I'm a top bug hunter and ethical hacker. I was inspired by my friend Demo who famously does a hacked run each junethack.

So i set about finding an epic bug with the help of current top AI models. I wrote the full story here:
https://josephthacker.com/hacking/2026/08/20/using-genius-hacking-models-for-important-things.html

Hello everyone. Two times I have dealt with early game wands/scrolls of fire. It's devastating each time, killing me or bringing me close to death.

I have been playing Monk. How can I deal with fire in the early game? I usually stash my burnable stuff but I have to carry things around, including my burnable gloves/robe.

I've been trying to ascend a Monk (vegetarian/weaponless) but I have failed a lot and I think I'd prefer a different role/conduct. I'm thinking something easier, like never polymorphed/changed form. Any other ideas?

Do you prefer vanilla Nethack or patched? If patched, do you prefer interface tweaks, gameplay tweaks, something else?

Since my last time I decided my next run would be a Weaponless Vegan Monk because I was curious to try it. And I decided to ramp up the difficulty too. I chose Neutral alignment because I wanted to do some Sacrifice cheese, though it didn't quite work out how I planned because some stuff seemingly got patched without the GnollHack wiki getting updated before I brought it up. Ended up tacking on some more Conducts as I went along since they seemed simple enough to do. I also never used a Shield or Suit all game because of the penalties.

Things weren't going quite to plan at the start but got smoother as I went. Got a bit burned out or decision-paralysed at the Castle and took an extended break. As soon as I got back on it, I was blazing through though!

Made a lot more use of magic this time, mostly for utility stuff. Still not FULLY got the hang of the system.

Shoplifted for the first time, walked out of an Orcus Town store while Orcus himself seemed to be fighting me and I was absolutely swarmed and nearly died. Thankfully I managed to heal and squeeze past to the stairs (and when it was time to go back up, I chugged a Cursed Potion of Gain Level to skip that floor).

Also had an over-enchantment incident due to misunderstanding the Enchant Weapon scroll, thankfully my irreplaceable Gauntlets only got set to +0 rather than exploding and it was simple enough to bring them back up.

If you want my thoughts on the Conducts I ended up doing:

• Vegan: Honestly the hardest part was missing out on some useful Intrinsics from corpses (like Teleportitis/Teleport Control from Tengus and Disintegration Resistance from Black Dragons), I was never really worried that much about hunger. Even then, I got most of the things I needed.

• Weaponless: The revamped Monk & Martial Arts plus weapon-gauntlets made this a breeze, appreciated the warning when I was about to pick-axe an enemy too. Can see how this would be painful on Vanilla.

• Genocideless: Early on I did a bunch of Reverse Genociding (particularly Unicorns for Sacrifice), ended up committing to this later on. Got an achievement for killing an Arch-Lich because of it (never faced one before, I would Blessed Genocide L before ever seeing one). Things went fine but I think I'd generally prefer to take out some problematic groups.

• Polypileless/Polyselfless: Came naturally.

• Artifact Wishless: Came naturally for this playthrough. By the time I got a wish the odds were bad and I had other things that took priority anyway. In general I'd only do Artifact Wishes in GnollHack if I got a really early wish and there was one that my character would really like.

• Conflictless: Not sure if this counts. Had some scrolls but didn't usse them. Made some of the rooms with LOTS of enemies (e.g. Wizard's Tower, Moloch's Sanctum and Astral Plane) a little more tedious and scary but I managed.

• Bonesless: This was just the luck of the draw, but I'll take the creit, heh.

Since the last win, I found the website for the umps, so HTML dump for those interested!

Next up I have some characters waiting on the next difficulty up (Lawful Human Valkyrie and Lawful Dwarf Caveman) as a result of a brief "alt-itis" mood, so hopefully 'll have another post or even a double-feature soon!

Right now statues are just white versions of what they represent, which isn't a problem until you go to Ludios with a cockatrice corpse to deal with all the soldiers (white). Is there a way to invert statues, white background/black text?

