The Traveler’s Companion to the Mazes of Menace

The Roles

There are thirteen roles available to adventurers. Each comes with different starting equipment, different intrinsic abilities gained at various experience levels, and a different quest to complete in the mid-game.

Archeologist. You start with a bullwhip, a pickaxe, and a tinning kit. The pickaxe is quietly one of the best starting items in the game: it lets you dig through walls and create your own escape routes from the very first level. The tinning kit lets you preserve corpses for later. Archeologists are capable and flexible, though a bit fragile in early combat. You begin knowing what all gems are, which is a nice parlor trick and occasionally useful for unicorn negotiation. Alignment: Lawful or Neutral.

Barbarian. You start strong. Literally. A two-handed sword and good starting strength mean you can hack through early monsters with ease. The downside is that two-handed weapons prevent you from using a shield, and Barbarians are not known for their finesse. You do get poison resistance from the start, which saves you from several common early deaths. A straightforward role for players who like straightforward solutions. Alignment: Neutral or Chaotic.

Cave Dweller. You start primitive but tough, with a club and some rocks for throwing. You gain speed early and your hit dice are generous. The Cave Dweller’s simplicity is a virtue: fewer tools means fewer things to manage. Alignment: Lawful or Neutral.

Healer. You begin with a stethoscope, healing potions, and poison resistance. The stethoscope is remarkable: it lets you check a monster’s hit points and your own internal state. Healers are fragile fighters, but their medical knowledge keeps them alive through situations that would kill other roles. You can also see whether potions of sickness are safe, which streamlines identification considerably. Alignment: Neutral.

Knight. You start mounted on a pony, which is both a blessing and a liability. The pony is a decent combatant early on but will get you into trouble if it wanders into a shop. Knights follow a code of conduct that penalizes attacking fleeing or peaceful monsters. You get a lance for jousting from horseback, which is very effective when it works. Alignment: Lawful.

Monk. You fight best with bare hands and start with no weapon at all, which is the point. Monks gain martial arts abilities as they level, eventually becoming formidable unarmed combatants. You start with sleep resistance and see invisible, and you should avoid eating meat if you want to maintain your spiritual discipline. One of the more unusual roles, rewarding for experienced players. Alignment: Any.

Priest. You start with holy (or unholy) water and the ability to intuitively sense whether items are blessed, cursed, or uncursed. This is enormously useful. You know immediately whether that cloak you just found is safe to wear. Priests are competent fighters with access to clerical spells and begin with a mace. Alignment: Any (matches your god).

Ranger. You start with a bow and a generous supply of arrows, making you one of the strongest ranged combatants early on. Rangers get stealth and see invisible early. Your elven racial option gives you sleep resistance on top of that. If you enjoy picking off enemies from a distance, this is your role. Alignment: Neutral or Chaotic.

Rogue. You start with a short sword, daggers for throwing, and a sack. You get stealth from the beginning and your backstab ability deals extra damage when you attack from hiding. Rogues are excellent at avoiding trouble, which is often better than being good at surviving it. Alignment: Chaotic.

Samurai. You start with a katana, which is one of the better one-handed weapons in the game, plus a wakizashi backup and a yumi bow with arrows. Samurai get speed early and have a strong martial kit overall. The katana’s damage output carries you through the early game with ease. Alignment: Lawful.

Tourist. You start with a Hawaiian shirt, a credit card, a camera, and a truly absurd number of darts. Tourists are deliberately designed to be the hardest role in the game. Your starting equipment is mostly a joke, your combat abilities are poor, and the dungeon seems to know it. That said, the darts are actually useful for training ranged skills, and the camera can blind monsters in a pinch. A role for people who have ascended before and want a challenge. Alignment: Neutral.

Valkyrie. You start with a spear, a small shield, and cold resistance. Valkyries are widely considered one of the most beginner-friendly roles: strong combat stats, good starting equipment, and cold resistance covers one of the more common damage types. If you’re lawful, you can find a long sword and dip it in a fountain at experience level 5 or higher for a chance at Excalibur. (In older editions, Valkyries started with a long sword, making this easier.) This is the recommendation for your first serious attempt. Alignment: Lawful or Neutral. Female only.

Wizard. You start with a quarterstaff and a spellbook or two. Your physical combat is terrible, but you have access to the deepest magic in the game. Wizards are extremely powerful in the late game but very fragile early on. You’ll lean heavily on your spells and need to find ways to avoid melee combat until you’re strong enough to dominate it. If you enjoy resource management and creative problem-solving, the Wizard is deeply satisfying. Alignment: Neutral or Chaotic.

The Races

Your race affects your starting attributes, maximum attributes, and which intrinsics you begin with or can gain.

Human. You know what a human is. No infravision, no poison resistance, no particular talents. On the bright side, every role is open to you, and nobody in the dungeon singles you out for being one. Perfectly serviceable.

Dwarf. Dwarves are sturdy and strong, with infravision (they can see warm-blooded creatures in the dark). They’re good fighters and have an affinity for mining. Available for: Archeologist, Cave Dweller, Valkyrie.

Elf. Elves get sleep resistance, infravision, and a natural affinity for bows. They’re a bit more fragile than humans but have excellent dexterity. Available for: Ranger, Wizard.

Gnome. Gnomes get infravision and are comfortable underground. They’re small but resourceful. Available for: Archeologist, Cave Dweller, Healer, Ranger, Wizard.

Orc. Orcs get infravision and poison resistance, which is genuinely useful. They tend to have high strength but low charisma. The trade-off is that some shopkeepers are less friendly. Available for: Barbarian, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard.

Alignment

Your alignment (Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic) determines which gods you worship, which artifacts you can safely use, and how certain actions affect your standing. It’s tempting to think of these as “good,” “balanced,” and “evil,” but it’s more nuanced than that.

The key thing to understand about alignment is that it’s a number. Every action that matches your alignment’s expectations increases it; actions that violate your alignment’s code decrease it. Your alignment record affects your relationship with your god, which in turn affects whether prayer will save you or smite you.

Lawful characters should avoid attacking peaceful creatures and should never murder. Sacrifice frequently at co-aligned altars. Lawful has the advantage of access to Excalibur, one of the best weapons in the game, obtainable as early as experience level 5.

Neutral characters have the most flexibility. You can get away with more than a Lawful character, but your god still frowns on truly chaotic behavior. Neutral has access to some excellent quest artifacts.

Chaotic characters can kill with relative impunity but should avoid pious behavior that doesn’t match their dark patron’s expectations. Chaotic is often paired with Rogue for thematic consistency.

For your first game: Lawful Valkyrie, Human or Dwarf. Strong combat, cold resistance, and a path to Excalibur once you find a long sword. It’s the closest thing to an easy mode the Mazes offer, which is to say it’s still very hard.

The Early Shopping List

No matter your role, here’s what you should be looking for:

A source of nutrition. You will get hungry. It happens faster than you think. Food rations are the gold standard: 800 nutrition each, they never spoil. Grab every food ration you see. If you’re a role that starts with tripe rations, those are fine for your pet but genuinely unpleasant for you. Eat them only if you must.

A way to identify things. In the early game, your primary identification tools are altars (drop items to see if they flash blessed/cursed), your pet (it won’t step on cursed items), and experimentation. A scroll of identify is valuable, but you might not find one for a while. A touchstone (a gray stone that identifies gems) is helpful but not urgent.

Armor improvements. Whatever you’re wearing, you can probably do better. Look for cloaks, helmets, gloves, and boots to fill empty equipment slots. Even basic items like a helmet or pair of gloves provide armor class benefits and can protect against specific attacks.

A ranged attack. Daggers, darts, or a bow with arrows. Fighting from range is almost always safer than melee, and some monsters (like floating eyes) should never be fought in melee at all.

A light source. Many areas of the dungeon are dark, and bumbling around blind is a recipe for walking into things you’d rather see coming. An oil lamp or magic lamp is ideal. A candle or two will do in a pinch.

Restraint. New adventurers pick up everything they find. Veterans pick up everything they need. The difference is about forty pounds and the ability to outrun a gnome lord. If your status line reads “Burdened,” you’re carrying someone else’s inventory too.

The Golden Rules of Early Survival

Rule 1: Don’t fight what you can’t beat. This sounds obvious, but it’s the single most violated principle in the Mazes. If a monster is too tough for you, walk away. Use corridors as chokepoints. Funnel enemies so you fight them one at a time. If you stumble into a room full of monsters, step back into the corridor and force them to come to you in single file.

  Bad: fighting in the open        Good: corridor chokepoint

  ┌─────·──────┐                   ┌─────·──────┐
  │·Z··Z·······│                   │·Z···Z······│
  │··Z·@·Z·Z···│                   │··Z··Z······│
  │····Z·······│                   │·Z··········+##@
  │··Z·········│                   │··Z·········│
  └────────────┘                   └────────────┘

  You're surrounded.               They come to you one at a time.

Rule 2: Don’t eat things you don’t understand. Monster corpses can grant powerful intrinsics, or they can poison you, give you food poisoning, or worse. Until you know what a corpse does, leave it on the ground. The exceptions: you can always safely eat food rations, lembas wafers, cram rations, and fruits. Lichen corpses are safe and never rot. Lizard corpses are safe, never rot, and cure petrification. Always carry one if you can.

Rule 3: Your pet is your friend. Your starting pet is more useful than it appears. It will fight alongside you, pick up items (which tells you they’re not cursed, since pets avoid cursed items on the ground), and can even be trained to steal from shops. Keep it fed by dropping tripe rations or corpses near it. A healthy, well-fed pet is one of your best early assets.

Rule 4: Learn to pray. If you are about to die (hit points critically low, starving, turning to stone) you can pray to your god for help. In the early game, with decent alignment, prayer will almost certainly save you. But you can only pray about once every 300-500 turns, and praying at the wrong time (when your god is angry, when you’re in Gehennom, or when you’ve prayed too recently) can make things much worse. Think of prayer as an emergency button with a cooldown. Don’t waste it on minor problems. We’ll cover the details in Divine Relations.

Rule 5: Explore thoroughly but move purposefully. Every turn you spend in the dungeon costs nutrition. If you stand around for hundreds of turns, you’ll starve. But rushing past rooms means missing items you need. The sweet spot is to explore each level fairly completely (check rooms, open doors, look for hidden passages) but don’t grind. When you’ve found what the level has to offer, move on.

Things That Kill You (And How Not to Let Them)

Here’s a short list of common early deaths and how to prevent them:

Starvation. Eat when you’re Hungry (the status message), not when you’re Weak or Fainting. If you’re Fainting, pray immediately. Pick up every food ration you find.

Floating eyes. They’re the e on the map. Small, blue, and seemingly harmless. If you hit one in melee, you’ll be paralyzed, and every monster in the vicinity will take free shots at your frozen body. Use ranged attacks, or just walk around them. They don’t pursue you.

Rotted corpses. If you eat a corpse that’s been on the ground too long, you’ll get food poisoning, which is lethal without treatment. Eat corpses fresh (within a few turns of the kill) or not at all. If you do get food poisoning, pray immediately.

Falling down stairs while overburdened. If you’re carrying too much, taking the stairs can cause you to tumble and take significant damage. Drop items before descending, or manage your inventory.

Killer bees. They come in swarms, they’re fast, and in the early game, a group of them can overwhelm you. If you see one bee, expect more. Use a corridor to fight them one at a time.

Your own pet. If your pet is between you and a narrow corridor, you might accidentally swap places with it repeatedly instead of moving. Worse, if you attack it (because you got confused or forgot it was there), you lose alignment and trust. Be aware of where your pet is.

The Big Picture

Before we talk about what the symbols mean, here’s the overall shape of the place. The dungeon is a branching tree with a main trunk (the Dungeons of Doom) and several side branches. The diagram nearby shows the full layout. Knowing where you are in this tree helps you plan your route and know what’s coming.

The Dungeons of Doom form the upper half, roughly levels 1 through 27. Along the way you’ll find branches leading to the Gnomish Mines (luckstone, shops), Sokoban (a prize at the top), your Quest (your role’s special dungeon), and optionally Fort Ludios (a vault full of gold). The main trunk ends at The Castle, which guards the entrance to Gehennom.

