# NetHackWiki talk:Community Portal
Woo. Discussion. Anyway, I was just wondering, what happens if you set a page so it redirects to itself? stormy 01:08, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Generally it isn't a good thing. Appears under maintenance on things to avoid. Lotte 02:16, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

If NetHack was released today...
Imagine this: the game we know as NetHack 3.4.3 did not exist (nor any of its predecessors, like Rogue or Hack). Rather, it was published today as NetHack 1.0. NetHack is closed source. Rec.games.nethack is established and NetHack immediately gains the user base it currently has in real life, too. Now, I was wondering, how long do you think it would take for anyone to ascend for the first time? Remember, no one would even know about the invocation rituals or anything, you'd just know about the standard message about Moloch and Marduk. Of course, there would be no spoiler files available, and if the game was closed source, they couldn't be generated. The main source of information would pretty much be the Oracle — and experience; your own and of those who post to rec.games.nethack. The Guidebook would of course be there too. Personally I'd guess it'd take a year or so before the first ascension by anybody. Opinions? Views? Guesses? Or is this just such a ridiculous thought that it should be sucked away by a mind flayer and never spoken about anymore?&nbsp;:) --ZeroOne 22:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Urban Dead is somewhat like that; it's a new game (about a year old) with a large fanbase, and an active wiki. The source is unavailable, and yet people have already figured out item generation probabilities to a remarkable degree of accuracy. NetHack is a much, much deeper game, but there's not much that can't be discovered with a little patience and a lot of players. The details of magic cancellation would be tricky.
One of the more notable YANIs I've read recently has the DevTeam releasing the next version privately to the /dev/null guys so that the world is forced to compete unspoiled. I like that idea an awful lot. --Jayt 14:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Patch question
Anyone know if there was ever a patch to add SlashEMs firearms and explosives to vanilla nethack? Those are really the only reason I ever play SlashEM anymore.

Cptschrodinger 07:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)