NetHack 5.0

Forty years of the DevTeam thinking of everything · the current NetHack

Date of birth28 July 1987 1.3d; this version: 2 May 2026

CreatorsThe NetHack DevTeam founded by Mike Stephenson, Izchak Miller, Janet Walz

LanguageC99 + Lua ~293,000 lines in 223 .c/.h files

PlatformUnix, Windows, macOS… tty, curses, X11, Qt; here: SDL2 and the browser

Lineage

NetHack descends from Hack (1985), which descends from Rogue. Mike Stephenson's 1987 fork became NetHack 1.3d; the DevTeam has carried the same code base forward ever since, through 2.x, 3.0 (1989), 3.4.3 (2003) and 3.6 (2015). The README of 5.0 calls it “a direct descendent of NetHack 3.6”: the long-running 3.7 development branch was released under a new major number.

Its many variants (SLASH'EM, UnNetHack and others) branch off older 3.x versions; see the family tree.

Credits

The NetHack DevTeam	Every version since 1987; 5.0.0 released 2 May 2026 with a list of over 3,100 fixes and changes (NetHack/NetHack @ dd8acee, branch `NetHack-5.0`)
Mike Stephenson, Izchak Miller, Janet Walz	The original DevTeam that forked Hack and named it NetHack
Jay Fenlason, Andries Brouwer	Hack, the code underneath
The DevTeam and contributors	The 16×16 tile set shipped with NetHack (`win/share/monsters.txt`, `objects.txt`, `other.txt`), used here
This port	SDL2 multi-window port and browser build (memmaker/nethack50)

Trivia

The “Net” is not for networked play: the DevTeam named the game NetHack because “their collaboration work was done over the Internet”. (Wikipedia)
5.0.0 was released on 2 May 2026, with more than 3,000 patch notes; 3.6.0 (December 2015) had been “the first major release in over a decade”. (Wikipedia, release notes)
“The DevTeam Thinks of Everything” (TDTTOE) is the players' name for the feeling that every odd interaction was already programmed in. (Wikipedia)
Picking up the Amulet of Yendor now grants a wish. (NetHackWiki)
New in 5.0: the displacer beast, the genetic engineer, the gold dragon, the amulets of flying and guarding, and the spellbook of chain lightning. (NetHackWiki)
Level and dungeon descriptions are no longer compiled at build time: they are Lua scripts loaded while you play. (release notes)
Randomly generated spellbooks have a tiny chance of being Discworld novels. (fixes5-0-0.txt)
The game is released under the NetHack General Public License, a copyleft licence certified by the Open Source Initiative. (Wikipedia)

What's unique

Depth of interaction. Dip, rub, engrave, polymorph, wield a cockatrice corpse: nearly every object and monster reacts to nearly every action, which is where TDTTOE comes from.
A branching dungeon. The Gnomish Mines, Sokoban, the Quest, Fort Ludios, Vlad's Tower, Gehennom and the Elemental Planes hang off the Dungeons of Doom; 5.0 adds themed rooms and more varied Gehennom levels.
Thirteen roles × five races, each role with its own Quest, quest artifact and starting pet.
Conducts and achievements track how you won: vegan, atheist, pacifist, illiterate, wishless, and new in 5.0, no rule breaking in Sokoban.
Still the same game. Saves from 3.6 no longer load, but the map, the keys and the monsters are those of 1987, grown for four decades.

Code dive

Language: C99 (a stated goal of 5.0) plus Lua: about 293,000 lines in 223 files under src/ and include/, and 131 Lua files under dat/ for levels, dungeon layout, quest texts and themed rooms.
Data tables: monsters in include/monsters.h, objects in include/objects.h, artifacts in include/artilist.h, roles and races in src/role.c. The save file was reworked to write individual fields, little-endian, instead of raw structs, so saves can cross machines.
Window ports: the core talks to the display through a window_procs table; tty, curses, X11, Qt and Windows GUI ship upstream. Our port adds win/sdl2/winsdl.c (SDL2, one window per NetHack window) and reuses it for the browser, where the WebAssembly side decides everything and JavaScript only blits and plays sounds.
Cross-compiling is an explicit 5.0 goal: the parts of makedefs that ran on the build machine were split off, which is what made the Emscripten build straightforward.
Source: memmaker/nethack50; upstream NetHack/NetHack @ dd8acee; our changes.

