Rogue: VICTORY!!!!

After six years of blogging, I've just caught up to the CRPG Addict's first post.

And so, after four months and 288 attempts, I have finally completed Rogue.  I wouldn't exactly say that I'm proud of it as an achievement - beating Rogue requires more persistence and luck than genuine skill, I'd say - but it is an achievement nonetheless.  The percentage of people that have played Rogue and beaten it would be pretty small, and the percentage that have beaten it without cheating would be smaller still.  Being able to say that I'm in that small percentage feels pretty good.

Getting "good" at Rogue is a weird process in terms of CRPGs.  For most CRPGs, that process involves improving your character statistically.  If your numbers aren't good enough for a certain fight, you can just go somewhere and kill easier enemies for a while until your numbers improve.  Even proto-roguelikes like The Game of Dungeons, which also featured perma-death, had this as an option.  And yes, even Rogue sort of has this as an option if you happen to find two rings of slow digestion (something that happened to me exactly once in close to 300 games).  But for the most part you're on a hunger timer in Rogue, and the need to find food keeps you from being able to stop and grind for experience.  With that as a limitation, there's no way to avoid death by improving your character, and the only method of advancement is through knowledge.  You learn what the different items do, how strong the various monsters are, and what tactics and items are needed to maximise your survival.  And above all, you learn the value of patience.  It's a rare CRPG where the player's improvement is vastly more important than that of the character.

For me, things didn't click until right near the end.  I spent months sending characters into the Dungeon of Doom, with very little to show for it in terms of improved performance.  For every game where I made it down to level 20, I'd have a dozen more where I didn't even make it to level 10, or died on level 1.  Up until a few days ago I hadn't even found the Amulet of Yendor, and I was starting to worry that I'd be playing this game forever.

Then, out of nowhere, I had a game where I made it to level 26 of the dungeon and found the Amulet.  I had no idea what it was going to look like, and it turned out that it was disguised as a comma, hidden among the full stops that represent an empty space.

I hadn't done anything different than usual during that game, but I did have a number of advantages over the average adventurer: good armour, a two-handed sword, a high Strength score, and loads of hit points.  Having a decent hit point total is crucial to beating the game, and unfortunately that's something that's almost completely out of the player's hands.

Once you find the Amulet of Yendor, you need to take it all the way back to the surface: that means traversing levels 26 through 1 all over again in reverse order.  They aren't the same levels, either; the level 25 you just beat won't have the same layout the second time you tackle it.  The amulet doesn't give you any extra offensive powers, but I think it does stop you from getting hungry.  At least, I don't recall having to eat any food while carrying it.

Anyway, the first time I found the amulet didn't go so well.  I made it back to the stairs and climbed to level 25, but then I walked right into a trapdoor that dumped me back to level 26.  Then I walked into another trapdoor and found myself on level 27.  Then after I found the stairs I stupidly went down instead of going up.  Eventually I fought my way back up from level 28 to level 25, only to get cornered by a pair of Umber Hulks, confused, and killed.  Umber Hulks are the worst.

After that game, though, things just fell into place for me.  I had 34 more game after that, and in 25 of them I made it past level 16 (which is where the game starts to get really hairy).  I'm not sure exactly what had changed, except perhaps that I was more engaged and "switched on".  Finding the amulet was a real shot in the arm, and I was playing with a lot more determination and patience, and also a better knowledge of what I needed to win.

I'd like to say that skill was the sole factor in my eventual victory, but to be honest I hit the absolute motherlode in terms of luck and item drops.  I found banded mail armour early on, and several scrolls of enchant armour.  I found a two-handed sword around the mid-levels, and was able to enchant that once as well.  With potions I enhanced my Strength score, and managed to keep a potion of restore strength in reserve so that I'd have that score when it was needed most.  My hit points were good.  And best of all, in defiance of all the odds, I found two scrolls of genocide.

Besides finding the Amulet of Yendor, there's little more exciting in Rogue than getting your hands on a scroll of genocide.  I don't think they're included in the later versions (correct me if I'm wrong).  When you read one, you get to completely wipe a monster from the game.  I never hesitated to wipe out Umber Hulks: their confusion gaze and the near-total lack of agency that resulted made them by far the deadliest monster near the end of the game.  With two of these scrolls, I genocided Umber Hulks and kept the second scroll in reserve.  That way, if any monster type ever looked like killing me I had a guaranteed ace up my sleeve.

As it turned out, I didn't need it.  Without Umber Hulks to worry about, I found that I was formidable enough in battle to survive most situations.  Of the monsters on the lower dungeon levels, only Xorns gave me much trouble.  Vampires aren't all that hard, and Mimics are easily killed after their initial surprise attack (they disguise themselves as other items in the game).  Dragons and Purple Worms are tough, but I never encountered any that were hostile; they just sat motionless while I skirted around them.  I did get level-drained by a Wraith (twice), but that was the extent of my difficulty.  Any other monster that I didn't fancy fighting hand-to-hand I bumped off with my wands of drain life (which drain half your current hit point total and deal that as damage to the target).  I descended to level 26, found the Amulet of Yendor, and got back up to the surface with only minor difficulties.

I have to say that on the way back, once I got to level 15 or so, I felt great.  By that point I'd left the really tough monster behind, and all that were left were things like Centaurs, Quasits, Orcs, Hobgoblins, etc.  Victory was assured, and it was kind of like taking an extended victory lap while I murdered a whole ton of monsters that had previously made my life hell.  There are other games that have given me this experience before: Half Life 2 springs to mind, as the souped-up gravity gun near the end of that game makes you pretty unstoppable, and the final battle in Super Metroid is another great gaming moment where it's just about impossible to lose.  More games could stand to go easy on the player in the final stretch, I find it to be a nice end-of-game reward.

Here's my winning character on the cusp of victory:

And this is the inventory I had at that moment:

Just before I left the dungeon, I ate all of my food and drank my last potion of healing. Then, with great deliberation, I unfurled my scroll of genocide and took great pleasure in wiping out every Xorn in the dungeon.  Vengeance is sweet, and unnecessary vengeance is all the sweeter.

So Rogue is done, and I have to say that it's been one of the best experiences I've had with a game on this blog.  Frustrating, yes, and far far too time-consuming.  But unlike other games that have eaten up far too much of the blog's time, I'd quite happily sit down and have another crack at the game right now.  It has problems, but I expect it to do very well on the RADNESS Index.

