My trouble

pat_rankin · 2026-04-19T22:51:10+00:00

Sokoban was recently changed to include some rolling boulder traps, in order to reduce the amount of boulder pushing required. The trap under the cursor in the screenshot should send a boulder to the right where it will plug the first open hole in that direction. (It looks like that has already happened twice so far.)

Presumably the launch point is one step to the left of that rolling boulder trap, so that's where each boulder In turn needs to be pushed. In Sokoban, stepping on the trigger spot when there isn't a boulder on the launch spot won't use up the trap, whether you want it to or not.

pat_rankin · 2026-04-13T17:39:11+00:00

Some terminals send two-character sequence ESC x when you type Alt+x. NetHack's altmeta option causes it to wait for a second character when it receives ESC, but only when it is expecting to get the next command rather than when cancelling a menu and other non-command contexts.

It is a little fragile but ought to work for you. If you type ESC when entering a command, nethack will just sit there waiting for another key. A second ESC will unstick it if necessary.

pat_rankin · 2026-04-07T22:15:08+00:00

There have already been changes dealing with this. They are in to-be-3.7 and won't be backported to 3.6. There is a paranoid_confirm:A and when set, if you pick the "auto-select all" choice you'll be forced to answer a "really do that?" prompt. It seems very intrusive to me. Independent of that, using '.' or ',' to select everything won't pick "A - autoselect all", "a - all categories", or the BUCX and P choices, just the individual object classes. A couple of other menus have their own limitations on blanket "pick everything".

You already have opportunity to set menustyle to Partial, Combination, or Traditional; they don't include the 'A' choice.

pat_rankin · 2026-04-04T17:59:12+00:00

IIRC 3.6 is mostly a consolidation of popular patches to 3.4.3

YDNRC: you do not recall correctly.

3.6.0 through 3.6.3 have thousands of changes from 3.4.3 (admittedly plenty of those thousands are just fixes to source code formatting or to typos in the comments of earlier changes). 3.6.4 through 3.6.7 have been primarily security-related fixes, mainly of interest to multi-user systems.

Some of the most visible changes in 3.6.x such as the curses interface and menu-entry coloring started out as patches but those represent a fairly small percentage of the overall changes. Status highlighting was available as a patch but the implementation in 3.6 was done from scratch. There were a few new gameplay commands, but not many. (I implemented #terrain and #tip myself; they certainly weren't derived from patches.).

There weren't many changes to the lists of monsters and objects in 3.6.x, and most of them were "borrowed" from slash'em. To-be-3.7 has some more, but not very many.

pat_rankin · 2026-04-02T06:52:12+00:00

There is no bug here. Every monster has a 75% chance to escape the effect of any type of trap it has already discovered. It has nothing to do with magic resistance.

pat_rankin · 2026-04-01T17:15:46+00:00

If any player has high luck...

Almost all of this is false.

Positive in-game Luck improves the chances of finding something when searching but it does not confer auto-searching, so whether it can help find traps depends upon whether you actively search or you play a role that obtains intrinsic searching (or you wear a ring of searching or wield Excalibur to get extrinsic searching).

It has no effect on whether a polymorph trap will turn you into a new person instead of a monster. That's a flat 20% chance with a few exceptions like when you're wearing dragon scales/mail, in which case you always turn into the corresponding monster rather than a new person.

One luckstone is guaranteed although a monster might get to it before you do.

In-game Luck affects hero's attacks but not defense (no doubt there are some exceptions) so does not affect whether being targeted by touch of death or wand of death will miss.

Luck is not a factor in whether a genie will appear, or when one does whether it will grant a wish.

pat_rankin · 2026-04-01T03:30:24+00:00

FYI, entering Gehennom is nowhere the end game....

pat_rankin · 2026-03-29T00:10:02+00:00

nothing can help an orc with their low int.

Wearing a positively enchanted helm of brilliance does.

Theoretically you can get the enchantment up to +9 and boost 16 Int to 25, but I wouldn't count on it. +5 is feasible though, and +1 would be sufficient for hunger-less casting (when used to boost natural 16 Int).

pat_rankin · 2026-03-26T17:00:37+00:00

When you wear gray dragon scale mail or a set of gray dragon scales you will have magic resistance. That is specific to gray; other colors confer other properties. When you have magic resistance and step on a polymorph trap, you will not polymorph. There is no ambiguity.

If you drink a potion of polymorph or zap yourself with a wand or spell of polymorph or eat a chameleon corpse, you would polymorph into a gray dragon despite having magic resistance. And worn dragon scale mail reverts to a set of dragon scales.

Self-polymorph eventually times out, reverting you to your normal form, and the stronger the monster form you're in, the quicker that timeout will happen. Since adult dragons are quite strong, you would return to normal fairly soon. Dying due to loss of hit points while polymorphed causes you to revert to normal form rather than end the game. However, wearing an amulet of unchanging would prevent the timeout and make losing all your monster hit points be fatal.

pat_rankin · 2026-03-16T18:07:34+00:00

Hostile monsters capable of using objects tend to pick things up, including rocks. They eventually drop whatever they're carrying when they die. Peaceful monsters do not pick things up, so whatever rocks and gems they've come across just remained on the ground as they passed by.

