SLASH Frequently-Asked Questions
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SLASH is Super-Lotso-Added-Stuff-Hack!
Tom Proudfoot -- proudft@ccnet.com


1. What are the differences between SLASH and Nethack 3.1.1?

Lots! The most apparent, though, are the new monsters, new items, new special
levels, new classes, and a general overall feeling of bloated overdoneness.
You know -- the things that make Nethack great!

The differences that affect the way you play, though, are that the
Gnome Mines are only one level and don't have a town, and the Wish List
doesn't begin with an artifact weapon and GDSM.


2. What are the differences between SLASH and Nethack Plus?

SLASH is a modification of the second-to-last release of Nethack Plus. Thus,
it does not contain the weapon skill system, the water weird, and whatever
else got added in at that point. It does, though, have the new classes
and items of Nethack Plus.


3. What should I, the experienced Nethack player, do to adjust to SLASH?

In Nethack 3.1.1, the "wish order" is pretty standard. Most people start
off with Gray Dragon Scale Mail, so they can use a shield of reflection
and a cloak of displacement for maximum studliness. Now, with shimmering
dragons (displacement) and silver dragons (reflection), the options are
more open and variable for each character.

Many monsters commonly genocided are comparatively wimpy in SLASH.
You can't genocide cockatrices and be safe from stoning without also
genociding basilisks, asphynxes, and chickatrices. You can, however, wipe
out rust monsters and green slime easily, with one genocide each.
Note that there are now arch-liches, one step tougher than master liches.

Other than that, just pretend you're playing Nethack for the first time --
where all the monsters are unusual and scary, and the items are strange
and mysterious.


4. I was playing SLASH and it crashed!

If you're playing the binaries I made, please make sure that you are
doing both of the two following things:

   a.) Running the nh.bat file. This sets up a swap file for when
       you run out of memory.

   b.) Have enough free disk space. I've noticed that if I get below 2
       or so megs of free space, SLASH begins to freak out and crash
       randomly. This isn't good.

However, if you're running under Windows 95, you can skip the first step,
because the magic of Windows 95 creates a virtual memory swap file, and
you don't need two virtual memory systems running at once. But _always_
make sure you're playing with some disk space, or chaos will ensue.


5. Why'd you use this stupid Watcom compiler anyway?

Because I like it, it's what we use at work, and it sure seemed to run
faster on my 386 than Gnu-C. 


6. Barbarians, Valkyries, Cavemen, and Samurai all seem a lot easier than
   the other classes.

Yeah, I know. They've always been easier, but the differences seem to have
been magnified in Nethack Plus. Look on the other classes as more of a
challenge.


7. I wished for Stormbringer and I got Stvrmbringer! What the hell?

Wishing for artifacts has a 50% chance  of misspelling it and screwing up
your wish. If you want to be 100% sure of getting a good weapon, wish for
a unicorn horn or a crysknife or a lightsaber or 3 blessed scrolls
of enchant weapon or something.


8. I found a bug! I found a bug! Nyah! Nyah!

Please try to describe as completely as possible a bug or crash so that I
have a chance to fix it. So far, I've been putting out a new version of
SLASH about once every week, and each version has fixed all the reported
bugs at that time, so hopefully you won't have to wait very long. One person
actually sent me a screen shot of a crash (I don't know how he did it),
and it was immensely helpful.