RADNESS INDEX

Story & Setting: This is one of the categories where this game will fall down the hardest, because the story is absolute nonsense.  The goal of the game is to find the Amulet of Yendor at the bottom of the dungeon, simply so that you can be admitted to the Guild of Fighters.  It's a reward that in no way befits the difficulty of the task in question, and really calls into question the sanity of the hundreds of adventurers I sent to their deaths.  As for the setting, the Dungeon of Doom is a random labyrinth whose rooms and tunnels are represented in ASCII.  Any atmosphere here comes from the game mechanics, and not much else. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters and Monsters: There aren't any characters to interact with as such, but it's not that kind of game.  What it does have is monsters - 26 in total - and each of those has its own abilities and behaviour.  From the weak bats that flit about at random to the tough Umber Hulks with their confusing gaze, from the Wraith that drains levels to the Troll that regenerates, this game might have the most well-realised line-up of monsters seen yet, and the most faithful to its Dungeons & Dragons-inspired roots.  Rating: 5 out of 7.

Combat: The core combat here is basic: you simply exchange blows with your enemy until one of you has been killed.  But with the ability to maneuver, and the raft of items available, Rogue has what is probably the most tactical and enjoyable combat to date.  Why exchange blows when you can use a wand of drain life, or a healing potion, or a scroll that teleports you out of the battle entirely?  Like Akalabeth before it, the entire game engine is available during battle, and that opens up a lot of options, but Rogue has far more variables in play, and makes for a much more exciting experience.  My one complaint is that it can be a bit random at times, but that's true of most games of this vintage, and of D&D itself.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Aesthetics: This is Rogue's weakest point, for sure: it has no sound, and its graphics are entirely represented by ASCII characters.  It's functional, and it does have a certain charm - enough so that the genre inspired by it still frequently uses the same style - but it's still a definite failing.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: It's tempting to give this game a very high score here, because everything about it just works.  The monsters, the items, the combat, the exploration... it all melds together into an incredibly tense gaming experience.  It also controls really well.  There are a load of keyboard commands, and some keys do different things depending on whether they're capitalised or not, which you'd think would be terrible.  In practice it works, especially when you get to the point where you no longer need to consult a cheat sheet.  Even so, I feel like the randomisation lets it down.  There are some games where you just can't win, regardless of how well you play, and that's a let down.  Rating 5 out of 7.

Challenge: This is undoubtedly one of the most enjoyably challenging games I've ever played, but it is far too random to score highly here.  In some games, like the one where I beat it, all the items you need fall into your lap.  In others, you get nothing, and limp into the high levels with 30 hit points and not a prayer of victory.  Ideally, you'd stand a chance of winning in every game after mastering its tactics, but that's not the case here.  That's not cool, but at the same time, there's just something about Rogue that kept me coming back and trying again.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Fun: Despite how futile, random and frustrating it can be, Rogue is a lot of fun.  I think that's because of how open it is: no two games are ever alike, and there's no end to the situations you can find yourself in.  Sure, it sucks to win a hard-fought battle against a Xorn, only to take one step into a trap door, fall down a pit, and get instantly killed by Quasit.  Yes, it sucks when you polymorph a Bat into a Purple Worm and get eaten on Level 1.  But what other games of this vintage allow such variety?  There are plenty of times playing Rogue where my death was inevitable, but I always felt like there was something I could try.  Plus, after nearly 300 games and four months I still feel like playing it. That has to count for something. Rating: 5 out of 7.

Bonus Points: I'm giving Rogue the full two bonus points, for inspiring an entire genre.

The above scores total 25; that score doubled, with the bonus points added, gives a RADNESS Index of 52.  That puts it on top of the CRPG pile, six points ahead of The Game of Dungeons v5.4.  It doesn't crack the top of the overall list though, as Zork is well ahead on 64 points.  At this early stage, though, I feel pretty good about two genuine classics like Rogue and Zork topping the charts on this blog.

NEXT: To be honest, I'm not sure what comes next.  This pandemic situation has me going through some bullshit, and as readers of my other blogs will know I'm currently taking a blogging hiatus.  I'll call it a hiatus for now, because I'm pretty sure that I just need a break, but it's entirely possible that I might not be back.  If that's the case, and this is my final post, I'd like to thank my regular readers, and I hope you've enjoyed what I've been doing here.  I'll still be reading comments on the blog, and I'll be on Twitter (@NPMahney) if you want to get in touch.

Rogue: An Obligatory Mid-Week Post

It took me a bit longer to get Haunt up and running than I thought it would - I had to figure out how to use Telnet - and to be honest my blogging fervour has somewhat subsided from the insane level it was at back in April.  So I haven't been playing any games other than Rogue, which while still fun for me is death for the blog.  I'm determined to keep up my twice-a-week schedule, though, so I'll half-arse a quick post and hope that you're all satisfied.

I've lost another 17 characters since my last post.  This includes five deaths on the first dungeon level, 9 in the mid-levels, one to a Yeti while grinding for XP on level 15, and one to a hung game.  This is becoming a real problem:  I've had a few games that just became completely unresponsive to my keyboard commands.  I've taken some steps to fix it, but I might be violating Rogue etiquette.

Of those 17 games, I had one that was really promising.  I found a two-handed sword, and managed to enchant it a couple of times.  I was wearing plate mail armour.  I had a stash of potions of restore strength, and a Strength score of 18/78.  (Rogue uses the odd D&D rule where fighters with an 18 Strength get to roll percentile dice to see if they get any extra bonuses).  I had a scroll of scare monster, which I was pretty stoked about.  And I had a ring of slow digestion, among other things.  That's a pretty hard equipment list to beat.

By the time I got down to dungeon level 13, I'd also amassed nine portions of food, and between that and the ring I had plenty of time to grind for XP.  At this point - and this is what I meant about the breach of Rogue etiquette - I backed up my save file.  I gather that it's not the done thing among Rogue aficionados, but I wasn't doing it for the purpose of cheating.  This was a failsafe against the game hanging on me.  I'm happy enough to start over when I legitimately fail, but this was a character that I didn't want to lose to technical issues.

I spent a good long while on level 13, doing laps of the level and fighting Quasits, Centaurs, Yetis and other weaker monsters.  I was wearing bad armour so that my plate mail would be protected from Rust Monsters, but I didn't run into any problems.  Advancement is slow though - the strongest monster there is the Yeti, which is worth 50 XP.  I managed to advance to level 11, which requires 5,160 XP.  Getting to level 12 requires double that, which seems like a pretty tough ask.  You could do it quickly enough fighting monsters like Dragons and Purple Worms, but survival is no guaranteed thing against those.  By the time I reached level 11 I only had three meals left, so it was time to move on.