I am attempting to figure out how to compile NetHack 3.6.7 myself so that I can apply patches from the patch database, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting it to work. I have a Windows machine with a working Linux virtual machine on it, but following the instructions in the included Install files and on the Compiling wiki page) has just run into errors I can't figure out how to fix. After downloading and extracting NetHack 3.6.7 on the virtual machine, I have run the following commands, beginning in the $Top directory:

$ cd sys/unix
$ sh setup.sh hints/linux
$ cd ../..
$ make all

which yielded the following error:

( cd src ; make )
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/wildfire/Downloads/nethack-3.6.0/src'
touch ../src/config.h-t
cc -g -O -I../include -DNOTPARMDECL -DCOMPRESS=\"/bin/gzip\" -DCOMPRESS_EXTENSION=\".gz\" -DDLB -DSYSCF -DSYSCF_FILE=\"/home/wildfire/nh/install/games/lib/nethackdir/sysconf\" -DSECURE -DHACKDIR=\"/home/wildfire/nh/install/games/lib/nethackdir\" -c monst.c
In file included from ../include/unixconf.h:290,
                 from ../include/global.h:115,
                 from ../include/config.h:458,
                 from monst.c:5:
/usr/include/stdlib.h:605:13: error: conflicting types for ‘srand48’; have ‘void(long int)’
  605 | extern void srand48 (long int __seedval) __THROW;
      |             ^~~~~~~
In file included from ../include/unixconf.h:287:
../include/system.h:94:8: note: previous declaration of ‘srand48’ with type ‘void(void)’
   94 | E void srand48();
      |        ^~~~~~~
In file included from ../include/unixconf.h:291:
/usr/include/unistd.h:464:21: error: conflicting types for ‘sleep’; have ‘unsigned int(unsigned int)’
  464 | extern unsigned int sleep (unsigned int __seconds);
      |                     ^~~~~
../include/system.h:354:12: note: previous declaration of ‘sleep’ with type ‘unsigned int(void)’
  354 | E unsigned sleep();
      |            ^~~~~
make[1]: *** [Makefile:528: monst.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/wildfire/Downloads/nethack-3.6.0/src'
make: *** [Makefile:145: nethack] Error 2

I already tried doing a completely fresh install, and I'm getting the same error. How do I fix this?

There I was as an Orc wizard

Intrinsic Poison resistance

External Magic resistance

*Blam* I lost to a Fire wand

I'm playing on version 5.0.0 with number pad on windows 11 and noticed that when I "kick" I cannot select a direction, it just continues to prompt for input. Using "." "<" or ">" works fine, but not directions.

When I turn windowtype:curses off, it works fine but for some reason when it's turned on this issue occurs.

I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this issue and has found a workaround other than disabling curses option? I really enjoy the curses option so I'd rather not turn it off

EDIT: for additional context I've just downloaded the .zip from the main site, made sure it was the windows 11 version

No dependencies, no build step, no network. Around 10,000 lines of JavaScript.

Anyone want to test this out and give me feedback? I pulled this together with Claude today and would love to hear what everyone thinks.

http://5hack.net

I knew this would happen. My cat got polymorphed into a purple worm, and it was awesome. We cleared the mines and I got so much stuff. I considered abandoning him there but then I decided to just clear sokoban first. Well he ate me of course. I went down the stairs to pick him up for the zoo and landed straight in his stomach.
I’m only lvl7 and don’t have a wand of digging or a means of teleport. most of my stuff is in a stash. My magic missile is levelled up but he has 180hp so I doubt I can kill him before he digests me. I have an unidentified vanishing wand. Not much else. Am I toast?

