The November Nethack Tournament

General Rules

Use your common sense: don't hack into the game servers, don't deliberately corrupt or leak memory or otherwise try to crash or hang up the game, don't abuse the RNG, and don't be a jerk.

For now, bots are banned as well. If they're unbanned at some point in the future, they will still be disallowed from impersonating a human (playing on an account registered to a human) or cybernetically enhancing a human clan (playing in a clan that contains humans).

However, anything within the normal execution of the game is fair game. This includes farming, scumming, abusing program bugs, reading dead characters' dump logs, viewing ttyrecs of your own or others' games, using interface enhancers like InterHack, and hanging out on IRC to see if the gray stone you picked up in Mines' End gets livelogged as the luckstone.

Clans

To create clans, invite players to your clan, and accept invitations to others' clans, go here.

For the 2018 tournament, there are no limits on the size of a clan, and the scoring is designed so that adding new clan members, however inexperienced, cannot hurt the clan overall.

At November 10th at midnight UTC, clan membership will become frozen; people can still leave or be kicked out of clans, but cannot create new clans or join new clans. Anyone who starts their first tournament game after this date may optionally join or create a clan within 24 hours of starting their game.

Scoring

Not accounting for trophies, all ascensions are worth 50 points each. There are several ways to get more points:

Trophies

Various accomplishments across one or multiple games earn you trophies, which come with an associated boatload of points. To see how to earn these, go to the Trophies page and hover over them; they will show up as a tooltip.

Ascending with Conducts

For conducts that necessarily imply other conducts, such as Vegan and Vegetarian, keeping the more stringent conduct will score points for both it and the less stringent conduct. For example, a foodless ascension is actually worth 50 points, because the player will get the points for Vegan and Vegetarian as well.

Speedrunning

Games that are won in under 20,000 turns score additional bonus points equal to 500,000 divided by the turncount of the game. For instance, a game that finishes in 5,000 turns will score 100 bonus points, whereas a game that barely finishes in 20,000 turns scores 25 points. No points are awarded for games longer than 20,000 turns.

Streaking

A streak is a series of consecutive winning games by the same player. Because you can play on multiple servers, the rule is that the first game you start on any server after winning the previous game in a streak is the candidate game for continuing the streak; other simultaneous games will not be counted for your streak.

If you simply play consecutive games, starting the next after you ascend the last, then each game counts towards your streak, even if they are played on different servers.

However, if you start games on different servers concurrently, not every game will be eligible for your streak. For example, suppose you ascend game A, then start game B, and start game C on another server before ascending game B. You then ascend game C – this does not count towards your streak, because game B came first. If you ascend game B, this will count towards your streak. You could then start game D and ascend it, in which case your longer streak would be extended, A-B-D.

For those familiar with DCSS tournaments, these rules are the same as theirs.

Each consecutive streak game has its ascension points (plus bonuses for speedrunning or conducts) multiplied by a number which increases as the streak gets longer. This number is 1.1 for the second game of a streak, 1.2 for the third, 1.3 for the fourth, and so on.

Achievements

Achievements are worth 1 point each, across all games (if you get the same achievement in two or more games, you still only get 1 point for that achievement counting towards your individual score.) If you get all possible achievements and the All Achievements trophy, each achievement counts for 2 points instead.

Achievement-related points are counted towards your individual score directly, and are not multiplied by any streak you may have.

Below is a listing of every achievement a player can earn in-game, and a description of that achievement and what needs to be done to earn it.

Clan Scoring

Clans' games are scored based on the highest score for a given character race/role/alignment/gender combination. That is, if one player in a clan ascends a Val-Dwa-Fem-Law with no frills and gets 50 points, the clan will have 50 points for that win; but if another player in the same clan ascends another Val-Dwa-Fem-Law and gets 10 points for a conduct, scoring 60 points for that game, the clan's 50 points for the older win are replaced with the higher scoring 60-point game.

Many of the trophies which can be earned individually can also be earned collectively by a clan, for the same amount of points. If an individual earns one of these trophies on their own, their clan will also get the trophy.

The Great and Lesser Race/Role

Most of the major trophies are explained as tooltips on the Trophies page; hover over the trophy title to see it. The "Great Race/Role" and "Lesser Race/Role", however, need a bit more explanation.

The Great Race/Role is a multi-ascension trophy, and gives extra credit for playing, for example, “all the gnomes” – The Great Gnome, or “all the wizards” – The Great Wizard. Gender does not matter. Alignment does not matter for The Great Race, but it does for The Great Role. Only starting alignment is counted.

The Great Human is a special case, and requires you to play only those roles which must be human, as shown in the table below. The required Monk can be of any alignment.

These may be achieved by individual players or by clans working together.

Below is a table of requirements for each race or role:

The Lesser Race/Role works identically to the Great, but instead of ascending, you must instead complete a game with each required character combination where you successfully retrieve the luckstone from the bottom of the Mines AND retrieve the prize from the end of Sokoban.

The Great Race/Role is worth fifty additional points for each character combination it requires (as shown in the table above), and The Lesser Race/Role is worth five additional points for each character combination it requires. Like other trophies, these can also be earned collectively by a clan.

You can earn points for both the Lesser and Great of the same Race or Role, since it is possible to ascend without completing Sokoban and/or retrieving the Mines’ End luckstone.