👉 Welcome to the Intermediate Guide. This guide builds upon the basics from the Starting Guide for Beginners to help you survive the deeper dungeon.
🗺️ Part 1: Navigating the Dungeon
⛰️ Dungeon Branches
The dungeon in GnollHack is not just a single straight line down; it features several branching paths.
| Dungeon Branch / Area | Area / Entrance Found In | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Dungeons of Doom | The starting branch | The main dungeon branch. You start on level 1 and must descend to find the Amulet of Yendor. Stick to this path initially. The deeper you go, the harder the monsters become. |
| Gnomish Mines | Dungeons of Doom (levels 2-4) | A mostly unlit cavernous branch populated primarily by gnomes and dwarves. |
| Mine Town | Gnomish Mines (levels 5-8) | A guaranteed town level within the Gnomish Mines, featuring multiple Shops and a Temple with a Priest. It is an excellent place to identify items and buy gear. |
| Sokoban | Dungeons of Doom (levels 6-10) | A puzzle branch where you must push boulders into pits to advance. Completing it yields a valuable reward (a Bag of holding or an Amulet of reflection). |
| Quest | Dungeons of Doom (levels 11-16) | A unique branch tailored to your Character Classes. You must be at least experience level 14 to enter it. |
| Gehennom | Dungeons of Doom (levels 25-29) | The late-game hellish branch of the dungeon. Unlike NetHack, GnollHack has removed the tedious mazes from Gehennom, making it much more enjoyable and fast-paced to explore. |
🔗 Learn More
- Dungeon Layout — Complete overview of all branches, levels, and structures
👤 NPCs and Merchants
You will encounter various specialized NPCs who can identify items or buy your unwanted gear.
| NPC Type | Services Offered |
|---|---|
| General Storekeeper | Buys and sells a wide variety of items. Can identify any item for a fee in Shops. |
| Specialized Shopkeeper | E.g., bookstores. They can only identify the types of items they sell in Shops. |
| Artificer | Resides in the Laboratory and will gladly buy your expensive (but perhaps useless to your class) spellbooks. |
| Geologist | A specialized NPC who buys gems. Sell them your identified valuable gems for a massive profit in the Workshop. |
| Oracle | Can identify items for a fee and provides game hints in Delphi. |
| Priest | Found in Temples. They can bless and curse items for a fee, and they sell protection (extrinsic AC) if you donate large sums of money. |
| Smith | Provides many useful services and can identify weapons and armor for a fee in the Smithy. |
🤝 Part 2: Companions & Mercenaries
🤝 Hiring Mercenaries
You can interact with peaceful monsters (using the Chat C command) and hire them as mercenaries. You must pay them gold, but having heavily armed soldiers fighting alongside you makes the early and mid-game significantly easier.
🐾 Pet Management
The Starting Guide for Beginners advises you to rely on your pet, but to survive the mid-game, you need to actively manage and grow them into powerful companions.
- Feeding and Starvation: Pets have a hunger timer. If they go too long without eating, they become confused and weakened and will eventually die of starvation.
-
Equipping Pets: Intelligent pets with hands can wield weapons and wear armor. You can equip them using the Chat
Ccommand. - Gaining Resistances: Just like you, pets can gain intrinsic resistances (like fire, cold, shock, or poison resistance) by eating the right monster corpses. Strategic feeding can make your pet incredibly resilient.
-
Calling Them Back: If your pet wanders off, use the Yell (
Y) command to call them back to your location.
⚔️ Part 3: Combat, Dangers & Resistances
⚠️ Dangerous Early-Game Monsters
| Monster | Danger | Survival Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Cockatrice | Instant death (petrification) upon physical contact. | Never touch them bare-handed. Wear gloves before hitting them in melee. Do not eat their corpses. If you fall into a pit while carrying a cockatrice corpse, you will turn to stone and die. |
| Floating eye | Passive paralysis. If you hit them in melee, you will be paralyzed for many turns while other monsters kill you. | Use ranged combat. Shoot them with arrows, darts, or spells. Alternatively, apply a blindfold before hitting them (you cannot be paralyzed if you cannot see them). |
| Gelatinous cube | Paralyzing attacks and passive paralysis. If you hit them in melee or they hit you, you will be paralyzed for many turns. | Use ranged combat. Keep your distance and use ranged weapons or attack wands. |
| Ghast | Paralyzing attacks and terminal disease (sickness). Their melee attacks can paralyze you for several turns and cause a fatal illness that will quickly kill you if not treated. | Cure sickness immediately. Have a noncursed Unicorn horn, Fig, or Jar of medicinal salve ready, or know the Cure sickness spell. Kill them from a distance. |
| Ghoul | Paralyzing attacks. Their melee attacks can paralyze you for several turns. | Use ranged combat. Keep your distance and kill them before they can get into melee range. |
| Nymphs | Item theft. | They will steal your items and teleport away. Kill them with ranged attacks before they get close. |
💡 Tip: Paralysis is extremely dangerous throughout the entire game. Obtain Free Action (paralysis resistance) as early as possible to prevent monsters from hitting you helplessly.
