@ 5Hack

The dungeon

This is a real level

Not a mock-up — the map below came out of the generator, monsters, loot and all. Every square is one character. You are the @.

                                                     ----------
            ----------                               |..b.....|
            |........-#######                        |........|
           #-.......e|      #                       #|........-#
           #----------      #                       #------+---#
           #     ############                       #      #  ##
           #                #         --------      #      #  #
           #                #         |......+#     #      #  #----------
           #                #         |......+####  #      #  #+.../....|
           #                #         |......-#  ##############+........|
           #                #         |......-####--|--+--# ###-...x...>|
           #                #         ----++|-#  #+.%G..%+###  |.....[..|
           #                #             #####   |(.....|#    |........|
           ###              ###############      #+....!.-#    ----|-----
    ---------#              #----||-----------   #--------#       ##f##
    |.+.$...+################+..............h|   #        ##:######-+-+--
    |...r...-#              #+...............+####             #  #|Z@.+|
    |.......|                -----------------                 ####-\.$.|
    ---------                                                      ------

Eight rooms, nine monsters, eleven items. A gnome zombie (Z) is standing next to you. There is a throne (\) and gold ($) two rooms south, a wand (/) in the north-east, and the way down (>) is on the right.

The alphabet

Reading the map

Letters are living things. Punctuation is stuff. Monsters follow their first initial — d is a dog or a jackal, D is a dragon — so you can usually guess what has just walked around the corner.

Terrain

Things worth picking up

Some of the neighbours

Every one of those was standing on the level above. Your pet starts beside you and follows you down the stairs if it is next to you.

Starting

Getting in

On the title screen press r to be handed a random character, or n to choose a role, race and alignment yourself. If you have played before, c continues where you stopped.

• Play in the browser The normal way in. Runs right here. Your progress is stored in this browser, so come back to the same URL and your character is waiting.
• Download 5hack.html The whole game in a single file. One 410 KB file with no external references. Keep it, email it, put it on a USB stick — it plays offline by double-clicking.
• node serve.js For working on it. Serves the source version on port 8125, so you can edit a file and reload.

Moving

Your hands never leave the keyboard

Movement sits under your right hand on the home row. Walking into a monster attacks it; walking into a closed door usually opens it. The arrow keys and the number pad work too, if you would rather.

Hold shift with any of those — H, J, K, L — to run until something interesting happens. _ travels to a spot you pick with the cursor, which is the fastest way across a level you have already explored.

Prompts

Most commands ask a question

A command key rarely finishes the job on its own. Press it and the game asks what to use it on, up on the top line, and you answer with a single key. Wielding a weapon is the pattern almost everything follows. Press w and you get:

a, b and d are the things in your pack you could wield — the same letters i lists. Press one.

Done, in two keystrokes. e to eat, q to quaff, W to wear and the rest all work exactly this way.

Commands

The full set

Press ? in game for this same list. Nothing here is modal: every command either does its thing or asks you one question.

The status

Two lines that tell you everything

Dlvl how deep you are · HP current (maximum) — it turns orange at a third and red at a seventh · Pw magic energy · AC armor class, and lower is better · Xp level/points · T turns elapsed.

Anything wrong with you appears at the end of the second line: Hungry, Weak, Confused, Blind, Burdened. The first two are a clock. Ignore them long enough and you will faint in front of something with teeth.

Advice

What kills beginners

• Hunger. Eat when the status line first says Hungry, not when it says Weak. Corpses are food, and eating the right ones permanently grants resistances — a killer bee gives poison resistance.
• Floating eyes. Never hit an e in melee. Its passive gaze freezes you for dozens of turns while everything else in the room catches up. Throw something instead.
• Unknown potions. A "swirly potion" is a different thing every game. Test them when you are healthy and alone, never at low HP with company.
• Forgetting to pray. #pray once, when you are genuinely in trouble — nearly dead, starving, poisoned — and your god will usually fix it. Praying again too soon annoys them.
• Not writing Elbereth. E, then a dash for your fingertip, then type Elbereth. Most monsters will not attack you while you stand on it. It buys you the turn you need.
• Cursed gear. Cursed armor welds itself on and cursed weapons stick to your hand. If you can, drop unknown items on an altar first — the flash tells you which way they lean.

Persistence

Saving, and the one thing you cannot undo

The game saves itself constantly — every fifty turns, on every staircase, and whenever you close the tab. Reopen the page and it offers to continue exactly where you stopped: the same dungeon, the same monsters mid-stride, even the same position in the random number stream. S saves and exits deliberately.

Saves live in your browser. You can export one to a file from the title screen and import it on another machine, which is also how you take a backup.

The point

Why you are down here

The Amulet of Yendor sits on the twenty-sixth level, guarded. Getting to it is most of the game. Carrying it back up all twenty-six levels — with the dungeon now actively spawning things to stop you — is the rest.

Climb out through the top with the Amulet in your pack and you ascend. Almost nobody does this on their first character. Or their tenth.