Gehennom is the lower half: maze levels, demon lords, and the ultimate objective — the Amulet of Yendor at the very bottom in Moloch’s Sanctum. Once you have it, you climb all the way back up and pass through the Elemental Planes to reach the Astral Plane, where your god awaits your offering.

  Dungeons of Doom (levels 1-29ish)
    │
    ├── The Gnomish Mines (branch around level 2-4)
    │     ├── Minetown (shops and a temple)
    │     └── Mine's End (bottom: luckstone)
    │
    ├── Sokoban (branch around level 5-9, goes UP)
    │     └── Top: bag of holding or amulet of reflection
    │
    ├── Your Quest (portal around level 11-16)
    │     └── Unique to your role. Get your quest artifact.
    │
    ├── Fort Ludios (portal, if you find it)
    │     └── A vault full of gold and soldiers
    │
    ├── Medusa's Island (level ~25)
    │
    └── The Castle (level ~27, bottom of Dungeons of Doom)
          │
  Gehennom (levels 28-50ish)
    │
    ├── Vlad's Tower (contains the Candelabrum)
    │
    ├── The Wizard's Tower (Wizard of Yendor, Book of the Dead)
    │
    └── Moloch's Sanctum (bottom: the Amulet of Yendor)
          │
          (now go ALL the way back up)
          │
          The Elemental Planes
            Earth ─► Air ─► Fire ─► Water
              │
              The Astral Plane (three altars, pick the right one)
                │
                ASCENSION

The typical trip: go down through the Dungeons, detour into the Mines for a luckstone and Minetown’s shops, clear Sokoban for a prize, do your Quest, reach the Castle, descend through Gehennom to get the Amulet, then climb all the way back up and through the Planes. Simple enough on paper. Surviving it is another matter.

The Map Symbols

Everything in the dungeon is represented by a symbol on the screen. Learning to read these symbols quickly is important:

Letters represent monsters: d for dogs, D for dragons, Z for zombies. Colors help distinguish within a class: a red D is a red dragon, while a gray D is a gray dragon. We’ll cover this in detail in A Field Guide to Dungeon Fauna.

Item symbols are punctuation marks:

Room Types

Most rooms in the dungeon are ordinary, empty or with a few items and monsters scattered about. But some rooms are special:

   A shop:                 A zoo:                 A throne room:
   ┌───────┐               ┌────────┐             ┌────────┐
   │··[·?!·│               │Z··Z$Z··│             │··Z·Z·Z·│
   │···@···│               │$Z···$Z·│             │·Z·\··Z·│
   │!··)·/·│               │·Z$Z··Z$│             │··Z·Z···│
   └──+────┘               └───+────┘             └───+────┘
       #                       #                      #
   @ = shopkeeper          Z = sleeping           \ = throne
   Items for sale.         $ = gold piles         Monsters guard.

Shops. Identified by the shopkeeper standing in the doorway (or inside). Shops sell items of a particular type: general stores, armor shops, weapon shops, scroll shops, potion shops, and more. Items on the shop floor belong to the shopkeeper; pick one up and you’ll be quoted a price. You can sell items too. Shopkeepers are extremely powerful in combat, so don’t steal unless you have a plan.

Temples. A room with an altar and a priest or priestess tending it. The altar’s alignment matters: if it matches yours, you can sacrifice here for good effects. If it doesn’t, the resident priest won’t be friendly about your attempts.

Throne rooms. A room with a throne (\) and usually surrounded by monsters. Sitting on the throne has random effects, sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrible. See Points of Interest.

Zoos. A room packed with sleeping monsters and gold. If you open the door, they all wake up. Fight from the doorway and pick them off one at a time.

Barracks. A room full of soldiers. They’re organized and armed, but they’re also carrying good equipment. Worth clearing if you can handle the fight.

Beehives. A room full of killer bees and royal jelly. The bees are dangerous in numbers, but royal jelly is excellent food.

Themed rooms. Newer editions of the dungeon include a variety of themed rooms: collections of specific monster types, item caches, and environmental setups. These are too varied to catalog completely here, but they add welcome variety to the standard layout.

Fountains {

Ah, fountains. That gentle bubbling sound has lured more adventurers to their doom than any trap. Every experienced player has a fountain story—the time they summoned a water demon on dungeon level 3, the time they quaffed and got a wish, the time snakes poured out of the basin.

Quaffing from a fountain is a slot machine with these reels:

Most of the time, nothing happens. Sometimes something wonderful happens. And sometimes a water demon appears and reminds you that curiosity has a body count.

Dipping in a fountain is a different gamble, and one that Lawful characters should know by heart. If you’re at least experience level 5, dipping a long sword may transform it into Excalibur—one of the finest weapons in the dungeon. Knights get a generous 1/6 chance per dip; everyone else gets a meager 1/30. Otherwise, dipping can rust your gear, summon hostile water creatures, or occasionally bless the dipped item.

The conventional wisdom: if you’re a lawful Knight carrying a long sword, dip in every fountain you see until Excalibur appears. Other lawful characters should try too, but pack patience. And if you’re not lawful? Walk past the fountain. It has nothing for you but wet boots and regret.

Altars _

If fountains are slot machines, altars are the single most useful piece of furniture in the dungeon. Treat every altar like the treasure it is.

Dropping items on an altar reveals their BUC status instantly: - Amber flash → blessed - Black flash → cursed - No flash → uncursed

This is free, unlimited, and works on everything. In the early game, your first altar becomes your testing laboratory—haul every suspicious piece of gear there before putting it on. Many promising ascensions have been saved by the simple discipline of altar-testing before wearing.

Sacrificing monster corpses on an altar deepens your relationship with your god. The corpse must be fresh (stale sacrifices are an insult) and the bigger the monster, the more your god is impressed. Sacrifice enough and your deity may reward you with an artifact weapon aligned to your cause. See Divine Relations for the full theology.

Converting an altar to your alignment is possible by offering a same-race sacrifice on an altar of a different alignment. It’s a grisly business—but useful when the dungeon gives you an altar to the wrong god.

Thrones \

Sitting on a throne is the purest gamble in NetHack. The list of possible outcomes reads like a wish list shuffled with a hit list:

• A wish (if your luck is positive)
• Genocide of a monster class
• Free identification of items in your pack
• A stat boost—or a stat drain
• An electric shock
• Full healing
• A crowd of hostile monsters, summoned for your amusement
• Confusion
• A curse on one of your items
• Magic mapping of the level
• See invisible
• All your gold, vanished

About one time in three, something happens, but you won’t know which column of the ledger it’s going to hit. Sit on a throne when you’re strong enough to survive the worst row of that table, and ideally when your luck is positive (for a shot at the wish). Even when nothing happens, the throne may vanish in a puff of logic, so you might get several tries or none at all. (Vlad’s throne in the Tower is special: it never vanishes without granting a wish first.)

Sinks #

Sinks are the dungeon’s most underrated identification tool, hiding in plain sight in kitchen-themed rooms.

• Kicking a sink can shake loose a ring (useful!), summon a black pudding (terrifying!), or just stub your toe. Worth a kick in the early game if you can handle what comes out
• Dropping a ring down a sink produces a message unique to the ring type—“The water flow seems greater” for a ring of gain constitution, for example. This is one of the most reliable non-magical identification methods for rings
• Pouring potions down a sink (by dipping) produces telltale effects: a polymorph potion transforms the sink into a fountain, an oil potion leaves a film on the basin. A clever way to narrow down potion identities without risking a sip
• Quaffing from a sink mostly produces minor effects, but occasionally yields something interesting. It’s the least rewarding interaction

The Gnomish Mines

The entrance appears somewhere around dungeon levels 2 through 4, as a downward staircase. You’ll know you’re in the Mines because the walls become rough stone and the corridors get irregular.

The Mines are populated primarily by gnomes, dwarves, and the occasional dwarf lord. If you’re playing a gnomish character, most of them will be peaceful, which makes the Mines a relatively comfortable detour. Everyone else will need to fight through a modest but steady stream of hostile gnomes.

Minetown appears a few levels into the Mines. Usually it’s a small settlement with shops and a temple, and it’s worth visiting early. The shops let you sell unwanted items for gold and buy useful gear. The temple has an altar (check the alignment) and a resident priest. If the altar matches your alignment, you’ve found a safe place to identify items by dropping them on it.

One in seven times, however, Minetown generates as Orcish Town: an overrun settlement with no shops, no priest, and iron bars blocking the entrances. There’s still an unaligned altar, but you won’t get any shopping done. If you were counting on Minetown for early commerce, this is a rude surprise.

Watch out for the Minetown watch (when it exists). The guards are peaceful unless you steal from a shop or attack a peaceful creature. If you anger them, they’ll call for reinforcements.

Mine’s End is the bottom of the Mines. One of its level variants contains a guaranteed luckstone, which you very much want. A luckstone in your open inventory prevents your luck from timing out toward zero, which affects everything from combat to fountain wishes. Grab it and carry it for the rest of the game.

Sokoban

The entrance appears somewhere around dungeon levels 5 through 9, and it goes up. Sokoban is a set of four puzzle levels where you push boulders onto holes or into place to open a path. No teleport works here, and you can’t dig through the floors.

The puzzles are fixed (two variants per level, randomly chosen). Each level has exactly one correct solution. If you push a boulder into a corner where it blocks your progress, you’re stuck and will need to start the level over. The game won’t warn you about this.

The prize at the top is either a bag of holding or an amulet of reflection, both extremely valuable. In current editions, which prize you get is weighted by the level variant (one variant favors the bag, the other the amulet, but either can appear in either). A cursed scroll of scare monster is also placed under the prize. A bag of holding lets you carry far more inventory at reduced weight. An amulet of reflection bounces ray attacks back at their casters. Either one is worth the detour.

One important rule: the Sokoban levels penalize you for “cheating.” Breaking or polymorphing boulders, reading scrolls of earth, or squeezing past boulders costs you a point of luck each time. Solve each level honestly if you can. For complete solutions to all eight level variants, see Sokoban Solutions in the appendices.

The Quest

Around dungeon levels 11 through 16, you’ll find a magic portal to your Quest. But you can’t enter it immediately. You need to be at least experience level 14, and you need to have spoken to your quest leader (who appears on the first Quest level). The leader sends you to retrieve your role’s quest artifact from a quest nemesis.

Each role has a unique Quest with unique maps, a unique nemesis, and a unique artifact reward. The Valkyrie hunts the Orb of Fate. The Wizard retrieves the Eye of the Aethiopica. The Tourist battles the Master of Thieves for the Platinum Yendorian Express Card. And so on.

Quest artifacts are powerful. Most provide magic resistance, which you absolutely need. Some provide other useful properties like telepathy or warning. Getting your quest artifact is a milestone that marks the transition from “surviving” to “preparing for the endgame.”

If your alignment record is too low (from attacking peacefuls, for instance), your quest leader will refuse to send you. Keep your hands clean.

Fort Ludios

Fort Ludios is optional and easy to miss entirely. It appears as a magic portal somewhere in the dungeon, often behind a wall that requires digging to reach. The portal leads to a fortified military compound filled with soldiers, lieutenants, captains, and a whole lot of gold.

The fort is guarded heavily. Soldiers come in numbers, and they carry useful items: C-rations, K-rations, and sometimes decent weapons. The real prize is the gold (thousands of pieces) and the occasional chest. This is a good place to visit if you need money for protection rackets or shop purchases, but it’s not essential for victory.

If you can’t find the portal, don’t worry about it. Fort Ludios is a bonus, not a requirement.

Medusa’s Island

Medusa’s level sits near the bottom of the Dungeons of Doom, around level 25. You’ll know it by the large body of water and the statues scattered around (those used to be adventurers).

The level has three challenges stacked together:

1. Crossing the water. The island is surrounded by water. You’ll need levitation, water walking boots, or some creative approach (freezing water with a wand of cold, building a boulder bridge, polymorphing into a flying creature). Don’t wade in without preparation, because:

2. Giant eels. The water is home to giant eels that can grab and drown you if you’re burdened. Stay unburdened while crossing, or avoid the water entirely.

