A friend once showed me a post on rec.games.roguelike.nethack where someone was finally begging for a hint because they'd gone deep in the dungeon and couldn't figure out anything to do next. They couldn't find any staircases down, though they had found a weird vibrating square, and none of the many weird items they'd collected seemed to do anything to help.
This is one of the things that makes a spoiler free run hard to imagine. I think the Oracle can tell you about the ritual but geez it would take you forever to figure this stuff out
There is a story of a purported very deep spoiler-free run [1]. The person made a journal of everything the Oracle had to say (over multiple games) and was able to figure out a lot on their own as well.
A friend once showed me a post on rec.games.roguelike.nethack where someone was finally begging for a hint because they'd gone deep in the dungeon and couldn't figure out anything to do next. They couldn't find any staircases down, though they had found a weird vibrating square, and none of the many weird items they'd collected seemed to do anything to help.