# User:Umbire the Phantom/The Guide to NetHack 1.3d for Junethack Players and Other Determined Daredevils
I know this is userspace, but feel free to edit as you like, just don't be a jerk.
Contents

1 So, you wanna play 1.3d.

1.1 Is it currently June?

1.1.1 No
1.1.2 Yes

2 A Primer

2.1 Controls and options
2.2 You

2.2.1 Your attributes
2.2.2 Your pet

2.3 The Dungeons of Doom

2.3.1 Shops
2.3.2 Dungeon features
2.3.3 Traps

2.4 Objects

2.4.1 Artifacts
2.4.2 Amulets
2.4.3 Food

2.4.3.1 Tin chart

2.4.4 Weapons
2.4.5 Tools
2.4.6 Armor
2.4.7 Potions
2.4.8 Scrolls
2.4.9 Wands
2.4.10 Spellbooks
2.4.11 Rings
2.4.12 Gems
2.4.13 Other items

2.5 With Special Thanks
2.6 References

So, you wanna play 1.3d.
If you're here, you're clearly seeking advice on making any amount of progress in NetHack 1.3d, which is a version of the NetHack we all know and love - it's both old enough to run for President (and would legitimately be a better candidate than the current-at-time-of-writing crop but I digress), and its age definitely shows accordingly, for better and worse.
Given that most of the information documentated on this wiki prioritizes current vanilla and in general requires a lot of leg work to get and keep up-to-date, the usefulness of the information that follows is subject to constant shifts - as I and others actually play this game more and see what's up, we'll fill out this guide (and ideally the wiki) appropriately.
How much use you in particular will get out of this guide is also contingent on your answer to the following question...

Is it currently June?
For context, see Junethack.
No
Then what are you doing here?
...no, but really. Hardfought folks tend to glom to vanilla a fair bit, though a few variants are still decently represented - even among the "lesser-known" versions and variants, this one isn't exactly played too often. so if you've found this page, and you're not playing 1.3d specifically for June reasons, you have to be:

Someone like me who'll try damn near anything once;
Someone on a random wiki binge which, whom among us and all;
Someone who's actually working on this guide as well;[1]
The vanishingly rare Actual 1.3d Player™, or;
Some secret fifth thing I haven't accounted for above.
In any event, proceed to "Yes" below if you're genuinely interested in knowing more.

Yes
Okay so here's the June trophies and some of the prerequisites needed for them:

Get crowned.
Go to Hell (as in the set of levels from DL 30 on).
Get fire resistance before entering, probably from crowning as above. Enter without it or lose it while inside, and you lose the game.
Beat up Rodney.
Ascend with the Amulet (I think).
This space below, we'll get into the meat and potatoes of accomplishing said goals and doing so with some level of consistency, insofar as 1.3d permits.

A Primer
So assuming you haven't read the article on NetHack 1.3d or (much more likely) can't be bothered to tab repeatedly between pages, we'll cover the relative basics in this section. We're working with Hardfought's version of the game, so everything below this line assumes you are playing 1.3d specifically on Hardfought - i.e. none of the hard mode stuff is active, contributions from Ken Arromdee[2] are enabled, and there's some necessary fixes and other stuff backported.

Controls and options
Probably the most important section, given the help commands in-game are... a bit obtuse about what you can and can't do. Work-in-progress. 
Some of the most important things to remember:

There are much fewer free actions, if any at all, and even things as simple as checking your square or your wallet consumes a turn.
No autotravel or autofill.
You can't displace pets or other peaceful monsters, so movement is even more tedious.

Command

Key/Extended

Short Description

Engrave

E

Write on the floor. You can ID-test wands this way, but you can't write afterward if the wand you test makes the engraving vanish or polymorphs it.

Check inventory

i

Peek at your inventory. No navigation between pages outside of "space to next page", unfortunately.

Inventory by type

I

Checks inventory by an object type that you select by pressing its symbol.[3]

Move without pickup

m

Exactly what it says on the tin - move without acknowledging items. No difference between this and normal movement when moving into an adjacent monster.

Redraw

Ctrl&nbsp;+ R

Redraws the screen. You'll need to do this fairly often, since it won't always auto-update for you.

Search

s

Searches around you. Same as modern NetHack.

Transcribe

x

Attempt to transcribe a book. Succeed and you learn a spell, fail and you get the usual bad effects - regardless, this will always use up the book. Yes, even if you're blind or confused at the time.

List spells

X

Display all known spells.

Count gold

$

Counts your gold and uses up a turn doing what you could've done by looking at the lower left corner of your interface.[3]

#cast

Extended

Yes, you need to type this out to actually cast your known spells.