3. Medusa herself. Her gaze turns you to stone. You need either reflection (a shield of reflection or amulet of reflection bounces the gaze back, stoning her instead) or blindness (you can’t meet her gaze if you can’t see). A mirror also works if you apply it at her. Reflection is the cleanest solution. If you got the amulet of reflection from Sokoban, you’re already prepared.

There is a downward staircase (or ladder) on the island itself that leads toward the Castle. The level has four possible layouts (two added in version 3.6.0), so don’t rely on memorizing a single map.

Arien Malec’s Medusa Checklist

Arien Malec collected crossing strategies from dozens of RGRN posters back in the early 2000s. His original guide, with input from Pat Rankin, Geoduck, Topi Linkala, and others, remains one of the most consulted single-topic spoilers ever written. Here is a condensed version.

Surviving Medusa’s gaze. You need one of the following before entering her level:

• Reflection (amulet, shield, or silver dragon scale mail). Her gaze bounces back and stones her instead. This is the cleanest solution and the one most players use.
• Blindfold or towel. Wear it before entering line of sight. You’ll need telepathy or monster detection to navigate while blind. Works perfectly but makes the level harder to explore.
• A mirror. Apply it at Medusa to reflect her gaze at close range. More dangerous than passive reflection since you need to be adjacent.
• One-shot kill. If you have a wand of death, the spell finger of death, or a cockatrice corpse, you can kill Medusa before she gets a turn. Combine with speed or stealth for reliability.

Crossing the water. The island is surrounded by deep water. Your options, from safest to most desperate:

• Levitation (ring, boots, potion, or spell). Cleanest method. You float over the water without touching it, immune to eel grabs from below.
• Water walking boots. You walk on the surface. Eels can still grab you, so stay unburdened.
• Wand of cold. Zap the water to freeze a path of ice. Ice is safe to walk on. This is reliable and only costs a few charges.
• Scroll of earth. Creates boulders that fall into the water, making a boulder bridge. Slow but works if you have nothing else.
• Polymorph into a flying or swimming creature. Risky if you lack polymorph control.
• Jumping boots or the knight’s jump. Can leap across narrow water gaps, but requires careful positioning.

Surviving the eels. The water contains giant eels (and sometimes a kraken) that can grab and drown you. Critical rules:

• Stay unburdened while near or in water. A burdened character grabbed by an eel is almost certainly dead.
• An oilskin cloak or greased armor makes you harder to grab. Greasing wears off, so it’s not fully reliable.
• Magical breathing (amulet or polymorph) means you survive being pulled under, buying time to escape.
• Kill eels at range whenever possible. Wands, spells, and thrown weapons all work. Don’t melee eels in the water.
• Levitation and water walking do NOT protect against being grabbed and pulled under. Only magical breathing, staying unburdened, and killing eels first are reliable defenses.

The Castle

The Castle is the last level of the Dungeons of Doom proper, around level 27. It’s a large fortified structure surrounded by a moat, with a drawbridge as the main entrance. A maze section to the side contains a minotaur.

To enter the Castle, you need to open the drawbridge. Options:

• Play the passtune. A five-note musical sequence played on a tonal instrument (a tooled horn, bugle, or magic harp) opens the drawbridge. The notes are randomized per game. You can learn them by trying different sequences: the game tells you how many notes are correct after each attempt, like a game of Mastermind.
• Wand of opening pointed at the drawbridge.
• Spell of knock cast at the drawbridge.
• Wand of striking on the portcullis.

Inside the Castle, you’ll find a throne room, barracks, and several treasure chambers. One of those chambers contains a wand of wishing, typically with three charges. This is one of the most important items in the game. Use your wishes wisely (see Wishes and Wishing).

Below the Castle lies Gehennom. There is no going back to the upper dungeon once you descend without climbing back up through everything. Make sure you’re prepared before you go down.

The Oracle

Somewhere in the mid-levels of the Dungeons of Doom (around levels 5 through 9), you’ll find a special room containing the Oracle of Delphi, flanked by centaur statues and a fountain.

The Oracle offers two services:

• Minor consultations are cheap and produce fortune-cookie-style messages, occasionally useful but mostly atmospheric.
• Major consultations are expensive but provide genuinely helpful gameplay information: hints about monsters, items, and game mechanics.

The Oracle is peaceful and never attacks. Her room is a safe place to rest for a moment, though the fountain is subject to the usual fountain risks.

Nuisance Traps

Annoying but rarely lethal. The silver lining: arrow and dart traps produce free ammunition. Veterans sometimes trigger them deliberately to stock up.

Movement Traps

Trapdoors and level teleporters are the most disruptive—one wrong step and you’re separated from your pet, your stash, and your carefully explored map. But with teleport control (from an item or intrinsic), teleport traps become free transportation. Levitation makes you immune to pits and holes entirely, floating serenely above them.

Dangerous Traps

Fire traps are the sleeper threat. The fire itself hurts, but the real catastrophe is your inventory: scrolls burn, potions shatter, and that stack of twenty scrolls of identify you’ve been hoarding is suddenly ash. Fire resistance saves your skin but not your belongings.

Polymorph traps are a double-edged sword. With polymorph control, they’re a free polymorphing booth. Without it, you become something random—possibly a newt that can’t use any of its equipment.

Sleeping gas is murder in monster-rich areas. You can’t fight, you can’t run, you can’t even wake up on purpose. Monsters line up to hit you like it’s a buffet.

Searching and Detection

The best defense against traps is finding them before they find you:

• Search (s) repeatedly—each search has an independent chance to reveal each adjacent trap, and Luck improves the odds
• Wand of secret door detection reveals traps in its path
• Crystal ball can reveal traps across the entire level
• Pets avoid known traps, so watch their pathfinding for clues
• Flying and levitation make you immune to most floor traps

Below dungeon level 5, a quick search before stepping into a new corridor segment is cheap insurance. The turn you spend searching is always cheaper than the turns you spend climbing out of a spiked pit.

Finding Secret Doors

The Dungeons of Doom were designed by architects who believed that every room should have one emergency exit that requires ten minutes of tapping on walls to locate. Secret doors and corridors are the game’s passive-aggressive way of saying “you haven’t explored thoroughly enough.”

When to search for secrets:

• Dead ends that feel too convenient. If a corridor just stops, and you haven’t found what you came for, there’s probably a door in the surrounding walls
• Suspiciously empty rooms with no obvious exit. The exit exists; it’s just been cunningly disguised as a wall
• After exhausting all visible options. When you’ve explored everything reachable and still haven’t found the downstairs, it’s time to stop wandering and start wall-tapping

The systematic approach:

Type 20s to search twenty times in one spot. For new characters with average Luck, you need 15-22 searches to reliably reveal a secret. Searching once and moving on is essentially announcing your intention to remain lost.

Move three squares along the wall and repeat. This creates overlapping search coverage—any secret door in that wall segment gets searched from multiple adjacent positions, which dramatically improves your odds. The pattern looks tedious on paper because it is tedious, but tedium is cheaper than being trapped on Dlvl 1 forever.

Items that help:

• Ring of searching auto-searches every turn you move
• Excalibur (if wielded) improves search chances
• Lenses (any kind, if worn) boost secret detection
• Wand of secret door detection instantly reveals nearby secrets
• Blessed scroll of magic mapping shows every secret door on the level

The wisdom of patience:

Secret doors are NetHack’s way of teaching you that brute force doesn’t solve every problem—sometimes you need brute force applied methodically to every wall section in sequence. The downstairs you seek is behind one of these walls. Finding it is a matter of systematic elimination. The only mistake is giving up after three searches and declaring the level “impossible.”

Elbereth

The mechanics below are drawn from Kate Nepveu’s Elbereth FAQ (2001, updated 2002), one of the clearest single-topic guides in the NetHack community. Kate also maintained steelypips.org, the long-running archive that preserved decades of community spoilers.

Elbereth is not a trap, but it belongs in a chapter about dungeon hazards because it is your best defense against many of them.

Writing the word “Elbereth” on the ground (using the engrave command, E) creates a protective ward. Most monsters will not attack you in melee while you stand on an Elbereth square. This applies whether you wrote it or found it already engraved.

Elbereth has rules:

• It only works while you stand on it. Step off and the protection ends.
• Attacking a monster erases it. If you fight in melee while standing on Elbereth, the word smudges and you lose protection. In version 3.6.1 and later, this also costs you −5 alignment as punishment for defiling the sacred word with violence. Elbereth is defensive only — use it to buy time, not to fight from.
• Some monsters ignore it. Anything represented by @ (humans, elves, player-like creatures), the Riders on the Astral Plane, Angels, minotaurs, unique/named monsters (quest nemeses, Vlad, etc.), and blind monsters all disregard Elbereth. Shopkeepers and guards also ignore it. Cornered monsters with no retreat path will fight through Elbereth rather than stand still. In general, any creature intelligent enough to be “human-like,” any creature that is blind, and anything that has nowhere to flee will walk right through.
• It must be the only text on the square. If there’s already an engraving, you need to overwrite it. Adding Elbereth to an existing message won’t work.
• Engraving is an interruptible occupation. In current editions, writing with anything other than a wand takes multiple turns (one per letter). If you’re interrupted mid-word — by an attack, a teleport trap, or anything else — you get a partial engraving that does nothing. This makes wands (which write the whole word instantly) far more valuable for emergency Elbereth.
• Durability varies by method. In current editions, the engraving is not gradually eroded by scaring monsters. Instead, it persists until you take a hostile action (which destroys it instantly) or, for dust engravings, until monsters walk over it.

Burning with a wand of fire or lightning is ideal: it takes only one turn, produces a permanent engraving, and cannot be interrupted. A wand of digging is the next best option, also instant. Writing in dust with your finger is free and instant but erases almost immediately. All other methods take multiple turns and leave you vulnerable — use them only when you have breathing room.

Impairment and errors. If you are blind, confused, stunned, or hallucinating, you have a chance of misspelling Elbereth with each letter. A misspelled Elbereth has no power. This makes engraving under duress unreliable unless you use an instant method (wand of fire burns the whole word at once, regardless of impairment).

Levitation and durability. If you are levitating, dust engravings beneath you won’t be erased by monster movement, because you’re floating above the square. This makes dust-Elbereth more durable than usual.

The practical use: when things go badly and you need a moment to recover (quaff a healing potion, read a scroll, use an escape item), write Elbereth in the dust and stand on it. Most monsters will back off, giving you a turn to act. For a more permanent safe spot, burn it with a wand of fire. Permanent Elbereth squares are useful for stashing items, resting, or creating safe retreat points in dangerous areas. It works in most of the dungeon, and it costs nothing but a wand charge.

Common Early Encounters

Mid-Dungeon Threats

Things You Don’t Want to Meet

We’ll cover specific monsters in much more detail in the individual sections. For now, remember the essentials: never melee a floating eye, always carry a lizard corpse, and respect anything with D or & on your screen.

Petrification (Stoning)

Anything involving cockatrices or Medusa. Touching a cockatrice without gloves, eating a cockatrice corpse, being hit by Medusa’s gaze, or even stepping on a cockatrice corpse while barefoot will turn you to stone. The process can be immediate or delayed (you’ll see the message “You are slowing down” with a few turns to act).

Defenses: Wear gloves when handling cockatrice corpses. Carry a lizard corpse at all times (eating it cures stoning in progress). Use reflection against Medusa. Stoning resistance (from eating an acid blob or certain other sources) makes you immune.

The other side of the coin: a wielded cockatrice corpse (with gloves on) is one of the most devastating weapons in the game. Anything you hit with it that lacks stoning resistance turns to stone.

Drowning

Giant eels and krakens can grab you and pull you underwater. If you’re burdened or worse when grabbed, you can drown before you get a turn to respond. This happens most often at Medusa’s level and in the endgame.

Defenses: Stay unburdened near water. An amulet of magical breathing lets you survive underwater. Levitation keeps you above the water entirely. Kill sea monsters at range whenever possible.

The Touch of Death

Some monsters, most notably Death (one of the Riders on the Astral Plane), can kill you with a single touch. The Finger of Death spell and the wand of death work similarly.

