👉 Welcome to the Intermediate Guide. This guide builds upon the basics from the Starting Guide for Beginners to help you survive the deeper dungeon.
🗺️ Dungeon Branches
The dungeon in GnollHack is not just a single straight line down; it features several branching paths.
| Branch / Area | Description & Strategy |
|---|---|
| Dungeons of Doom | 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. |
| The Gnomish Mines | A branch typically found between dungeon levels 2 and 4. |
| Minetown | 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 | 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). |
| The Quest | A unique branch tailored to your character's class. The entrance is a magic portal located between dungeon levels 11 and 16. You must be at least experience level 14 to enter it. |
| Gehennom | 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. |
NPCs
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. |
| Specialized Shopkeeper | E.g., bookstores. They can only identify the types of items they sell. |
| Artificer | A specialized NPC who 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. |
| Oracle | Can identify items for a fee, and provides game hints. |
| 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. |
Hiring Mercenaries
You can interact with peaceful monsters (using the C Chat 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.
⚠️ 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). |
| Nymphs & Leprechaun | Item and gold theft. | They will steal your items/gold and teleport away. Kill them with ranged attacks before they get close. If you eat a Leprechaun corpse, you may get teleportitis! |
🧬 Key Intrinsics and Resistances
As you descend deeper, monsters will begin using magical, elemental, and status-inflicting attacks. Obtaining key resistances and intrinsics is vital for survival.
- Poison Resistance: Protects against poison darts, traps, and poisonous monster attacks or corpses (e.g., kobolds).
- Sleep Resistance: Prevents being put to sleep by wands, traps, or sleep-inducing monsters.
- Free Action: Grants complete immunity to paralysis attacks, which would otherwise leave you helpless.
- Death Resistance: Essential for surviving late-game insta-death attacks (such as the Finger of Death spell or wands of death). Note that Magic Resistance does not protect against death attacks in GnollHack.
- Magic Resistance (MR): Protects you from polymorph traps, anti-magic traps, and most monster spells.
- Reflection: Bounces ray attacks (like dragon breath and wands) back at the caster.
For a full breakdown of how to obtain these and how they function, see Resistances and Saving Throws.
💎 Item Quality and Tier Upgrades
Weapons, armor, and wands in GnollHack can possess quality modifiers that drastically improve their performance:
- Exceptional: Weapons deal 2x base damage; body armor grants -4 AC and +1 MC; wands deal 2x base damage.
- Elite: Weapons deal 3x base damage; body armor grants -8 AC and +2 MC; wands deal 3x base damage.
- Celestial / Primordial / Infernal: Alignment-restricted (Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic). Weapons deal 4x base damage; body armor grants -12 AC and +4 MC.
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.
🩹 Status Conditions & Curing Strategies
The deeper dungeon holds many debilitating status conditions. Knowing how to cure them instantly can save your run:
- Mummy Rot / Sickness: Cured by eating a Fig, using a Jar of medicinal salve, applying a noncursed Unicorn horn, or casting a Cure sickness spell.
- Stoning / Petrification: You only have one turn to react when stoning starts. Immediately eat a Lizard corpse or a Dragon fruit, or use a Jar of basilisk blood. Always keep a lizard corpse or dragon fruit in your open inventory.
- Lycanthropy: Cured by eating a Sprig of wolfsbane (which is poisonous, so ensure you have poison resistance), drinking holy water, or praying.
- Intelligence Drain: Mind flayers and other tentacled enemies drain intelligence and cause amnesia. Wear a helmet to block 90% of these attacks, or wear a Ring of sustain ability for immunity. Restore lost attributes with a Potion of restore ability or a Cloudberry.
For more detailed strategies, read How to Cure Various Conditions.