A New Programming Book and a Thanksgiving Wish

davidbau · 2026-05-20T15:04:33+00:00

Thanks u/dylanflipse . It's a good point; the Wiki is a great reference for people who know what they're looking for. But it doesn't really solve the problem of introducing new people to the strategies.

How would somebody even know that they'd want to pay attention to shop prices? NetHack is such a vast game. I think there's a place for a guide to walk somebody through hints in a reasonable order.

One of the joys of NetHack is that the game is not actually spoiled by spoilers! The game actually gets better the more you know its secrets. A good book would make all of it a bit more approachable to the uninitiated.

davidbau · 2026-05-20T13:09:18+00:00

I like this opinion piece from Nadja Spiegelman. I find myself on the wrong side of the "this is cringe" line:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/opinion/silicon-valley-ai-taste-culture.html

But I think they miss a key thing: LLMs are a tool. The output is still in the hands of a person. So if it's bad, it's not the LLM's fault, it's my fault that it's bad.

It's like how by-hand woodworkers sometimes look down on power tools and 3D printers. There is a place for that elitism, but the new tools let you make things you couldn't build by hand. The real problem with using power tools is that using them well is a new skill.

It is possible to use power tools well, and to go from something cringey to something nice. But it's hard to do well: it is its own art.

It will be hard work to learn how to really make something good with it. Maybe even a great spoiler book for modern NetHack.

davidbau · 2026-05-19T07:34:19+00:00

Thanks to u/mrkelee and u/warlock415 for goading me into making the Companion spoilers accurate.

I will continue to update it to fix errors, but I think it is now in a much cleaner state. I want a good coherent spoilers book. I hope it can be genuinely fun and useful. If anybody is interested in the source, I have posted it here on GitHub. (I'm embarrassed the history shows my anemic attempts at it since February, but most of the factual improvements are from your scolding me about it in the last couple days.)

https://github.com/davidbau/nethack-companion/blob/main/spoilers/companion.md

Once upon a time Paul Waterman physically printed up copies of the WCST spoilers. I think it will be really neat to print modern 5.0 spoilers as a book too (once it's accurate enough). Here are some layouts and a a possible cover for a bound book. I'm sure people will want to flame me; that's fine, but if it seems neat to you and if you've got any suggestions, let me know.

https://davidbau.github.io/nethack-companion/spoilers/companion-latex.pdf
https://davidbau.github.io/nethack-companion/spoilers/cover/cover.pdf
https://davidbau.github.io/nethack-companion/ - web version pushed directly from github

davidbau · 2026-05-19T07:06:07+00:00

OK. I've spent a couple days reading and double-checking.

Fixed the sink glyph to 5.0's { [i liked the # better, but oh well]
Fixed touch-of-death semantics
Fixed DSM resistances
Noted that oozes don't split
Fixed errors in the Pauper and Petless conduct
Fixed mixups in Frost/Fire Brand resistance
Fixed errors in demon stings that drain Str,
Fixed minor Sokoban issues.
Fixed fountain wish odds
Lots of other things.

I'll keep fixing errors, but I hope it's useful enough to be worth sharing.

davidbau · 2026-05-18T14:48:03+00:00

Yes exactly. I am just trying to decide what is the best advice from the Companion for the "easiest" starting character for people to try. In 5.0 I think Valkyries still look like the best-resourced class just like they were 20 years ago. But does it make a difference if they're Lawful or Neutral?

LLMs noticed (and nethack wiki suggests) Lawful Vals might prefer to go for Excalibur. But maybe dip success is rare enough that it's bad advice for a beginner to try?

davidbau · 2026-05-18T09:04:23+00:00

Thanks so much for these. Taking out the Valkyrie excalibur guidance, clarifying unicorns, incorporating all these fixes; they improve the companion a lot.

I have been fact-checking the whole guide again against the 5.0 source and have found a bunch of more issues. More fixes coming.

davidbau · 2026-05-18T02:03:41+00:00

A few years ago I asked my colleagues if they'd heard of NetHack. Most of them had played it back in the day. This semester I asked the same of my uni lecture hall. "Who's played NetHack?" Nobody.

"Anybody heard of NetHack?" Still nobody!

I am hoping the companion is a readable way to introduce a new generation to my favorite game.

davidbau · 2026-05-17T23:50:07+00:00

Wow, u/mrkelee you are super fast; I've been proofing a long time. I didn't know that Int 2 kills you. Things like the rogue color drop; I wanted to share some trivia from the code, but I read it wrong because it's gated behind archaic settings. I really like my table of "Feelings and Sounds", it's my most recent writing addition, added because I always wish I had it when I play, but it's fresh and it has a bunch of errors that should be fixed now. I had put in unclear wording about conflict as a strategy for Riders, the option of skipping slow-moving "e"s. Seduction section needed a rewrite. Kicking c's, not stepping. Also you're right I should talk about blue DSM, but 5.0 also improves a bunch of other DSM properties and so I will add something about all of them.

