Just lost my win streak on Nethack.
I decided I'd try a ranger because I'd never played one and orcs start with poison res, so safer for streaks. I didn't have any luck with shops on the first 6 floors so I headed down to the mines. My AC of -3 was pretty decent, my HP sucked at 33, though. I was level 7 when I fell down a trapdoor into minetown, which was fine. I found a magic lamp at the lighting store and that was all the shops held for me. But the food store had two potions of booze that I had plans to dilute and use the co-aligned altar to make some holy water. I was just heading to the up stair to get my dog when I came across a bones pile. Some player killed by some orcs. I went through their stuff, which was kind of nice. A polished shield that I was planning on using for reflection once I uncursed it and another magic lamp. I took one of their sacks and was just heading back to the altar to check BUC and do some price identification on all the scrolls and potions they had. I just went through the door into town and found myself standing next to a fire ant that hadn't been there before. I usually try not to play burdened, but I was only going to the altar, so I was careless. Now I suddenly realize that I have all the potions and scrolls in open inventory so I quickly stuff them in the sack, including the 4 health potions. Then if I was smart I would have dropped the bag and hit the ant with my slow monster wand and then shot it full of arrows. Instead I tried to make some distance... while burdened. Obviously that didn't work and I was getting low on health so I prayed. "You feel Mars is well pleased." great, but my health didn't go up. Crap, 10/33 isn't low enough enough to get healed by god. Now I'm really screwed. I drop the bag to make a stand, 6 health, last turn. I shoot 3 orcish arrows and hit with 2, the ant kills me.
I know that 4 wins in a row is still really good, and the streak was gonna end at some point, but this still really burns me, and I was really hoping to make it an even 5 and then stop. It was preventable in so many ways if I had only thought about things right when I saw the ant instead of panicking and trying to run away. You'd think after so many games I'd have learned, but nope.
Oh well, in a way I'm relieved because I've been playing rather obsessively and now I can go play some other games again. It's been about a month and a half of basically living Nethack, so I'm gonna hang it up and break with the game for hopefully a few years. Nethack is fun, but is really only interesting for the first couple hours. That's the big problem with the game, most of the challenge is front loaded. The early game is exciting and dangerous, and every new item can make a huge difference and every new enemy needs to be handled with caution. But, once the mine and sokoban are clear I'm usually set up well enough that there isn't too much that can go wrong outside of dumb mistakes but it's still another 10+ hours of carefully going through the motions until the game can end. It's just too long really. It's great on your first couple ascensions, to have this massive dungeon to clear, and it really feels like an accomplishment, but after that it just starts to drag on.
Oh well, it's just a number on a scoreboard that nobody else actually cares about anyway.
Crap.