I was extremely confident about my chances, and the first few levels below 13 went by like a breeze.  Unfortunately, it all came unstuck on level 16.  I looked at the list of monsters to see which was introduced on that level: Invisible Stalkers.  I scoffed, feeling that I could handle them without trouble.  Of course, when I did meet one it was nothing but trouble.  I noticed I was getting hit, and started flailing about at random trying to find my assailant.  I finally got a hit in, but by then it had reduced me to about 15 hit points.  I was getting desperate at that point, so I dropped my scroll of scare monster on the ground.  I had wanted to save it for the Xorns, Umber Hulks and worse monsters lower down, but I wasn't going to reach those depths unless I did something now.

With the scroll at my feet, I knew that I couldn't be damaged, so I made my attack.  The thing is, you attack in Rogue by moving.  And the Invisible Stalker wasn't in the square where it had previously been.  So I moved off of my protective scroll, breaking the magic, and promptly got killed.  Chalk up another dumb way to die in Rogue.

I was really banking on that scroll, I must admit.  I've found plenty of them before, but never more than one in a game, and I have a tendency to read scrolls before identifying them.  With the scroll of scare monster, that's a complete waste.  On this game I encountered a Zombie with the scroll on the ground between us, and I noticed the Zombie move around it to get to me.  That's not normal monster behaviour in Rogue, and I quickly realised to save that scroll rather than use it.  Sure enough, it was what I thought it was.  Not that it helped me much, but I'll be keeping an eye out for more such scrolls.

I don't have any other images from the above game for this post, so here one of me fleeing from an absurdly powerful cadre of monsters on dungeon level 3.  I'd tested out a polymorph wand on a Kobold in the bottom left room, turning it into a series of monsters that were far too strong for me.  The last monster I turned it into before running out of wand charges was the worst possible: a Purple Worm.  So I fled all the way across the dungeon, avoiding monsters and luckily finding the stairs.  It was a narrow escape, not that the character got much further.

The sort of tension that only a roguelike can create.

I expect to post about Haunt on Sunday, but I wouldn't bank on it.  I run D&D on Saturday nights now, which leaves me pretty knackered the next day.  Plus I'm determined to beat Rogue, and it's been monopolising all of my gaming time.  I'm not sure how much more content I can eke out of it before winning, and winning seems a long way off.

Rogue: Death, Genocide, and Data Compilation

I've just recently started up a new D&D campaign using video chat, so that's eaten up a decent amount of my time in the last few days.  As such, I haven't done much gaming aside from the odd bit of Rogue.  I'd like to be able to say that I've gotten better at it, but I'm not all that sure that Rogue is a game that you can get better at.  Sure, eventually you learn to stop doing a bunch of dumb things, but eventually that plateaus and you're pretty much at the mercy of the game's RNG and the inventory that it bestows upon you.

Since my last post, I've lost another 23 adventurers, for a grand total of 53.  Of those 23, nine have been lost on the 1st level before leveling up.  Five have been lost in the mid-levels, usually to Centaurs.  Four of those failures happened in the teen levels.  Twice I've had the game freeze up, and been forced to reboot; on one of those I was on level 19, which was particularly tooth-gnashing.  Once I died on level 3 because I forgot to eat, and a Giant Ant killed me after I had fainted from hunger.  My best game so far saw me descending all the way to level 20, but I was predictably killed after being confused by an Umber Hulk.  On the last game I had, I was about to be killed by a Centaur, so in desperation I used a polymorph wand on it.  It turned into a Purple Worm, which killed me even faster.

I haven't discovered much else in the way of magic items, except for this one amazing find:

Ah yes, genocide.  That well known boon.

A Scroll of Genocide!  With this item, you can wipe any one type of monster completely from the dungeon for that game.  I knew these scrolls existed in later roguelikes, but I had no idea that they were in Rogue itself.  They must be a pretty rare drop, I've only ever found one of them in 53 games.  Anyway, I didn't hesitate too much to nominate Umber Hulks as my target of genocide.  Unfortunately, I didn't manage to progress much deeper than level 10 in that game, so I never got to reap the benefit of my mass-killing.  It was still pretty satisfying though.

One thing I've continued to do is collect data on what levels the various monsters appear on.  Today I compared my data to that extracted from the code by Ahab over at Data Driven Gamer, and filled in the gaps for the monsters I hadn't encountered yet.  The ranges I came up with matched those posted by Ahab almost exactly.  I took those numbers, and made a list that goes level by level, showing what monsters can appear.  It's a little bit like cheating, but from earlier games of Rogue I already had a fair idea of what the monsters were.

Dungeon Level	Monsters Encountered
1	Kobold, Jackal, Bat, Snake, Hobgoblin
2	Kobold, Jackal, Bat, Snake, Hobgoblin, Floating Eye
3	Kobold, Jackal, Bat, Snake, Hobgoblin, Floating Eye, Giant Ant
4	Kobold, Jackal, Bat, Snake, Hobgoblin, Floating Eye, Giant Ant, Orc
5	Kobold, Jackal, Bat, Snake, Hobgoblin, Floating Eye, Giant Ant, Orc, Zombie
6	Kobold, Jackal, Bat, Snake, Hobgoblin, Floating Eye, Giant Ant, Orc, Zombie, Gnome
7	Jackal, Bat, Snake, Hobgoblin, Floating Eye, Giant Ant, Orc, Zombie, Gnome, Leprechaun
8	Bat, Snake, Hobgoblin, Floating Eye, Giant Ant, Orc, Zombie, Gnome, Leprechaun, Centaur
9	Snake, Hobgoblin, Floating Eye, Giant Ant, Orc, Zombie, Gnome, Leprechaun, Centaur, Rust Monster
10	Hobgoblin, Floating Eye, Giant Ant, Orc, Zombie, Gnome, Leprechaun, Centaur, Rust Monster, Quasit
11	Floating Eye, Giant Ant, Orc, Zombie, Gnome, Leprechaun, Centaur, Rust Monster, Quasit, Nymph
12	Giant Ant, Orc, Zombie, Gnome, Leprechaun, Centaur, Rust Monster, Quasit, Nymph, Yeti
13	Orc, Zombie, Gnome, Leprechaun, Centaur, Rust Monster, Quasit, Nymph, Yeti, Troll
14	Zombie, Gnome, Leprechaun, Centaur, Rust Monster, Quasit, Nymph, Yeti, Troll, Wraith
15	Gnome, Leprechaun, Centaur, Rust Monster, Quasit, Nymph, Yeti, Troll, Wraith, Violet Fungus
16	Leprechaun, Centaur, Rust Monster, Quasit, Nymph, Yeti, Troll, Wraith, Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker
17	Centaur, Rust Monster, Quasit, Nymph, Yeti, Troll, Wraith, Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker, Xorn
18	Rust Monster, Quasit, Nymph, Yeti, Troll, Wraith, Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker, Xorn, Umber Hulk
19	Quasit, Nymph, Yeti, Troll, Wraith, Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker, Xorn, Umber Hulk, Mimic
20	Nymph, Yeti, Troll, Wraith, Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker, Xorn, Umber Hulk, Mimic, Vampire
21	Yeti, Troll, Wraith, Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker, Xorn, Umber Hulk, Mimic, Vampire, Dragon
22	Troll, Wraith, Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker, Xorn, Umber Hulk, Mimic, Vampire, Dragon, Purple Worm
23	Wraith, Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker, Xorn, Umber Hulk, Mimic, Vampire, Dragon, Purple Worm
24	Violet Fungus, Invisible Stalker, Xorn, Umber Hulk, Mimic, Vampire, Dragon, Purple Worm
25	Invisible Stalker, Xorn, Umber Hulk, Mimic, Vampire, Dragon, Purple Worm