In current editions, the touch of death has been reworked. It now deals heavy damage (8d6 + 50) and permanently drains your maximum HP by half the damage dealt, rather than being a simple binary kill. You only die outright if the drain would reduce your max HP to zero. This means a high-level character with many hit points can survive a touch that would have been instantly fatal in older editions.

Defenses: Magic resistance blocks the instadeath component of the touch of death and the wand/spell, but in current editions you still take damage and max HP drain even with magic resistance. Death himself (the Rider) is a special case and ignores magic resistance entirely. An amulet of life saving will revive you once.

Starvation

This isn’t technically instant, but it feels like it. If your nutrition drops to zero, you faint. If you don’t eat something while fainted, you die. In the early game before you’ve established a food supply, starvation is a real threat.

Defenses: Eat corpses promptly. Pray when your god is willing and you are Weak or Fainting (prayer cures hunger). Carry food rations, tripe rations, or lembas wafers. Don’t let nutrition management slide.

Brainlessness

Mind flayers drain Intelligence with their tentacle attacks. If your Intelligence reaches zero, you die instantly. In current editions, mind flayers no longer cause amnesia, but the Intelligence drain is still lethal if unchecked.

Defenses: Wear a greased helmet to prevent tentacle attacks from connecting. Kill mind flayers at range (wands, spells). Use a unicorn horn or other means to restore lost Intelligence before it reaches critical levels.

Choking

If you eat while already satiated, you can choke and die. The game warns you (“You’re having a hard time getting all of it down”), but if you confirm, you’re dead.

Defense: Don’t eat when satiated. Just don’t.

Deadly Poison

A handful of monsters (pit vipers, some spiders) have instantly lethal poison attacks. The chance is low but nonzero. Eating certain corpses (Death, Pestilence) is also instantly fatal poison.

Defenses: Poison resistance makes you immune. Most characters can get this early by eating enough appropriate corpses. It’s one of the first intrinsics worth acquiring.

Disintegration

A black dragon’s breath weapon disintegrates you. Touching a wide-angle disintegration beam also kills. In current editions, black dragons also have a passive disintegration attack — hitting one in melee can disintegrate the attacker.

Defenses: Disintegration resistance (from eating a black dragon corpse or wearing black dragon scale mail). Reflection bounces the beam back. Magic resistance does NOT protect against disintegration.

Genocide

Reading a scroll of genocide while confused can genocide your own race. Don’t do this.

The Amulet of Life Saving

This deserves special mention. An amulet of life saving, when worn, revives you once from any death (including instadeaths). The amulet is consumed in the process. If you find one, save it for the endgame or for situations where instadeath risk is high. It’s your insurance policy.

Delayed Deaths

Not every fatal threat kills instantly. Several give you a few turns to react. Knowing the warning signs and the cures can save a run.

Stoning (slow). If a cockatrice hits you (or you handle one without gloves), you may begin turning to stone over several turns. The messages progress: “You are slowing down,” then “Your limbs are stiffening,” then death. Cures: eat a lizard corpse (this is why you carry one at all times), eat an acidic corpse, pray if your god is willing, cast stone to flesh on yourself, or use a wand of polymorph or amulet of unchanging to interrupt the process.

Sliming. Being hit by a green slime starts a transformation that ends in you becoming a green slime (dead). The process takes several turns with messages about your body changing. Cures: burn the slime off with fire (a wand of fire zapped at yourself, a scroll of fire, walking into a fire trap, a red dragon’s breath), pray, or change form via polymorph. Fire is the most reliable cure.

Illness (food poisoning). Eating a rotten corpse or being struck by certain attacks (Pestilence, for example) gives you food poisoning, which kills in a fixed number of turns. You’ll see “You feel deathly sick.” Cures: a unicorn horn (apply it), pray, eat a eucalyptus leaf, or vomit (by being satiated and eating more). Vomiting from other causes also cures illness. Poison resistance does NOT protect against food poisoning (it only protects against strength-draining and instant-kill poison).

Sinking in lava. Falling into lava without levitation or fire resistance gives you a few turns to escape before you sink and die. Your inventory is also at risk. Cures: prayer, levitation (put on levitation boots or a ring), teleport, or just step out if you can. Fire resistance prevents the damage but doesn’t prevent sinking. Lava immersion also destroys most of your inventory.

Drowning (being held). When grabbed by an eel or kraken while in water, you have a few turns to escape before drowning. If you’re burdened, you may not get even one turn. Cures: magical breathing (amulet or spell), kill or teleport the eel before it pulls you under, stay unburdened near water, or avoid the water entirely.

Strangulation. Wearing a cursed amulet of strangulation slowly kills you over a few turns. Cure: remove the amulet (requires uncursing it first, since cursed amulets can’t be removed — use a scroll of remove curse, holy water, or prayer).

The Essential Kit

The short version: the big three are magic resistance, reflection, poison resistance, and a lizard corpse to survive the dungeon’s worst surprises. Get these as early as you can. Everything else is luxury. These are survival.

Starting Pets

Most roles begin with a faithful pet—a little dog or a kitten, depending on your role. This small creature is more useful than it looks. It follows you between levels (if adjacent when you take stairs), fights alongside you, picks up items, and eats food it finds on the floor. Think of it as a self-propelled, self-feeding trap detector with teeth.

A pet that eats well and fights often will grow. A little dog becomes a dog, then a large dog. A kitten becomes a housecat, then a large cat. A grown large dog or large cat is a genuine combat asset, capable of taking on mid-dungeon threats that would give you trouble.

One more thing: your pet will not step on cursed items willingly. This makes it one of the cheapest identification tools in the game—drop items on the ground and watch whether your pet avoids them. If it refuses to walk over a square, something cursed is sitting there.

Feeding and Loyalty

Pets have an invisible tameness score that decreases over time and when they take damage. When tameness hits zero, your loyal friend goes feral and turns on you. Feeding is the antidote:

• Dogs and cats love tripe rations and most meat
• Horses prefer apples, carrots, and other vegetarian fare

Tripe rations are ideal for dogs and cats. You’ll find them scattered through the dungeon—always pick them up, even though they’re revolting food for humans. Your pet will adore you for it.

Taming New Creatures

If your starting pet perishes (or you want an army), several methods of taming exist:

• Throwing food at a suitable creature: meat for dogs and cats, produce for horses
• Scroll of taming tames all creatures within a radius
• Spell of charm monster tames a single adjacent creature
• Magic trap effects occasionally produce taming

The beautiful thing is that taming isn’t limited to small animals. With a scroll of taming or the charm monster spell, you can recruit almost anything: a purple worm to swallow your enemies whole, a dragon to breathe fire at them, a titan to crush them underfoot. Only unique monsters (Medusa, the Wizard) and a few special creatures resist your charms entirely.

What Pets Do for You

A well-fed pet earns its keep in several ways:

• Combat muscle. A strong pet clears rooms and softens up dangerous monsters before you engage
• Curse detection. The old drop-and-watch trick, described above—free, reliable, and available from turn one
• Shoplifting. If your pet picks up an item inside a shop and carries it out the door, the shopkeeper blames the animal, not you. This takes patience (the pet must wander onto the item, then wander back out) but it’s the cheapest way to acquire a wand of wishing from a shop
• Sacrifice fodder. Monsters your pet kills leave corpses you can sacrifice on altars, exactly as if you’d killed them yourself

Keeping Your Pet Alive

Pets die from the same things you do: traps, poison, powerful monsters, drowning in water. Keep an eye on your companion’s health (; to farlook) and don’t lead it into fights it can’t win. A dead pet is not just a loss of utility—it’s a cold feeling in the pit of your stomach.

If you change levels and your pet isn’t adjacent, it won’t follow. The game tells you: “You have a sad feeling for a moment.” Your pet is still alive on the previous level, but its loyalty is ticking down. Go back for it before it forgets you were friends.

Blessed, Uncursed, Cursed

Before you can worry about what an item is, you need to know what condition it’s in. Every item in the Mazes is blessed, uncursed, or cursed — BUC for short — and the difference matters far more than you’d think. The gods have opinions about your equipment, and those opinions have consequences:

• A blessed scroll of identify generously reveals every item in your pack. A cursed one grudgingly identifies a single item, as if doing you a favor.
• A cursed piece of armor bonds to your skin like it has abandonment issues. You cannot remove it until you lift the curse.
• A cursed potion of gain level interprets “gain a level” in the most literal architectural sense — you rocket through the ceiling to the floor above, instead of gaining an experience level.

The pattern is consistent: blessed items are helpful beyond their description, uncursed items work as advertised, and cursed items find creative ways to ruin your day. A blessed luckstone passively improves your luck; a cursed one drags it down. A cursed scroll of teleportation sends you somewhere terrible. You get the idea.

You don’t see BUC status by default (Priests are the exception — they sense it naturally, which tells you something about clerical paranoia). But there are several reliable ways to check:

Altar testing. Drop an item on an altar:

• An amber flash means blessed.
• A black flash means cursed.
• No flash means uncursed.

This is free, fast, and unlimited. If you find an altar early, use it heavily.

Pet testing. Your pet won’t step on cursed items. If you drop something and your dog walks around it, it’s cursed. If the dog walks over it (or picks it up), it’s safe. Not as precise as an altar, but works anywhere.

Holy water. Dipping an item in blessed water (holy water) will uncurse or bless it. Dipping in cursed water (unholy water) will curse it. Holy water is precious in the early game, so save it for items you’ve already identified.

Scroll of identify. A blessed scroll of identify will identify everything in your pack at once. This is the gold standard, but you need to identify the scroll first (irony noted) and bless it.

The Price Is Right

Shopkeepers are, without exaggeration, your most important identification tool. Every unidentified item has a fixed base price that depends on what it actually is. When you pick up an item in a shop, the shopkeeper quotes you a price derived from that base price, modified by your Charisma and the shopkeeper’s markup.

The key insight: items in the same category that share a base price are in the same price group. If you know the price, you can narrow down the possibilities enormously, sometimes to just two or three candidates.

Here’s how to do it. Pick up an item in a shop and note the price quoted. The quote will be higher than base price (shopkeepers mark up). With average Charisma, the sell price is typically one third of base and the buy price is roughly double. You don’t need to memorize exact formulas. What matters is grouping: items quoted at similar prices are in the same price tier.

The price tables for each item class follow. These are your field reference for shopping trips.

The Engrave Test (Wands)

This is the single most useful trick for wand identification and costs you nothing. Apply a wand by engraving on the floor with it (command: E, then select the wand). What happens tells you what the wand is:

The engrave test costs one charge per wand but preserves the rest. With one zap you can sort most wands into clear categories. For BEAM wands (which just write in the dust like a finger), you’ll need further testing: try zapping them at a monster or in a safe direction.

Warning: In current editions, cursed wands may explode when used to engrave. BUC-test your wands before engraving with them.

Crucially, engraving with a wand of wishing does nothing special. It just uses a charge. So if you suspect you have a wand of wishing ($500 price), do NOT engrave with it. Zap it directly.

The Sink Test (Rings)

If you find a sink (usually in a kitchen), you can drop a ring down it. Each ring type produces a characteristic message:

You have about a 95% chance of losing the ring each time, so only test rings you’re willing to sacrifice. The two exceptions: searching and slow digestion rings are never lost.

Use-Testing (The Careful Way)

When you don’t have access to a shop or a sink, you can sometimes figure out what an item is by using it carefully. Here’s the approach for each category:

Potions. The safest test is to throw a potion at a monster and observe the effect. Throwing avoids the risk of drinking something lethal. If a potion heals the monster, it’s some kind of healing potion. If the monster speeds up, it’s speed. If the monster becomes invisible, well, you’ve learned something (and now have an invisible monster to deal with).

You can also dip items into potions. Dipping a weapon into a potion of sickness will poison it, confirming the potion’s identity. Dipping a unicorn horn into a potion of confusion, hallucination, or sickness will turn it into water.

Scrolls. Reading is risky. Some scrolls (destroy armor, amnesia, punishment) are genuinely harmful. The safest approach is to price-ID first, then read scrolls from safe price groups. If you must test blind: take off your armor before reading a scroll that might be destroy armor. Read from a position where teleportation won’t be disastrous.

Confused reading produces different effects for many scrolls and is sometimes useful. A confused scroll of remove curse, for example, will curse items instead.

