Evilhack review (long ish)
Greetings all!
I've been playing nethack for a few decades now, starting in 1990 on a Sparc OEM cabinet running SunOS. I played on and off for a few years without much success, finally taking a break until I got my first mac in 2005. My first ascension was in 2006 and I've not stopped since then, following all the versions and updates along the way. I just play ASCII with colours and it's fine.
Fast forward to earlier this year when, during a few days with some extra free time, I ascended three days in a row. I couldn't escape it—I was getting a bit bored. It looked like it might be time to look at variants and see what was out there. I had previously shied away from them becuase I enjoyed the balance and overall feel of vanilla nethack, but was sad that some of my favourite patches, such as the Convict, never stuck.
I quickly found myself looking at EvilHack, with its promise of being "a much more difficult game". I downloaded, installed, and got into it quite quickly.
It delivers fully on its promise. Much more difficult is an understatement. But the difficulty is balanced out with some more fun stuff that makes it mostly worth it.
Things that I love about EvilHack:
- Map variety. I love all the new variants (Soko, mines, castles, Ludios) and sub-branches. They're unique, mostly fun, and add a lot to the game.
- The Ice Queen's Realm. This is peak nethack and I absolutely love everything about it. This is the frivolity that the game was built on and I adore that it continues.
- New monsters. By and large, I love the increased variety of monsters you see (with one (1) notable exception below).
- Balance improvements in so many areas.
- I am less terrified of purple h's and blue R's than I used to be.
- L's feel more manageable and less desperately in need of immediate genociding.
- Dragons are way scarier and thats a good thing™.
- Dexterity is hit by overeating more (I actually hate this, but agree it's a good change ^_^).
- Resistances are a bit harder to get, and reflection is not quite the complete cure as it was before. A reasonable change (if occasionally frustrating).
- Crystal plate mail isn't dumb any more.
- Wand identification via engaving is streamlined. It almost feels like cheating, but I prefer it.
- Forging. It's a bit silly, but I do enjoy it.
- Materials. I maxxed out my AC in vanilla nethack at -52. I've been beyond -70 a few times in EvilHack now. That's kinda fun.
- Non-artefact gifts. These are fun and really change the dynamic of the game quite a bit.
- Gehennom. I love the new lava Gehennom. It's less tedious than the mazes and feels more like it it 'should'.
- Class and race varieties. I'm only doing human samurais right now, but I'm excited to try 'em all out eventually.
Things I don't love about EvilHack, but probably aren't that bad and more point an accusing finger at my sloppy playing style (hjkl + ESC non-stop).
- Shocking spheres. These things can bite my %@*(# %@%. Holy crap I hate them so much. It is now the immediate first thing I genocide in any game.
- Alignment abuse system. It is so, so, sooooo easy to accidentally abuse your alignment and not even realise it. It drives me batty. But it's changing the way I play and it's a new challenge. The 50k redemption pattern is pretty nuts too — it's rare that I can get more than 50k in a game and I'm deffos not wasthing super precious wishes on getting gold.
- Tal'Gath and the Hidden Dungeon. I usually just skip this as that 10d10 bite is frickin' ridiculous and figuring out the entire level blind is not my idea of a good time. Beholders and magic eyes aren't that bad that I'd waste precious magic markers on genociding them.
- The ease with which your weapons get ripped out of your hand. The number of times that the Sword of Annihilation has gotten ripped out of my hand and used against me is aggravating. Again, it speaks more to my careless hack and slash style, but ARGH. I am slowly learning to slow down and check my inventory every few moves to make sure i still have it.
- The Sword of Annihilation itself drives me nuts. I feel like the game is impossible without it, but the number of times somebody has stolen say The Hammer of the Gods, Sunsword, or Frost Brand out of my second hand only for the Sword of Annihilation to disentegrate them (and my frickin' weapon) is well into high single digits now. Argh. Argh. Argh.
- Dichotomy. I don't know if wounding friendlies hurts everybody's alignment record or just Samurais, but Dichotomy's blast attacks make it useless for Samurai characters — you're always going to hurt people with collatoral damage.
- See invisible is harder to get permanently. I frequently go all the way without see invis. What's the point of white Es any more 😄 ??
Things that are just nuts to me and my brain argues are unbalanced to varying degrees:
- Acid blasts. I can have -70 AC and 250 hit points, and after moving three tiles find myself on death's door because of repeated acid blasts. I've now started carrying around yellow dragon scales, but taking off the previous cloak and then putting that one one is slow. Yellow dragons are often #2 on my genocide list because of their danger levels as well but like Vampire or Elven mages (or somebody) keeps hitting me w the blasts and it's awful.
- Related: I am unable to figure out how to enchant non-merged dragon scales. As per above, I feel like I need various types a lot of the time but can't afford to have them at +0 the whole time.
- Lucifer. Just. Completely. Bonkers. A bit too much. OMG. I've beaten him exactly once.
- Wand of Orcus. Unless I am wearing the Gauntlets of Purity, 90% of my encounters with Orcus start with me having 250+ hit points and end with me having maybe 40 hit points. I am not sure how else to get death/drain resistance except perhaps polymorphing into a Vampire King/Queen? Earth castles don't stop it, nor does anything else I've experimented with. I haven't tried just constnatly running away from him, but yeesh, I dread Orcus now.
- Much like I feel like I'm screwed without death magic resistance, I feel like I desperately need the half physical damage from the Tsurugi of Muramasa to survive a lot of encounters (I only defeated Lucfier wielding that and drinking all the potions of full healing).
- Magic chests. These feel a bit too much like cheating to me, especially the one down in the Wizard's tower. I was fine just having my locked chest in Soko all the time.
- Altar availability. The only games that I do well on right now are the ones where I get the "good" mine's end with the cursed balrog figurine and the three altars. With the new artefact granting mechanisms, I really really really need to be sure to get Angelslayer (for SoA later), and ideally Sunsword or Grayswandir and Dragonbane. If the number of lv >= 10 (incl mine's end) isn't enough, I feel like I'm just screwed and the new restricted wishing won't save me enough to help me succeed later in the game.
- I love (love) the Bag of the Hesperides, but part of my brain no longer worries about bags like I used to because I know it's always in the same place. That feels like a crutch. Maybe it should be harder to find?
- I do think I should have to identify scrolls of identify at least once :shrug.
Overall, I absolutely love this variant. I don't know much about the authors of it yet, but I really feel an affinity to the values that seem to have gone into this variant. I'm working my way through the source code and hope to be able to start contributing patches eventually.
If vanilla nethack feels pretty straightforward to you, highly recommend this variant. It's so aggravatingly addictive.