I'm hoping that the information above can help me to plan out my runs a bit better.  Already I can see that the strength-draining Giant Ants are gone at level 13, and the armour-draining Rust Monsters are gone at level 19.  Looking at that list, it appears to me that level 13 is the safest place to grind for experience.  It's after the Giant Ants, but before the level-draining Wraiths, which can make advancement almost impossible.  The major nuisances on level 13 are Rust Monsters, but even when wearing no armour you have a good chance of surviving against the monsters there.  Next time I find a Ring of Slow Digestion I'm going to park on that level and earn as much XP as possible until my food reserves run low.  Hopefully, that will be my key to victory, or at least a run that gets me deeper than level 20.

Rogue: Email Addresses Make Me Nervous Now

Hey, guess what? You're not going to believe this, but I haven't beaten Rogue yet.

Okay, so that's pretty much to be expected.  To be honest, I haven't even gotten close.  My best efforts saw me getting down to level 19; in one of those I took one step right into an Umber Hulk and died almost instantly, and in the other I teleported away from an Umber Hulk only to be killed by a Xorn.  None of my tactics really seem to be helping, as I'm not reaching the deeper levels with any sort of consistency.  I'm just as likely to get cornered by Centaurs on level 8 as I am to descend further than level 15, and I really hoped I'd be doing better by this point.

So what I'm going to do with this post is lay out all the things that I've discovered about the game and try to use that to com up with a battle plan.  I'll start with the monsters, especially as they might be significantly different to the ones in the commercial version of Rogue that most of you will have played.  There's not an Emu to be seen here.

• A is for Giant Ant.  As far as I can tell, they start appearing on dungeon level 3, and stop appearing after level 12.  Giant Ants are among my most hated enemies in the game, as they have a sting that drains a point from your Strength.  It actually doesn't hamper your combat effectiveness on the low and mid-levels, but having a high Strength is almost a necessity when stronger enemies start appearing.  There's a potion that restores your Strength, and I try to keep one to drink as soon as I hit level 13.  There's no point drinking one before that, because you're almost guaranteed to get drained again at some point.
• B is for Bat.  The weakest enemy in the game, I've encountered them between levels 1 and 8.  They don't attack you directly, but instead just move at random and take the occasional swipe at you.  They're not dangerous unless you're already in some dire straits, but they can be difficult to hit.
• C is for Centaur.  Centaurs start appearing around level 8, and I've encountered them as low as level 17.  For me, Centaurs have been the first real hurdle in the game.  After you gain some XP most of the monsters you fight will be trivial, until the Centaurs show up.  They hit harder than anything encountered previously, and I've had a lot of ill-equipped characters go down to them.
• D is for Dragon, I seem to recall.  I haven't encountered one yet.
• E is for Floating Eye.  These monsters appear between levels 2 and 11, and are completely non-aggressive.  They just sit there motionless, until you attack them.  You don't want to let one near you though, because they have a paralysing attack which can leave you helpless for other monsters.  The best tactic is either to ignore them or kill them with missile weapons.
• F is for Violet Fungus.  I haven't recorded the levels that I've encountered these on.  Like Floating Eyes they're stationary, but if you move next to one you won't be able to move away.  They don't seem to do a lot of damage, but they do take a lot of hits to kill.  Like the Eyes, they're best killed from a distance.
• G is for Gnome.  I've encountered these between level 6 and 15, and they're among the easiest enemies in the game.  By the time you meet them they're a trivial nuisance, and you can slaughter them with impunity.
• H is for Hobgoblin.  The terrors of level 1.  Before you gain extra hit points, Hobgoblins are the enemies you most want to avoid.  They lose their deadliness once you've gained a level or two, but they're definitely the leading cause of death for low-level characters.
• I is for Invisible Stalker.  Again, I haven't recorded where I've met these, but they don't start showing up until around level 15.  Not that they show up at all, because you can't see them without the right magic ring.  They hit pretty hard too.
• J is for Jackal.  A fairly easy enemy from the first few dungeon levels.
• K is for Kobold: Maybe the weakest enemy in the game aside from Bats.  They're the only other monster that's only worth 1 experience point.
• L is for Leprechaun: These monsters aren't hostile, and if you attack them all they do in retaliation is steal your gold and disappear.  I suppose that's a problem if you're playing for points, but if you're going for the Amulet of Yendor it's no big deal.  I always attack them for the potential experience points.
• M is for ???  I have no idea yet.
• N is for Nymph.  Like the Leprechauns they're not hostile, but when you attack them they steal one of your magic items.  They're worth killing though, because they drop items when defeated.  You want to do it with missile weapons though.
• O is for Orc.  Another fairly weak enemy that appears in the mid-levels.  They've never posed much danger to me.
• P is for ??? Another one I haven't met yet.
• Q is for Quasit.  They show up starting around level 10.  They don't do a lot of damage, but they're hard to hit, so they can still pose a danger with repeated blows.
• R is for Rust Monster. Another hated enemy.  They show up around level 9, and I haven't gotten far enough to figure out when they stop appearing.  Every hit they land on you worsens your armour by 1 point of Armour Class.  This even works on leather armour, which I thought wasn't the case; perhaps it's something that got fixed in a later version.  The only thing to do is take off your armour when you see one, and hope you still have something decent to wear when you hit the lower levels.  Or to just suck it up with an AC of 9 while you keep a good suit of armour in reserve.
• S is for Snake.  Another of the weaker low-level enemies.  Not venomous, thankfully.
• T is for Troll.  They start appearing on level 14, and when they do you know things are about to get serious.  They hit hard, and they take quite a few hits to kill. I suspect they regenerate hit points, but there's no way to know for sure.
• U is for Umber Hulk.  Of the enemies on the deepest levels, these are the ones I remember hating the most.  When they hit you, they cause confusion, which makes you act at random.  Once that happens it's game over, as even the strongest characters will go down to three or four hits from an Umber Hulk.  Best avoided at all costs.
• V is for Vampire, I think.  I haven't encountered one yet.
• W is for Wraith.  They aren't too bad, except that sometimes their blows drain your experience points, which lowers your hit points and makes you weaker in general.  You get some, but not all, of these points back when you kill the one that drained you.  Wraiths are best dealt with from a distance.
• X is for Xorn.  Alongside Umber Hulks, the high-level enemy that usually cooks my goose.  I'm not sure what abilities they have beyond hitting hard and being tough to kill, but that's more than enough.
• Y is for Yeti.  A mid-level enemy that's reasonably tough, but nothing to get too worried about unless you're already beat up.
• Z is for Zombie.  Mid-level undead that are usually not much of a problem.