Rings. First, confirm the ring is not cursed (altar or pet test). Then put it on. Many rings produce an immediate message or visible effect: you start levitating, you become invisible, you feel stronger. If nothing obvious happens, check your stats and inventory for subtle changes (protection, searching). Take it off quickly if you start feeling hungry faster than normal (hunger ring) or if monsters seem to be approaching more aggressively (aggravate monster).

Amulets. Most amulets are safe to wear briefly. Put it on, wait a few turns, take it off. The dangerous ones (strangulation, restful sleep) are usually cursed, so check BUC first. An amulet of ESP reveals itself if you go blind while wearing it (you’ll see monsters as brain-shapes). Amulet of reflection is trickier to detect, but you’ll notice it when a ray bounces off you.

Armor. Try it on (after checking it’s not cursed). Magical armor reveals itself immediately: speed boots make you faster, a cloak of invisibility makes you invisible. Mundane armor is identifiable by its appearance (the “old gloves” are leather gloves, “riding boots” are fumble boots, and so on).

Here’s a useful table of boot and helmet appearances:

Gray Stones: Four Stones, One Correct Answer

Gray stones deserve their own section because they look identical but have wildly different value. There are four types:

The problem: all four look like “a gray stone” until identified. Here’s how to tell them apart:

The kick test. Kick an unidentified gray stone on the floor. If it scoots away normally, it’s not a loadstone. A loadstone is abnormally heavy and resists being kicked.

The pick-up test. A cursed loadstone cannot be dropped once picked up — it magically returns to your inventory. If you pick up a gray stone and it weighs you down suspiciously, try to drop it. If you can’t, it’s a cursed loadstone. Uncurse it immediately (holy water, scroll of remove curse, prayer) so you can get rid of it.

The price test. If you can reach a shop: a $60 gray stone is a luckstone. A $45 gray stone is a touchstone. A $1 gray stone is flint or a loadstone.

The rub test. Apply (a) a gray stone. If it’s a touchstone, rubbing a valuable gem against it will produce a “streak” message identifying the gem. If nothing happens, it’s not a touchstone.

Location clue. The luckstone at Mine’s End is guaranteed. If you find a gray stone at the bottom of the Mines, it’s almost certainly the luckstone. Bless-test it at an altar to confirm (the guaranteed one is always uncursed).

The rule of thumb: if you find a gray stone, don’t pick it up until you’ve tested it. A loadstone can ruin your encumbrance, and if it’s cursed, you’re stuck with it until you find a way to uncurse. Kick it first. Check BUC second. Then pick it up.

Naming What You’ve Learned

As you gather clues, use the #name command (or N) to track what you know. You can call an entire item class by a name you choose. For example, if you’ve determined that “fizzy potions” are in the $200 price group, call them “fizzy=$200” so you don’t forget. If you later throw one at a monster and it speeds up, you can rename the class to “speed.”

This habit of annotating your discoveries is what separates adventurers who die on level 8 from adventurers who reach the Castle. The dungeon doesn’t keep notes for you. You have to do it yourself.

A Practical Strategy

All of these techniques combine into a workflow. Here’s what a seasoned traveler does on a typical descent:

At an altar (priority one). Ferry everything you’ve found to the altar. Drop each item. Sort your pack into blessed, uncursed, and cursed piles. Wield or wear the blessed stuff. Stash or discard the cursed stuff.

At a shop (priority two). Pick up and put down unidentified items to get price quotes. Group them by price. Cross-reference with the tables above. Suddenly half your inventory is narrowed to two or three possibilities.

Engrave-test your wands as soon as you find them. It’s fast, it costs only one charge, and it immediately sorts wands into categories. A wand that digs the floor is digging. A wand that freezes your engraving is cold. Simple.

Experiment cautiously with the rest. Wear non-cursed rings one at a time. Throw potions at monsters. Read scrolls from safe price groups after removing your armor.

Save your scrolls of identify for the items that resist other methods: amulets (all the same price), spellbooks (dangerous to read if unknown), and the one stubborn potion in the $50 group that you can’t quite pin down.

  The Identification Flowchart:

     Found an item
          │
          ▼
     Can you reach an altar? ──yes──► Drop it. Check BUC.
          │ no
          ▼
     Is your pet nearby? ──yes──► Drop it. Does pet avoid it?
          │ no                        │ yes: it's cursed
          ▼                           │ no: it's safe (uncursed/blessed)
     Can you reach a shop? ──yes──► Check the price. Consult tables.
          │ no
          ▼
     Is it a wand? ──yes──► Engrave-test it.
          │ no
          ▼
     Is it a ring + sink nearby? ──yes──► Drop it in the sink.
          │ no
          ▼
     Is it safe to use-test? ──yes──► Try it carefully.
          │ no
          ▼
     Save a scroll of identify for it.

The whole system is about reducing uncertainty with the cheapest, safest method first. Altars and shops are free. Engrave-testing costs one charge. Use-testing costs more and carries risk. Scrolls of identify are the expensive last resort. Work through the list in order and you’ll rarely be surprised.

How Hunger Works

Your nutrition starts at 900 and ticks down steadily. The rate depends on what you’re doing:

• Base consumption costs 1 point per turn (less while sleeping).
• Regeneration (from a ring or intrinsic) costs extra on odd turns.
• Encumbrance costs extra on odd turns if you’re burdened or worse.
• Rings cause additional hunger while worn. Two rings drain faster.

When nutrition drops below certain thresholds, you get warnings:

The practical takeaway: eat when you get the “Hungry” message. Don’t wait for “Weak.” If you hit Fainting and have no food, pray to your god (see Divine Relations). Prayer cures hunger if your god is willing to help.

What to Eat

Food rations provide 800 nutrition and are the staple food. They weigh 20 and are common in shops. Stockpile these when you can.

Lembas wafers are better: 800 nutrition at only 5 weight, the best ratio in the game. Elven characters find these more often.

Corpses are the primary food source in the early game. Most fresh corpses provide nutrition proportional to the monster’s size. A few rules:

• Eat corpses within a few turns of the kill, or they rot and cause food poisoning (lethal without treatment).
• Never eat old corpses. If in doubt, don’t eat it.
• Some corpses grant intrinsic resistances (poison resistance from killer bees, fire resistance from fire giants, etc.). Eat these deliberately.
• Some corpses are harmful (floating eyes paralyze you, green slimes turn you into slime, cockatrice corpses kill you). Know which corpses are safe before eating.

Tripe rations are terrible for you (your character retches) but pets love them. Save tripe for your pet.

Tins are preserved food that never spoil. They take several turns to open (one turn with a tin opener, three with a dagger, more with bare hands). Blessed tins open instantly. A tin of spinach increases your strength.

Dangerous Foods

Cockatrice corpse: instant death by stoning. Never eat this.

Acidic corpses (acid blob, etc.): damage unless acid resistant.

Poisonous corpses: damage and stat drain unless poison resistant.

Rotten corpses: food poisoning. Pray immediately if affected.

Cannibalism (eating your own race): costs 2 to 5 luck and gives the aggravate monster intrinsic. Cavemen and orcs are exempt.

Useful Corpse Effects

Eating for intrinsics is one of the most important things you can do in the early and mid game. Poison resistance should be a top priority.

Food Strategy

1. Eat fresh corpses as your primary food source.
2. Save food rations and lembas wafers for emergencies.
3. Eat intrinsic-granting corpses deliberately (even if not hungry).
4. Pray when Weak or Fainting if you have nothing to eat.
5. Buy food from shops when you can afford it.
6. Don’t carry more food than you need. It’s heavy.

The Potion Table

As with all randomized items, price is your best friend. A shop visit narrows a mysterious bottle from “could be anything” to a short list of candidates:

Water is the oddity in the $100 group—it always appears as “clear potion,” identifiable on sight. Don’t underestimate it; water is the raw material for holy water, which is the foundation of everything.

Key Potions

Healing, extra healing, full healing. The healing chain, and your lifeline in combat. Extra healing is the workhorse: it cures blindness and sickness in addition to restoring HP. Blessed extra healing and full healing also raise your maximum HP permanently. You can never have too many of these.

Gain ability. When blessed, raises all your stats by 1. Uncursed raises a random stat. This is liquid gold: save every one until you can bless it.

Speed. One blessed quaff and you’re permanently faster for the rest of the game. Speed is arguably the single most important buff in NetHack; the difference between moving at normal speed and fast speed is the difference between trading blows and hitting twice before they swing once. In current editions, the wand of speed monster no longer grants permanent speed when self-zapped—only a temporary burst of 50–74 turns. The potion is the real prize.

Holy water. Not a potion you find—a potion you make. Drop uncursed water on a co-aligned altar, pray, and the gods bless it for you. Holy water can then bless any item you dip into it. This is the engine that drives your entire inventory: blessed scrolls of identify, blessed potions of gain ability, blessed scrolls of enchant weapon. You will never have enough holy water.

Gain level. Raises your experience level by 1. Useful for reaching quest eligibility quickly, or converting into something better through alchemy.

Alchemy

Here’s where potions get interesting. Dip one potion into another and you might create something better—or you might cause an explosion. Most combinations are duds, but the useful recipes are worth memorizing:

The chain from healing → extra healing → full healing → gain ability via gain energy or gain level is the core alchemy sequence, and it’s extraordinarily powerful. A handful of common healing potions and a gain energy or two can be transmuted into the rarest potions in the game. Treat every gain energy potion like the catalyst it is.

Fair warning: there’s a 10% chance of explosion on any non-water mixture, so do your chemistry in a safe place and away from your stash. Cursed potions used as the dipping target always explode.

Unicorn Horn Interactions

A unicorn horn dipped into certain potions purifies them:

• Blindness, confusion, hallucination → uncursed water
• Sickness → fruit juice

This turns dangerous potions into useful raw materials. The water can be blessed into holy water; the fruit juice can be alchemized into see invisible. Nothing is wasted in a well-run dungeon pharmacy.

The Scroll Table

Price-identification is especially powerful for scrolls, because the cheapest scroll ($20) is always identify—the one you need most:

The $60 group is treasure (enchant weapon lurks there alongside innocent blank paper). The $80 group is equally good: enchant armor and remove curse, two scrolls you’ll always want more of. The $100 group is the danger zone—a grab-bag mixing magic mapping and teleportation with destroy armor. And at $300, you’ll find both genocide (one of the strongest effects in the game) and punishment (a ball and chain permanently attached to your ankle). Choose wisely.

Key Scrolls

Identify. The bread and butter of dungeon life. Blessed identify reveals multiple items at once (with positive luck, always at least two). You will never have enough of these.

Enchant weapon / enchant armor. The path to endgame power. Each scroll raises enchantment by +1 (uncursed) or potentially more (blessed). Important: enchanting beyond +5 risks destroying the item entirely, but blessed scrolls can safely push to +7. Save these for your ascension kit, bless them, then savor every +1.

Remove curse. Frees you from cursed equipment. Uncursed version works on worn and wielded items only; blessed version uncurses your entire inventory. Every adventurer has a “put on a cursed ring” story. This scroll is the happy ending.

Charging. Recharges wands and rechargeable tools. Save these for your wand of wishing—one charge means one more wish. Blessed charging restores more charges. But don’t get greedy: each recharge increases the chance the wand explodes. The second recharge is pushing your luck; the third is usually fatal for the wand.

Genocide. The nuclear option. Uncursed eliminates a single species; blessed wipes an entire monster class from the game forever. Liches and mind flayers are popular targets. Read one while confused and you genocide your own race—which kills you instantly. Read carefully.

Magic mapping. Reveals the entire level layout; blessed also shows secret doors. Invaluable in Gehennom’s maddening mazes, where mapping by hand could take a lifetime you don’t have.

Scare monster. The trick: don’t read it. Drop it on the floor and stand on it. It works like a permanent Elbereth, frightening most monsters away. The catch: pick it up after it’s been dropped and it crumbles to dust. So choose your standing spot wisely.

Teleportation. Uncursed teleports you randomly on the level. Cursed or confused reading sends you to a random dungeon level. With teleport control, you choose where you land—making this one of the most versatile escape tools in the game.