#dip

Extended

Lets you dip items into a potion or into a fountain on your square.

#pray

Extended

Pray to the gods, and pray they actually answer what you were asking for in the first place.

#remove

Extended

Attempts to remove a heavy iron ball attached to your leg.

#sit

Extended

Sits down on your current square, roughly the same as modern NetHack.

You
You get to pick a role and a gender.
...and that's it. 1.3d was long before things like alignment or race were introduced by the 

<sarcasm>Woke Liberal NetHack DevTeam.</sarcasm>

 As such, character creation is pretty barebones and straightforward, with your choice of roles as follows - all weapons and armor are at +0 unless specified:

Archeologist - Back when Indy was fresh and not yet milked. Has intrinsic stealth and speed. Starts with a pick-axe, studded leather armor, two random potions, 3 stacks of food rations, and an entire ice box.
Cave-(wo)man - A specimen as old as Hack itself. Starts with a +1 club, a +1 bow, a stack of arrows, and leather armor.
Elf - The Ranger before Rangers. Starts with a short sword, a bow, a stack of arrows, and either elfin chain mail or an elven cloak.
Fighter - The pre-Conanization Barbarian. Starts with a two-handed sword and ring mail.
Healer - Paging Doctor P. Roe Tagonist. Has intrinsic poison resistance. Starts with a stethoscope, a stack of 4 potions each of healing and extra healing, and a bunch of apples.
Knight - Sorry rough riders, no horses yet. Starts with a long sword, a +2 spear, a +1 ring mail, a helmet, a shield, and a pair of gloves.
Ninja - That role what got replaced by the Rogue. Has intrinsic stealth and speed. Starts with a katana, +1 leather armor and a stack of shuriken.
Priest - Because someone needed to have the gods' favor in this game. Starts with chain mail, a shield, a +1 mace, and two random spellbooks.
Samurai - Insert bastardized Japanese truism here. Has intrinsic speed. Starts with a katana, a +1 bow, a stack of arrows, and splint mail.
Tourist - In case you thought NetHack was ever not anachronistic by design. Starts with ten stacks of food items, 2 potions of extra healing, an expensive camera, and a stack of +2 darts.
Valkyrie - Still The Best 1987. Has intrinsic stealth and cold resistance. Starts with a +1 long sword, a +3 shield, and a food ration stack.
Wizard - In all its unpatched glory. Starts with 2 random rings, 2 random wands, 3 random scrolls, 2 random potions, and an elven cloak.
Your attributes
These here 're your stats:

Experience - Capped at XL 14 (which is the Quest-ready threshold in vanilla).
Hit points - The most important number.
Magical energy - If you have this, you can cast stuff, simple as.
Armor class - The second most important number.
Strength - No faffin' around intelligence or dexterity yet.
Your pet
...is always a little dog. They'll eat damn near any corpse if it isn't poisonous, but aren't nearly as reliable for detecting cursed items or traps - there's no messages for reluctant movement, and traps they step on aren't highlighted, because you can't have nice things.
If a pet refuses to pick up an item even after moving over it, it's probably cursed. Similarly, if you get a message about them stepping on a trap, search that area to manually reveal it.

The Dungeons of Doom
NetHack 1.3d's dungeon is a single-branch affair that's a maximum of 40 levels long, with the standard goal of "retrieve the Amulet of Yendor or die trying": go in, get as deep as you can, get the Amulet, get out with the Amulet, win. There's a basic suite of special rooms:

Vaults: Same as in vanilla, you can dig your way to them or use the "ad aerarium" vault teleporter, then dig or warp your way out.
Shops: With attendant shopkeeper as expected, though the mechanics are very unrefined compared to vanilla. More on them below.
Throne rooms: No special "ruler" yet, but has the expected court of monsters.
Treasure zoos
Beehives
Crypts
Swamp
After roughly 25 or so levels of room-and-corridor maps, you start getting the old-fashioned mazes - on each maze level, an enormous rock in a dead-end square has a wand of wishing and yes, you can obtain multiple such wands. Dungeon levels 30+ also count as Hell, the conceptual ancestor to Gehennom - these levels are upstairs-only, meaning you can only access them via level teleportation. You also need to have fire resistance for those levels or you die. Lost that ring of fire resistance while in there? You die. Relying on a polyself that timed out? You die. Lose your intrinsic to a gremlin? Then you're clearly on a different version because 1.3d doesn't have those, so that's one less thing for you to fear. But one way or another, you need fire resistance.
The Wizard of Yendor awaits in a small room in the center of the bottom-most maze level, surrounded by water and accompanied by a hell hound - the Amulet of Yendor is in his possession. Once you beat him and/or take it, make your way back up and out of the dungeon and escape with the Amulet to secure victory.