🔗 Learn More
- Monsters — Full bestiary and encounter difficulty modifiers
🧬 Key Resistances
As you descend deeper, obtaining key resistances is vital for survival.
| Resistance | Effect | How to Gain As Intrinsic1 | How to Gain As Extrinsic2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poison Resistance | Protects against poison darts, traps, and poisonous monster attacks or corpses (e.g., kobolds). | Starting as certain races/roles (e.g., Orc, Barbarian, Healer), or gaining levels in specific roles. | Amulet versus poison, Ring of poison resistance, or Green dragon scale mail. |
| Sleep Resistance | Prevents being put to sleep by wands or traps. | Eating corpses (e.g., Elf, Orange dragon), starting as a Monk, or gaining levels as an Elf. | Orange dragon scale mail. |
| Free Action | Grants complete immunity to paralysis attacks, which would otherwise leave you helpless. | Gaining levels as an Elf. | Ring of free action, or Orange dragon scale mail. |
| Death Resistance | Essential for surviving late-game insta-death attacks (such as the Finger of Death spell or a wand of death). | Gaining levels as a Priest. | Ring of protection from undeath, Amulet versus undeath, Gown of the archbishops, or Black dragon scale mail. |
| Magic Resistance | Protects you from polymorph traps and most monster spells. Note that Magic Resistance does *not protect against death attacks.* | ❌ | Cloak of magic resistance, Gray dragon scale mail, or certain artifacts. |
| Reflection | Bounces ray attacks (like dragon breath and wands) back at the caster. | ❌ | Amulet of reflection, Shield of reflection, or Silver dragon scale mail. |
- 1 Intrinsic is an innate ability that doesn't come from an item.
- 2 Extrinsic is an ability granted by an item.
🔗 Learn More
- Resistances and Saving Throws — Comprehensive calculations, rates, and saving throw rules
🛠️ Part 4: Items, Gear & Upgrades
💎 Item Quality and Tier Upgrades
Weapons, armor, and wands in GnollHack can possess quality modifiers that drastically improve their performance:
| Quality Tier | Weapons | Body Armor | Wands | Alignment & Restrictions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exceptional | 2x base damage | -4 AC, +1 MC | 2x base damage | None |
| Elite | 3x base damage | -8 AC, +2 MC | 3x base damage | None |
| Celestial / Primordial / Infernal | 4x base damage | -12 AC, +4 MC | — | Lawful / Neutral / Chaotic only |
ℹ️ Note: Other armor pieces (shields, boots, gloves) also receive AC and MC scaling based on their quality.
You can visit a Smith NPC to repair damaged gear, rustproof items, and upgrade weapon and armor quality for a gold fee. For more details, see Exceptional, Elite, Celestial, Primordial, and Infernal Items.
🔗 Learn More
- Items — List of all item categories and materials
- Weapons — Overview of weapon categories and quality tiers
- Armor — Overview of armor categories, slots, and properties
- Exceptional, Elite, Celestial, Primordial, and Infernal Items — Full breakdown of quality multipliers and scaling
- Mythic and Legendary Items — Guide to randomized weapon and armor affixes
🩹 Part 5: Status Conditions & Curing
🩹 Status Conditions & Curing Strategies
The deeper dungeon holds many debilitating status conditions. Knowing how to cure them instantly can save your run:
| Status Condition | Cure / Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Mummy Rot / Sickness | Eat a Fig, use a Jar of medicinal salve, apply a noncursed Unicorn horn, or cast a Cure sickness spell. |
| Stoning / Petrification | Act in 1 turn: Eat a Lizard corpse or a Dragon fruit, or use a Jar of basilisk blood. Always keep one in open inventory! |
| Lycanthropy | Eat a Sprig of wolfsbane (requires poison resistance), drink holy water, or pray. |
| Intelligence Drain | Prevent: Wear a helmet (blocks 90% of attacks), a Nose ring of cerebral safeguarding, or a Ring of sustain ability. Restore: Drink a Potion of restore ability or eat a Cloudberry. |
🔗 Learn More
- How to Cure Various Conditions — Step-by-step methods to recover from all harmful statuses
- Conditions — Complete mechanics and stats for sickness, stoning, blindness, and more