Confused Reading

Here’s a trick the dungeon doesn’t advertise: many scrolls do something completely different when read while confused. Some of these alternate effects are better than the normal ones:

• Confused destroy armor doesn’t destroy anything—it erodeproofs a piece of armor. One of the best tricks in the game
• Confused enchant armor / enchant weapon also erodeproof instead of enchanting. Useful when you need protection from rust more than another +1
• Confused remove curse has a 25% chance of blessing or cursing each uncursed item—risky, but it’s a clever way to create holy water if you confuse-read while carrying uncursed potions of water
• Confused genocide genocides your own role. This kills you. Don’t get confused at the wrong moment

The Wand Table

Key Wands

Wishing. The most valuable item in the game. Each zap grants one wish. In current editions, wands of wishing generate with only 1 charge and can be recharged once (and only once) to a maximum of 1 additional charge. This means the Castle wand of wishing typically yields 2 wishes plus a possible wrested third — a significant reduction from older versions where it could provide 5 to 7. Plan your wishes carefully before you find one.

Death. Fires a death ray that instantly kills most things it hits. Reflected by reflection. Blocked by magic resistance. One of the best offensive tools in the late game.

Digging. Essential utility. Dig through walls to create shortcuts, dig down to escape dangerous situations, dig through rock to reach vaults and hidden areas. Every ascension kit should include a wand of digging.

Teleportation. Zap monsters to send them somewhere else on the level. Zap yourself to teleport. Enormously useful for escaping trouble or removing a dangerous monster from your path.

Fire, cold, lightning. Offensive ray wands that bounce off walls. Fire burns scrolls and spellbooks on the floor. Cold freezes water (useful for creating paths). Lightning blinds monsters.

Cancellation. Removes special properties from items and monsters. A cancelled monster loses most of its special attacks. Do NOT put this wand in a bag of holding (it will explode the bag). Keep it separate in your main inventory.

Polymorph. Transforms monsters into random other monsters and items into random other items of the same class. Can be used creatively (polymorph a pile of junk armor hoping for dragon scale mail, polymorph a weak monster hoping for a useful corpse). Risky but powerful.

Identification by Engraving

The engrave test (described in The Identification Problem) is the fastest way to sort wands. Every wand type produces a distinctive result when used to engrave on the floor.

Kieron Dunbar’s “Identifying Wands by Zapping” spoiler, originally posted to RGRN, describes a systematic protocol for narrowing down wand identity through controlled experiments. The approach below is adapted from his checklist.

Beyond Engraving: Systematic Wand Testing

The engrave test sorts most wands immediately, but a few produce ambiguous results. For those, a systematic testing protocol helps:

Step 1: Note the wand category. When you engrave, the result tells you whether the wand is NODIR (non-directional), RAY, or BEAM (immediate). This alone cuts the possibilities dramatically.

• NODIR wands (light, nothing, enlightenment, create monster, secret door detection, wishing): Most reveal themselves through the engrave test messages. Light creates a lit field. Enlightenment makes you feel self-knowledgeable. Create monster says “bugs appear.” If nothing visible happens but a charge was used, it’s the wand of nothing.
• RAY wands (digging, magic missile, fire, cold, lightning, sleep, death): Digging riddles the floor with holes. Fire, cold, and lightning produce obvious elemental effects. Sleep stops bugs from moving. Magic missile and death just write in dust. Of these two, death is $500 — check the price first.
• BEAM wands (everything else): The engrave test doesn’t distinguish most beam wands well. If the engraving vanishes, it’s cancellation or make invisible. If the engraving disappears entirely, it’s teleportation or polymorph. For the rest, further testing is needed.

Step 2: Safe zapping tests. For wands that remain unidentified after engraving, zap them at safe targets:

• Zap at a locked chest or door. A wand of opening unlocks it. A wand of locking locks it. A wand of striking breaks it.
• Zap at a corpse on the floor. A wand of undead turning raises it as a zombie. A wand of polymorph transforms it.
• Zap at a tame or weak monster. Speed monster makes it faster. Slow monster makes it slower. Make invisible makes it vanish. Probing reveals its stats.
• Zap at a cancellable item (a potion, a figurine). Cancellation will dull it. Note: cancellation does NOT affect booze, fruit juice, or oil, so don’t use those as test subjects.

Step 3: When in doubt, check the price. If testing hasn’t resolved the wand, its shop price narrows the field further. A $150 wand is one of twelve types. A $200 wand is one of four. A $500 wand is death or wishing — and you should be very careful with it either way.

Recharging

Wands can be recharged with a scroll of charging. Each recharge increases the risk of the wand exploding. The formula is (recharges cubed) / 343, so:

• First recharge: 0.3% explosion chance.
• Second: 2.3%.
• Third: 7.9%.
• Seventh: 100%.

Wands of wishing can only be recharged once before they explode automatically. Use blessed charging for the best results.

Wresting

When a wand has 0 charges, you can still try to zap it. There is a 1/121 chance of “wresting” one final charge from the wand before it turns to dust. This is a last resort, but it works on wands of wishing too.

The Ring Table

Rings marked “auto-curse” generate cursed 90% of the time. If you slip on a ring and can’t remove it, you’ve just learned what auto-curse means the hard way.

The rings that matter most: Free action is arguably the single best ring in the game—paralysis is death in the late game, and this ring makes you immune. Teleport control turns random teleportation from a nuisance into on-demand transportation. Conflict makes monsters attack each other instead of you, which is devastating on crowded levels (though it also turns your pets hostile). Slow digestion lets you go indefinitely between meals.

The hidden cost: Every ring you wear increases your hunger rate. Two rings drain food noticeably faster. The veteran habit is to keep rings in inventory and slip them on only when needed—free action before fighting mind flayers, conflict before entering a throne room. Economy of fingers is an art.

Amulets

Amulets are simpler in theory but harder to identify—they all cost $150, so price is no help. You’ll need to wear-test or use a scroll of identify. The stakes are high, because the range runs from “saves your life” to “slowly strangles you to death”:

Life saving is the crown jewel. When you die—any kind of death—it triggers, revives you at full HP, and crumbles to dust. Wear it whenever you’re going somewhere dangerous. Take it off when you’re safe. You only get the one miracle.

Reflection is excellent if you didn’t get a shield of reflection from Perseus’s statue or elsewhere. Wearing it as an amulet frees up your shield slot for a small shield or two-weapon fighting.

Guarding provides +2 AC and +2 magic cancellation (MC). This is a new addition in current editions that neatly solves the MC puzzle: pair it with a cloak of magic resistance (MC1) and you reach MC3, freeing you from needing the less versatile cloak of protection.

Magical breathing prevents drowning—which sounds niche until you reach Medusa’s level (surrounded by water) or the Plane of Water (entirely underwater). Then it’s existential.

Identification

Rings and amulets resist casual identification. The best approaches: drop rings down sinks (each type produces a unique message), wear-test in safe areas (risky with auto-cursing types), or use scrolls of identify. For amulets, there’s no price trick—identify scrolls or careful wear-testing are your main options. Always BUC-test an amulet before putting it on; cursed amulets of strangulation are one of the most embarrassing ways to die.

Containers

The bag of holding deserves its own paragraph because it transforms how you play. A blessed bag reduces the weight of everything inside to roughly one quarter—meaning you can carry your entire potion supply, your backup armor, your scroll library, and still have room for loot. Get one from Sokoban or wish for one early. It’s that important.

The cardinal rule: never put a wand of cancellation, another bag of holding, or a charged bag of tricks inside a bag of holding. The resulting magical explosion scatters your carefully curated inventory across the floor. In older editions it destroyed everything. Either way, it’s a game-ending mistake that every veteran has made exactly once.

Unlocking Tools

The dungeon is full of locked things, and brute force is noisy and slow. A skeleton key is the gold standard (70%+ success on doors, 75%+ on boxes). A lock pick is respectable. A credit card is the worst but still better than kicking. Always carry one of these—the weight is negligible and the utility is constant.

Light Sources

Oil lamps and candles light dark corridors, which is pleasant but not essential. The real prize is the magic lamp: rub it while blessed and there’s an 80% chance a djinni emerges and grants you a wish. Never, ever use a magic lamp for light. That’s like using a winning lottery ticket as a bookmark.

The Candelabrum of Invocation is a unique candelabra found in Vlad’s Tower. It’s one of three items needed for the invocation ritual to enter Moloch’s Sanctum. You’ll need seven candles to fill it—so start hoarding candles when you find them.

Musical Instruments

Music has power in the Mazes. A tooled horn or bugle is needed to play the passtune at the Castle drawbridge (you’ll find the notes nearby—listen carefully). A magic harp charms monsters into tameness. A magic flute puts them to sleep. A drum of earthquake creates pits around you, which is as chaotic as it sounds.

Non-magical instruments (wooden flute, leather drum) produce noise but no special effects—useful only for confusing the issue.

Other Notable Tools

The unicorn horn is arguably the single most important tool in the game. Apply it to cure confusion, blindness, sickness, hallucination, and nausea—basically every status ailment that matters. Carry one at all times. If you don’t have one, getting one should be near the top of your priority list.

The magic marker is a printing press for scrolls. Write scrolls of identify, enchant weapon, enchant armor, or anything else on blank paper or blank scrolls. Charges are limited and precious: writing a scroll you’ve already identified costs fewer charges, so identify first, write second. A well-used magic marker can produce half your ascension kit.

Armor and AC

Armor Class (AC) starts at 10 and decreases as you add protection. Lower is better. Each point of AC reduces the chance of being hit. At AC -10 or below, you’re quite difficult to damage with physical attacks.

The key armor slots:

Dragon scale mail is the endgame body armor of choice. In current editions, each color provides two extrinsic resistances. Gray dragon scale mail provides magic resistance and is the most popular wish target. Silver provides reflection. Black provides disintegration resistance and drain resistance (the only non-artifact source). Green provides poison resistance and sickness immunity.

To get dragon scale mail: kill a dragon, pick up the scales it drops, then either read a blessed scroll of enchant armor while wearing the scales (they transform into scale mail), or wish for the mail directly.

Speed boots are one of the most powerful items in the game. Being faster than your enemies means you get more turns, which means more chances to attack, cast spells, or run away.

Cloak of magic resistance provides magic resistance in the cloak slot and frees up other slots for different resistances. However, be aware that since 3.6.0, magic cancellation (MC) values were overhauled: the cloak of magic resistance now provides only MC1, not MC3. The cloak of protection is now the only single item that provides MC3, which blocks 90% of monster special attacks (down from 98% in older editions). A ring of protection now contributes +1 MC, and the new amulet of guarding provides +2 MC, giving you more ways to assemble full magic cancellation coverage.

Weapons

Weapon choice depends heavily on your role and skill caps.

Excalibur (long sword dipped in a fountain while Lawful) is one of the best weapons: +d5 to hit and damage, level drain resistance, automatic searching. For Lawful characters, getting Excalibur early is a priority.

Silver saber deserves special mention. Many endgame threats (demons, undead, werecreatures) are vulnerable to silver. A silver saber does an extra d20 damage against them, making it one of the best late-game weapons.

Your quest artifact is often your primary weapon or at least worth carrying for its properties. Check what your role’s artifact does.

Enchantment

Weapons and armor can be enchanted using scrolls of enchant weapon and enchant armor. Each scroll adds +1 (uncursed) or potentially more (blessed). Enchanting beyond +5 risks destroying the item, though blessed scrolls reduce this risk. The absolute safe limit for enchanting is +5 for weapons and +3 for armor (with uncursed scrolls). Blessed scrolls can push higher safely.

Erosion and Proofing

Weapons and armor can be damaged by rust (iron items), fire (organic items), and corrosion (copper items). A badly damaged item provides less AC or damage.

To fix erosion, read a confused scroll of enchant weapon (for your weapon) or confused scroll of enchant armor (for a random worn armor piece). This erodeproofs the item permanently without changing its enchantment. It also repairs any existing damage.

Alignment and Blasting

Each artifact has an alignment. If you try to handle an artifact that doesn’t match your alignment:

• Intelligent artifacts (most quest artifacts): 8d6 damage and you drop the item. You cannot wield these.
• Other misaligned artifacts: 4d4 damage on first touch, 1/4 chance of being blasted each subsequent touch.

