A Practical Guide to Nethack: The Whole Dungeon Catalog: Food Version 2 by R2 Last updated 9-24-07 ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Contents Section I: About This Guide Section II: The Basics of Food Section III: Food Items Section IV: Tins Section V: Eating Things That Aren't Food Section VI: EoD/Copyright Notice ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section I: About This Guide So you're going into the Dungeons of Doom to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. Good for you! But it's a big, big dungeon and you'll be in there for a long, long time, so make sure you eat right and don't go starving to death or anything. Seriously, you're in a dungeon full of monsters and you died because you forgot to bring enough rations? Laaame. This guide assumes you're already familiar with Nethack, and was written for NetHack 3.4 for Windows. If you're hardcore enough to use Unix, you're probably hardcore enough to figure out what, from this guide, applies to you and what does not. In this guide, when I'm talking about specific commands, I'll wrap the keystrokes in square brackets. For instance, [e] means to press the "e" key (to eat an item). [E] means to hold Shift and press the "e" key, just like you were typing a capital letter. There are some long commands that are preceded by pound signs in the game, and will be transcribed as such. If I say to #offer something, that means to sacrifice a corpse at an altar. If I say to offer a tripe ration to a hostile dog, that doesn't involve the #offer command. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section II: The Basics of Food Exploring the Dungeons of Doom burns a lot of calories, so you'll need to eat regularly to stay alive. Your character has a statistic that's hidden from you under most circumstances: nutrition. This runs from 2000 down to -200 or so, and both ends of the scale are fatal. If your nutrition is between 150 and 1000, you're not hungry, and there's no descriptive term. If it falls below that, you get Hungry down to 50 nutrition, and Weak as you drop to 0. After your nutrition goes negative, you will often faint from lack of food, and eventually starve to death if the monsters in the dungeon don't hack your unconscious body apart first. If your nutrition is above 1000, you're satiated and not hungry at all. If your character is a Knight or Samurai, eating while satiated carries an alignment penalty. When you eat a meal while satiated, you may be informed that you're having trouble getting it all down. If this is the case, stop eating! If your nutrition goes above 2000, you will choke to death on your meal. You will lose one point of nutrition every turn. You'll lose an additional point every other turn if your encumbrance level is "stressed or worse, or if you have the regeneration, hunger, or conflict intrinsics from any source other than an artifact. You'll lose another nutrition one turn out of every twenty for each ring or amulet you're wearing, or by just carrying the Amulet of Yendor. Each food item you eat has a nutrition value. This number is simply added to your current nutrition. When you're hungry, eat! Food is usually generated uncursed and the b/u/c status doesn't matter, so don't waste your holy water. Food also takes a certain number of turns to eat, given under the "time" description. If no Time is listed, the food is consumed in a single turn. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section III: Food Items -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Food Type: Meat Eating meaty foods will break a vegan code of conduct, should you wish to pursue such a challenge. Everything except eggs will also break the Monk's required vegetarian code of conduct. Anything on this list may be thrown at a domestic dog or cat to tame it. Corpses are (usually) meat, but a section on eating monsters would be larger than the rest of this guide put together. Read my "Practical Guide To Nethack: The Whole Dungeon Catalog: Monsters" instead. Egg Nutrition: 80 Eggs are worth identifying if you can. Sometimes you get a plain ol' regular egg, which means it was laid by a chicken somewhere and is only good for eating. Other eggs might have been laid by ants, crocodiles, nagas, cockatrices, or even dragons. Eggs have a one in three chance of hatching after a while. For female characters, the result is usually hostile. For male characters, the hatchling has a 50% chance to be tame (according to the game's source code, "The identity of one's father is learned, not innate"). Dragon eggs will always hatch tame baby dragons. If your character is female and you polymorph into an egg-laying creature, you can use the #sit command to lay an egg. These eggs will always hatch, and the hatchling will always be tame. Breaking an egg you laid yourself carries a -1 luck penalty per egg. Eggs may be [w]ielded or [t]hrown. Generally they simply "splat!" when they strike a creature or object, but cockatrice eggs will petrify any creature they hit. Cockatrice