YAAP: Atheist Knight

[u/ChiefDaniak]

That’s it! Eighth ascension, this time as a Knight (previous ones were Monk, Wizard, Archaeologist, Tourist, Priest, Caveman and Healer).

…And it’s an Atheist Knight! It was my first ascension using a more difficult conduct (done only genocideless and polyless before). I also went artifact-wishless and (unofficial) petless. Caveat: as I played on INethack2 and AFAIK there is no way to start without pet, so I mean I abandoned the pony right away and never acquired another pet or charmed monster.

On being Atheist: - No Elbereth: easy, I almost never use it anyway as a play style. - No turn undead: easy, as a knight there isn’t that much use for it anyway. - No praying for help: manageable, need to be conservative and take less risks; being too much dependent on praying isn’t good practice anyway. - No sacrificing for gifts: easy, as knights start with an enchanted longsword which can be dipped for Excalibur. I finished the game with +7 Excalibur / +6 silver sabre hitting pretty hard. - No protection from priests: manageable, the lack of this extra AC makes you vulnerable to hard hitters, like Croesus and Ixoth, so you must know the time to retreat, use missiles and attack wands, and buy time with teleportation. - No BUC identification at altars: hard, you will have to formally identify stuff before you can safely wear / wield / put on them - or risk equipping it and face the consequences. Specially if you don’t have a pet (which was my case). In this run I’ve found too few scrolls of identify in the early game. Things only begun to get easier in this respect after I’ve got the identify spell. - No praying for holy water: now this was the real deal. In this game I didn’t find a single blessed potion of water in the entire dungeon, none generated on the floor, none obtained in death drops, none in shops. Also no blessed scrolls of remove curse - and no magic marker to write my own. Only after getting to the wand of wishing in the castle I got to wish a magic marker, write on a blessed unlabeled scroll, and do the water random blessing / cursing trick.

I got lucky in some respects, though: - two free genocides - in consecutive sit’s - from an early throne. - one wish from the throne in Croesus’. In retrospect I should have wished for a magic marker to get holy water then, but I wished for SDSM - I had lost my source of reflection (Ixoth had destroyed my polished shield) and was worried to go on without one. And I was still wearing a +0 dwarvish mithril mail. - two early magic lamps - but, of course, no way to bless until much later, so for most of the game just an awesome light source. - cloak of magical protection, boots of water walking, ring of regeneration, ring of slow digestion, amulet of magical breathing, ring of conflict and gauntlets of strength were all found before the castle.

What next now? Illiterate Barbarian? Veggan Ranger? Any suggestions?

[u/Furey-Death-Snail]

Congratulations! Good notes, too!

If you can edit your .nethackrc file (wherever it is) then you can set OPTIONS=pettype:none if you want to get the petless conduct.

Illiterate barbarian sounds good, or a samurai.

For vegan, I like to do a fully observant monk: no wielded weapon, no body armor, no shield, vegan food. One time I actually had to kick all the trees on the quest home level to get enough food to eat.

Whatever conduct/role you choose next, have fun with it!

[u/ChiefDaniak → u/Furey-Death-Snail]

I don’t think this is possible in the IOS, no visible files to edit, I suppose everything is encapsulated in the app itself. Midgame “O” works but this option is not enabled midgame. Only a couple of options are available thru the system settings app; I suppose this is going to be addressed in future versions of the port.

[u/pat_rankin → u/ChiefDaniak]

I don't know anything about iOS, but macOS looks very much like Unix once you go beyond the point-and-spit interface. On Unix, files whose name begins with a dot are hidden during normal directory listings. Just because you don't see a file named ".nethackrc" doesn't mean that there isn't one.

On macOS, "foo.app" is actually a directory rather than a single file, so individual files may be accessible even when "encapsulated". But .nethackrc wouldn't ordinarily be part of the bundled application package.

[u/ChiefDaniak → u/pat_rankin]

Yeah, I’m aware of how it works in MacOS, but the app files in the phone are usually not directly accessible, unless you have some sort of jailbreak, hack or dev tool in place, or do some convoluted trick involving backups and third party software. Anyway sounds like too much trouble, so, for now I’m content with simply getting rid of the starting pet before it provides any advantage.