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This website is adapted from my NetHack 3.1 Help file for Windows. Both were created by Doctor Kildeer (above, center), known to the mundane universe as J Meeks. Most of the information in the site is from that version, though I'll be adding changes for version 3.2.2 as — and when — I can.
Large parts of the text of this site come from the documentation provided with the NetHack 3.1 distribution package, which in turn was adapted from earlier versions. This text was arranged into Windows Help hypertext format, expanded with the author's extensive play notes, and enhanced using Lotus Ami Pro word processor. At one point, the author idiotically deleted the Ami Pro source documents and had to start over copying raw text back from the compiled help file into the word processor — how tedious! Still, it allowed a much-needed revision of the file structures, so it may have been for the best.
It remained in semi-completed form for a long time, until a chance mention of NetHack on the alt.callahans newsgroup reminded of how much fun I'd had playing over the years. It was clear that WinHelp was less suitable than HTML for such a document, so I proceeded to convert the thing. It's going to take a while, but I've started.
Click here for document conventions,
here for detailed credits,
or here for production notes.
Here are the major typographic conventions used in this Help document:
Other color or type conventions may be used in special circumstances, such as the "Secrets of Food" and "Secrets of Changing Luck" tables; what each color or type style means will be described in such places.
Clicking a button like this will take you to further detailed information on a subject. The information you'll find by clicking this button is just explanatory, and contains no big secrets or spoilers, though it may on occasion help you out of a tough bind or clarify something that'd been mystifying you.. |
 Click this kind of button only if you want detailed tips and "secret" information on a topic. These can come in handy if you have 'reached a dead end' and can't get any further. But they can also spoil your fun if you read them before you try things for yourself! |
 This type of button lets you invoke a Mail daemon, which will carry a Scroll of E-mail to my in-box at net@ddress. Note to spammers: I will absolutely never buy or patronize any product or service you advertise via unsolicited commercial e-mail! You've been notified. |
The main original document from which I adapted my own Windows Help file was A Guide to the Mazes of Menace, by Eric S. Raymond, who says large portions were shamelessly cribbed from A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom, by Michael C. Toy and Kenneth C.R.C. Arnold, and small portions were adapted from Further Exploration of the Dungeons of Doom, by Ken Arromdee.
Doctor Kildeer (author of the present website), in the spirit of shamelessness demonstrated by his illustrious predecessors, wishes brazenly to lift once again this information. At great length he's expanded the original program documentation and organized it into hypertext form. He gives thanks to all those brave Hackers who went before, but wishes they'd stop leaving all those cursed magic items all over the nice clean dungeon floors when they die.
Below are the original game credits.
NetHack is the product of literally dozens of people's work. Main events in the course of the game development are described below:
The original Windows Help document on which this website is based was prepared using…
…by J Meeks beginning April 20, 1993. "What a long, strange trip it's been."
The Help file's sources were converted into HTML using HotMetal 4.0 and a lot of elbow grease.
Far beneath all the additions, this site consists of the text of A Guide to the Mazes of Menace, by Eric S. Raymond (which is supplied as the documentation for NetHack 3.1; see Credits). It's been edited, rearranged, and expanded with many notes painfully accumulated by J Meeks during far too many hours of play. In addition, many other people's help-and-hint texts provided valuable information, though much of it is for older versions of the game. If some of the advice in this document turns out simply not to be true, that is one likely reason.
With the exception of cited titles, which are found mostly here in the credits section, anything you see in italics is a direct quotation from the original NetHack documentation.
Please click here
if you have comments, corrections, advice, or hints you would like to
contribute. This will allow you to compose and dispatch to me a Scroll of
E-mail (please include source attribution if possible). You'll have Doctor
Kildeer's heartfelt thanks, as well as a place in NetHack history! (Or at
least on this website.)
Alternatively, or additionally, you might wish to sign
or read 
my Guestbook.
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