Shops
1.3d shops are... interesting, to say the least:

Prices are determined basically at random each time you enter and exit, sure, why not, fuck you. It's not all bad - you can actually exploit this for profit using the old pet theft approach.
Normal random loot can generate in the room where a shop is made.
Multiple pieces of inventory can generate on a square.
Killed monster drops belong to the shop as usual except for their gold - this means no fear of killing leprechauns in a shop and losing the gold they stole.
The stuff in the "open" row by the entrance wall may or may not also be counted as part of its inventory.
The game doesn't disclose actual prices (which as mentioned are random anyway because "fuck you"), but at least it tells you what is and isn't paid for.
Features and other stuff can generate in shops too, including traps also because "fuck you".
Shop types are the general store, liquor, used armor, weapons, wands, rings, bookstores, and food stores.

Dungeon features
Pools
Fountains, which work pretty close to how they do in vanilla NetHack.
Thrones
Traps
bear trap
arrow trap
dart trap
trapdoor
teleportation trap
pit
sleeping gas trap
magic trap
squeaky board
web
spiked pit
level teleporter
anti-magic field
rust trap
Objects
Objects that debut in this version are indicated in boldface.

Artifacts
There's only two artifact weapons and nothing else, though this is before 3.0.0 - that means you can make multiple artifact weapons.

Orcrist can be created by naming any two-handed sword, and deals +d10 to orcs. Given the sheer amount of orcs that occur early on, this may be genuinely worth considering.
Excalibur is created vaguely similar to modern versions, but there are critical differences: you must first name a long sword Excalibur and then #dip it into a fountain, with a 2⁄15 chance of the Lady of the Lake blessing the sword.[4] Excalibur has no special properties of its own, but this enchants it to +5, uncurses it and rustproofs it - "really good long sword" is generally more than sufficient for pretty much anyone.
Amulets
...do not exist as a formal object class. There's only the two thus far:

The Amulet of Yendor, your primary objective.
The cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor, a cheap plastic imitation of your primary objective introduced in Hack 1.0.3 to stop cheap plastic imitations of an ascension run that intentionally or otherwise take advantage of bones.
Food
Eat or die.

Food ration: Probably the most reliable food in light of dead monsters being not-that-great for nutrition which, see below.
Tripe ration: Dog food.
Dead monster: There are two things that are very important to note about monster corpses in 1.3d.
They confer their intrinsics silently. This is beyond annoying in the case of dead leprechauns, which fits with the annoying qualities of live ones.
They are not nearly as reliable as they are in modern NetHack. In particular, you can end up feeling sick and losing HP from not eating a corpse immediately - this is ostensibly logical for the raw meat of a freshly-killed (and possibly sentient) being, but unfortunately also sets you back quite a bit when you're just trying to survive and gather permafood. You can still subsist on them, but keep this in mind.
dead lizard: Basically modern lizard corpses, minus the actual lizard monster.
pancake
fortune cookie
carrot
slice of pizza
cream pie
Tin: Contains randomly-chosen food such as peaches or even spinach.
orange
apple
pear
melon
banana
candy bar
egg
clove of garlic
lump of royal jelly
Tin chart

Message
Nutrition

It contains spinach - this makes you feel like Popeye!

600, increases strength

It contains salmon - not bad!

60, causes slippery fingers

It contains first quality peaches - what a surprise!

40

It contains apple juice - perhaps not what you hoped for.

20

It contains some nondescript substance, tasting awfully.

500

It contains rotten meat. You vomit.

-50

It turns out to be empty.

