Скачать или смотреть Auto-explore incrementally — move like a pro | DCSS tips

You can display the next auto-explore target by pressing "Xo". I bind this macro to my ; key and use it extensively. Haven't seen anyone else doing so. Spread the tip!

As you can see, incremental auto-explore is quite convenient. It only goes a short distance. You can sanity check it by tapping ;; or just hit ` to repeat the command.

The disadvantage of this method is that it doesn't update pathing after each step. I suspect that autoexplore with "o" is therefore safer and more efficient, perhaps significantly so. Therefore I usually just autoexplore in short bursts by tapping "op" repeatedly. ("p" is an obsolete key for prayer that interrupts the autoexplore after a few steps.)

Anon complains on rlg-chan:

If you could press the 'o' button while knowing exactly where it is going to place you, then it would be the same as pressing a numpad button or clicking on a square. As you don't know where you'll end up, you can not make a meaningful choice about where you end up, meaning that you can't use the information you've gained in order to make choices which improve your odds.

'o', then, is exclusively a button which decreases your odds of winning when you press it, from a mechanical perspective. From a human perspective, it increases your chance of winning, because NOT pressing 'o' and instead making good constant decisions about your pathing will be very low-yield in terms of attention paid vs positive results gained, which means that attention paid will continue to drop due to lack of reward, meaning that a player who doesn't press 'o' is likely to die of boredom.

The basic action of moving is, then, boring. Optimal movement is maximally boring, and results in loss because of that.

Meanwhile, 'o' brings your character directly to the next meaningful object, but even then you're going to ignore more than 50% of object on the ground. Often, this meaningful object is a creature, and you're not in the ideal position to handle whatever threat that creature will represent.

In a perfect game, mechanically optimal play is also maximally fun. So, the act of moving itself should be fun.
This is a massive challenge which games often struggle with. Platformers and rhythm games have the best answers here, though minesweeper and such puzzle games are honorable mentions which are relevant to such tile-based games.