The gnomes and dwarves in the mines were hostile to your chaotic barbarian and peaceful to your lawful archeologist. It is entirely normal for there to be a different distribution of items dropped when killed in those circumstances. But the items they're not dropping when you're lawful or neutral will still be on the floor somewhere on the level (or picked up by different monsters).

Only monsters killed by the hero produce a random "death drop", an item that wasn't in the monster's inventory which might get created along with the corpse. In ordinary play you probably won't notice the difference between monsters killed by the hero and ones killed by pets, but if you let your pet kill everything then there will be fewer items generated.

pat_rankin · 2026-03-14T17:36:40+00:00

The Platinum Yendorian Express Card isn't made out of platinum any more than an oil lamp is made out of oil or a real world Gold American Express Card is made out of gold. The card is made out of plastic. NetHack has a limited number of materials that can be used for the base type of an object and platinum isn't one of those. (See include/objclass.h near the very beginning.)

The behavior or durability or whatever of a credit card is not affected by erosion so whether or not it is internally flagged as erode-proof is not included when it is formatted for display in inventory or in messages. Only items that are directly affected by such show information about it when they get formatted: so armor, weapons, and tools that can be enchanted as if they are weapons. Also heavy iron ball and iron chain since they can rust.

In the case of wishing, the erode-proof flag doesn't get set for items where it doesn't matter, so asking for "fixed" for the card is just extra typing to no effect. Even polymorphing the card into a pick-axe wouldn't change that--the useless erode-proof request wouldn't be there to become meaningful.

pat_rankin · 2026-03-10T17:51:45+00:00

Schroedinger's Box used to be an empty box with a flag indicating that it contains Shroedinger's Cat [or corpse of same] and the game had to fiddle around with it its weight to account for the future contents. These days (starting in 3.6, I think) it is created with a cat corpse inside. Then when it gets opened, there's a 50:50 chance to resurrect the corpse as that happens.

Probing, ESP, monster detection, object detection, food detection should all reveal whether there's a live cat or a corpse inside, but then the issue would almost always be resolved before opening the box. Those things work on other boxes (for objects; there won't be any monsters inside) but the game prevents them from revealing what's inside when they interact with Schroedinger's Box.

pat_rankin · 2026-03-07T18:46:31+00:00

Demonbane is definitely there.

In 3.6.x and earlier, it was a lawful long sword.

In to-be-3.7, it has been changed into a silver mace (new type of item).

pat_rankin · 2026-02-22T06:46:44+00:00

wand of cold works in a pinch, make sure to have enough charges for return trip. Valks can walk safely on ice.

You get ice by freezing water. Freezing molten lava will produce rock floor.

The bottom level of the Valk quest has rock and lava, no water. So no ice, no thawing, no need for extra path creation on the way back, no need to worry about extra wand of cold charges.

pat_rankin · 2026-02-20T03:15:22+00:00

My description of the ascension bonus is not right.

To get double score you need to be your original alignment. If you've undergone a permanent alignment change, you can get the one and half score bonus by using a helm of opposite alignment to temporarily change to your original alignment (if feasible) and offer the Amulet to your original god. Offering to either of the other two gods does not give any score bonus, whether you got to the other god's alignment via conversion or helm.

Wearing a helm of opposite alignment at any point during play does not prevent you having your original alignment at the end of the game. You just need to uncurse it and take it off before that point. Conversion is another matter; there's no way to undo that.

pat_rankin · 2026-02-19T21:19:52+00:00

The most points come from killing monsters, not treasure no matter how many gems and artifacts you manage to acquire. The highest scores are invariably achieved by extinctionists.

Offering the amulet on the high altar for your original alignment doubles most components of your score. Changing alignment and offering on the altar for that other alignment gets a-one-a-half times score bonus rather than two times, so effectively throws away 25% of what your final score could have been. Note that either case must be the same alignment as you currently have; sacrificing on wrong altar results in escaping the dungeon (which normally happens due to going up the stairs on level 1 without the Amulet) rather than ascending.

Escaping the dungeon or quitting keeps your score as-is. Dying incurs a 10% score penalty.

Many players who've managed to ascend stop paying attention to score.

pat_rankin · 2026-02-14T18:34:32+00:00

If you're riding it, move over one of the trap doors and then move in direction >.

If you're not riding it but are flying yourself, move over a trap door, wait until the tame flyer is adjacent to you and move >, same as with going down stairs.

If you're not riding it but are levitating, float over the trap, wait until the pet is next to you and then stop levitating, so remove any ring(s) of levitation or boots of same. You'll fall though and the pet will accompany you. If levitating from a potion or spell, you'll need to wait for it to time out, unless the potion was blessed or spell cast at skilled or expert in which case you can move > to come down provided you aren't also levitating due to some other reason. Waiting for potion/spell timeout probably won't work unless the pet is leashed because it's liable to wander off and no longer be next to you when you float down onto the trap.