eggs will also petrify creatures that eat them, so they're better off thrown or hatched into pets. Tripe Ration Nutrition: 200 Time: 2 Tripe is bovine stomach lining. It's unfit for human (or elven, dwarven, or gnomish) consumption -- there's an even chance you'll vomit and lose some of your nutrition score after eating tripe. Orcs and Cavemen don't mind eating it, but generally it's used as dog food. Drop or throw tripe to tame dogs and cats to increase their apport for your character, meaning they like you and are more willing to fetch items on your behalf. Meatball Nutrition: 5 Meatballs are the result of casting the Stone to Flesh spell on rocks, gems that aren't just worthless glass, loadstones, luckstones, touchstones, or flint stones. Like tripe, they're excellent treats for pets both canine and feline; your pet will happily eat them and love you all the more for it. Meat Ring Nutrition: 5 The result of casting Stone to Flesh on a ring made of stone. Applicable rings are any of the rings described as granite, opal, clay, coral, black onyx, moonstone, jade, tiger eye, agate, topaz, sapphire, ruby, diamond, emerald, or ivory. You can [P]ut on a meat ring, but it doesn't do anything. Meat Stick Nutrition: 5 The result of casting Stone to Flesh on a wand described as "marble". Huge Chunk of Meat Nutrition: 2000 Time: 20 The result of casting Stone to Flesh on a boulder. Yep, that's a big chunk of meat, all right. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fruits and Vegetables All of these foods are vegan-friendly, so they're good for Monks. All fruits and vegetables can be [t]hrown at a pony, horse, or warhorse to tame it. Kelp Frond Nutrition: 30 Kelp fronds grow underwater. If you're going to harvest them, you'll need to polymorph into an amphibious creature and put all of your gear that is damaged by water into an Oilskin sack or leave it on dry land. They're not extremely common, so a Scroll of Food Detection will be helpful should you desire kelp for some reason. Eucalyptus Leaf Nutrition: 30 Eating a eucalyptus leaf cures sickness and vomiting. They make a good dessert if you happen to eat something rotten. You may [a]pply a eucalyptus leaf to use it as a whistle. If blessed, the leaf works like a magic whistle, but there's a one in forty-nine chance that it becomes uncursed afterwards. Clove of Garlic Nutrition: 40 Cloves of garlic make reasonably effective undead-repellant. If you [t]hrow or [w]ield garlic at an undead creature, it will flee from you for 2-8 rounds. Sprig of Wolfsbane Nutrition: 40 While it won't repel lycanthropes from attacking you, wolfsbane will cure lycanthropy when eaten. Apple Nutrition: 50 These are treats for horses, making them friendlier to you. Carrot Nutrition: 50 Also treats for horses. Eating a carrot will cure blindness -- let the rabbits wear glasses! Pear Nutrition: 50 Banana Nutrition: 80 While they can't be used to tame monkeys or apes, should you have a pet Y creature anyway, bananas are treats for them. Orange Nutrition: 80 By NetHack-logic, you'd expect an orange to cure sickness. But it doesn't. Melon Nutrition: 100 Slime Mold Nutrition: 250 This is, believe it or not, your favorite fruit. You can change the name by editing your "defaults.nh" file. Search for "slime mold" and change it to something a little more appetizing that isn't the name for any other item in the game. Guava is a favorite for some reason, but if you're playing a game with a graphics patch, the icon looks like a bunch of grapes, so you might want to go with that for consistency. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- People Food Animals generally won't eat food in this list unless they're extremely hungry and nothing more appetizing is available. If you see your dog or cat snarf a food ration out from under you, it's very hungry, so try to provide for your pet in the future. Fortune Cookie Nutrition: 40 When you eat a fortune cookie, you get a rumor. If the cookie was blessed, the rumor is true. If cursed, the rumor is false. If uncursed, who knows? You can also [r]ead a fortune cookie to get the rumor without any gain in nutrition; this destroys the cookie. Candy Bar Nutrition: 100 Cream Pie Nutrition: 100 A favorite of the Keystone Kops, cream pies may also be [t]hrown at other creatures to blind them. If [a]pplied, you can use one to blind yourself. If you have cream pie on your face, you can [a]pply a towel or #wipe off your face to regain your vision. Lump of Royal Jelly Nutrition: 200 A favorite food for the dungeon-delving connoisseur; royal jelly has all sorts of beneficial effects. Not only is it a 200 nutrition snack that you can scarf down in one turn, but it restores up to 20 hit points, heals any wounded legs, and increases your Strength by a point. If your hit points are at maximum when you eat royal jelly, there's a one in seventeen chance that your hit point maximum increases by one. If the royal jelly is cursed, the above benefits are annulled and you lose 20 hit points and a point of