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For those of you who are seeing this for the first time and have any love for games like Minecraft, Civilization, etc... please take the time to break through t

For those of you who are seeing this for the first time and have any love for games like Minecraft, Civilization, etc... please take the time to break through the very steep learning curve to give this game a fair shake. It is truly a work of art. Please note that the Wiki helps make the game playable: http://df.magmawiki.com/ http://df.magmawiki.com/

eru 15y ago
You might benefit from having played Nethack first. At least the culture shock will be a smaller.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  I still can't get a grip on Nethack. I think I need to print out the list of key bindings in order to actually play.
  - johnswamps 15y ago
    I would try playing Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup instead. It's another roguelike that is heavily inspired by nethack but is more modern and more beginner friendly. I love nethack (I've ascended twice) but it's definitely showing it's age (not to mention that the game is pretty broken in some regards). Crawl has a better interface and tries to remove all the tedious parts of roguelikes, though there's still a learning curve.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      What's broken in it?
      - thricedotted 15y ago
        Not sure if this is what johnswamps was referring to, but the two big things that come to mind are the Sokoban levels (there are only two fixed variants which can only guarantee you one of two things, and a lot of the time if people don't get the thing they want (usually the bag of holding), they end up restarting since the odds of getting it anywhere else in the game are pretty low after that) and the fact that you can do things like pudding farming to obtain items/corpses easily. A lot of actions in Nethack are formulaic and based on tricks, whereas DC:SS encourages things like unknown item use more. In the end, I love Nethack and it was my first roguelike, but DC:SS is just a lot more fun. Also, here's a post comparing Dungeon Crawl and Nethack that I just remembered: http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Linleys_Dungeon_Crawl http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Linleys_Dungeon_Crawl
        eru 15y ago
        I actually prefer getting the amulet of reflection from Sokoban, and bags of holding get randomly generated relatively often. But start scumming is damnable anyway.
      - johnswamps 15y ago
        A lot. Much of it isn't really relevant to beginners, but here's a quick list off the top of my head. Maybe broken wasn't the right word, these are just general problems with the game 1. The endgame is too easy and boring. 2. Elbereth and #pray make it too easy to get out of tough spots 3. Most classes end up playing similarly after the midgame (either wizard or melee typically) 4. Wands of wishing, magic markers, and polypiling are too powerful 5. The game is nearly unbeatable without spoilers 6. Sokoban is boring after you've played through it a few times 7. There's a bunch of cheap tactics like pudding farming 8. It's too generic and boring to put together an ascension kit. There are very few trade-offs you need to make in choosing what armor and weapons to use 9. The religion aspect is too simplistic 10. Combat gets tedious in the endgame. Most of the time you're just plowing through monsters. This results in tons of "battle spam" with you getting several messages like "You hit the minotaur!" every turn, forcing you to not read them and possibly miss important information 11. The game requires several patches to be playable (menucolors, sortloot, hpmon, etc.) 12. The default options are pretty bad 13. Traveling and exploring can be boring Wow, that was a lot longer than I thought it would be. But I only write so much because I care :) I had a lot of fun beating nethack and and it's one of my favorite games of all time. I'm possibly prouder of beating nethack than of my MS degree :)
        gnosis 15y ago
        This is all true. However.. how many years of gameplay did you have to put in to learn it? Speaking for myself, I've been playing nethack since the 80's. How many other games can you name that will keep an audience interested for 20 or 30 years? I'd count that as a fantastic success in game design. Despite that, I do agree that the game has its weaknesses and could stand to be improved quite a bit. One of its greatest weaknesses is its glacial pace of development. The last release was in 2003.
        eropple 15y ago
        Eh--I had my first ascension (Val) about four months after I started. I've done so another three times since. (Wiz, Arc, Rgr). I think that there's a possibility that it's not as difficult, in relative terms, for people around my age who grew up with similar games, and fairly hard ones at that.
  - insin 15y ago
    POWDER is worth looking at as a starter - it feels like a scaled-down, more accessible NetHack with much of the the identification fun and unexpected combinations of interactions, and it's just as playable with a control pad, due to its GBA origins. http://www.zincland.com/powder/ http://www.zincland.com/powder/
  - hugh3 15y ago
    Key bindings is the least of your problems. If you want to play Nethack well (ie with any chance whatsoever of ascending), you'll need to read hundreds of pages of FAQs to understand exactly what the hell is going on. And once you've read all those, most of the surprise is gone, since you'll know that kicking a sink has a 1/20 chance of producing a black pudding and so forth.
- rdl 15y ago
  I liked nethack, angband, and rogue. Then I found ADOM -- (www.adom.de), which is great fun, but turned into a "second system" problem with JADE (development slowed so he could rewrite entirely in Java...). Still, amazingly fun. I never got into dwarf fortress or minecraft, but will check them out more after 25 August :)
imeikas 15y ago
Or if you cherish your time, you keep away from it. It's quite addictive and you can have a lot of Fun.
hugh3 15y ago
please take the time to break through the very steep learning curve to give this game a fair shake I don't know, I don't think we have the same attitude towards games. I already spend hours a week sitting in front of a computer doing really difficult stuff with screenfuls of ugly text for non-obvious rewards. It's called "work", and it pays me in real-world money and real-world glory. I don't have much desire to do the same sort of thing in my spare time. Nope, give me a beautiful, overproduced and shallow game any day.
- JabavuAdams 15y ago
  Reminds me of the experience of sitting around a table with some brilliant people arguing about what our role-playing-game characters should do next. Hey, we're in a heated, passionate, frustrating meeting, and we're not even getting paid! We should start a company or something...

