NetHack is a display oriented Dungeons & Dragons(tm) - like game. The standard tty display and command
structure resemble rogue.
Other, more graphical display options exist for most platforms.
To get started you really only need to know two commands. The command ? will give you a list of the
available commands (as well as other information) and the command / will identify the things you see on
the screen.
To win the game (as opposed to merely playing to beat other people's high scores) you must locate the
Amulet of Yendor which is somewhere below the 20th level of the dungeon and get it out. Few people
achieve this; most never do. Those who have go down in history as heroes among heroes - and then they
find ways of making the game even harder. See the Guidebook section on Conduct if this game has gotten
too easy for you.
When the game ends, whether by your dying, quitting, or escaping from the caves, NetHack will give you (a
fragment of) the list of top scorers. The scoring is based on many aspects of your behavior, but a rough
estimate is obtained by taking the amount of gold you've found in the cave plus four times your (real)
experience. Precious stones may be worth a lot of gold when brought to the exit. There is a 10% penalty
for getting yourself killed.
The environment variable NETHACKOPTIONS can be used to initialize many run-time options. The ? command
provides a description of these options and syntax. (The -dec and -ibm command line options are equiva‐
lent to the decgraphics and ibmgraphics run-time options described there, and are provided purely for
convenience on systems supporting multiple types of terminals.)
Because the option list can be very long (particularly when specifying graphics characters), options may
also be included in a configuration file. The default is located in your home directory and named
.nethackrc on Unix systems. On Debian systems, use .nethackrc.gnome for the Gnome windowing port, use
.nethackrc.x11 for the X11 windowing port, and use .nethackrc.qt for the QT windowing port. You can use
.nethackrc.tty for the non-graphical version. The configuration file's location may be specified by set‐
ting NETHACKOPTIONS to a string consisting of an @ character followed by the filename.
The -uplayername option supplies the answer to the question "Who are you?". It overrides any name from
the options or configuration file, USER, LOGNAME, or getlogin(), which will otherwise be tried in order.
If none of these provides a useful name, the player will be asked for one. Player names (in conjunction
with uids) are used to identify save files, so you can have several saved games under different names.
Conversely, you must use the appropriate player name to restore a saved game.
A playername suffix can be used to specify the profession, race, alignment and/or gender of the charac‐
ter. The full syntax of the playername that includes a suffix is "name-ppp-rrr-aaa-ggg". "ppp" are at
least the first three letters of the profession (this can also be specified using a separate -pprofes‐sion option). "rrr" are at least the first three letters of the character's race (this can also be spec‐
ified using a separate -rrace option). "aaa" are at least the first three letters of the character's
alignment, and "ggg" are at least the first three letters of the character's gender. Any of the parts of
the suffix may be left out.
-pprofession can be used to determine the character profession, also known as the role. You can specify
either the male or female name for the character role, or the first three characters of the role as an
abbreviation. -p@ has been retained to explicitly request that a random role be chosen. It may need to
be quoted with a backslash (\@) if @ is the "kill" character (see "stty") for the terminal, in order to
prevent the current input line from being cleared.
Likewise, -rrace can be used to explicitly request that a race be chosen.
Leaving out any of these characteristics will result in you being prompted during the game startup for
the information.
The -s option alone will print out the list of your scores on the current version. An immediately fol‐
lowing -v reports on all versions present in the score file. The -s may also be followed by arguments -p
and -r to print the scores of particular roles and races only. It may also be followed by one or more
player names to print the scores of the players mentioned, by 'all' to print out all scores, or by a num‐
ber to print that many top scores.
The -n option suppresses printing of any news from the game administrator.
The -D or -X option will start the game in a special non-scoring discovery mode. -D will, if the player
is the game administrator, start in debugging (wizard) mode instead.
The -d option, which must be the first argument if it appears, supplies a directory which is to serve as
the playground. It overrides the value from NETHACKDIR, HACKDIR, or the directory specified by the game
administrator during compilation (usually /usr/lib/games/nethack). This option is usually only useful to
the game administrator. The playground must contain several auxiliary files such as help files, the list
of top scorers, and a subdirectory save where games are saved.
--showpaths can be used to cause NetHack to show where it is expecting to find various configuration
files.
--version can be used to cause NetHack to show the version information it was compiled with, then exit.
That will include the git commit hash if the information was available when the game was compiled. On
some platforms, such as windows and macosx, a variation --version:paste can be used to cause NetHack to
show the version information, then exit, while also leaving a copy of the version information in the
paste buffer or clipboard for potential insertion into things like bug reports.
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