About to be killed by a Xorn.

I'll list out the magic items I've found as well, beginning with the potions.  Whenever I find a potion, I tend to drink it right away so that type will be identified from then on.  There are some detrimental ones, but only one of them is a real inconvenience.

• Confusion: Makes you confused when you drink it, but doesn't last all that long.
• Healing.
• Extra-Healing: I think there are two levels of healing potion but I'm not certain.
• Haste: Makes you faster but wears off after about a half-dozen moves.
• Gain Strength: Adds a point to your Strength.  These are best saved for when your Strength is at maximum, or they don't count towards your total when you use the next potion.
• Restore Strength: Brings your Strength back to whatever it's highest total has been.  Usually that's 16, but the Gain Strength potion can make it higher.
• Monster Detection: Gives you a screenshot of where all the monsters on the dungeon level are.
• Blindness: Makes you blind, which is pretty bad.  You can't see your surroundings, and you have no idea what monsters are attacking you.  It lasts for a while too, although it's survivable if you drink one on the early to mid levels.
• Paralysis: Makes you immobile for a short time, which is normally not a big deal.  I've tried throwing them at monsters, but it doesn't seem to affect them.
• Magic Detection: Shows you where the magic items on the level are.
• Poison: Knocks a point off your Strength.
• Gain Level: You gain an entire experience level, which can be great depending on how much XP you have.  Invariably I drink one when I'm only ten points away from my next level gain, which is pretty annoying.
• There's one potion that tastes like the juice of whatever fruit you specify in the options menu. I have no idea if there's another effect.
• The final potion gives you a "strange feeling", but otherwise I have no idea what it does.

Drinking a Potion of Gain Strength

These are the rings I've found.  Rings have some great effects, but a lot of them cause you to get hungry faster when you wear them, so it's a trade-off.  I tend not to put them on until I've identified them.

• Aggravate Monster: I think this one just makes every monster you meet hostile, but most of them are that way anyway.  I don't know if it makes them stronger at all.
• Preserve Strength: Makes it so nothing can drain your Strength score.
• Searching: Makes it easier for you to find traps and secret doors.
• Blinking: This is a cursed ring that teleports you to a random location on the same level every now and then.  It can be annoying, but it can also be a life-saver.  I'd like to try a run at the deeper dungeon levels while wearing one.
• See Invisible: Lets you see Invisible Stalkers.
• Slow Digestion: Makes it so you need a lot less food.  You can actually grind for XP once you find one of these.
• Increase Damage: I suppose this gives you a bonus to damage dealt, although it could make the monsters do more damage, I have no idea.
• Dexterity: Increases your Dexterity, although there are cursed versions that do the opposite. Your Dexterity score isn't visible, and I have no idea what it affects.  Trap evasion, maybe?
• Protection: I'm not sure if this increases your Armour Class or reduces monster damage, but either way it makes you harder to kill.
• Strength: Grants a Strength bonus. I don't know if it can take you over a score of 18.

Scrolls are next.  I tend not to read scrolls until I have an item that's worth identifying, because I don't want to risk wasting a Scroll of Identify.

• Identify: Tells you what a magic item is.  Maybe one of the most important items in the game.
• Light: A one-use item that lights up a dark room.  Not all that helpful.
• Enchant Weapon: Grants a +1 bonus to your weapon's damage or ability to land a hit.
• Teleport: Takes you to a random spot on the same dungeon level, which can be a very handy method of escape.
• Remove Curse: Lets you remove any cursed items that you're wearing.
• Confusion: Makes your hands glow red. The next blow that you strike will confuse that enemy.  I'd love, just once, to land one of these on an Umber Hulk.
• Mapping: Reveals the entire map of the level you're on.
• Enchant Armor: Gives  a +1 AC bonus to the armour you're wearing.
• Detect Gold: Shows you where the gold on the level is.
• Sleep: Puts you to sleep for a short time.
• Summon Monster: A random monster appears next to you, although I think it limits it to monsters that can actually show up on that level.  At least I think so, because I haven't summoned a Dragon by accident.
• Blank: I read a scroll that was completely blank once, not sure what that's about.
• There are scrolls that, when I read them, make me hear a maniacal laughter in the distance.
• Another type of scroll makes a humming noise.
• There's a scroll that makes me feel a pull downwards.  I haven't figured out any of the last three.

Casting an Enchant Weapon scroll

Finally, the staves and wands.  I'll give them a test zap when I find one, on the off chance that I can identify it.  If not, I'll try to test it on a weak enemy.  It wastes charges, but it saves on Identify Scrolls.

• Haste Monster: Makes a monster move faster.  Not good.
• Light: Lights up the room you're in.  One of these with a lot of charges is really handy on the lower levels, so that you can see the monsters coming.
• Striking: Deals damage to a monster at close range.
• Lightning: Damages monsters at range, and rebounds off walls.  I'm reluctant to use these, because I've been caught in an infinite loop of lightning rebounds that made the game hang.
• Slow Monster: Good for running away, because normally the monsters move at the same rate as you do.
• Magic Missile: A ranged attack that doesn't do a lot of damage.
• Polymorph: Transforms a monster into another kind of monster.  Can be great, but can also get you into all sorts of trouble.
• There's also an attack staff that causes tingling when I use it.  I'm not sure what this is.