Stats

Thing	Count	Notable ones
Roles	13	Archeologist, Barbarian, Caveman, Healer, Knight, Monk, Priest, Rogue, Ranger, Samurai, Tourist, Valkyrie, Wizard. The Valkyrie is always female; the Tourist starts with a Hawaiian shirt and an expensive camera.
Races	5	Human, elf, dwarf, gnome, orc.
Monsters	394	The displacer beast, genetic engineer and gold dragon (new), Medusa, Croesus, Vlad the Impaler, the Wizard of Yendor, and the Riders Death, Pestilence and Famine.
Artifacts	35	Excalibur, Mjollnir, Stormbringer, Grayswandir, Vorpal Blade, the Platinum Yendorian Express Card, the Eyes of the Overworld.
Weapons	71	Including 6 launchers and 6 projectiles; katana, tsurugi, aklys, crysknife, rubber hose.
Armour	70	Dragon scale mail in nine colours (gold is new), crystal plate mail, the Hawaiian shirt.
Rings / Amulets	28 / 11	Ring of conflict, of polymorph control; amulet of life saving, and the new amulets of flying and of guarding.
Tools	45	Magic marker, magic lamp, drum of earthquake, expensive camera, 7 containers (bag of holding, ice box).
Potions / Scrolls	26 / 23	Potion of gain level, of full healing; scroll of genocide, of charging, of stinking cloud.
Spellbooks	44	Finger of death, chain lightning (new), magic mapping, identify.
Wands	28	Wishing, death, polymorph, digging.
Food	32	Lembas wafer, cram ration, tin, egg, lump of royal jelly (which now turns a killer bee into a queen).
Themed rooms	23	Ice room, spider nest, garden, massacre, buried treasure, temple of the gods, a room inside a room.
Quests	13	One per role, each with its own leader, nemesis and artifact.
Dungeon	~50 levels	Dungeons of Doom 25–29 levels, Gehennom 20–24, Gnomish Mines 8–13, Sokoban 4, the Quest 5–7, Vlad's Tower 3, Fort Ludios 1, then the four Elemental Planes and the Astral Plane. Max experience level: 30.

Manual

The official Guidebook (“A Guide to the Mazes of Menace”, text, 7,800 lines) shipped with the source, under the NetHack General Public License. The in-game ? help and the port's help page cover the keys.

Getting started

Open the game, type a name and answer n to pick a role (Valkyrie is the classic first choice), or y for a random one. Say y to the tutorial if you have never played.
Move with the arrow keys or hjklyubn; walk into a monster to attack. ~ explores on its own, > walks to the stairs you have seen.
Press Enter for a menu of every command, i for the inventory (also shown in its own window).
Read everything you can (r), pray (#pray) when hit points are low and you have not prayed in a long time. Search (s) in dead ends.
Eat when “Hungry”, keep your pet close, and expect to die: the full key list is in the in-game guide.

Help

The NetHackWiki is the walkthrough: start with Standard strategy, then look up anything that kills you (what changed in 5.0.0). Rules of thumb:

Never melee a floating eye. Never eat a cockatrice corpse without gloves. Don't fight while “Weak”.
Engrave Elbereth in the dust (E, -) when cornered; most monsters will not step onto it.
Price-identify in shops; drop items on an altar to learn if they are cursed.
Do Sokoban early for the prize and the experience; leave the Quest until level 14.
More: NetHackWiki, RogueBasin.

Cheats

Wizard mode (nethack -D, Ctrl+W to wish, Ctrl+V to level-teleport) is compiled in, but the browser page never passes -D and the built-in sysconf only allows the users root and games, so it can't be reached here. (NetHackWiki)
Explore mode works: the #exploremode command (Alt+X) turns the game into a non-scoring discovery game where death is optional.
Excalibur: a lawful character of level 5 or more dips a long sword into a fountain.
Save scumming works in the browser: Export save before something risky, Import save if it goes wrong.