How do you open a treasure box with a wizard? With a thief I could always pick the lock with the '>' key. But with a wizard all I can do is zap locked doors. How do I zap the treasure box? I keep kicking them open and it breaks all the potions inside.

Knock spell or Wand of Opening generally. If memory serves you can still use lock picks and credit cards and such to open them... just a rogue is way better at it. It's based off your dexterity. Think you can also force the lock but I don't remember how.

Oh. My wizard always comes packaged with force bolt that I use to blast open doors and kill monsters. I just assumed I could open boxes with force bolt the way a thief picks them. I guess not. I guess I need to find a knock spellbook.

Thx. Guess I'll keep kicking the damn things open until I find a book.

I am terrible at this game.

easy way. Find any uncursed dagger and #force the lock while standing on the object.

Hey thanks!

Nice to see someone else playing Nethack as its a long time favorite of mine. Been playing since the MSDos days. A few ascensions under my belt, so know a few of the tricks. Learn something new about the game every time I play.

Haven't played a wizard in a long time, currently playing Rangers.

Ha I have never even come close to ascending.

I was reading about it. Apparently you have to do a lot of special tasks near the end I'm not even sure it tells you how to do it in the game. Is it even possible to beat this game without reading that stuff?

I ascended once back in 1999ish, one of my gaming crowning achievements in my opinion... nethack is much more ruthless than the *bands (for the most part)... but I find the *bands much more relaxing to play, so moved onto them. In either case you can do it without spoilers it just takes a lot more time and tinkering around. I have been playing TOME for a couple years now and I find it the most enjoyable of the rogue likes for my play style. Most recent character was a male yeek lost soul assassin of melkor bauglir "Fred LXXIX", fred alas is dead... and his brother "Fred LXXX" a male yeek lost soul assassin of melkor bauglir will soon be rushing to to a likely similar fate heh.

The bands and hacks are some of the most fun games ever created if you want an actual challenge. Even the 'cheap combination' characters in tome like death mold lost soul alchemist are more difficult than almost any modern game I've played... and *any* nethack characters is far more difficult. The only exception perhaps being "Demon Souls"... which is quite hard and merciless.

Is this game really supposed to be this hard or am I just fucking stupid? I mean I played for 45 minutes and then all of a sudden I fell through a trap door and landed right in the middle of a swarm of bats and they killed me. You can't run from bats! They bite you every step you run. I couldn't kill them all either.

What the hell was I supposed to do!? How was I supposed to know there was a trap door!? Am I supposed to check for traps every step I take? That was 45 minutes all for nothing and I have to start over.

Couldn't they at least put fucking save points in here? Jesus Christ. Whoever made this game is demented.

Once I was in the potion seller's shop and a mimic tried to kill me. So I zapped him but my spell broke all the potions and the shopkeeper said I owed him 800 zorkmids and he wouldn't let me leave. So I got mad and threw a potion at him and then he killed me.

Who the hell opens a shop deep in the mazes of menace? That doesn't make any sense.

Ha. It seems you are catching on to how the game works, and yes, I think the devs are extremely demented. The early game can be very brutal to a weak player but if you're careful, you should level up fairly quickly. Personally I think the lack of save points is a good feature of the game. Perma-death forces you to think about what you're doing and not just go blindly hitting everything that moves.

In the early game it really pays to stop and search every little bit as long as you don't have food issues. I also try early on to find some method of teleportation, either a wand or scroll, and some method of defense at a distance, usually thrown daggers. Also it's usually a good idea in the early game to try to keep your level at or higher than the level of the dungeon you are on, namely, don't go to dungeon level three until you are at level three yourself, but when you do find stairs down to the next level, go down and come back up immediately.

When you get in a tight spot (like your bats above) often if you stop and think of your options you can get out of it with a little cunning. I usually will do a ; and double check what is attacking me and do an i to see what equipment I have that can help. Neither of those things take a move. If there are more than one monster, try to put the weakest between you and the rest, or if it's an option, try to get into a corridor so they can only attack one at a time. If it's looking really desperate, this is the time to zap that unidentified wand or read that unidentified scroll. Sometimes a little luck can pay off, but this is usually a last resort.

Some people don't like to use spoilers, but personally I think it's worth it at least while you're learning the game. You can get a lot of information from the Oracle (sometimes not accurate), from fortune cookies (also not always accurate) and from at least one of the shopkeepers. I also keep notes of what levels have altars, fountains, where the mines entrance is, and other points like that, but that's mostly because I don't get to play out a game all at once as I do work full time and am a grandpa, so a couple of hours here and there is all I get (and the over 50 amnesia takes it's tole too).

Have patience with the game and take your time, it's worth it in the long run. And the day it really clicks that the game isn't about killing monsters but about surviving levels it will make more sense. I've played for many years and didn't ascend for the first time until just a couple of years ago.

asef

I got to mines end. How are you supposed to know which one is the load stone or the luck stone? I picked a load stone and I had to fight my way back to level three to dip in a fountain to get rid of it. And then I read an uncursed scroll in the room in minetown with the altar and it released a fireball and burned the priest and my god smited me to death. Which was really dumb because I found out whenever I put on a blindfold I could see all my enemies and was kicking ass the whole game with that. I totally wasted that samurai.

How was even supposed to know there was a luck stone to begin with? I only know because I read it on the internet. Do people really beat this game without reading spoilers? That's insane. That would have to be my life's work.