Strength instead. Royal jelly is hard to find; it's only generated in beehives. Beehives are randomly-generated dungeon rooms filled with -- you guessed it -- killer bees and their queen. Pancake Nutrition: 200 Time: 2 C-Ration Nutrition: 300 C-Rations are usually carried by soldier-type creatures. K-Ration Nutrition: 400 K-Rations are favorite food items for endgame characters. They convey rather a lot of nutrition and can be eaten in a single turn, so if you find yourself starving in a crowded room or even in the middle of a long combat, you can restore your vitality without getting pummeled in the process. Like C-Rations, K-Rations are usually carried by soldiers. Cram Ration Nutrition: 600 Time: 3 Cram is a special, nutritious bread from Tolkien's Middle-Earth. It's got plenty of nutrition and doesn't easily rot, but it does take three turns to -- pardon the pun -- cram down. Food Ration/Gunyoki Nutrition: 800 Time: 5 The staple food; many character roles start with a food ration or two. Lembas Wafer Nutrition: 800 Time: 2 Lembas wafers -- another Middle-Earth journeycake -- are the lightest food items you can get, they rarely rot and convey more nutrition in a round than any other food item except the K-Ration, with which they tie. All in all not a bad choice of sustenance! ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section IV: Tins Tins are unlabeled and mysterious. Until they're opened, there's no telling what's inside! Okay, you can identify them to find out what's inside. Spoilsport. Anyway, opening tins can be a hassle. If you're wielding a tin opener or the tin is blessed, it opens in a single turn. If you're wielding a dagger or crysknife, it takes 3 turns; an axe or pick-axe will open a tin in 6 turns. Otherwise, you try to open the tin for 50 turns before you give up. Cursed tins might explode! Most of the tins you find in the dungeon will be tins of spinach. Like a certain muscle-bound sailor-man, eating spinach will boost your Strength! Er, unless the tin is cursed, at which point you'll lose Strength instead. Tins of spinach are also worth a whopping 600 nutrition. Otherwise, the tin will be the corpse of a monster. Cannibalism counts, but whether the creature was poisonous doesn't. You can also get intrinsics from tinned creatures; tins of dragon meat are extremely helpful. Tins of creature corpses will be assigned a random descriptor and nutrition value, generally ranging from soup (20 nutrition) up to candied (100 nutrition). Pureed creatures are eminently digestible and are worth 500 nutrition. If the tin was made of a rotten corpse (or cursed), you lose 50 nutrition, and might get confused, stun, or vomiting status. Tins that you make yourself using a Tinning Kit are always Homemade, worth 50 nutrition. If the food inside the tin was french-fried or deep-fried, your fingers get slippery from eating the greasy food for up to 15 rounds. [a]pply a towel to wipe off your hands and pick up any of your inventory you may have dropped once your hands are clean. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section V: Eating Things That Aren't Food If you polymorph into a rust monster, you can eat rustable metallic objects (basically, anything made of iron). If you polymorph into a rock mole or xorn, you can eat objects made of stone and nonrusting metal objects, including silver and mythril. If you polymorph into a gelatinous cube, you can eat objects made of leather, wood, and cloth. Generally, the nutrition of such an item is simply a factor of its weight or mass -- who knows what nutrients a xorn needs in its diet? Eating a ring has a one in three chance of conveying the power of the ring to your character as an intrinsic. Rings that boost your statistics do not function in this way, and eating a Ring of Free Action only conveys Sleep resistance. Rings of Slow Digestion aren't edible. Some amulets have a one in five chance of conveying an intrinsic when eaten. An Amulet of ESP gives telepathy, an Amulet of Magical Breathing conveys amphibious and doesn't breathe, and an Amulet of Poison Resistance gives you poison resistance. Eating an Amulet of Unchanging will return you to your normal form. Eating amulets isn't always a good idea, though: an Amulet of Restful Sleep will put you to sleep for up to 100 turns, and an Amulet of Strangulation will choke you to death almost every time. If a rust monster tries to eat an object that's labeled "rustproof", it will spit the item out and be stunned for several rounds. The item is no longer rustproof after this happens. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section VI: EoD/Copyright Notice And that's that. Enjoy every meal, because it might be your last. This guide was compiled with information from Nethack spoilers found on the world wide web, such as those by Kevin Hugo, Dylan O'Donnell et al, combined with my own research. This game guide is copyright 2007 Richard Rouse. Feel free to distribute this guide anywhere you like, but crediting me as the writer would be nice.