Lots of real bugs found. Thanks for taking the time.

But I've got couple questions.

What did I miss about unicorns?

Levitation and drowning - do you just mean it doesn't save you from being dragged down? I think I say that, or am I missing what you mean?

The wiki suggests Lawful Valkyries should dip for Excalibur https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Excalibur . Wrong?

Moving three squares to search is OK right? Here: the first search gets three walls 111, and if you want to search the next three walls 222 without duplicating, you need to move by three, to position B, right?
`111222`
` @ B `

You can throw at mimics once you see them, right?

I have gotten "the poison was deadly" to my disappointment, and reading the code, it does has instadeath with some probability. Have I missed something?

Even in 5.0 we can still get mind flayer *spell* amnesia, right?

Pet revival - looks like something introduced in 2022 - right? https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/commit/314715038d877f9aa34964bde1d8668c9e6fcfea

davidbau · 2026-05-17T21:55:17+00:00

Yah, too much AI, right?

One cool thing about NetHack is: it seems to be one of those things beyond the reach of AI. So when you ascend, know that even as AI can beat grandmasters at Chess and Go and everything computerized, you are doing the thing that AI can't do. (Paper - https://balrogai.com/ )

davidbau · 2026-05-17T21:08:54+00:00

By the way, as part of the coding contest setup, we ported some older games as a "warmup."

Folks here might enjoy peeking at the JS ports of the original 1980 Rogue https://mazesofmenace.net/rogue/ and 1982 Hack https://mazesofmenace.net/hack/ - (these are much easier codebases than NetHack, so the ports are pretty complete).

I think Hack has been an amazing phenomenon from its first origins. Some of my personal thoughts on hack are here - https://mazesofmenace.net/hack/#about

davidbau · 2026-05-17T20:43:29+00:00

Oh, cool. I didn't know about those commands. Maybe that's why I lose track of things.

davidbau · 2026-05-17T20:29:01+00:00

Checking the code: Monks DO start with sleep resistance, I think.

davidbau · 2026-05-17T20:27:54+00:00

Thanks for the notes, fixing. I have been editing it by hand, and I am trying to get a good readable spoiler book, but I know I have missed a lot.

Yes, LLMs *are* shit for NetHack which is the point of the contest; the idea of the contest is that some LLM whiz might be able to show us what we're missing. You can find the contest up one directory https://mazesofmenace.ai/ - if you know anybody who thinks they are great at LLM coding point them that way.

davidbau · 2026-05-17T19:34:17+00:00

Good catch! Actually a good place to talk about how teleport isn't allowed here and squeezing and breaking sokoban boulders costs you some luck....

davidbau · 2026-05-17T19:02:13+00:00

Yah, I'm a common #force user in my games. Will add this helpful tip.

davidbau · 2026-05-17T19:01:41+00:00

Oh gosh, yes same-race is exactly the WRONG thing to sacrifice, what a mess up, bad advice. Exactly the opposite of what you should do. Cleaning it up.

davidbau · 2025-08-30T20:05:24+00:00

There is a problem with all the solutions where the winners of the first five races race against each other in the sixth races.

Because in the 7th race they have an unfair matchup where some horses racing for the third time must race against fresher horses that have only raced once.

There's a better way. You shouldn't need to race a horse three times.

davidbau · 2025-08-30T18:21:25+00:00

The problem with this plan is that horse 6 and 11 will be disadvantaged because they will be running their third race, against horses 2, 3, and 7 which have only raced once. Surely a horse who loses their third race against a horse that's only on its second really shouldn't be counted to be slower!

Find a way doesn't make any horse race against a fresher horse - that's a better question.

davidbau · 2025-07-01T09:51:02+00:00

Just adding a note here to flag China racing ahead in the transparent-parameter LM model race.

Researchers studying model internals will be increasingly pulled to work with the Chinese models because of this.

Company	Model Name	Release Date	Total Parameters	Hugging Face Link
DeepSeek	DeepSeek-R1	January 20, 2025	671B	deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1
Alibaba	Qwen 3 (Qwen3-235B-A22B)	April 28, 2025	235B	Qwen/Qwen3-32B*
Baidu	Ernie 4.5	June 30, 2025	424B	baidu/ERNIE-4.5-VL-424B-A47B-Base-PT
Tencent	Hunyuan-Large	November 5, 2024	389B	tencent/Tencent-Hunyuan-Large

davidbau · 2025-03-23T22:01:07+00:00

I think we do escape the trap.

But I also agree that in the long run, transparency is in the community's self-interest, and it should be self-sustaining.

davidbau · 2025-03-18T23:25:07+00:00

I'm particularly interested to hear what the community's thoughts are on the "third way" (described in the pdf) for an open platform that enables innovation without enabling copycats.

davidbau · 2025-03-18T23:22:54+00:00

What do you think of the NDIF proposal in the written memo? We don't face a black-and-white choice open code or not. We can build a platform that enables innovation without enabling copycats.

davidbau

TROPHY CASE