This is the documentation for a patch for Nethack 3.4.1, the classic roguelike timesink that’s been in development for nearly 15 years, and still has ASCII graphics. That means all the development time has gone into gameplay, and as a result, it’s probably the best game there is.

Download the patch here

A while ago Rob Ellwood suggested some nice YANIs on rec.games.roguelike.nethack, amongst which was the idea that fire and cold resistance should be mutually exclusive. Nasty! I love it! So here it is.

This patch makes fire and cold resistance intrinsics mutually exclusive. This means you can only have one or the other! For example, if you gain fire resistance from eating a corpse, you lose it when you gain cold resistance from eating another corpse, and vice versa. Intrinsics from level gains are not affected. There are some exceptions:

• It is possible for some classes to have both at the same time, since they acquire one intrinsic (Priests), or the other (Valkyries) or both (Monks) naturally as a consequence of level gains.
• Crowning turns fire into cold, and cold into fire, if you have one of them. If you have neither, you get both! I hope this captures their contrary nature and still keeps crowning a Good Thing.

Other implications are:

• ‘Extrinsic’ intrinsics are not affected, so you can still wear rings and armour to get the corresponding resistances.
• This makes rings of fire and cold resistance useful, and makes you think about which rings to wear later on in the game.
• If you have natural fire resistance, and non-natural cold resistance, then get fire resistance from a corpse, you’ll lose cold resistance, and vice versa.
• You’ll still most likely want fire resistance for Gehennom, so watch out for ice devils and Asmodeus!
• For most classes, the only way to get both is to be crowned when having neither. However, getting to the point of crowning without getting either is tricky, since once you get one, you will forever toggle between them, never losing both, unless a gremlin steals one, but this is rather dangerous as you might lose other intrinsics.

This patch undoubtedly makes the game harder, especially in the late stage, which I believe is a good thing. Monsters with cold attacks are currently rather useless, the classic example being Asmodeus, who is trivially easy to beat if you have cold resistance, which practically everyone does by then.

If anyone spots a bug, please tell me.