So that's the extent of what I've discovered about the game.  Looking over it, I think I've come up with a list of things that I need to survive on the lower levels.  Good armour is almost a necessity, as is a good weapon: a two-handed sword kills enemies much faster than any other kind of weapon.  A Gain Strength potion is needed, to restore any losses incurred by Giant Ants, or a Ring of Preserve Strength.  Healing potions are also handy, but it can be hard to build up a big store of them.  A Ring of Slow Digestion is an absolute must, as it gives you the luxury to linger on the mid-levels and build up your XP.  I suppose I could also hang about if I happen to have a run where I have over ten meals, which happened to me once. Finally, I think I need a bunch of items to help avoid the toughest monsters: scrolls of teleport, wands of light, and wands of polymorph are all handy for that.  Plus, of course, a few scrolls of Identify so I know what I'm carrying.

Potions of healing, a +3 mace, several options for fleeing and a
Ring of See Invisible; this is a pretty good load-out

The smart thing would be for me to keep playing the early dungeon levels, and starting over if my character hasn't put together a few of the items above.  It would probably save me some time, for sure.  I'm not going to do that just yet, because I'm still having fun just playing the game.  Eventually, though, I think I'll have to do it in the interests of making some progress on the blog.  I know I spent a year on Moria and The Game of Dungeons, but I don't want a repeat of those experiences.

And now, finally, I present to you my litany of failures, with a roll call of the adventurers who have perished in the Dungeons of Doom.

• Kejakena got killed on level 13 by a Troll.
• Nobody VI was killed on level 3 by a Giant Ant, which is a pretty unusual way to go.
• Jack Manley made it all the way to level 18 before meeting a Xorn and getting pummeled to death.  As with all Jack Manley appearances on this blog, this is strictly non-canon as far as my novels are concerned.
• Nobody VII was paralysed by a Floating Eye, which caused the game to hang.
• Sparhawk was softened up by a procession of Centaurs and Quasits, and finally succumbed to a Zombie on level 7.
• Robilar had a two-handed sword and two Rings of Increase Damage, but that didn't stop a Troll on level 14 from eating him.
• Nobody VIII and Nobody IX both got killed by Hobgoblins on level 1 of the dungeon.  The curse of the Nobody family strikes again.
• Mordenkainen got cornered between two Centaurs on level 8.
• Nobody X became a credit to his ancestors by making it all the way down to level 19 before being confused and killed by an Umber Hulk.  His many descendants will come to avenge him.
• Tenser got cornered between two Centaurs on level 12, a common fate for characters with names taken from the original Greyhawk campaign it seems.
• Kael got cornered between two Centaurs.  It was a good day for the Centaurs, that's for sure.
• Nobody XI failed to avenge his father by getting killed by a Hobgoblin on level 1.
• Nobb died on level 14 because I held down the space bar to search for a secret door at the end of a tunnel.  I found one, but the Centaur behind it got a load of free hits and killed me.
• Nobody XII was killed by a Zombie on level 8.
• Nobody XIII was killed by a Centaur on level 8.
• Bain got to level 19 with the inventory you see above, and a Strength of 18.  I was pretty hopeful, but it went wrong when I got confused by an Umber Hulk. I teleported away to escape, but while I was waiting out the confusion I was cornered by a Xorn.  You can still use items when confused, so I tried to last with healing potions until I could fight back, but it wasn't enough.

That's been 30 characters so far, with little signs of improvement.  Six of those deaths were on level 1, and six were on level 8: that ramp-up in difficulty that comes with the Centaurs has taken its toll.  After that, levels 14 and 16 have killed three adventurers each, levels 12 and 19 have claimed two, and a whole bunch of levels have claimed one.

It was worth a shot.

I'll definitely keep plugging away at Rogue, but I don't intend to make that the sole focus of the blog.  There's good news on the Futurewar front, as the creator answered my message and has fixed the bug that was stopping me from descending.  I don't want to play two long-running CRPGs with perma-death at the same time though, so I'm putting that on hold until I beat Rogue.  That makes my next game Space II, the sequel to sci-fi RPG/trading sim Space.  That should be a short one, and I'll probably have a post on it up by Sunday.  I've also got a post lined up for the TRS-80 version of Temple of Apshai, so never fear: the content will keep on flowing.

Priority CRPG 2: Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom (1980)

In the history of gaming, there are plenty of games that are important milestones.  Games that changed the direction of the medium, or set a benchmark for their genre going forward.  There are only a handful of games, however, that are so significant and set such a precedent that an entire genre will be named after them.  They're not necessarily the most famous games out there, but they are the ones that defined their play-style so much that their genre can't be separated from them afterwards. I've played a couple of those for the blog already: Adventure and MUD1 gave their names to the adventure game genre and MUDs, respectively.  Now I come to the third such milestone: Rogue.

I have an ambivalent history with roguelikes.  The first one that I remember playing for any significant length of time was Diablo, which is only tangentially related to the genre.  I bounced off it hard in the late 90s, when everyone was raving about it.  Why would I want to play a game with random dungeons when I could play something crafted by a human?  The random dungeons were just one aspect of a game that was - at the time - everything I didn't want CRPGs to become.

I played Rogue a time or two in the years after that, when I was making an effort to go back to a bunch of classics I'd missed.  I bounced off of Rogue in much the same way that I did with Diablo: random dungeons and a lack of story didn't appeal to me, and I really didn't get the permadeath thing.  I also kind of hated its dumb monsters.  Kestrels and ostriches?  No thanks.  (I was playing the  commercial DOS port, which excised a lot of the Dungeons & Dragons flavour of the original for legal purposes, even though a bazillion games had already nicked it without any repercussions.)

The commercial version of Rogue for DOS.  I'd mock the presence of
an emu, but those things are no joke.

It wasn't until around the  early 2010s that I was able to come to grips with it, mostly due to getting a smartphone.  I was looking for games to play on it, and I stumbled across an Android port of Rogue.  That's when the game clicked for me, as it's great for mobile devices.  Got ten minutes to waste standing in line?  That's the perfect time to knock out a few levels of Rogue.  Playing it on the go put me in a different head-space, where I wasn't looking for a substantial gaming experience, or settling in to explore a virtual world for hours on end.  I was looking for a challenge that I could kill time with in bite-sized chunks, and with Rogue I'd found it.  Sure, the touchscreen interface sucked, but for a turn-based game that didn't matter so much.

I never finished it on Android, and eventually I switched phones and couldn't find it for download any more.  The best I ever did was to make it to level 22, where I was probably killed by an Umber Hulk or something.  What can I say, it's a hard game.  I've played a few genuine roguelikes here and there since, but the only one I ever knuckled down with and beat was Pixel Dungeon.

