This writeup contains a list of
troubles your character can
experience in a game of
Nethack, and the ways I can think of to
fix them. I've organised them according to how serious they are in
the eyes of your deity. If your
alignment is reasonably good and
your
luck is non-negative, then a successful prayer is
guaranteed
to fix all your major problems. Once your luck is high enough (at
least 3) a successful prayer is also guaranteed to fix all your
minor problems. So prayer will not be mentioned specifically in the
remainder of this writeup.
Major troubles (in your deity's eyes)
- Turning to stone
- In addition to what Jeeves says, you can drink a potion of acid,
or polymorph into any stoning-resistant monster.
- Turning to slime
- Polymorph into a fire elemental or green slime. Maximum magic
cancellation will help prevent this problem.
- Being strangled
- For prevention, only try on noncursed amulets!
- Stuck in lava
- Teleport, level teleport, polymorph into something that likes
lava, freeze the lava, or keep trying to walk out (you may not make
it in time).
- Sick
- A few rather obscure cures: quaff a blessed potion of healing,
quaff a potion of holy water if you're not chaotic, invoke the Staff
of Aesculapius, eat a eucalyptus leaf. In Slash'Em, apply a
medical kit, sit on or pray at a toilet, eat a holy wafer, or use
the healing hands or surgery technique.
- Starving
- All you can do is pray or polymorph into something which can eat
unusual things, such as a rock mole or xorn. The time to create
food with stone to flesh is before you are too weak to cast it.
- Lack of hit points
- For your deity to recognise this as a trouble, your hit points
must either be 5 or less, or 1/7 of their maximum value or less. If
your hit points are rapidly dropping and prayer won't help, do NOT
keep fighting in the hope that one last swing will kill it. Stop
and think about what your best strategy for survival is.
- Run away if you're fast enough, retreat into a corridor so that
you need only face one enemy at a time, or teleport away. Level
teleport, dig through the floor, or quaff a cursed potion of gain
level, but remember, some monsters will follow you when you escape
in these ways.
- Heal yourself (with potions, spells, Slash'Em wands and
techniques,...)
- Engrave the mystic word Elbereth or drop a scroll of scare
monster.
- Kill the monsters with a powerful wand or spell, being careful
not to be killed on the rebound yourself.
- Disable your foes with sleep or paralysis, again watching out
for rebound effects.
- If all else fails, try random potions in the hope that they have
healing properties.
- Lycanthropy
- Curable by eating a holy wafer in Slash'Em. The effects can be
controlled with an amulet of unchanging or ring of polymorph
control, and magic cancellation helps prevent it.
- Stuck in wall or rock
- A rather obscure trouble curable by teleporting, digging one's
way out, or polymorphing into a xorn.
Minor troubles (in your deity's eyes)
- Punishment
-
- Dig a pit, place a boulder next to the pit, put the ball in the
pit, and push the boulder in on top of the ball.
- Read a scroll of remove curse.
- Let a monster eat it.
- Let a nymph steal it.
- Polymorph into a metallivore and eat it, a nymph and remove it,
or a noncorporeal monster and let it fall away.
- Cursed items
- See tips for getting rid of curses. Your deity treats cursed
blindfolds and levitation items as a major problem. Be creative:
there are many strategies you can use other than the standard remove
curse and holy water.
- Blind
- Apply a unicorn horn, quaff any healing potion or a potion of
see invisible, or eat a carrot
- Lost stats
- Apply a unicorn horn or quaff a (preferably blessed) potion of
restore ability. Lost strength is deemed to be a major problem if you are strained or worse.
- Wounded legs
- Eat a lump of royal jelly or drink a potion of speed.
- Stunned
- Unicorn horn, lizard corpse reduces timeout, or wait.
- Confused
- Unicorn horn, read a blessed scroll of confuse monster, lizard
corpse reduces timeout, or wait.
- Hallucinating
- Unicorn horn, or quaff a potion of extra/full healing or
sickness.
- Low magical energy
- Your deity only recognises this as a trouble in Slash'Em. It can
be cured by drinking a potion of gain energy, reading a scroll of
charging while confused, or in Slash'Em, using the draw energy or
power surge technique.
Troubles not recognised by your deity
There are three intrinsics which Nethackers sometimes see as bad but
which your deity will not treat as problems to be fixed. They are
uncontrolled teleportitis (randomly teleporting around), aggravate
monster acquired by cannibalism or eating a domestic animal, and
occasionally invisibility. The only way to lose these intrinsics is
to play with a gremlin at night, which is not recommended as you
will probably lose some useful intrinsics first.
However, these "bad" intrinsics can all be brought under control.
Once you have teleport control teleportitis becomes a good thing.
The effects of aggravate monster are not very serious and are
negated by stealth. Invisibility is only a problem because it makes
it harder for you to enter shops, and this can be solved by wearing
a mummy wrapping.