NetHack 3.6.7 with ZeldHack tiles and sounds, in your browser.

• About ZeldHack
• Keyboard controls
• Saving your game
• Tips
• New player's guide
• Playing in the browser

About ZeldHack

ZeldHack is NetHack 3.6.7 dressed up as an 8-bit console adventure: a tile set and sound effects in the style of the NES-era classics (The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and others), with the original game underneath unchanged.

NetHack is the classic dungeon crawl: descend a randomly generated dungeon, fight, find and identify items, and try to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. Every game is different, death is permanent, and almost everything interacts with everything else.

Credits

• NetHack 3.6.7 by the NetHack DevTeam (nethack.org), based on Hack by Jay Fenlason and Andries Brouwer; licensed under the NetHack General Public License.
• ZeldHack tiles, sounds and ambience music: the ZeldHack asset pack by LSpixel (lspixel.itch.io/zeldhack-for-nethack-ready-to-play); its sounds come from classic NES/Famicom games.
• Web version: our changes (auto-explore, stair walking, command menu, inventory item menus, window port, sound hooks, browser build) are local to this port and under the same licence.

About this version

Based on NetHack 3.6.7 (tag NetHack-3.6.7_Released), NetHack/NetHack @ ed600d9, with the ZeldHack assets by LSpixel. Web port source and all our changes: memmaker/zeldhack (changes against upstream).

Keyboard controls

Essential keys

Saving your game

• Saving is automatic. A second after each command the game writes a checkpoint, and the browser keeps it (IndexedDB). Reloading the page or closing the tab continues from there.
• S saves everything and stops; reload the page (or press Play again) to continue exactly where you were.
• When your character dies or you quit, the save is deleted: death is final.
• Each browser keeps one game. File ▾ → New game deletes it and starts over.
• File ▾ → Export downloads the save (or the running checkpoint) as one file; Import loads such a file again, also on another computer.
• Private/incognito windows and "clear site data" delete the stored game. Export first if it matters.

Tips

• Press ~ to explore; it stops when a monster comes into view, a message appears or you press a key.
• Press > anywhere once you have seen the down stairs: you walk there, press it again to descend.
• Eat corpses of freshly killed, safe monsters when "Hungry" shows; never eat cockatrices, and avoid old corpses.
• Your pet can tell cursed items: items it steps over reluctantly ("moves only reluctantly") are cursed.
• Pray (#pray) when your HP is below 1/7 of the maximum or you are Weak from hunger, but not more often than about every 1000 turns.
• Elbereth: engrave it in the dust (E, - for fingers) and most monsters will not melee you while you stand on it.
• Unknown wands: engrave-test them (E, then the wand) to learn what they do.
• Do not fight on in bad shape: retreat up the stairs, quaff unknown potions only in an emergency.

New player's guide

The goal

Descend through the Dungeons of Doom, get the Amulet of Yendor from the bottom of Gehennom and offer it on your god's altar on the Astral Plane. Most characters die long before that; getting deeper is the real measure.

Your first game

1. Pick a name, then a role. Valkyrie or Samurai are the easiest to start with; let the game pick the race and alignment.
2. Look at the Inventory window: your weapon is wielded and your armour worn already.
3. Press ~ to explore. When a monster appears, walk into it to attack.
4. Pick up things with ,; gold counts, most items are worth trying on later.
5. When the level is explored, press > to walk to the down stairs and again to descend.
6. Watch HP on the Status line. Low? Rest with s (or n20s for 20 turns) away from monsters, or go back upstairs.

Reading the screen

The map uses the ZeldHack tiles; Status shows your stats (St Dx Co In Wi Ch), alignment, Dlvl (depth), gold ($), HP, Pw (magic), AC (armour class, lower is better), experience level and turn count. The Visible window lists the monsters and items you can see; ; identifies any spot on the map.

Things that kill new players

• Floating eyes: never melee one (you get paralysed); throw things at it instead.
• Cockatrices and chickatrices: do not touch or eat them without gloves.
• Soldier ants and dwarves with mattocks early on: flee upstairs.
• Starvation: keep some food and eat when "Hungry" appears.

Playing in the browser

• Keys: the arrow keys or the number pad move you (Home, PgUp, End, PgDn for the diagonals); ZeldHack uses NetHack's number_pad mode, so h is help, j jump, k kick and l loot.
• Enter opens a menu of every command; ? is the game's own help, O its options.
• There is no --More--: all messages go to the Messages window.
• Windows ▾ shows, hides and arranges the windows (drag title bars and gaps); A−/A+ on a window's title bar change its text or tile size. Tiles switches between the ZeldHack 16, 32 and 64 px sets and text.
• Audio ▾: Sound effects (the ZeldHack sounds for hits, misses, doors, stairs, traps, hunger, level-ups…) and Music (the ZeldHack ambience loop). Both are off until you switch them on; the music is only downloaded then.
• Browsers keep a few shortcuts for themselves (Ctrl+W, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+N, Cmd shortcuts on a Mac), so those never reach the game.
• While this guide is open the game gets no keys; Esc closes it.