0

Weapons
arrow
sling bullet
crossbow bolt
dart
shuriken
rock
boomerang
mace
axe
flail
long sword
two handed sword
dagger
worm tooth
crysknife
aklys
bardiche
bec de corbin
bill-guisarme
club
fauchard
glaive
guisarme
halberd
lucern hammer
javelin
katana
lance
morning star
partisan
ranseur
scimitar
spetum
broad sword
short sword
trident
voulge
spear
bow
sling
crossbow
Tools
whistle
leash
magic whistle
expensive camera
pick-axe
magic marker
stethoscope
can opener
Ice box, which appears as a large box and is the only container available. Same as in vanilla, down to the fact you probably should lug one around constantly.
Armor
helmet
plate mail
splint mail
banded mail
chain mail
scale mail
ring mail
studded leather armor
Elfin chain mail: A precursor to the elven mithril-coat.
bronze plate mail
crystal plate mail
leather armor
elven cloak
shield
pair of gloves
Potions
potion of restore strength
potion of gain energy
potion of booze
potion of invisibility
potion of fruit juice
Potion of healing: heals for miniscule amount of HP.
potion of paralysis
potion of monster detection
Potion of object detection: Reveals object locations, but doesn't leave them marked on the map.
potion of sickness
potion of confusion
potion of gain strength
potion of speed
potion of blindness
potion of gain level
potion of extra healing
potion of levitation
potion of hallucination
Potion of holy water: Appears as a random potion, because this is well before it was decided water should have the same appearance in every game. Blesses whatever you dip into it.
Scrolls
scroll of mail
scroll of enchant armor
scroll of destroy armor
scroll of confuse monster
scroll of scare monster
Scroll of blank paper: Has its own label, for some stupid reason. Same as in vanilla, don't let the read message fool you.
scroll of remove curse
scroll of enchant weapon
Scroll of damage weapon: Basically a cursed scroll of enchant weapon.
scroll of create monster
scroll of taming
Scroll of genocide: Same as uncursed genocide in vanilla, though there's usually only one monster per symbol for most classes.
scroll of light: Lights a room, doesn't work on corridors.
scroll of teleportation
scroll of gold detection
scroll of food detection
scroll of identify
scroll of magic mapping
Scroll of amnesia: Wipes your memory of the current floor and known spells. Doesn't seem to touch known items, though.
scroll of fire: Blows you up for fire damage that lowers your max HP. Seemingly no damage to inventory as of yet.
scroll of punishment
Wands
wand of light
wand of secret door detection
wand of create monster
wand of wishing
wand of striking
wand of nothing
wand of slow monster
wand of speed monster
wand of undead turning
wand of polymorph
wand of cancellation
wand of teleportation
wand of make invisible
wand of probing
wand of digging
wand of magic missile
wand of fire
wand of sleep
wand of cold
wand of death
Spellbooks
Spellbooks as an item class make their debut here.

spellbook of magic missile
spellbook of fireball
spellbook of sleep
spellbook of cone of cold
spellbook of finger of death
spellbook of healing
spellbook of detect monsters
spellbook of force bolt
spellbook of light
spellbook of confuse monster
spellbook of cure blindness
spellbook of slow monster
spellbook of create monster
spellbook of detect food
spellbook of haste self
spellbook of cause fear
spellbook of cure sickness
spellbook of detect unseen
spellbook of extra healing
spellbook of charm monster
spellbook of levitation
spellbook of restore strength
spellbook of invisibility
spellbook of detect treasure
spellbook of dig
spellbook of remove curse
spellbook of magic mapping
spellbook of identify
spellbook of turn undead
spellbook of polymorph
spellbook of create familiar
spellbook of teleport away
spellbook of cancellation
Spellbook of genocide: Yes, really. If you successfully learn this spell and have the spare energy for it, then you potentially just win the game.
Rings
Ring of adornment: Does nothing since there's no charisma stat.
ring of teleportation
ring of regeneration
ring of searching
ring of see invisible
ring of stealth
ring of levitation
ring of poison resistance
ring of aggravate monster
ring of hunger
ring of fire resistance
ring of cold resistance
ring of protection from shape changers
ring of conflict
ring of gain strength
ring of increase damage
ring of protection
ring of warning
ring of teleport control
Gems
dilithium crystal
diamond
ruby
sapphire
emerald
turquoise stone
aquamarine stone
tourmaline stone
topaz stone
opal stone
garnet stone
amethyst stone
agate stone
onyx stone
jasper stone
jade stone
Worthless glass: In blue, red, yellow, and green flavors.
Other items
heavy iron ball
iron chain
Enormous rock: Totally not just a boulder.
With Special Thanks
I would like to close this as-of-yet unfinished guide by giving a non-exhaustive shoutout to the following folks:

Mike Stephenson, who released this first version of the game to Usenet and changed thousands of lives forever.
Patric Mueller, who introduced this version to the Junethack tournament and by extension Hardfought.
Keith Simpson, Hardfought owner and EvilHack dev whose work I thoroughly enjoy (and who I hope doesn't mind the full name here, haha)
amateurhour, one of the few IRC users I know who took to playing 1.3d and is responsible for much of the strategy above.
And you, for spending your time reading this, whoever the hell you are. &lt;3
References

↑ In which case, hit me up @ Umbire on Discord or Libera.chat so we can collab if you like!

↑ Or "KAA", if you've gone source diving here or in NetHack repos elsewhere.

↑ 3.0 3.1 Fun fact - if you do either of these commands and have a significant amount of gold on you, you will physically sit to count your gold and use up multiple turns! Because "fuck you"! there likely wasn't room to do anything that'd require another status line, and unfortunately for 1987 computers were... limited. So yeah - be careful doing this or you could die.

↑ fountain.c in NetHack 1.3d, line 242