How to fix the "Valley of the Dead has no upstairs"
bug
On a few levels, traps can be placed directly on staircases
and portals. This destroys the staircase / portal. If this
happens in the Valley of the Dead, the game is no longer winnable:
you can't level teleport with the amulet, and a cursed potion of gain level
won't take you up, either. Fortunately, Tina Hall developed a fix.
Take everything out of the VotD (or whichever level it is)
that you want to keep: pets, loot, whatever.
Leave the VotD. (If you can't either level teleport
out or fight your way through to the stairs down, there's probably still
a fix, but no-one's developed it.)
Note what level the VotD is on. Let's say it's dungeon
level 26. (The quest Home level will be called something like
70 or 71: branch 7, first level of.)
Save your game.
Make a back up copy of your saved game file, just in case
there are problems.
Start a wizard-mode game. (Start an MSDOS window;
go to your nethack directory; enter the command nethack -uwizard -D
Or, for the windowed Windows version, nethackw -uwizard -D )
Use CTRL-O to see what level the VotD
is on. If it isn't the same as the game you're trying to fix, #quit
and try again.
Use #levelchange to put your wiz-mode character to
the same character level as your original character.
Use CTRL-V to teleport to the VotD.
Put the VotD more-or-less in the same condition as the game
you're trying to fix. Kill the immediate attackers and go up the
stairs, or clear the entire level, or whatever. (CTRL-W to
wish for things like GDSM and 99 blessed potions of full healing.)
Leave the VotD.
Make a copy of the file containing the VotD. (The
DOS version calls it wizard.26 Windows: default-wizard.26
Unix: dunno.)
Quit the wizard-mode game.
Restart the game you're trying to fix.
Delete the file containing the VotD. (If your
name is Tina, the DOS version calls it tina.26 Windows:
default-tina.26
Unix: still dunno.)
Copy the wizard-mode file for the VotD over to tina.26
or whatever.
Go to the VotD and confirm that it's fixed.
If there's a problem, post details to news:rec.games.roguelike.nethack