[foresto]

In the early days of NetHack, spoilers were not so widely known (the web didn't exist yet) and save scumming was more difficult* (few people had admin access on systems that could run it) compared to now.

I wonder how many players today will resist those temptations now that they're not only trivial to discover and execute, but also widely accepted in gaming culture.

I urge new players to resist spoilers and cheats for as long as they can. This game is full of wonderful details and interactions that are not at all obvious, and they make it exceptionally rewarding to progress when you do so by discovering them on your own.

Of course, my recommended approach will mean dying a lot. If you keep a journal of things you do and notice in each play-through, your eulogy will be more useful. :)

Take heart: Starting over means you're likely to encounter new things in the levels you've seen before, so it won't be boring.

...

*I don't recall why the save files seemed elusive back then. Perhaps the system on which I played put them someplace obscure that I lacked either the motivation or the knowledge to find. Or perhaps they were kept out of reach of the player by unix permissions, requiring setuid for the game to read them. Either way, I'm glad, because the challenge and mystery of playing with only what the game provided made it all the more interesting.

[rcxdude]

Nethack is pretty punishingly difficult even with spoilers, so trying to go spoilerless is not for the faint of heart. The game does try to allow spoilerless play but I'm not sure it's tremendously well designed in that regard. So I understand the appeal but I think this is advice is only good for people who want a truly difficult challenge.

[zorked]

Nethack runs as a setgid process that hides save files from users.

Kind of old fashioned now that almost every Unix system is a single user system. There are still public servers for those that want the temptation to be taken away from them.

As to spoilers... Everybody reads the spoilers. I doubt anyone has ever ascended spoiler-free.

[Steuard]

[Possible obscure spoiler]

A friend once showed me a post on rec.games.roguelike.nethack where someone was finally begging for a hint because they'd gone deep in the dungeon and couldn't figure out anything to do next. They couldn't find any staircases down, though they had found a weird vibrating square, and none of the many weird items they'd collected seemed to do anything to help.

[why_at]

This is one of the things that makes a spoiler free run hard to imagine. I think the Oracle can tell you about the ritual but geez it would take you forever to figure this stuff out

[chongli]

There is a story of a purported very deep spoiler-free run [1]. The person made a journal of everything the Oracle had to say (over multiple games) and was able to figure out a lot on their own as well.

[1] http://nethack.gridbug.de/ellora/TheElloraSaga.pdf

[ForOldHack]

The ! command. If you run as SUID anything, and the UNIX you had, had a SUID bug, then the shell command SUID as root. Scary when you were running on a "secure" version of UNIX, and it had a SUID bug.

On DOS, the ! Command, gave you access to the levels files, for which you could make a closet level.

I always started a few rounds as every role, and watched the hilarity begin with the stupid ways to kill yourself, which after a few months, were always hillariously fun to read.

[Unit327]

Nethack is best played completely spoiled with the wiki open at all times. You'll miss the amazing interactions and stuff otherwise, and it is still challenging either way. It was basically made to be played by source divers in the days before wiki diving.

Savescumming is also just explore/wizard mode with more steps.

[pimeys]

Play as you like. Just saying I did read spoilers as a kid when I played it and I feel I did not lose anything. I learned a lot of English and after all these years Nethack is still the most memorable game I played.