eru 15y ago

You might benefit from having played Nethack first. At least the culture shock will be a smaller.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
I still can't get a grip on Nethack. I think I need to print out the list of key bindings in order to actually play.
- johnswamps 15y ago
  I would try playing Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup instead. It's another roguelike that is heavily inspired by nethack but is more modern and more beginner friendly. I love nethack (I've ascended twice) but it's definitely showing it's age (not to mention that the game is pretty broken in some regards). Crawl has a better interface and tries to remove all the tedious parts of roguelikes, though there's still a learning curve.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    What's broken in it?
    - thricedotted 15y ago
      Not sure if this is what johnswamps was referring to, but the two big things that come to mind are the Sokoban levels (there are only two fixed variants which can only guarantee you one of two things, and a lot of the time if people don't get the thing they want (usually the bag of holding), they end up restarting since the odds of getting it anywhere else in the game are pretty low after that) and the fact that you can do things like pudding farming to obtain items/corpses easily. A lot of actions in Nethack are formulaic and based on tricks, whereas DC:SS encourages things like unknown item use more. In the end, I love Nethack and it was my first roguelike, but DC:SS is just a lot more fun. Also, here's a post comparing Dungeon Crawl and Nethack that I just remembered: http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Linleys_Dungeon_Crawl http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Linleys_Dungeon_Crawl
      - eru 15y ago
        I actually prefer getting the amulet of reflection from Sokoban, and bags of holding get randomly generated relatively often. But start scumming is damnable anyway.
    - johnswamps 15y ago
      A lot. Much of it isn't really relevant to beginners, but here's a quick list off the top of my head. Maybe broken wasn't the right word, these are just general problems with the game 1. The endgame is too easy and boring. 2. Elbereth and #pray make it too easy to get out of tough spots 3. Most classes end up playing similarly after the midgame (either wizard or melee typically) 4. Wands of wishing, magic markers, and polypiling are too powerful 5. The game is nearly unbeatable without spoilers 6. Sokoban is boring after you've played through it a few times 7. There's a bunch of cheap tactics like pudding farming 8. It's too generic and boring to put together an ascension kit. There are very few trade-offs you need to make in choosing what armor and weapons to use 9. The religion aspect is too simplistic 10. Combat gets tedious in the endgame. Most of the time you're just plowing through monsters. This results in tons of "battle spam" with you getting several messages like "You hit the minotaur!" every turn, forcing you to not read them and possibly miss important information 11. The game requires several patches to be playable (menucolors, sortloot, hpmon, etc.) 12. The default options are pretty bad 13. Traveling and exploring can be boring Wow, that was a lot longer than I thought it would be. But I only write so much because I care :) I had a lot of fun beating nethack and and it's one of my favorite games of all time. I'm possibly prouder of beating nethack than of my MS degree :)
      - gnosis 15y ago
        This is all true. However.. how many years of gameplay did you have to put in to learn it? Speaking for myself, I've been playing nethack since the 80's. How many other games can you name that will keep an audience interested for 20 or 30 years? I'd count that as a fantastic success in game design. Despite that, I do agree that the game has its weaknesses and could stand to be improved quite a bit. One of its greatest weaknesses is its glacial pace of development. The last release was in 2003.
        eropple 15y ago
        Eh--I had my first ascension (Val) about four months after I started. I've done so another three times since. (Wiz, Arc, Rgr). I think that there's a possibility that it's not as difficult, in relative terms, for people around my age who grew up with similar games, and fairly hard ones at that.
- insin 15y ago
  POWDER is worth looking at as a starter - it feels like a scaled-down, more accessible NetHack with much of the the identification fun and unexpected combinations of interactions, and it's just as playable with a control pad, due to its GBA origins. http://www.zincland.com/powder/ http://www.zincland.com/powder/
- hugh3 15y ago
  Key bindings is the least of your problems. If you want to play Nethack well (ie with any chance whatsoever of ascending), you'll need to read hundreds of pages of FAQs to understand exactly what the hell is going on. And once you've read all those, most of the surprise is gone, since you'll know that kicking a sink has a 1/20 chance of producing a black pudding and so forth.
rdl 15y ago
I liked nethack, angband, and rogue. Then I found ADOM -- (www.adom.de), which is great fun, but turned into a "second system" problem with JADE (development slowed so he could rewrite entirely in Java...). Still, amazingly fun. I never got into dwarf fortress or minecraft, but will check them out more after 25 August :)

imeikas 15y ago

Or if you cherish your time, you keep away from it. It's quite addictive and you can have a lot of Fun.

hugh3 15y ago

please take the time to break through the very steep learning curve to give this game a fair shake I don't know, I don't think we have the same attitude towards games. I already spend hours a week sitting in front of a computer doing really difficult stuff with screenfuls of ugly text for non-obvious rewards. It's called "work", and it pays me in real-world money and real-world glory. I don't have much desire to do the same sort of thing in my spare time. Nope, give me a beautiful, overproduced and shallow game any day.

JabavuAdams 15y ago
Reminds me of the experience of sitting around a table with some brilliant people arguing about what our role-playing-game characters should do next. Hey, we're in a heated, passionate, frustrating meeting, and we're not even getting paid! We should start a company or something...