Since then I started the blog, and have beaten a number of games that I'd consider proto-roguelikes: The Dungeon, The Game of Dungeons (versions 5.4 and 8), Orthanc and Beneath Apple Manor all share elements that define the genre: random dungeon layouts, a quest to retrieve an item from deep within the dungeon, and permadeath.  None of those put all three elements together, although Beneath Apple Manor comes the closest.

It's odd that, of the three genres I mentioned at the start of the post, roguelikes seem to be thriving more now than at any other point in their history.  Adventure games peaked in the 80s and 90s, and haven't really returned to the prominence they had.  MUDs were big amongst a niche crowd in the 80s and 90s, but I suppose their turf got taken over by MMOs.  Roguelikes, on the other hand, seem to have only gotten big in the last decade.  I wonder if my experience is indicative of the trend, and if perhaps the rise of mobile gaming has anything to do with that?  Hard to say, but I'd love for someone with a stronger grasp of the genre's history to chime in with their opinion.

I'm not really here to write about the genre as a whole however, but the game that started it.  The history of Rogue began in the late 1970s, with two students at the University of California in Santa Cruz: Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman.  Toy had had some opportunities to play the mainframe-based Star Trek game in his youth, and became fascinated with computer games.  While at college he discovered Colossal Cave Adventure, which impressed him enough that he started writing his own.  Wichman had spent some time playing Dungeons & Dragons, and enrolled in UCSC to learn game design and become a board game developer.  The two became close friends, and started writing adventure games to challenge each other, but soon they realised that the genre provided little in the way of replayability.

Around 1980, with UNIX starting to take over as the primary operating system at UCSC, Toy and Wichman discovered a program called curses, written by Ken Arnold.  Curses allowed for the positioning of characters at any point on a terminal, and using that crude graphics could be developed.  That was the final inspiration that Toy and Wichman needed, and together they came up with a D&D-based game that would satisfy their desire for replayability.

I'm not sure when exactly Rogue was first playable; 1980 is the usual date given so I'll go with that.  By 1982, Michael Toy was so wrapped up in the game's development that he was kicked out of UCSC for poor grades.  He took the code with him and continued working on it; Wichman tried to keep up, but found it unworkable, and turned development fully over to Toy.  Toy eventually got in touch with Ken Arnold, intending to get some insight into how curses worked, and the two of them improved the interface, display, and procedural generation of the game.

Around 1984, Rogue was turned into a commercial product distributed by Epyx, but I won't be dealing with that version of the game just yet.  For now I'm playing a DOS port of version 3.6, which is based on the UNIX code as it existed in 1981.  No doubt it's inauthentic in some way, but as far as I'm aware it's the closest approximation out there to the game in its original form.

The backstory of Rogue has you playing as a student of the local fighter's guild.  As a kind of final entry exam, the guildmasters have tasked you with entering the Dungeons of Doom and coming back alive with the Amulet of Yendor.  (I've always assumed that this was supposed to be "Rodney" backwards, and intended to represent one of the creators in much the same manner that Werdna and Trebor represented the creators of Wizardry; today I've discovered that nobody who created Rogue had that name, so my theory is shot down.)  Outfitted with elf-made armour and an enchanted sword, you journey to the ancient ruins that mark the entrance to the Dungeons of Doom, and your quest begins.  (There's a bit of a disconnect between the backstory and the game here, as you actually start with an enchanted mace and a bow.)

The amulet is said to be somewhere below level 20.  In all the games of Rogue that I've ever played, I've never seen it.  As I said above, the lowest level I've ever reached is level 22, and I probably only hit level 20 a handful of other times.  A Rogue expert I ain't, but I intend to become one.  My intention is to beat this game legitimately, without save-scumming.  It's going to take a while, but thankfully I have a small leg-up in that I don't have to learn things from scratch.  I know some of the tactics already.  And you know, I beat The Game of Dungeons v8.  I beat Moria.  I can beat Rogue too.

Beginning a game of Rogue.  This time I'll win for sure.

So the goal of the game is to ascend through at least 20 dungeon levels, find the Amulet of Yendor, and get back to the surface.  Those levels are procedurally generated, and drawn using ASCII characters, but they're not completely random.  Each one has around nine rooms, laid out in a 3x3 grid, with passages connecting them.  Sometimes rooms are hidden, and can only be uncovered by searching for secret doors, but the 3x3 layout makes it pretty easy to figure out where those doors might be.

The player (represented by an @ symbol, to let you know "where you're at") is moved around using the number pad, so you can move in eight directions.  I think the original UNIX version used a cluster of letters for movement, but thankfully whoever converted it to DOS made this concession to user-friendliness.  The rest of the commands are executed via keyboard: t for throw, q to quaff a potion, r to read a scroll, that sort of thing.  The most confusing thing is that some commands use the same key in upper and lower case.  For example, lower case t is for throw, but upper case T is for taking off your armour.  Lower case w is to wield a weapon, and upper case W is to wear armour.  When I first started playing I needed a text file with all of the commands listed open at all times, but now that I've got a dozen games or so under my belt it's become second nature, and I hardly need to refer to it at all.

The player has very little in the way of stats: there's a Strength score, starting at 16, which I gather determines how much damage you do in combat.  Hit points work like they always do, and you always begin with 12 (which in D&D terms would be the equivalent of a 1st level fighter with maximum hit points and a decent Constitution score).  Armour Class determines how hard you are to hit, with a lower score being better as it was in old-school D&D.  You earn experience points by killing monsters, and gain levels that increase your hit points.  It's all very standard CRPG stuff.  You can customise your game slightly, by using the options command: this lets you rename your character and set their favourite fruit.  The latter merely changes the name of some items you can find, and has no real bearing on mechanics.  It's set on "slime-mold" as a default, but I usually change it to mushroom,which is a little more palatable but also something that could conceivably grow in a dungeon.  (If I change it to "amulet of yendor" can I get an easy win?)

The monsters are represented with upper case ASCII characters, and are very much drawn from the D&D Monster Manual.  On the first few levels you fight Snakes, Bats, Kobolds and Hobgoblins, but they get stronger as you descend: Zombies, Centaurs, Trolls, Invisible Stalkers, and even the incredibly D&D-specific Xorn.  I recall that on the deepest levels there were Umber Hulks, Vampires and Dragons, but I haven't managed to make it that far yet.