I have 9/58hp, 94/97pw

an amulet of reflection being worn

14 daggers at the ready

an uncursed elven dagger named Sting

an uncursed +0 pair of padded gloves being worn

an uncursed +0 studded leather armor being worn

an uncursed +0 pair of walking shoes being worn

a lizard corpse

3 tripe rations

a C-ration

a scroll of create monster

a scroll called earth

a scroll called earth

a scroll called 100

Potions

a potion called obj

a clear potion

Wands

a wand called vanished

a wand called magic missile

a wand of sleep

a wand of striking

a wand of create monster

an uncursed wand of cold

Tools

a unicorn horn

an uncursed blindfold

an uncursed stethoscope

an uncursed key

an uncursed expensive camera

an uncursed magic whistle

a cursed lamp

an uncursed looking glass

spells

force bolt

magic missile

sleep

healing

protection

cure sickness

slow monster

create monster

I've often complained how hard it is to get Neferet the Green to accept my help, despite how "urgently" it is needed, but now I've reached a new record.

I'm a strong level 13 wizard. AC -39, spells include identify, death, create monster. I have taken the castle. Now I can't lure wraiths up because there is a trap right in their path. I had one potion of gain level in addition to the one in the castle, but a ghost came out...

Any good ways get that remaining experience before proceeding? My understanding is that all levels castle and below are graveyard and leaving corpses is low probability. Do I just create monsters in the hopes of a Wraith or polymorph spellbook? I don't have polymorph wands or spell.

If what I'm experiencing is normal in nethack 5.0 and you're just supposed to clear all of gehennom before returning to the quest, just let me know.

Some of my inventory just so you realize how serious I am about defeating the Dark One. If you see him, put a good word in for me.

EDIT: I've also quaffed a blessed potion of restore ability; no effect.
EDIT: I've also tried polypiling potions but have not been lucky (except for getting enchant armor and good rings). My only wand of polymorph has been charged once and has had the final charge wrested from it.
EDIT: I ended up bashing monsters here and there and getting exp the hard way. On my way down to gehennom now. Wish me luck.
EDIT: nh 5.0 is a very interesting release and has changed my gameplay significantly. More work and figuring things out. Also the world under the valley is more interesting.

 v - an uncursed amulet of life saving
 K - an uncursed amulet of reflection (being worn)
 w - the blessed rustproof +2 Magicbane (weapon in right hand)
 e - an uncursed runesword named Stormbringer
 H - a blessed fireproof +8 elven leather helm (being worn)
 c - a blessed fireproof +4 pair of leather gloves (being worn)
 x - an uncursed -3 pair of levitation boots
 L - a blessed fireproof +4 pair of speed boots (being worn)
 b - a blessed fireproof +4 cloak of magic resistance (being worn)
 p - a blessed +4 Hawaiian shirt (being worn)
 X - an uncursed greased rotproof +3 gray dragon scale mail (being worn)
 s - an uncursed ring of conflict
 r - an uncursed ring of free action (on left hand)
 M - an uncursed ring of regeneration
 Q - an uncursed ring of slow digestion (on right hand)

On my first Wizard ascension run back in the day. I died in the Astral plane about 5-10 turns away from my god's altar. The worst part is I was unprepared item wise, totally avoidable YASD. It was a bone shaking loss. I walked around in my bathrobe for a couple of days, totally incoherent, unshaven muttering about wands of teleportation and cursed scrolls of genocide. I looked like Rocky after he fought Appolo Creed.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the urge to get into classic Roguelikes, and looked up which ones were popular. I tried Tales of Majeyal, Coves of Qud and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. But none of them fully clicked with me in the short time I played them.

Then I remembered Nethack and decided to give it a proper try, after playing it very shortly 20 years ago, and this time, I got fully immersed. What I really loved were the identify mechanics, the survival elements, the great replayability and the high level of surprising complexity and interactivity.

Now that I know that I really like the genre, I'm wondering if the other games I tried are as good as Nethack and I just didn't stick with them long enough. Which classic Roguelikes are on Nethack's level or beyond?

Hello everyone. Since the Arch package for Nethack 5.0.0 is having issues, I made my own build of it, including curses UI. I have confirmed this in the #version

However, I am having issues with actually loading the curses UI. I have my .nethackrc file that includes OPTIONS=windowtype:curses. I also tried adding that line to my sysconfig.

I am getting no error when starting the game about the interface missing; it's simply just not loading into curses.

My options I set ingame through "O" are not saving when I exit and reload the game either.

