Lugging a hundred thousand gold pieces to the Astral Plane was perhaps more trouble than it was worth, but I did score more points than other recent ascensions.  Also notably fun was intrinsic magical breathing and protection from shape changers.  Oh, and I brought my backup bands with me, the Beetles and the Ants.

Sayonara Ferret the Demigod...

You and the soldier ant and the giant beetle and the giant ant and the giant beetle and the soldier ant and the giant beetle
went to your reward with 4291074 points,
Excalibur (worth 4000 zorkmids and 10000 points)
The Tsurugi of Muramasa (worth 4500 zorkmids and 11250 points)
Snickersnee (worth 1200 zorkmids and 3000 points)
Werebane (worth 1500 zorkmids and 3750 points)
Dragonbane (worth 500 zorkmids and 1250 points)
Trollsbane (worth 200 zorkmids and 500 points)
      19 amethyst stones (worth 11400 zorkmids),
      15 emeralds (worth 37500 zorkmids),
      13 fluorite stones (worth 5200 zorkmids),
      13 agate stones (worth 2600 zorkmids),
      10 sapphires (worth 30000 zorkmids),
       8 rubies (worth 28000 zorkmids),
       8 opals (worth 6400 zorkmids),
       8 jade stones (worth 2400 zorkmids),
       7 black opals (worth 17500 zorkmids),
       7 citrine stones (worth 10500 zorkmids),
       7 chrysoberyl stones (worth 4900 zorkmids),
       6 amber stones (worth 6000 zorkmids),
       6 topaz stones (worth 5400 zorkmids),
       6 jasper stones (worth 3000 zorkmids),
       5 dilithium crystals (worth 22500 zorkmids),
       5 turquoise stones (worth 10000 zorkmids),
       5 aquamarine stones (worth 7500 zorkmids),
       5 garnet stones (worth 3500 zorkmids),
       4 diamonds (worth 16000 zorkmids),
       3 jet stones (worth 2550 zorkmids),
       1 obsidian stone (worth 200 zorkmids),
       5 amulets of life saving (worth 750 zorkmids),
and 110484 pieces of gold, after 84679 moves.
You were level 28 with a maximum of 542 hit points when you ascended.

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7/10 '22 2 Comments
Well played sir. Is the community still adding new stuff?
Vanilla nethack hasn't changed much, but gaining those intrinsic abilities was something I don't recall accomplishing before.
 

He donated an astonishing 128,000 zorkmids to friendly priests, and never attacked a peaceful creature.  (Strange how so many chose not to be peaceful!)
As for his other conduct...
After his cat Kit Fisto picked an ill-advised fight with a watch captain in Minetown, he only felt slightly guilty about occasionally eating food that would otherwise be wasted.  His pet killer bee named Baybee didn't survive the dungeon either.  And one is obligated to make use of a divinely-gifted sword, right?  There was dancing with demons, and nurses in a graveyard.  Experimenting with polymorph control turned him into a woman temporarily, which may have caused him to lose interest in dancing.  Mind flayers are annoying far beyond their ability to kill you.  One inflicted him with amnesia, so he had to genocide all similar-looking humanoids in reprisal.  And then once one has committed a genocide, why not a couple more?  Goodbye, liches and cockatrices.  After looting Ludios without finding so much as a crummy sack, he resorted to poly-piling for a bag.  Then he polymorphed into a black dragon to disintegrate Master Kaen.  He eventually started sporting dragon scale mail and a shield even though monks aren't supposed to wear body armor.  He plundered the grave goods of "dareman" (killed by a mumak while reading a book) to get Magicbane and other goodies.  The Astral Plane went very smoothly after eighty thousand turns of preparation.  He chose the correct curtain behind Famine to ascend with 3,994,254 points and armor class negative 49.

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3/16 '22 1 Comment
Well, I mean, but of course.
 

I am a cavegnome!  And I went to my reward with 4077970 points, having never successfully cast a spell.  I would have maxed out my attributes though, if a titan hadn't disintegrated my +5 helm of brilliance.  13 intelligence is pretty good for a cavegnome, right?

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12/31 '21 1 Comment
Nice! Aw 404
 

My trusty steed Ki-Rin-Tin-Tin was killed by a wand of death.
Then I managed to explode my bag of holding, my two primary weapons, and quite a lot of other useful things.
And Ki-Rin-Tin-Tin-Too was disintegrated by a black dragon!
So I limped onward, no longer a mounted knight but determined as ever.
"The guardian Angel of Lugh will not accept the name Cool Hand of Lugh."
I went to my reward with 3285282 points, happy just to have made it.

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11/22 '19 7 Comments
O my stars, they are still iterating on the game
They are iterating both it and several wildly differing variants:
* nethack the original, v3.6.1 and counting.
* unnethack - kitchen sink of additions, harder than vanilla, very actively developed.
* Slash'em/Slash'em Extended/SlashThem - I play this one a lot, basically 3.4.3 with new roles, races, monsters, artifacts, longer dungeon, shorter Gehennom. Kinda hard. Playing as a Vampire wizard is super fun. Playing as a Doppleganger is OP AF. Dev seems stalled for most of these subvariants.
* dNethack - new and actively changing as we speak, new mechanics for almost everything, WAY harder monsters, new roles that are basically impossible to ascend, Elbereth replaced with a series of Wards and spirit bindings that convey an intrinsic but only if you don't break conduct...easily the most complicated and difficult of the current variants. You can play as an android or a convict or a time traveler from the future who doesn't know why he has all these crazy plasma weapons etc.
* FiqHack - mostly UI and QoL improvements...didn't do much for me.
* GruntHack - intended to be harder; can't say, never tried it.

I think that's the major ones? AceHack and NitroHack got folded into one or more of those...NetHack4 became FiqHack I think...NetHack Fourk might be active.

Still a great (set of) game(s).
https://alt.org/nethack/hterm/ has NetHack 3.6.2, using a very convenient interface so you don't have to download or install anything. But now I need to play a time traveller? Aw, man.

https://ascension.run/hterm/ appears to have many of the variants Paul listed.
Hm, getting unstable connectivity to that variant site, it seems.
OH MY STARS AND GARTERS I can watch random people play nethack this is so much better than playing nethack
Oh, and you can send them a scroll of mail with your kibbitzing thoughts. That's fun.
 

There's nothing more dangerous than putting on your blessed greased +2 gray dragon scale mail in the morning and thinking that you're invulnerable.

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11/6 '19 2 Comments
Bag End. I can't believe I'm still in Bag End.
Baaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha.

I lost a level 24 wiz-elf-mal-cha to a cross-aligned artifact blast last week.

30 years on, the game still catches me being sloppy every. Time.