I played the game since 0.29 (released in August 2022) splatting hundreds of characters in all sorts of ways. One of them even touched the Orb but didn't live long enough to escape (ironically, it was another mountain dwarf). This run, I did something different: I actually started using my god's abilities in any viable situation.
It was a fun run, and I'm really surprised that the escape sequence isn't that difficult! For some reason I thought it would be really difficult. With that said I did it with 10 !haste and 11 ?blinking so maybe I’m just lucky :D
The hardest parts were probably Depths and Zot (although amusingly Z:5 was pretty easy) because the lack of resistances (particularly rElec and rCorr) was VERY noticeable.
I didn’t want to do any late-game optional branches except for Elf (because Depths is scary and I rather grind a bit before it) but I found the dreamshard necklace and figured it’d be more useful on the run than my amulet of faith so I went to Crypt to grind Nem’s piety a bit (wasn’t needed at all in the end).
Anyway, here's my character file for the curious: https://pastebin.com/6NhHY03U
Happy new year crawlers!!
Pathos Nethack Codec (basically Nethack rewrite for mobile support with some gameplay changes) was my second roguelike, after Pixel Dungeon. I was too stupid to search for guides so I played the game without ever knowing that eating certain corpses is always safe. I just kept dying of starvation.
My favorite start was a wizard, I loved figuring out how to use starting rings and scrolls to my advantage.
Yeah I've been playing for decades and still learning new things. Today, for instance, I learned that eating green slimes will melt your skin off and is uncurable.
I liked Pixel Dungeon, but there were some balancing issues deeper in the game that put me off it. That was a long time ago. I never got into Stone Soup because I felt like learning another Rogue/NH like game would be too much of a time investment at this point.
In fact I did, come to think of it, try to learn Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and I adore it. Sadly it's just open world with no direction, which doesn't work for me. I need a clearly stated game goal to work towards. But it's a cool game no doubt.
Damn Nethack is something else lol. At some point I tried to play it (not Pathos, the OG) and died to a floating eye that paralyzed me for a few dozen turns or something. Didn't touch it ever since :D
I'm not the biggest fan of PD personally but I find Shattered Pixel Dungeon (the most popular fork, very active) pretty fun. It was actually the first traditional roguelike I've ever beaten (not counting 7DRLs)!
I tried that one too, and had the same experience! I like its character creator, the complexity, even the inventory system. But... I don't know, the moment I find a safe base I lose any motivation to play. I'm not a survival girl after all.
Nethacks timeless motto is "Dying Is Fun!".
I didn't remember the graphics of Stone Soup to be so tight, though! It looks really good! Maybe I'll give it a go after all. I'm usually an ASCII purist because I'm masochistic like that, but that looks pretty. :)
It really is pretty!
Someone even made a "chart" of all the sprites changes during the game's lifetime: https://reddit.com/r/dcss/comments/1kjlvdq/dcss_pok%C3%A9mon_evolution_chart/
If you liked Pixel Dungeon then I highly recommend Shattered Pixel Dungeon! It has become the de facto official version of Pixel Dungeon under the care of Evan, who develops the game as his primary occupation. Evan has radically rebalanced the game and greatly increased its depth and character development, with new classes and subclasses, talent trees, and a vastly improved alchemy system!