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Nethack is hard. I already ascended several times but I still find that it's a major accomplishment when I manage to do it again. Without any particular reason, I decided to join the 2008 /dev/null Nethack tournament. In this post, I will try to summarize my adventure.

Back in 2005, I managed to make it on the top 5 on alt.org; I guess I though that it meant I had a chance to reach a nice position in the tournament.

I was wrong. The tournament trophies are designed so that farming won't help you. Ascending with a billion points doesn't mean much if you need a year of farming to do it.

If the regular conducts are too easy for you, the tournament has some extra spice: the challenges. I made the mistake of playing after a few drinks. When an in-game character asked me if I wanted to accept a challenge, I blindly went for it. The only challenge I enrolled was the Grue one. Without selling the punch, as soon as you end up in a dark room, you have only a few turn to run away or to find a light source; if you don't, you are eaten by a grue. It might seem easy but remember that the only place where you are sure to find light sources is in mine town, and that the mine levels above mine town are extremely poorly lighted.

I lost many characters to the darkness until that one game with the great start. My gnomish wizard was hoping to find the good loot in the first few level of the mine then he got blocked by the first dark level. Tough luck; back to the main dungeon. However, the few items that he found on the first floor of the mines proved to be of great help: my wizard got his silver dragon scale mail from a wand on wishing right on dungeon level four. Unfortunately, his great armor class proved not to be of much help since he was soon blocked by another dark room, without access to an altar or even a key, which was even more frustrating since all the shop he had seed were locked.

There was the option of zapping a wand of digging down until reaching mine town and there was the option of zapping the wand of wishing another time. Busting a wish on a 5 zorkmid item; it took a long time for me to accept the fact that I was stuck otherwise but I finally wished for a lamp. To give the game a bit more spice, there was only candles in Izchak's shop. That meant that my adventure was to end soon unless I found potions of oil.

I went for the end mines and I was lucky to find a spellbook of light along the way. I found no oil in the gnome king cellar and I was back at mine town with a single potion of holy water. The altar was cross aligned and I had no reliable way to blank the booze. I decided to spend my potion on the luckstone. After all, I was assured to reach the quest altar sooner or later.

And this is where I found my first usable altar. The Dark One is not particularly hard but without Magicbane, one must expect for major disturbance in his inventory during the fight. I went for the scroll of earth method and soon enough, I was abusing the altar at full speed.

The rest of the adventure was essentially straightforward except for an unfortunate event involving a potion of polymorphism, my dragon scales armor, and all the other pieces of my equipment. There was a few close calls when by lamp got shut off after being ingested. That's how I learned that keeping the spellbook of light around is more or less mandatory when doing the Grue Challenge.

The game was going well and I would definitely would have spent more time improving my score but time was running short and the end of the challenge was near. So I spent another wish on a figurine of an archon, gave my new pet a few pieces of highly enchanted armor then set myself for the big run. Until then, I had overlooked getting my hand on a bullwhip so I had to hunt balrogs in Gehennon before I could equip my archon buddy with the weapon that he deserved (for those who don't know the trick, the good weapon is definitely not anything that you will find on a balrog). That was it, I was ready.

Now talk about some bits of bad luck. When I tried to log into the Dev Null server on Friday, 2008-11-28, I was greeted by a message that my game could not be recovered but that I could pick a new gender, race, and class right away and start a new game. With only two days left in the tournament, I was in panic mode. Very few can finish Nethack in two days and I certainly can't, especially with the Grue challenge.

On Saturday evening, Matthew Bandy, a very dedicated Dev Null admin, presented me with tricky dilemma: he was only able to either restore my game to how it was week before or to give me the trickery trophy, a trophy that is given to the players who get killed by a server error. I went for the restore, which wasn't so bad as it was just before I set myself to equip my archon properly. But it was Sunday already and I had to act fast if I wanted this game to count in the tournament.

I killed the Wizard of Yendor with Finger of Death then I started going down for the vibrating square. I was halfway through when my archon steeped on a level teleporter. I had a decent weapon, the +7 Frostbrand, but with the wizard down I felt more like holding tight to Magicbane and letting someone else do most of the fighting. The secret to surviving Nethack is not to commit yourself to a particular strategy. I cleared most of the sanctum with a copious amount of magic missile and of finger of death. I had no time to let the Eye of the Aethiopica do its magic so I spent a few marker charges on a scroll of charging, chugged a potion of booze to keep the moral high, then got back to another intense session of non-stop casting.

Once I had the amulet secured, I used the remaining mana to make my way back by teleporting from staircase to staircase. Sadly, there was no sign of a stray pet in sight. I made a quick pit stop at my stash in the main dungeon to refresh a few spells. What a pleasant surprise it was to be interrupted in my study by the blinding radiance of an archon. Being a neural wizard, convincing this one to join me in my quest was not easy but I had mana to burn. It eventually worked and I was back on my way up. Still on my way up, it's on level four that I found a peaceful archon with half of an ascension kit for himself. I had to clear the sanctum all by myself but with two pet archons, the planes would be something else. Rodney tasted my finger of death everytime that he showed up and everything else went smoothly. I went for my reward without genocide and without wishing for an artefact.

I was exhausted but satisfied, late on a cold Sunday night of November after having spend several hours in line staring at an ASCII terminal. I spent the next 10 minutes refreshing the scoreboard while sipping a celebratory beer until I finally saw my name. I could go to sleep; I had earned my Dilithium Star.