possible to emulate the effect by eyeballing existing fixed
> width messages and manually terminating my lines. Some attempts
> are more successful than others so your mileage may vary...

This was clearly a successful attempt. Looks perfectly normal.

[James]

On Thursday, 11 April 2013 18:21:59 UTC+1, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-04-11, jim in austin wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:32:24 AM UTC-5, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
> >> Yes. He (and mardi, in his most recent posting I think) does an
> >> admirable job of avoiding Google's bugs, but still stuffs whole
> >> paragraphs into a single line.

> >> Perhaps it's not even possible to avoid ...

> > Google Groups, like most web editors,

> Some would say that that is the cause of its problems -- that it
> believes it's a web editor.

The "web editor" is, I believe, a feature of the browser. At
least on my system, the editor is the same for all of the sites.
(gvim, in my case---I use Firefox and It's all text.)

Now if there were only some way of preventing Google from
introducing all those extra empty lines. And not mangling
foreign characters.

--
James

[jim in austin]

On Friday, April 12, 2013 1:08:19 PM UTC-5, James wrote:
> The "web editor" is, I believe, a feature of the browser. At
> least on my system, the editor is the same for all of the sites.
> (gvim, in my case---I use Firefox and It's all text.)

Groups is the Google web forum app. It is possible for any Google
user to create public or private forums for the web. These are
obviously not part of or distributed to USENET. But USENET is
presented through this interface as well. If you are familiar with
the built-in html edit boxes for reply or comment, that's pretty
much what Groups offers. It is by no means "an editor" and is
barely configurable in any fashion...

[James]

On my machine, it looks very much like the standard text input
window of the browser. Which means that it is implemented *by*
*the* *browser*, and can be configured however the browser
wants. In my case, the browser is Firefox, and I've installed
the plug-in It's all text. Which means that the window has
a button which pops me into my favorite editor (gvim, in my
case), with all of the editor commands.

Very important in the case of Google, because I often have to
reformat, remove extra lines, etc., where Google has screwed
things up.

--
James

[rpresser]

On Monday, April 15, 2013 9:00:14 AM UTC-4, James wrote:

> a button which pops me into my favorite editor (gvim, in my case),
> with all of the editor commands.

For gvim, the filetype "mail" is useful for correcting GGroups
postings. I have this in my _gvimrc:

:map <F9> :set ft=mail tw=68^MQG

This sets filetype mail, sets textwidth 68 characters, and then
reformats all text.

The extra > lines still have to be removed, unfortunately.

[Ray Kulhanek]

On 04/06/2013 11:53 PM, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> On 07.04.2013 03:09, mardi wrote:
>> Is it recommended that I try to play through the game in Explore
>> mode?
>
> Since you're new to the game I'd say that (though technically
> possible) you won't be able to play *through* the game; there's
> too much skill and knowledge necessary and confirming death a
> dozen times per turn will make that effectively useless at some
> point. There's also the inherent problem that you may get used to
> cheat death instead of thinking about those concrete situations
> and trying to find solutions for any trouble you have in a game.

The thing to be aware of is that deaths in Nethack tend to fall into
four categories:

Yet Another Stupid Deaths (YASDs):
"I wonder what a cockatrice corpse tastes like."
Small scale tactical mistakes:
"I'll just try to hit the soldier ant ONE more time before running."
The Random Number God hates you:
"The gnome zaps a wand of death!"
Strategic mistakes:
The sort of thing that doesn't lend itself to pithy quotes. Not
identifying your gear, descending too quickly, not having an escape
strategy, etc.

Explore mode will let you keep playing if you die, which is fine if
the death was one of the first three types: you learn your lesson and
then keep playing. But if you're not careful, it will train you to
ignore the strategic mistakes. If you find yourself dying repeatedly
in normal combat, it's a sign that you haven't prepared well enough
(or don't know when to retreat. Easy heuristic for that: if you don't
know whether you should retreat, you should). In that case, you should
probably just accept the death and start over, rather than learn bad
habits by just relying on the "Die?" prompt.

I recommend that you not use the wand of wishing that explore mode
gives you for the same reason; most of the early game is about
learning how to gradually acquire a set of useful equipment and
survive until you do.

I also recommend that you do read the spoilers on the wiki; it's
theoretically possible to win without reading any spoilers, but it'll
probably take the better part of a decade to do it, and the game
remains challenging even after having been thoroughly spoiled.

[jim in austin]

On Monday, April 15, 2013 8:00:14 AM UTC-5, James wrote:
> On my machine, it looks very much like the standard text input
> window of the browser. Which means that it is implemented *by*
> *the* *browser*, and can be configured however the browser
> wants. In my case, the browser is Firefox, and I've installed
> the plug-in It's all text. Which means that the window has
> a button which pops me into my favorite editor (gvim, in my
> case), with all of the editor commands.

Well, technically, everything everywhere is implemented by the
browser in my case since I am tester for the Chrome OS... =)

A cursory search of the Chrome Store turned up nothing like
you describe. And I am unlikely to install an editor here in
any case since Google warns it could be wiped at any time
without warning. But it's no big deal. USENET is the outlier
in this case and this is the only group where I post so a
little care and hand editing is tolerable...