I just finished my best ever game of Nethack. I earned 31,118 points as a level 9 Valkyrie.

Some highlights:

I got all the way to the bottom of the Mines, fought several vampires and trolls, but somehow completely missed the luckstone. I did pick up a grey stone, but it ended up being a touchstone.

I got a Wand of Wishing! I was zap testing wands in Minetown and the game asked me for a wish! I had no idea what to wish for – it was my first time getting a wish 😱 – but I had been watching Adeon’s Nethack speedrun at the 2017 Roguelike Celebration and remembered him wishing for some absurdly qualified dragon scale mail, so I ended up with a +2 uncursed silver dragon scale mail that brought my AC down to -10. It saved my butt later on when I ran into a bunch of winter wolf pups because it reflected their cold beams.

Later on in the mines, I stepped on a polymorph trap that transformed me into an ice dragon. That transformation caused my dragon scale mail to fuse into my body. When the transformation ended, I was left with simple dragon scales, which were still silver, but no longer had the big defense bonus. Boo. :( I did get to lay two eggs that hatched into baby ice dragons. Baby dragons are ravenous and indiscrimate.

The baby dragons killed the Oracle. Whoops.

In the oracle level, I tried to dip my long sword into the fountains around the Oracle, hoping to find Excalibur. Just a few turns before, I’d fought a gelatinous cube that corroded my sword. I didn’t notice at the time though, so dipping went horribly wrong… Not only did my corroded long sword become thoroughly rusted, it also eventually became cursed. Oddly enough, that sword was still the best weapon I had, and I used it to the very end. I need to figure out how to replace weapons that get degraded like that.

I solved Sokoban with some help from the Nethack wiki for the first time. The puzzles are hard but I enjoyed thinking through them. The monsters in there, especially in the upper levels are hard: multiple elementals, several packs of winter wolf pups, yetis, apes, and a zruty. I got through the last level and discovered a mimic blocking the hallway to the zoo. It killed me.

Near the end, I was testing amulets and put on an Amulet of Changing that caused me to switch genders. Boo.

It’s in my logfile now too.