If you've never tried DCSS, I think you should try it. I think it also mitigates a number of the same things you complained about. The game's built-in manual

If you've never tried DCSS, I think you should try it. I think it also mitigates a number of the same things you complained about. The game's built-in manual has a whole section about its game philosophy you're likely to find appealing, especially if you were frustrated with Nethack for those reasons: https://web.archive.org/web/20160304070026/http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq Anyway, you should try it!