Yes, a little, but I never really got into it. As I recall, Nethack didn’t do what I suggest so much as not tell you what certain things are until you magically indentify them.
Well, there are other ways in NetHack to identify things besides the “identify” spell (which itself must be identified anyways). You can:
Try it out on yourself. This is often definitive, but also often dangerous. Say if you drink a potion, it might be a healing spell… or it might be poison… or it might be fruit juice. 1⁄3 chance of existential failure for a given experiment is crappy odds; knowledge isn’t that valuable.
Get an enemy to try it. Intelligent enemies will often know the identies of scrolls and potions you aren’t yet familiar with. Leaving a scroll or potion on the ground and seeing what the next dwarf that passes by does with it can be informative.
Try it out on an enemy. Potions can be shattered over an enemy’s head instead of being drunk; this is safer than drinking it yourself, though you may not notice the effects as readily, and it’s annoyingly easy to miss and just waste the potion on the wall behind the monster.
Various other methods that can at least narrow down the identification: have your pet walk on it to see if it’s cursed, offer to sell it to to a shopkeep to get an idea of how valuable it is, dip things in unknown potions to see if some obvious effect (i.e. corrosion) occurs, scratch at the ground with unknown wands to see if sparks/flames are created and if so what kind, kick things to see if they are heavy or light, and so on and so on...
The reason NetHack isn’t already the Ideal Experimental Method Game is because once you learn what the right experiments are, you can just use them repeatedly each game; the qualitative differences between magical items are always the same, and it’s just a matter of rematching label to effect for each new session.
On the other hand, for newbie players, where the experimental process might be exciting and novel… well, usually they’re too busy experiencing Yet Another Silly Death to play scientist thoroughly. Heck, a lot of the early deaths will be directly due to un-clever experimentation, which discourages a scientific mindset.
Curiosity killed the cat… indirectly, with a shiny unlabeled Amulet of Strangulation.
And anyways, hardly anybody figures out the solutions to NetHack on their own. The game is just too punishing for that, and the cheatsfiles are too easily available online. (Any NetHack ascendants here who didn’t ever look stuff up online?)
This reminds me of something I did in a D&D game once. My character found three unidentified cauldronsful of potions, so she caught three rats and dribbled a little of each on a different rat. One rat died, one turned to stone, and one had no obvious effects. (She kept the last rat and named it Lucky.)
I didn’t get ahold of vials that would shatter on impact before the game fizzled out (a notorious play-by-post problem). I did at one time get to use Lucky as a weapon, though. Sadly, my character was not proficient with rats.
The reason NetHack isn’t already the Ideal Experimental Method Game is because once you learn what the right experiments are, you can just use them repeatedly each game; the qualitative differences between magical items are always the same, and it’s just a matter of rematching label to effect for each new session.
Yes. That’s why
So the game should generate different sets of fake names for each time it is run, and have some variance in the forms of clues and which NPC’s give them.
isn’t quite the perfect solution: you can still look up a “cookbook” set of experiments to distinguish between Potion That Works and Potion That Will Get You Killed.
To be fair, in real life, it’s perfectly okay that once you determine the right set of experiments to run to analyze a particular phenomena, you can usually use similar experiments to figure out similar phenomena. I’m less worried about infinite replay value and more worried about the game being fun the first time through.
Cookbook experiments will suffice if you are handed potions that may have a good effect or that may kill you. But if you have to figure out how to mix the potion yourself, this is much more difficult. Learning the cookbook experiments could be the equivalent of learning chemistry.
Ever played Nethack? ;)
Yes, a little, but I never really got into it. As I recall, Nethack didn’t do what I suggest so much as not tell you what certain things are until you magically indentify them.
Well, there are other ways in NetHack to identify things besides the “identify” spell (which itself must be identified anyways). You can:
Try it out on yourself. This is often definitive, but also often dangerous. Say if you drink a potion, it might be a healing spell… or it might be poison… or it might be fruit juice. 1⁄3 chance of existential failure for a given experiment is crappy odds; knowledge isn’t that valuable.
Get an enemy to try it. Intelligent enemies will often know the identies of scrolls and potions you aren’t yet familiar with. Leaving a scroll or potion on the ground and seeing what the next dwarf that passes by does with it can be informative.
Try it out on an enemy. Potions can be shattered over an enemy’s head instead of being drunk; this is safer than drinking it yourself, though you may not notice the effects as readily, and it’s annoyingly easy to miss and just waste the potion on the wall behind the monster.
Various other methods that can at least narrow down the identification: have your pet walk on it to see if it’s cursed, offer to sell it to to a shopkeep to get an idea of how valuable it is, dip things in unknown potions to see if some obvious effect (i.e. corrosion) occurs, scratch at the ground with unknown wands to see if sparks/flames are created and if so what kind, kick things to see if they are heavy or light, and so on and so on...
The reason NetHack isn’t already the Ideal Experimental Method Game is because once you learn what the right experiments are, you can just use them repeatedly each game; the qualitative differences between magical items are always the same, and it’s just a matter of rematching label to effect for each new session.
On the other hand, for newbie players, where the experimental process might be exciting and novel… well, usually they’re too busy experiencing Yet Another Silly Death to play scientist thoroughly. Heck, a lot of the early deaths will be directly due to un-clever experimentation, which discourages a scientific mindset.
Curiosity killed the cat… indirectly, with a shiny unlabeled Amulet of Strangulation.
And anyways, hardly anybody figures out the solutions to NetHack on their own. The game is just too punishing for that, and the cheatsfiles are too easily available online. (Any NetHack ascendants here who didn’t ever look stuff up online?)
This reminds me of something I did in a D&D game once. My character found three unidentified cauldronsful of potions, so she caught three rats and dribbled a little of each on a different rat. One rat died, one turned to stone, and one had no obvious effects. (She kept the last rat and named it Lucky.)
Did you try using the two lethal potions as weapons?
I didn’t get ahold of vials that would shatter on impact before the game fizzled out (a notorious play-by-post problem). I did at one time get to use Lucky as a weapon, though. Sadly, my character was not proficient with rats.
It’s a rat-flail!
Nah, I used him as a thrown weapon. (He was fine and I retrieved him later.)
Nethack as ML training environment: https://nethackchallenge.com/
Yes. That’s why
isn’t quite the perfect solution: you can still look up a “cookbook” set of experiments to distinguish between Potion That Works and Potion That Will Get You Killed.
To be fair, in real life, it’s perfectly okay that once you determine the right set of experiments to run to analyze a particular phenomena, you can usually use similar experiments to figure out similar phenomena. I’m less worried about infinite replay value and more worried about the game being fun the first time through.
Cookbook experiments will suffice if you are handed potions that may have a good effect or that may kill you. But if you have to figure out how to mix the potion yourself, this is much more difficult. Learning the cookbook experiments could be the equivalent of learning chemistry.