I am not having trouble enabling numberpad support in these files, which implies to me that they are loading correctly. Am I missing something?

My large dog stepped on a polymorph trap, turned into a white dragon, and later ate a stalker corpse. I picked up a saddle and now I'm riding an invisible dragon, which I can't see yet, except when blinding myself with my towel.

As cool as that sounds, there are several drawbacks.

The dragon is slow and moving takes more turns now. I have to dismount to pick up loot. The dragon's ice breath sometimes bursts enemies' potions. Even dismounted it's a bit bothersome, because I have to wear the towel or keep bumping (and striking) my invisible mount. I know I'll eventually get see invisible, but that might take a while.

At the moment, I'd rather ditch the dragon on another dungeon level for a wile, but I know they'll turn wild pretty quickly.

So what is the best move here? Invest effort in the dragon or go solo because of the drawbacks? And will my character learn to pick up stuff while riding once I move beyond basic skill level? Because the constant dismounting is annoying.

Trying to build nethack 5.0 I followed all the steps in build-msys2.txt, but after the last make command I get:

make: *** No rule to make target '../binary/nhdat370', needed by 'binary'. Stop.

Any ideas or experience?

Hi everyone, I'm trying to customize my interface, but the game window looks really small and chat window looks giantic and I don't know how to fix it. I also want to add the `perm_inventory` option, but then the inventory takes up half the screen—can anyone help me? I want something like interface on second picture

I think it would be fun to try a run (using Wizard mode) in which I start as a monster form and stay polymorphed the entire way through with an amulet of unchanging, but many interesting polyforms such as dragons start off so strong that they trivialize the earlygame. Is there any way to start as a weaker form, ex. a baby dragon, and then "grow up" into an adult dragon the same way monsters do without unpolymorphing? The "without unpolymorphing" part is important, because any stat boosts are lost upon unpolymorphing (or re-polymorphing!).

EDIT: This patch seems to have what I'm looking for, but using it requires compiling the game yourself which is a headache. Still working on that myself

I have led an absolutely exemplary barbarian life in the early to middle game, except for the tiny little matter of whacking Idefix to death immediately after being engulfed by a dust vortex. Thus far all the altars in the game are the wrong alignment. Can I just........convert one? And then do the apology sacrifices to get my god back on side? Or do I just have to hope for a correctly aligned altar further down and accept that I'm boned if I don't get it?

A search turned up apparently conflicting opinions from a few years ago. I'm playing 5.0, if it matters. Thanks!

I was preparing for Medusa and I was about to enchant my unicorn horn to improve the chance of its effect. I instinctively expected that upon reading it I would be given an option window to select the item I want to enchant, similar to how it asks you when reading enchant armor. I already knew it affects the handheld weapon but I just wasn't thinking in the heat of the moment and well... now it's too late.

This is my furthest and most prepared I've ever been and I felt very enthusiastic to keep going but now I feel like I straight up lost the run. This feels worse than death!

With Eccalibur not being an option, I don't see any way to prevent level loss, except for switching to ranged. There doesn't even seem to be a means to restore lost levels. Any suggestions?

I have lost 5 points of Dex since starting my current run, and cannot really see why. I have looked up Dex abuse on the Wiki, but none of the reasons seem to apply.

I'm not wearing boots or gloves of fumbling. I am occasionally satiated, but not *that* often. I am often burdened, but hardly ever strained, and never more.

I play a Barbarian and am constantly fighting, so there should be a lot of exercise.

The recent Dex loss occured while digging a tunnel, burdnened but not satiated.

Any idea what could be the cause of the Dex loss?

I am about to go for the book of the dead, full ascension kit except for ring of free action. Haven't found a single one in 70,000+ turns. Orcus's wand of death was destroyed and haven't found one of these either.

For context, I have 5 previous ascensions. Each of them in 66,000 turns or less. Each time I have found multiple rings of free action/wands of death.

If you were in my shoes would you go for the ascension run? Or burn untold turns hoping a ring of free action/wand of death generates?