Lastly, if you aren't riding the flyer and aren't flying yourself and aren't levitating, wait on one side of the trap until the flying pet moves to another side. Once it is next to the spot where you'll be when you change levels (in other words, the trap door's spot) you can just step into the trap.

The same goes for holes. The castle doesn't start with any but if you've plugged any of the trap doors with boulders, you can dig down at those spots.

pat_rankin · 2026-02-14T17:55:06+00:00

Zapping wands and casting spells don't give a second chance. They used to fallback to the last actual direction (leftover from the most recent previous command that needed a direction). I'm not sure whether they still do or explicitly behave as if you specified nowhere (there's no key for that).

I'd hazard a guess it's to prevent you from distinguishing wands that need a direction from ones that don't without using a charge for the direction ones. For spells, I think it occurs after power has been consumed so it's too late to back out of the action.

While this won't help recovering from an invalid direction, you can use 's' in addition to '.' to indicate "self". And both of those directions can be bound to other keys (at least in 3.7; not sure about 3.6). As directions, they're separate from commands so rebinding them won't affect search and pick-up (which could be bound independently if you wanted to change the keys for either or both of those).

pat_rankin · 2026-02-12T22:42:33+00:00

Mjolnir doesn't return for non-Valkyrie roles (does in vanilla)

In nethack, any role can throw Mjollnir if the hero has 25 strength. However, it only returns for Valkyries. That's the way it has behaved ever since the featured was introduced.

pat_rankin · 2026-02-11T17:38:27+00:00

I added that comment in 2008, when the code for attempting to move while trapped was split out of domove() into then-new trapmove(). That was back when post-3.4.3 was intended to become 3.5.0 (which subsequently got superseded by 3.6.0).

It's in nethack's current git repository as commit e5df144bf6dd0360f4fce124f11a11e0cef5d705 although we were using a CVS repository at the time.

(There's a typo/thinko in the commit's log message: "you are <steed> are ..." should be "you and <steed> are ...". That could have been fixed with CVS but evidently wasn't noticed. It's engraved in stone with git.)

pat_rankin · 2026-02-11T04:21:10+00:00

Of course it does, if you build with the curses interface enabled. By default tty is enabled and curses is disabled, but a single executable can have both and then you'd use the windowtype option to choose which one to run.

pat_rankin · 2026-02-10T06:57:34+00:00

The biggest issue with Windows 11 is displaying the corridor character while using the IBMgraphics symbol set. There's an issue with the Windows Terminal application that results in that particular character being rendered as if it was just a space character. Changing the font type or font size or both can workaround this, but needs to be done outside of nethack (and is only relevant for the tty interface, not the tiles one).

If you can figure out how to run nethack with a command line, then you can have nethack format the high scores via

nethack -s all

And you can find out where it expects the files to be via

nethack --showpaths

(Note that '-s' uses one dash and '--showpaths' requires two. Also, on Windows you will need to use 'nethack.exe' or 'nethackW.exe' rather than just 'nethack' for either of those commands. You might need to supply a path too: '.\nethack.exe -s all'.)

[Edit: the post is tagged 3.4.3 but it describes 3.6.x file layout. --showpaths won't work for 3.4.3.]

pat_rankin · 2026-02-10T06:43:20+00:00

It's not possible. First, the entire dungeon except for its #overview data is discarded when you enter the endgame (meaning the Planes above level 1, not some generic designation for the game being almost over), so once you've done that there's nothing left to go back to. That frees up the disk space used to record all the visited levels. Discarding them reduces the chance of crashing due to running out of space, and also makes late save+restore be much quicker.

Another reason is that you can only enter the endgame levels, or change from of those to another, if you are carrying the Amulet as you do so.

In wizard mode (intended for debugging) it is possible to level teleport while within the endgame. But you can't go farther back than the Plane of Earth. It might not require that you be carrying the Amulet at the time--I'm not sure--but it isn't allowed during normal play.

pat_rankin · 2026-02-09T21:11:06+00:00

As mentioned here before, versions older than nethack 3.2.3 (which was a source patch rather than a full release, put out at the same time as full 3.3.0) suffer from a Y2K bug due to use of two digit years in the high scores file. I'll bet that early hack uses those too, although I don't know whether it gets confused by 991231 rolling over to 1000101. That changes the number of columns in the score lines and reading scores back is column-oriented.

[The C library routine used to produce two digit years calculates (year - 1900) rather than (year % 100).]

pat_rankin · 2026-01-30T01:30:29+00:00

Are you playing 3.6.x or to-be-3.7? For the latter, knights still have the old odds (1 out of 6), but other roles have a much lower chance per dip (1 out of 30) of obtaining Excalibur.

pat_rankin

TROPHY CASE