Eva Myers's Home Page

I am currently working as a Computer Officer at the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge. For information about the computing facilities of the Laboratory, see my official home page.

• I have a Ph.D. on ``Al/Si Ordering In Silicate Minerals'' from the Department of Earth Sciences.

• I'm an ex-committee member of the Archimedeans (Cambridge University Mathematical Society), and ex-President of the New Quintics (the mathematical society for a number of Cambridge colleges including Christ's, Newnham and Queens').

• I enjoy playing roguelike games, especially Nethack, Slash'EM and ADOM. If you don't know what ``roguelike games'' are, they are turn-based single-player computer games with ASCII graphics in which you are an adventurer who is exploring dungeons, killing monsters and trying to succeed in a difficult quest. The dungeons, monsters and items are usually generated randomly, which gives roguelikes a great deal of replay value. Petri Kuittinen's Guide to Roguelike Games has more information about roguelikes.

  The first roguelike I discovered was Nethack, in which you are an adventurer on a mission to recover the Amulet of Yendor for your deity.

  • Check out my page of myths and facts about Nethack.
  • A spoiler on keeping and training pets in Nethack.
  • If you've made it to Gehennom for the first time, here is a spoiler on surviving the endgame.
  • The nhk script which tabulates the commonest causes of death in a Nethack logfile.
  • My list of all the unusual ways to die in Nethack.
  • Infrequently Asked Questions About Nethack, a list of some of the more intriguing topics discussed on rec.games.roguelike.nethack.
  • A categorised list of the Nethack spoilers which I have found on the Web.

  I also play Slash'EM, a Nethack variant with lots of extra classes and races, new special levels and other new features. Slash'EM can also be downloaded from Ali's Slash'EM page; if you are in the UK you'll find this page much faster than the official Sourceforge site. I have written a collection of Slash'EM spoilers; links to them all can be found on my page of differences between Slash'EM and Nethack.

  Another good roguelike is ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery), in which your aim is to save the world of Ancardia from the invading forces of Chaos. ADOM has a much more complex plot than Nethack or Slash'EM, featuring many useful unique NPCs and multiple ways to win the game, but its user interface is not as friendly as Nethack's. For example, if you read a scroll and it isn't automatically identified, there is no way to name that type of scroll, unlike in Nethack. Here are more comparisons of Nethack and ADOM.

  The best places to go for ADOM spoilers are Andy Williams' ADOM Guidebook and the ADOM Forums (web-based discussion forums where I post as Ekaterin). You can read other people's gameplay tips and add your own at the ADOM Wiki. Here are a few spoilers I have written. These were originally written for version 1.0.0, but should be applicable to the current version.

  • Tables of wilderness encounters including tips on which ones are dangerous and how to deal with them.
  • A list of some obscure messages from the executable and how to get them.
  • Useful and useless strategies for dealing with Khelavaster.

• Here are some of my favourite science-fiction-related links:
  • Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide To Isaac Asimov
  • The Isaac Asimov Home Page
  • The Bujold Nexus
  • Hatrack River - The Official Web Site of Orson Scott Card
  • The Robert A. Heinlein Home Page
  • Cambridge University Science Fiction Society
  • The SF Site: Site Map