Traps are also a danger, although a minor one.  There are arrows that shoot from the wall, and poison darts that can reduce your Strength.  The most troublesome are those that dump you on the next lower dungeon level, as sometimes that can mean you have to fight some monsters that you're not quite ready for.  On my first game I had an irritating placement of a teleport trap, which was situated right in front of the door to the room where the stairs down were located.  There was nothing I could do except keep running into it until it put me where I needed to go.  It was just a quirk of the random generation, and not a fatal one, but it sure was annoying.

I need to get into the room in the upper left, but
that teleport trap won't let me.

There's plenty of gold to be found, but it's a little pointless: you can't buy anything, and it's really just there as a kind of scoring system.  Also scattered around the dungeon are weapons, armour, potions, scrolls, rings, and magic staves/wands.  The weapons and armour are sometimes magical, granting a bonus to combat or defense, but they can also be cursed.  Cursed items can't be removed until you find a scroll of remove curse, but there's often no way of knowing how good an item is until you start using it (unless you find a scroll of identify).  Putting on an item without identifying it first is always a gamble.

The potions, scrolls, rings and staves/wands are uniquely identified, but those identifiers change for every game.  For example, potions are differentiated by colour.  In one game a potion of healing might be red, but in the next game it might be silver. Rings and staves/wands are differentiated by the material they are made out of, and the scrolls use gibberish words.  Some items are identified once you use them; if you use a scroll of identify, the next such scroll you find will be clearly marked.  Some items don't identify, though, so it can be a good idea to take notes unless you have a good memory.  Just don't expect those notes to be helpful on your next game.

Food is also a factor.  You begin with one meal, but there is food to be found throughout the dungeon if you're lucky.  If you don't eat, you'll eventually grow hungry, and then weak.  Once you're weak, eventually you'll start falling unconscious every few moves.  I don't know if you can genuinely starve to death, but once you start passing out the monsters will probably make short work of you.  Hunger is the main reason that you can't linger on the easier levels and grind for experience: you need to keep descending, as that's the only way to find food.

At this point, I should probably address permadeath.  Rogue has it, and is infamous for it.  You can save your game, but the file will be deleted as soon as you reload, so you can't just save your game and keep trying from the same point over and over again.  I used to think that was unfair bullshit, but now I recognise it as a completely valid element for this kind of game.  A complete game doesn't take all that long, and the progress you make isn't by getting further through the game but by learning its systems.  I like the phrase that Toy and Wichman used to describe it: "consequence permanence".

So far I've played thirteen games, with varying levels of success, and some genuinely heart-breaking moments.  I'll quickly run through my experiences below:

• Nobody (the default character name) was my first character, and made it all the way to dungeon level 16.  I was pretty heartened by this, and started to entertain the delusion that I could beat Rogue on my first shot.  Alas, I got cornered between a Rust Monster and an Invisible Stalker, the latter of which made short work of me.
• Nobody II got down to level 8, but had a pretty low hit point total.  He got killed in his first fight with a Centaur.
• Gideon made it down to level 16, but got killed by an Invisible Stalker.  I find that for a lot of characters who make it past the initial stages, Invisible Stalkers are among the most common stumbling blocks.
• Mideon died on level 8.  My run of bad luck started when I accidentally threw my mace at a kobold.  Throwing items at foes when they are far away is a standard tactic to avoid melee, but if you throw a weapon and hit with it, that weapon disappears.  I lost my mace this way, and had to fight with my bare hands. It didn't matter all that much, until I tried to fight a floating Eye, which paralysed me.  A Centaur rolled up while I was paralysed and killed me.
• Jonn Greywood made it to level 11, but lost his mace along the way by throwing it at a floating Eye.  Then he put on cursed plate armor, which got further reduced in effectiveness by a Rust Monster (which have the ability to worsen your AC by 1 with every hit if you're wearing metallic armour).  I couldn't remove the cursed armour, and ended up fighting a Centaur with no weapon and an AC of 9.  It didn't end well.
• Saskar got into a fight with a Wraith on dungeon level 16.  Wraiths drain your experience points, and I dropped from level 9 to level 7.  I escaped by using a teleport scroll, only to land right next to a Troll which killed me with one blow.
• Nobody III put on a cursed ring that occasionally made him teleport to a random location in the dungeon, which was pretty distracting.  I threw my mace away, and eventually got killed by a Hobgoblin (which is pretty uncommon for a character that deep in the dungeon; I must have been softened up by something else first).
• Myrio Immyrio Velaasa was my most promising character.  She had a strength of 18, a two-handed sword, and numerous healing potions.  The two-handed sword is really the key item to doing well at Rogue, it makes killing monsters much more efficient.  Unfortunately, it all went wrong when I found a staff of lightning bolts.  The lightning bolts that it casts bounce around the walls until they hit something.  I tried to hit a Wraith with one, but the bolt ended up bouncing around the room in an endless loop that I couldn't break out of.  I sat there holding the spacebar through a whole episode of The Goodies, but it was still stuck in that loop by the end.  I had to abandon Myrio, who I think actually had a good shot at descending past level 20.
• Nobody IV got killed by a Bat on level 1.  This is the most embarrassing way to die in Rogue, because Bats don't even target you, they just sort of move about at random and occasionally attack if you're next to them.  Nobody IV, I disavow you.
• Sir Gareth did really well, making it all the way down to level 17 before getting cornered by a Xorn with no way out.  You don't want to engage a Xorn in straight up combat unless you're incredibly hard, but I had no other choice.
• Krago got killed by a Snake on level 1.  It's not quite as bad as being killed by a Bat, but it's not far off.
• Artis got killed on level 1 by a Hobgoblin.  Hobgoblins are the biggest danger to starting characters, until they gain some extra hit points.
• Nobody V had a really bad run of luck with some giant Ants, which can drain your Strength with their stings.  I got my Strength drained all the way down to 3, and it would have gone lower if that was possible.  (Strength ranges between 3 and 18, another of this game's many D&Disms.) I got cornered between an Ant and an Orc, and couldn't do enough damage to beat  either of them.

Myrio got stuck in a loop, and I forgot to screenshot one of the Nobodies,
but this is an otherwise comprehensive graveyard.

So that's my tale of woe and ignominy.  But I'm building up my knowledge of the game, how the various monsters behave, and how to counter them.  I've learned to take off my armour when I see a Rust Monster, or to try to find some magic leather armour.  I've learned to keep a potion of restore strength in reserve, to use around level 10 when the giant Ants stop appearing.  I've learned not to read scrolls until I have an item worth identifying, like a ring or a two-handed sword.  Even with that knowledge, a lot of Rogue is down to luck: if you don't find the right items, or enough food, you're not going to survive.  For the moment I'm having fun in the attempt, and struggling to avoid playing "just one more game" before bed.