It's a pretty obscure mathematical game, so I figured I'd ask. If not, any general roguelike players like Angband/Dwarf Fortress etc?

Funny you should post this; I just started getting back into this game in the last few days, almost 25 years after I first got addicted to it.

It's a fun game, but I wouldn't want to play it without spoilers. So much random stuff that's really helpful to know that you could never guess or figure out on your own. Makes me wonder how anyone ever played the game before the internet.

I'd play it over Oblivion any day of the week. Graphics are overrated. ;-)

Mathematical = huh?

I beat Nethack once after months of trying...Stayed up for hours and woke my then girlfriend up to tell her the news. I don't think I ever played again after that.

Dwarf Fortress looks ridiculous and I refuse to even touch it for fear of my life and sanity.

EDIT: Also, ditto on the spoilers. Knowing what to wish for and how to get more wishes is so necessary.

I think there's enough number-crunching behind the game to make it intensely mathematical, especially when you go somewhere like wikihack and see what makes the game run, but that's just me.
I discovered this crazy game just over a month ago and have so far completed it with a wizard and valkyrie, and I'm trying to get into dwarf fortress, but it's SOOOOOOOOooooo confusing I'm not having a VAST amount of success so far.
But yeah, spoilers are pretty essential - I do wonder how those who first played it could have ever completed it without having some idea what to do, how to save yourself from instadeaths, what most of the obscure messages that come up mean, etc etc etc
Madness.
EDIT : Yeah, NetHack > Oblivion definitely!

ToME (Tales of Middle Earth) = Nethack on steroids... plz to be having back 100's of hours of my life now, thx

I don't think I'd call ascending twice in a month "not having a VAST amount of success."

I think I made it to Fort Luidos once.

There are a lot of people who play, complete with spoilers, who never ascend a character. That is to say they never ascend without save scumming anyway. So if you've managed it in a month of playing that's rather good going.

Anyway I have a strong affinity for this game, it's been in my life since the early 90's. I will stick it on to fill 30 minute gaps here and there and it's a great way to relax, it almost becomes meditatory once one is familar with the game. I love it when a new version comes out and I am surprised again at some new reaction or series of events.

Of course if you're not familiar with the game it's really tough going and will take some getting used to, but if it appeals then the depth is there.

Sadly we haven't had a new version for rather a long time, which either means the dev team has given up (unlikely imo) or that the next version is going to be a massive revision with much learning required.

Once I make it to the Fort then I will expect to ascend the character and will be pretty annoyed with myself if I get it killed. Before the fort less so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMj8-aJIoh4

It saddens me that this thread is not getting more love.

Eh. I've played the game off and on for maybe 15 years or so without ever looking at spoilers. I'm slowly making progress through it, although I am well aware that I probably will never get all the way through it.

oh, I meant I'm not making great progress with dwarf fortress, not with Nethack!
First time I played (without having found wikihack) I think I lasted about hundred turns before i drank from a fountain, summoned a water elemental, thought "the game can't possibly throw something at me yet i can't fight, i should be able to beat this thing" and was killed in one hit.
nethack is awesome

yeah, whenever i find a new game of any sort i like, i seem to go into game overload and just memorise absolutely everything there is no know about that game. i'd say i probably know the majority/all of nethack chance-of-something-happening-%s and enemy special attacks by now.

i wish the game kept track of how many times you've ascended specifically as each class, though, and gives you a little extra congratulations when/if you ascend once as every class. that would be neat!

I am a retired world class(lol) Crawl player. Haven't played the new 0.4 branch, but I used to have the highest winrate(Jeff) on crawl.akrasiac.org: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring03/winners.html in version 0.3.4. Crawl is imo the best roguelike... it has the most replayability and strategic/tactical complexity. Nethack is a pretty sweet game, too, but I couldn't go back to playing it after playing Crawl.

http://crawl-ref.****************/

I used to play a fair bit of Ancient Domains of Mystery, mostly around version 1.0.0 but some of the version right before that (I think it was gamma 16 or something like that.) I beat it a few times, albeit with some heavy spoilage. I think actually the last time I played it I had a character on the final floor, which is usually an automatic win (it's tough to get there and not be buff enough to clean it out pretty easily) and then had a power outage that wiped the character. Woooooooo roguelikes!

I will have to look at Crawl and Dwarf Fortress.

EDIT: This Dwarf Fortress business looks hilariously, insanely over the top.

i watched a ton of how-to videos on youtube, but even they just left me scratching my head and trying to work out how you keep track of all this insanity

Dwarf Fortress seems like too much work to get into at the moment. I spent 45 minutes or so last night trying to get started on a game and didn't really get to a point where I felt comfortable just letting things happen.

Crawl is pretty fun at the moment, although it feels quite a bit harder than ADOM and Angband, which are the roguelikes I have the most exposure to. (EDIT: This is for a few reasons. The two biggies are persistent levels and the early game strengths of characters. Angband didn't have persistent levels, so if you were sufficiently patient it generally wasn't too hard to coddle your character along until it had a useful bag of tricks for getting out of jams. ADOM did have one dungeon without persistent levels but I rarely went there; however, a lot of characters can be surprisingly strong in the early game and can be very good if you get a little lucky with some drops, and there are enough early game quests that if you run into something nasty you can go do something else for a while. Thus far, Crawl seems to force you to keep plowing deeper, into lots of nasties that are way too strong for toe to toe combat, but with relatively few exceptions doesn't give you a ton of early game tools for avoiding toe to toe combat. Centaurs seem like an interesting way to go, since they are fast and good with ranged weapons, but the enhanced food consumption forces dungeon diving even faster, I would think. I'm sure tricks will become more apparent to me with further play.)

Even the best players lose a fair number of characters in the early game in Crawl... Here are some simple tips that you're prob. familiar with as a roguelike vet.

1. Use ranged weapons(usually thrown stones, daggers, hand axes, etc early on) whenever possible to soften up enemies for melee.

2. Use your consumable resources(wands, potions, scrolls) aggressively. In contrast to some other roguelikes, you need to id a lot of stuff by using it rather than ID scrolls. Here is a spoiler I typed up on the id game awhile back:

3. Rest up to full HP/MP after every battle.

A fair number of the top players consider Centaurs to be the strongest race, but their food management is problematic for a beginner. Some strong combos for beginners to try are: Spriggan Venom Mage, Mountain Dwarf Berserker or Healer, Deep Elf Fire Elementalist or Conjurer [ice book].

Dwarf Fortress is awesome! I'm addicted right now.

If you're having trouble getting started, this tutorial is a great start and if you go through it you'll be able to get around without being confused.

****ing vg forum! If only I had 1/10 the energy for poker as I do for games What is a good graphics set? I'm currently using the one from that tutorial, but any other recommendations?

I just use the ASCII.

Holy crap this game might even get me to play it instead of nethack.

hardcore man... have you seen screenshots of the graphics though? Blows ASCII away, its like its virtual reality or something

Thanks for posting the link btw.

I've never played dwarf fortress, but I think it's impossible to play any rogue-like smoothly unless you're using ascii

you can't tell what anything is with tiles on

check out some of the screenshots if you are curious, everything seems way better to me. Maybe a personal preference though.

Thanks for posting the link to that Dwarf Fortress tutorial! I'm definitely going to try again in the next few days to get into it, once I'm done a) revising for exam and b) ascending a Samurai in nethack. Looks like a really good tutorial, though, but not sure if I'll go with the ASCII or tileset.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Probably do what I do with most roguelikes and use a tileset first, then move to the ASCII once I actually know what on earth is going on!