Key Artifacts

Excalibur (Lawful, long sword): +d5 to hit and damage, level drain resistance, automatic searching. The go-to weapon for Lawful characters.

Grayswandir (Lawful, silver saber): +d5 to hit and damage, double damage dealt, halved physical damage received. One of the best weapons in the game. Wishable.

Mjollnir (Neutral, war hammer): Can be thrown and returns like a boomerang (if STR 25). +d5 to hit and +d24 damage against non- shock-resistant targets. Requires high strength to use effectively.

Magicbane (Neutral, athame): +d3 to hit and damage, protects against curses while carried, cancels monsters on hit. Useful as a secondary weapon. Can be obtained by sacrifice.

Stormbringer (Chaotic, runesword): +d5 to hit and damage, drains one level from hit targets (you gain it). Attacks peaceful monsters automatically, which can cause alignment problems.

The Eyes of the Overworld (Neutral, lenses): Magic resistance, astral vision. A quest artifact for Monks.

Quest artifacts vary wildly by role but most provide magic resistance, which makes them important to carry even if you don’t wield them. Check your specific role’s artifact.

Prayer

Matthew Lahut’s Praying Spoiler, originally posted to RGRN and archived on steelypips.org, remains the definitive reference for the prayer system. The mechanics below draw from his work.

Praying (#pray) calls on your god for help. When conditions are right, prayer is the single most powerful emergency tool in the game. When conditions are wrong, it can kill you.

What prayer fixes (in priority order). Your god addresses your problems in a specific order, fixing the most urgent first:

1. Petrification in progress (stoning)
2. Sliming in progress
3. Strangulation
4. Sinking in lava
5. Illness (food poisoning, sickness)
6. Severe hunger (Weak or Fainting)
7. Critically low HP (less than 5, or less than 1/7 of max)
8. Lycanthropy
9. Blindness, confusion, stunning, hallucination
10. Punishment (iron ball and chain)

After resolving your problems, your god may grant additional blessings: fixing minor afflictions, improving your alignment, or even gifting intrinsics like telepathy or speed.

The requirements for a safe prayer. All of the following must be true:

• Your alignment must be non-negative. Killing peacefuls, robbing shops, and other misdeeds reduce alignment. Sacrifice and virtuous behavior raise it.
• Your luck must be non-negative. Luck is affected by many things (see Luck and Fortune).
• Your god must not be angry. God anger is separate from alignment and accumulates from specific offenses (breaking conduct with your god, desecrating altars).
• The prayer timeout must have expired. After a successful prayer, you must wait before praying again. The timeout averages around 450 turns but can range from under 200 to over 700 due to the random formula used. In a genuine emergency (HP critical, starving), there is some forgiveness if your timeout is close to expiring.
• You must not be polymorphed into a demon or undead while worshipping a non-chaotic god.
• You must not be in Gehennom (unless you worship Moloch, which no standard role does). Your god cannot hear you there. This is one of the things that makes Gehennom so dangerous.
• If you’re on an altar, it should be co-aligned. Praying on a cross-aligned altar directs your prayer to the wrong god.

When prayer goes wrong. If any requirement is unmet, your god responds with punishment instead of help: loss of alignment, loss of luck, increased timeout, cursing of worn items, or summoning of hostile minions. Severe transgressions (praying to a very angry god) can trigger lightning or disintegration, both potentially fatal.

Practical guidance. Pray when you’re about to die and have no other option. Starvation, stoning, illness, and critically low HP are all valid emergencies. Don’t waste prayers on minor inconveniences. Before you pray, make a mental check: is my alignment positive? Have enough turns passed? Am I on a co-aligned altar or no altar at all? If you can’t answer yes to these, find another solution.

Prayer timeout tracking. The game doesn’t show your timeout directly, but you can estimate it. Count roughly 500 turns from your last prayer (more if it went badly). In the early game, when turns are slow and you’re fighting one creature at a time, 500 turns pass quickly. In the late game, when you might take 100 actions per level, it takes longer to feel.

Sacrifice

Offering fresh monster corpses at an altar builds favor with your god. The rules:

• The corpse must be fresh (killed within the last few turns).
• Bigger monsters are more valuable sacrifices.
• The altar must match your alignment, or you’re praying to someone else’s god (which has its own consequences).
• Same-race sacrifice is forbidden and severely punished (with one exception: it can convert an altar to your alignment).

With enough sacrifice credit, your god may gift you an artifact weapon. The first gift comes after relatively modest sacrifice; subsequent gifts require substantially more. Gift artifacts are always aligned to your god and always match a weapon skill you can use.

Altars and Alignment

You can convert an altar by sacrificing on a cross-aligned altar repeatedly. This is risky (the altar’s god will be angry) but useful if the only altar you’ve found doesn’t match your alignment. Having a co-aligned altar is important for sacrifice, holy water production, and BUC testing.

Crowning

If your alignment record is very high (through sacrifice and good behavior), your god may crown you. Crowning grants:

• A special title (e.g., “Hand of Elbereth” for lawful characters).
• An artifact weapon appropriate to your alignment, if one is available that you can use.
• Intrinsic fire resistance, cold resistance, poison resistance, and shock resistance.
• Full healing.

However, crowning also locks your alignment (you can never change it) and raises the prayer timeout to at least 1000 turns. Many experienced players avoid being crowned because the increased timeout removes prayer as a reliable emergency tool during the most dangerous part of the game. If you need to sacrifice a lot to get an artifact gift, be aware that you might accidentally trigger a crowning instead. Some players deliberately keep their alignment record modest until they’ve secured the items they need.

To-Hit Calculation

Every swing of your weapon is a d20 roll, modified by everything the game can think of to make your life interesting:

• Your experience level (the game’s way of saying “you’ve seen things”)
• Your weapon’s enchantment (a +7 Excalibur hits noticeably better)
• Your Luck (the universe literally takes sides — up to +5 or -5)
• Your Strength bonus (muscles still matter underground)
• The monster’s AC (the lower their AC, the harder they are to tag)

You need to roll at or above (10 + defender’s AC - your modifiers). Since some late-game monsters have AC of -10 or worse, this formula can feel like trying to hit smoke. Enchant your weapon. Keep your luck up. And maybe don’t try to punch an arch-lich.

Damage

Base damage depends on your weapon and whether the target is small or large. (Most weapons are optimized for one or the other, because apparently dungeon physics care about monster volume.) Added to base:

• Weapon enchantment (+1 per point)
• Strength bonus (up to +6 for STR 18/xx, or more)
• Weapon skill bonus (depends on skill level)
• Special bonuses (silver damage, artifact bonuses, etc.)
• In current editions, two-handed weapons get a 50% bonus to the strength damage component, which is the Mazes’ way of rewarding you for giving up your shield

AC and Defense

Your AC determines how likely monsters are to hit you. The journey from “I die to gnomes” to “nothing can touch me” looks like this:

At AC -20, almost nothing hits you with physical attacks. Feel free to laugh at ogres. But many late-game threats use special attacks — breath weapons, spells, gaze attacks — that ignore AC entirely. You can be wearing impenetrable armor and a disenchanter will still ruin your day. AC is necessary but not sufficient.

Two-Weapon Combat

Some roles can fight with a weapon in each hand, which looks impressive and gives more attacks per turn. The catch: it splits your skill bonuses and you can’t use a shield. Two-weapon combat is powerful for roles with high skill caps in it (Rangers, Barbarians) but a trap for everyone else. If you’re not sure, just use one really good weapon. In current editions, two-handed weapons got a buff that makes them a compelling alternative to dual-wielding.

Fighting Smart

The dungeon rewards cowardice, cunning, and property damage. Here are the time-tested tactics that keep adventurers breathing:

• Use corridors. Monsters can only approach one at a time in a corridor. This is the single most important tactical principle in the Mazes. Never fight a mob in an open room if you can retreat to a chokepoint and fight them in single file. This turns a suicide mission into a turkey shoot.
• Fight at range. Wands, thrown weapons, and spells let you soften up monsters before they reach you. This is especially important against monsters with dangerous melee attacks. A fire ant is scary in melee. A fire ant that you’ve already zapped three times is just a warm corpse.
• Know when to run. The Mazes have no medals for bravery, only for survival. If a fight is going badly, use a scroll of teleportation, a wand of teleportation, or just run. Dead adventurers don’t get second chances (unless wearing an amulet of life saving).
• Use conflict. A ring of conflict makes monsters fight each other. Walk into a room full of enemies, put on the ring, and watch them destroy each other while you enjoy the show from the doorway. Nature is beautiful.
• Elbereth for emergencies. Write it, stand on it, recover. The monsters will mill around you looking confused and angry, which is exactly how you want them.

Sources of Wishes

The Mazes are stingy, but there are more wish sources than most travelers realize:

• Wand of wishing: 1 charge, found in the Castle treasure room. Rechargeable once for 1 additional charge. The Castle chest also contains a potion of gain level, because the Mazes occasionally feel generous.
• Vlad’s throne: A special throne that grants a guaranteed wish if you keep sitting. Four of thirteen outcomes are a wish (which destroys the throne); the other nine are painful but the throne survives, so persistence pays off.
• The Amulet of Yendor: Grants a wish when you first pick it up. A reward for reaching the bottom of the dungeon.
• Magic lamp: Rub a blessed lamp for an 80% chance of a wish. Either a magic lamp or a magic marker is guaranteed in Orcus-town.
• Fountain: ~1 in 30 chance of a wish per quaff. Far more likely to produce snakes.
• Throne: Very rare chance of a wish when sitting. Also a very real chance of everything going wrong.
• Djinni from smoky potion: Rare (1 in 13 base probability), and even then only 20% wish chance (80% if blessed). But when it works, you feel like a genius.

Most games give you 4 to 6 wishes total: the Castle wand (2-3 with wresting), Vlad’s throne (1), the Amulet pickup (1), and possibly a magic lamp. That’s 4 to 6 chances to shape your destiny. Don’t waste them on food.

What to Wish For

Generations of adventurers have argued about optimal wish order. Here’s the conventional wisdom, battle-tested by thousands of ascensions:

1. Gray dragon scale mail (magic resistance + AC — magic resistance is the most important protection in the game, so this is highly recommended).
2. Silver dragon scale mail (reflection + AC, the second pillar of not dying to wands).
3. Speed boots (being fast gives you more actions per turn—excellent for both offense and escape).
4. Gauntlets of power (STR 25, +AC, if your role benefits — and most roles benefit from punching harder).
5. Amulet of life saving (insurance for the endgame, when overconfidence kills more adventurers than monsters do).
6. A specific artifact (Grayswandir is a common target for the silver damage against everything in Gehennom).

Don’t wish for consumables (scrolls, potions) unless you’re in dire straits. Items you can find through normal play aren’t worth a wish. A wish is for things that change the fundamental equation of your survival.

Wish Syntax

When the game asks “For what do you wish?”, be specific. This is not the time for ambiguity:

• “blessed +3 gray dragon scale mail” gets you exactly that.
• Just “gray dragon scale mail” gives you an uncursed +0 version. You had one wish. Why would you not specify?
• You cannot wish for artifacts that are already generated.
• You cannot wish for the Amulet of Yendor (nice try).

Learning Spells

Read a spellbook to learn the spell it contains. Reading takes several turns and can fail — sometimes catastrophically. A failed reading can paralyze you, summon hostile monsters, or just waste your time. Worse, each failed attempt damages the spellbook. Fail enough times and the book crumbles to dust, taking the spell with it. It’s like the book is judging you.

The chance of successfully reading a spellbook depends on three things: the spell level, your Intelligence, and your experience level. Higher-level spells demand more of both. Blessed spellbooks add a bonus (equivalent to a few points of Intelligence). Cursed spellbooks should never be read — they always fail and always punish you, because of course they do.

Here’s a rough guide to what you can safely read:

(The “Minimum Int + XL” column means the sum of your Intelligence and experience level. If you have 18 Intelligence and are level 14, your sum is 32, and you can reliably read up to level 6 spells. A blessed book effectively adds 2-3 to this number.)

