Since the tutorial uses a tileset I am using that version for now. I am pretty certain I will swap back to ASCII once I start out on my own though, graphical tiles always seem so cluttered to me.

edit: Add my thanks for posting those links to both the game and the tutorial.

Yeah, I'll try it sometime, but right now I'm stuck on a dinky computer and my frame rate falls pretty hard when I get a large population of dwarfs. I don't want to make it worse.

Every time I try to play Nethack with a graphical tileset, it's ridiculously confusing. The number of pixels they get in per icon is just too small, so I can't tell what anything is. I can't totally explain it, but (colored) ascii just works so much better for me.

Ok, I need help with crawl. I'm trying a mummy fighter bc I don't want to deal with food. Mummy/magic classes gets me killed too fast. I get down about 5-6 levels and then some unique or big mob rapes me when I'm at full hp. I don't know what to do. I explore every level fully. I'm only leveling fighting/maces. I tried leveling armor/shields too but I ended up doing worse.

Mummy Fighter is a very hard combo for a beginner... lack of potions reduces your margin of error a lot. The food aspect of the game is pretty easy and I think you'll have a much better time with a regular fighter like a Mountain Dwarf, Hill Orc, Minotaur or w/e. With mummies and the lack of a food clock, whenever you run into trouble on a lower DL, you should go up to a cleared level and kill the easier monster respawns to increase your XL and skills. You're kinda forced into this a lot as a mummy because they're weak in combat to counterbalance their resistances and foodlessness.

Don't mess around with turning skills on and off as a beginner... if you really want to, then turn maces and shields off and leave fighting/armour on.

Playing NetHack in today's video game environment is similar to pulling out an Atari 2600 and playing Pong. LOL

Having said that, as soon as I get home from work I'm loading up NetHack and playing. I probably first played NetHack back in the mid 1980's, over 20 years ago. It never gets old going into a shop and robbing a Shopkeeper blind. I've never ever EVER come close to finishing the game, somehow someway I always die. 90% of the time it's by one of those pissed off Shopkeepers. My only complaints are (1) there's never enough Identify spells around and most of my stuff remains unknown until I end up dropping or selling to clear up inventory space, (2) sometimes I just can't find enough food and die of starvation, (3) the real way to win the game is to build up a few characters, have them die and then create another character and go find your own ghost to get all that equipment.

Thanks for the reminder, I prob haven't played in 3 years!

Wow, no kidding. These things wreck shop! Great first spell, high speed, low food consumption just appears to be awesome. My first one got killed but it's already my 3rd best character out of 15 or so, and I just got a little ambitious with it and got messed up by a ghost of a previous character where the poison sting didn't work. I'm concerned ghosts of these venom mages are going to be the nastiest things ever to run into, though - long range poisoning and high speed is pretty gross.

Spriggans are my fav. race and Spriggan Venom Mage is one of the best combos. Stabbing is another great way to go as a Spriggan (start as an Enchanter or Assassin)--make sure you have the blue highlight on for sleeping monsters in your config. file(not sure if this is default nowadays).

As soon as you see one, just flee the level until you're stronger... player ghosts are very tough monsters for their DL and they're especially hard to kill for a Venom Mage early on because they're immune to poison(as you found out). The problem of poison immune monsters is one you'll have to deal with later in the game as well, usually by learning Earth Magic.

Ok so I can just sit here and grind indefinitely in a DL? Game seems easy now!

Yeah, if you want to(only with Mummies). This is why I don't really like Mummies... grinding is boring and they are the grind race. Anyway, as a novice you will probably end up getting killed in the late game even if you do a ton of grinding.

grinding in any of these games is a terrible strategy because you will have just wasted a lot of time and you'll still die anyways.

Why is this?

+0/+2 flail of protection dmg:9 acc:+2 delay:150%
or
+1/+1 orcish hammer of crushing dmg:7 acc:+3 delay:130%

Which part? Mummies are the grind race because they don't need food--all the other races(actually, I think Vampires can go without food too, but I haven't played since Vampires were added) are forced to explore because they will starve to death if they wait for monster respawns.

Re: Late game deaths. The end game is hard and can kill uber characters if you are inexperienced. Also, grinding doesn't improve your equipment--only skills and experience level.

This.

I died on DL7 when I was level 9 to an orc warrior 1v1. I'm too tilted to play this game anymore.

I need more things to read too. The wiki is woefully incomplete.

If you are just trying to learn how to play Crawl Mountain Dwarf Fighter is by far the easiest race to play in the game. Turn axes off, and train fighting/armor and shields and if you find plate mail early on it will be almost impossible to die as long as you don't do anything stupid.

With that said getting to the Lair (the first sub dungeon you should do, but not the first one you will find generally) is one of the hardest parts of the game. If you can get to the Lair it is pretty easy sailing from their until you actually need to start collecting runes from the subbranch bottom levels. The trick to getting to the Lair is to know what early monsters will kill you. Orc Warriors, Ogres, Orc Priests, Gnolls(only a problem because they always come in packs of 3+ and can hit pretty hard with halberds), and in some cases if you don't have hp or healing potions poison monsters can prove difficult. Giant Ants can lead to deaths on early levels for this reason. You need to know when you see one of these types of monsters that you either need to run or start blowing consumables before you engage so that you do not die.

