As a gamer, I am a completionist. Having games in my inventory that I haven't completed is such an annoyance for me that I've waded through some incredibly bad games in my days.
There still remain a few titles that I've simply never "completed", and for obvious reasons NetHack is one of them.
I've played the game for years, but never have actually made it through. Usually the frustration of dying for some ridiculous reason has finally made me put the game away for a year or two.
Due to the lack of decent new games, I decided to have another go with NetHack. Since I found out that the graphical front-end actually supports Slash'EM as well, I decided to try it out. So I picked up Vulture's Claw and started another foray into the dungeons of doom...
For those of you who don’t know it, Slash’EM is NetHack on steroids. It features new playable races and professions, new items and artifacts, rehashed magic system and tons and tons of new monsters and special levels. It also makes the game much harder. My attempt should have been doomed from the beginning.
Well, my first tries with Slash were exactly that. AndhairaX, the orcish Necromancer perished in the gnomish mines and vampiric skyway didn’t make much further.
…
But lo and behold – Trash the rogue made it to the very bottom of the Dungeon. (Unlike his pet troll, sheek, who perished during the rogue quest).
Let's Ascend in Slash'EM
or die trying
Here you see him stumbling up from Valley of The Dead, into which he level teleported by accident (Slash’EM changes the levels a little). Straight into the Castle’s throne room. No biggie.
Trash is a rich socialist bastard. Welfare state has nannied him with several wishes, granting quite decent ascension kit. He has a bag of holding and a beefed up artifact bag of holding (lying on an altar below) filled with various wands, scrolls and other valuables.
The Castle cleared, Valley of the Dead likewise. I got a new wand of wishing amongst some other minor goodies. I could make another trip up for some blessing and identification, but what the hell.
Into the Gehennom (with my pet dragon Draq who just hatched from an egg).
First impressions - boring. Some pesky vampires and a dude who claims to be a demon prince or something. Died like the rest of them. Another wand of death and a wand of wishing (!).
Man, this is going to be boring. I decide to use some of the scrolls of enchant armor I found to enchant my shield. They turned out to be blessed, so Mirrorbright goes up to whopping +7 and doesn't crumble. I switch into one-weapon combat with a shield, just in case that Gehennom might actually provide some challenge for my unnaturally well beefed up hacker.
2nd level of Gehennom. Well shit.
O.K. So for those of you who don't know the background, Demogorgon is the most bad-ass demon prince of them all. In the original NetHack, he was an optional challenge that a few chose to take on. And in Slash'EM the assholes have put him into the 2nd level of Gehennom! What the fuck?
Demogorgon teleports around. His attack gives you fatal poisoning that'll kill you in 15 turns or so. And if that's not bad enough, every successive attack reduces that timer by a fraction. Great.
What will happen? Will Trash the Burglar of Decadent Socialist Utopia succumb to his arrogance, or will decadence triumph?
There still remain a few titles that I've simply never "completed", and for obvious reasons NetHack is one of them.
I've played the game for years, but never have actually made it through. Usually the frustration of dying for some ridiculous reason has finally made me put the game away for a year or two.
Due to the lack of decent new games, I decided to have another go with NetHack. Since I found out that the graphical front-end actually supports Slash'EM as well, I decided to try it out. So I picked up Vulture's Claw and started another foray into the dungeons of doom...
For those of you who don’t know it, Slash’EM is NetHack on steroids. It features new playable races and professions, new items and artifacts, rehashed magic system and tons and tons of new monsters and special levels. It also makes the game much harder. My attempt should have been doomed from the beginning.
Well, my first tries with Slash were exactly that. AndhairaX, the orcish Necromancer perished in the gnomish mines and vampiric skyway didn’t make much further.
…
But lo and behold – Trash the rogue made it to the very bottom of the Dungeon. (Unlike his pet troll, sheek, who perished during the rogue quest).
Let's Ascend in Slash'EM
or die trying
Here you see him stumbling up from Valley of The Dead, into which he level teleported by accident (Slash’EM changes the levels a little). Straight into the Castle’s throne room. No biggie.
Trash is a rich socialist bastard. Welfare state has nannied him with several wishes, granting quite decent ascension kit. He has a bag of holding and a beefed up artifact bag of holding (lying on an altar below) filled with various wands, scrolls and other valuables.
The Castle cleared, Valley of the Dead likewise. I got a new wand of wishing amongst some other minor goodies. I could make another trip up for some blessing and identification, but what the hell.
Into the Gehennom (with my pet dragon Draq who just hatched from an egg).
First impressions - boring. Some pesky vampires and a dude who claims to be a demon prince or something. Died like the rest of them. Another wand of death and a wand of wishing (!).
Man, this is going to be boring. I decide to use some of the scrolls of enchant armor I found to enchant my shield. They turned out to be blessed, so Mirrorbright goes up to whopping +7 and doesn't crumble. I switch into one-weapon combat with a shield, just in case that Gehennom might actually provide some challenge for my unnaturally well beefed up hacker.
2nd level of Gehennom. Well shit.
O.K. So for those of you who don't know the background, Demogorgon is the most bad-ass demon prince of them all. In the original NetHack, he was an optional challenge that a few chose to take on. And in Slash'EM the assholes have put him into the 2nd level of Gehennom! What the fuck?
Demogorgon teleports around. His attack gives you fatal poisoning that'll kill you in 15 turns or so. And if that's not bad enough, every successive attack reduces that timer by a fraction. Great.
What will happen? Will Trash the Burglar of Decadent Socialist Utopia succumb to his arrogance, or will decadence triumph?