Also exploring every level completely may not be the best idea if you get to dungeon level 5 and there is a pack of orcs with two priests in it and an ogre running around your best bet will likely be to go down a level and come back later.

Also the reason that grinding will not make the end game super easy is that even without grinding your character is going to likely hit Level 27 before Zot:5 and while you can still level up skills at this point they really are just going to make you more versatile not really more powerful. In the end game surviving is way more about what resistances you have then what level your character is and grinding with a mummy in the early game is not going to get you better end game equipment.

lol 1v1 death.

I've died 6 times with mountain dwarf fighter so far.

Died from poison twice on level 2. Can I do anything but rest if I have no healing pots?
An ogre with a runed dire flail or some **** like that two hit me.
Sigmund raped me once or twice from afar with some purple magic ****.

If you don't have healing pots you should avoid monsters that can poison you if you don't have enough health to just rest through it. As a Mountain Dwarf Fighter you should have enough health though as long as you aren't getting poisoned and are already low on health. If it is really going to be a problem you can use wand charges to blow up early snakes, or use other consumables to kill them fast. Poisoning monsters are just one of the things you have to get a feel for and know when to avoid. Also, remember even the best players die in the early stages of crawl. You need to use consumables liberally especially early, but the problem is you need to know when to use them before you start getting hit because some of the early nasty monsters can kill you real fast. Also it is dangerous to start randomly using unidentified items, but sometimes it is the only option. This means you want to use identify potions/scrolls as soon as possible so you know what you have.
Yeah, I forget to mention Sigmund he is the one early game unique that is a problem. If you see him generally you just want to run and leave the dungeon level. Same thing goes for Ogres if you can use wands to kill them from ranged, because they swing giant clubs and if they connect they can do 40-50 hp in one swing and it will kill a low level character really quick.

You shouldn't die too much from poison as a Mountain Dwarf Fighter. Make sure to be fully rested before doing any exploring. The key to Crawl is to always think about how you can maximize your survival chances. You have to think ahead, use resources wisely and avoid dangerous situations.

Check out the links on the crawl.akrasiac.org front page(the best resource is the Henzell bot in ##crawl on freenode) if you want to read more about the game. The in-game documentation is good as well.

Sigmund is a whore. Given how early you find him, he is the deadliest monster in the game. Luckily he doesn't show up every game.

TBH, you're going to die numerous times before you win, esp if you aren't a roguelike vet. The mean winrate on CAO is ~.5%.

I finally got kinda deep. I'm in level 8 of the lair right now. My god gave me a flaming executioner axe and I used two enchant weapon III scrolls on it so it's +5/+7 I am raping. This is a lot more fun now!

I feel like in the manual somewhere it suggests that learning some kinds of magics makes it difficult to learn others. Is there any place where this is more fully fleshed out, and is this a concern in terms of choosing the right skills for the late game? My Venom Mage's magic skills look something like

Spellcasting, 9
Conjurations, 9
Enchantments, 5 (I found a book with Paralyze and picked some other spell to buff Enchantments to the point where I could cast Para reliably, this has saved my bacon against a couple of black snakes)
Divinations, 3
Fire Magic, 1 (Sif Muna just dropped Conjurations (fire) on me, which I welcome as another type of magical damage to have against poison immunes)
Poison Magic, 11 (I've turned off experience going here for the moment, because I'm not sure how worth it the higher level poison spells I've seen are)

Am I hurting myself in the future by working on these things now? It would be nice in some sense to get away from Conjurations because Spriggans are so inefficient at it but I'm pretty invested at this point.

Fire vs Ice, Earth vs Air and Conjuration vs Summoning make learning their opposing school harder to learn iirc.

You're stuck with Conjurations... I think Earth Magic is generally the way to go to complement Poison. There are some monsters late in the game that are immune to fire and poison, so you want earth magic to deal with them(or firestorm which does 1/2 dam. to immune monsters, but this is harder to learn for a Spriggan). Enchantments are always useful for Haste, Deflect Missiles, Regeneration, etc. Divinations--around 5 levels is enough to cast Detect Creatures/Traps reliably which is the most you need in general.

Ok, I finished the lair, swamps and orc lair. I've got a +7/+7 flaming executioner's axe, 28AC and 15EV. I just found a +3 platemail that gives +1 dex and +4 acc. I am going to be unbelievably tilted if I die and have to start over.

How did we get off the NetHack topic? lol

I think the last time I played the game was on a 640x480 monitor. LOL The game filled the whole screen (the "original" TTY or ASCII version, not this silly new "graphical" interface).

On my new computer here (Vista Ultimate) with a great big 1600x1200 monitor, the game is TINY. I think it runs in a DOS window that's 640x480. It's so small I'm really having a hard time doing anything.

I right clicked the windows icon, clicked PROPERTIES and on the OPTIONS tab under "Window Size" I selected "full screen"... applied the change and re-ran. No full screen, still in 640x480 window.

Any ideas to help me run this full screen and where I can actually read the map and the text?