Wizards are the undisputed masters of magic: they learn faster, fail less, and have the widest range of useful spells. A well-built Wizard can eventually learn every spell in the game, which is the closest the Mazes come to letting you cheat. Other roles can cast some spells but with less panache — a Valkyrie might manage identify (level 3) but will struggle with anything above level 4. Tourists, Barbarians, and Cavemen should probably stick to hitting things.

Each spell stays in memory for approximately 20,000 turns, then fades and must be relearned. You can check how close a spell is to expiring from your spell list (+). Carry important spellbooks with you if you plan to rely on their spells in the late game — you can also apply a spellbook to check how many times it’s been read (each reading wears the book down, and they eventually crumble to dust). Nothing is worse than reaching Gehennom and discovering your finger of death expired ten levels ago.

In recent editions of the Mazes, the spell maintenance system adds an ongoing cost: known spells gradually drain a small amount of your maximum power while memorized. Higher-level spells cost more to maintain. This means you can’t just learn every spell you find — carrying too many memorized spells shrinks your effective mana pool. Choose wisely and let unneeded spells expire.

Key Spells

For Wizards, learning identify and magic mapping as spells dramatically reduces your need for scrolls — it’s like having infinite scrolls, except they cost mana instead of inventory space. Finger of death is the ultimate argument-ender. Charm monster turns your enemies into your friends, which is even better than killing them because friends carry things and absorb hits.

Mana Management

Your power (Pw) pool determines how many spells you can cast before you need to sit in a corner and regenerate like a phone battery. Power regenerates over time (faster with higher Wisdom and with a regeneration source). The Energy Vortex trick: let an energy vortex hit you while carrying an amulet of reflection, and it will increase your maximum power. Yes, getting hit by a vortex makes you more magical. The Mazes have their own logic.

High-level spells cost serious power. You can’t spam finger of death unless you have a colossal power pool, and even then you’ll run dry faster than you’d like. Plan your casting, carry backup options (wands, scrolls) for when your mana runs low, and remember that a Wizard who can’t cast spells is just a person in a bathrobe holding a stick.

How Items Get Cursed

• Born that way. Some items generate cursed most of the time (rings of teleportation, rings of polymorph, amulets of strangulation—anything the dungeon thinks is funny)
• Bones inheritance. Items on a bones level have an 80% chance of being cursed. That tempting armor on the dead adventurer’s corpse? Probably trapped
• Monster interference. Certain monsters can curse items in your inventory
• Confused remove curse. Reading it confused has a chance of cursing items instead of uncursing them
• Unholy water. The evil twin of holy water

Effects of Cursed Items

• Cursed armor and rings bond to you and can’t be removed—a cursed ring of teleportation means random teleports you can’t stop, and a cursed pair of levitation boots means you can never touch the ground again
• Cursed weapons can’t be unwielded. Hope you like that -3 orcish dagger
• Cursed potions and scrolls often do the opposite of what you want, or a weakened version of the normal effect
• Cursed tools malfunction spectacularly. A cursed bag of holding doubles the weight of its contents instead of reducing it
• Cursed food is unpleasant but rarely fatal. Small mercies

Detecting Curses

Prevention is better than cure. Test items before wearing them:

• Altar test. Drop an item on an altar. A black flash means cursed. This is free, instant, and should become instinct
• Pet test. Your pet refuses to step on cursed items. Drop and observe
• Temple priest. Will identify BUC status for a fee—convenient in Minetown
• Scroll of identify. Always reveals the full status

Removing Curses

When prevention fails, you have three remedies:

• Scroll of remove curse. Uncursed removes curses from worn and wielded items. Blessed uncurses your entire inventory. The blessed version is one of the most relieving moments in NetHack
• Holy water. Dip a cursed item in holy water and it becomes uncursed. Simple, reliable, and reason enough to stockpile holy water
• Prayer. A pleased god uncurses your worn items as a side benefit of answering prayer. Don’t waste a prayer solely on this, but it’s a nice bonus

The lesson: always carry holy water and a scroll of remove curse. The moment you find yourself stuck with cursed levitation boots over a moat, you’ll understand why veterans never leave home without them.

How Luck Works

Luck ranges from -13 to +13. It starts at 0, the universe’s way of saying “prove yourself.” Left alone, luck drifts back toward zero over time — the Mazes don’t give anything for free.

Luck timeout. Every 600 turns, your luck moves one point toward 0. If you have +5 luck, it will drop to +4 after 600 turns, then +3 after 1200, eventually reaching 0. Your good deeds are forgotten. Your sins, alas, are also forgiven.

Luckstone. Carrying a luckstone in your open inventory (not inside a container) freezes the timer. Your luck stays wherever it is until something changes it. This is why getting the luckstone from Mine’s End is one of the first things every experienced player does. It’s a small gray stone that makes the universe remember you fondly.

Gaining and Losing Luck

The pattern is consistent: be virtuous and the numbers smile on you. Be a monster and they frown. The Mazes have a moral compass, and it’s embedded in the math.

Why Luck Matters

At Luck +5 (or higher, with a luckstone), life is noticeably better:

• You hit more often in combat. Swings that would have missed connect instead.
• Your prayers are more likely to be answered. Your god likes lucky people. (Gods are fickle that way.)
• Scrolls of enchant weapon/armor succeed more often at high enchantment levels.
• Wands of wishing are more likely to work perfectly on wresting.
• Fountain wishes become slightly more likely.

At negative luck, all of these go wrong. At Luck -10 or worse, prayer always fails and many items actively betray you. You’ll miss attacks you should have hit. Scrolls will backfire. The dungeon becomes a place that is trying to kill you even harder than usual, which is saying something.

The practical advice: get a luckstone early, sacrifice occasionally to keep luck positive, and don’t kill peacefuls. Treat the universe well and it will return the favor — in the form of slightly better random numbers, which in the Mazes is the closest thing to love.

What’s Different

• No prayer. Your god is deaf to you in Gehennom (unless you’re a Moloch worshipper, and you’re not). No emergency healing. No food rescue. No curse removal via divine intervention. Pack accordingly, because down here, you are completely on your own
• Fire everywhere. Fire traps litter the corridors. Demons breathe fire as casually as you breathe air. If you don’t have fire resistance by now, turn around
• Hot ground. In current editions, the ground itself is hot enough to shatter potions dropped on the floor. Keep everything in a bag at all times
• Demon lords. Named demon lords—Orcus, Baalzebub, Asmodeus, Juiblex, Yeenoghu, and if you’re very unlucky, Demogorgon—hold court on specific levels. Each is a major battle. Several can summon reinforcements. All of them are angry you’re here
• Teleportation restrictions. In current editions, teleportation is blocked on a demon lord’s lair level while that lord still lives. Kill or banish them and the restriction lifts. In older editions, most Gehennom levels permanently blocked teleportation
• Mazes. Nearly every level is a maze. A wand of digging or pickaxe isn’t optional here—it’s as essential as your weapon. Dig straight lines to the stairs and don’t look back

Key Objectives in Gehennom

You’re here for three artifacts, one ritual, and one extremely dangerous robbery:

1. Vlad’s Tower. A three-level tower where Vlad the Impaler (a vampire lord) guards the Candelabrum of Invocation at the top. Kill Vlad. Take the Candelabrum. Don’t linger.

2. The Wizard’s Tower. The Wizard of Yendor waits here with the Book of the Dead. He is the most dangerous enemy in the game—not because he’s the strongest fighter, but because he never stops. He teleports, summons monsters, steals the Amulet, curses your gear, and once you wake him, he will not leave you alone for the rest of the game. Kill him. Take the Book.

3. The vibrating square. Somewhere on the level directly above Moloch’s Sanctum, a single square vibrates when you step on it. This is the ritual site. Finding it in a maze is part of the challenge—scrolls of magic mapping help enormously.

4. The Invocation. At the vibrating square, light the Candelabrum (with 7 candles attached), ring the Bell of Opening, and read the Book of the Dead. The passage to Moloch’s Sanctum opens.

5. Moloch’s Sanctum. The high priest of Moloch guards the Amulet of Yendor. Defeat him and take it. Then turn around and realize you must carry it all the way back up through the entire dungeon you just descended.

Survival Tips

• Bring extra food. You can’t pray for it
• Bring scrolls of remove curse. You can’t pray curses away
• Dig, don’t navigate. Maze walls are faster to go through than around
• Kill the Wizard quickly. Every turn he lives is another summoned monster, another stolen item, another cursed piece of gear. He’ll come back—he always comes back—but the intervals between his appearances give you breathing room
• The Amulet anchors you. Level teleportation doesn’t work while you carry it. Every step back to the surface must be climbed by foot

The Problems

Everything that can go wrong will try:

• The Wizard of Yendor periodically teleports to you, summoning nasty monsters and trying to steal the Amulet. He will not stop. Kill him each time; he always comes back. He is the world’s most persistent ex.
• The Amulet blocks teleportation. You can’t level teleport while carrying the Amulet. You must climb every single staircase from the bottom of Gehennom to the surface. All of them. By foot.
• Covetous monsters. Demon lords and the Wizard can warp directly to your position and attack. They specifically target you for the Amulet, because apparently everyone wants this thing.
• The Mysterious Force. While carrying the Amulet in Gehennom, each time you climb stairs, there’s a chance you’ll be yanked back to a random location on the level instead of going up. The dungeon is literally holding onto you. This stops once you’re above Gehennom, where the dungeon’s grip weakens.

Strategy

You are no longer an explorer. You are a running back carrying the ball through the entire opposing team. Speed is everything.

• Don’t fight. Don’t explore. Don’t loot. Just go up. Every turn you spend fighting something optional is a turn the Wizard gets closer to stealing the Amulet.
• Dig. Use your wand of digging to reach staircases quickly. Straight lines through walls beat wandering through corridors.
• Zap problems away. Teleportation wands move monsters out of your path. Death wands remove them permanently. Use both liberally.
• Kill the Wizard fast. When he shows up (and he will), don’t try to be clever. Finger of death, wand of death, or brute force. The faster he’s down, the fewer monsters he summons.
• Use Elbereth when you need a turn to heal, apply a unicorn horn, or just catch your breath.

The Ascension Run rewards preparation and punishes hesitation. If you packed well at the Castle and your resistances are solid, this is a sprint, not a marathon. Once you reach the top of the Dungeons of Doom, the final staircase leads to the Elemental Planes — the last obstacle between you and divinity.

Plane of Earth

You arrive encased in solid rock and boulders, surrounded by earth elementals that hit like the mountain itself. The portal is buried somewhere in the level. Dig. A wand of digging is essential; a scroll of magic mapping or crystal ball reveals the portal’s location so you can dig toward it instead of blind. This level is claustrophobic, dark, and punishing—but it’s the gentlest of the four.

Plane of Air

The opposite extreme: an open void with no walls, no floor you can feel, just empty sky and air elementals moving faster than thought. They attack multiple times per turn and they cannot be genocided. A ring of conflict is devastating here—let them tear each other apart while you search for the portal. A scroll of magic mapping reveals it. One strange trick: if a vortex engulfs you, it carries you randomly around the level—and if it happens to cross the portal, you’re pulled through. Sometimes the fastest route is to surrender to the wind.

Plane of Fire

Everything is on fire. The ground is fire. The air is fire. Fire elementals fill the level, and fire traps dot every corridor. Fire resistance isn’t just recommended—without it, you’ll be dead in turns. Map the level, find the portal among the flames, and get there. Don’t stop to fight anything you don’t have to.

Plane of Water

The entire level is underwater. Without magical breathing (an amulet or intrinsic), you will drown—and drowning is instant death, no saving throw. The level is a labyrinth of water-filled chambers with occasional air pockets. Sea monsters prowl the corridors. Find the portal and push through. This is the last barrier between you and the gods.

The Astral Plane

You surface into the presence of the divine. Three altars stand in the great temple: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. You must sacrifice the Amulet of Yendor on the altar matching your alignment to ascend. Choose wrong and the Amulet is lost—you’ll need to fight to retrieve it.

The plane is swarming with Angels and the three Riders: Death, Famine, and Pestilence. The Riders cannot be permanently killed— they revive, they pursue, they do not stop. Don’t try to clear the level. You are not here to fight. You are here to reach one altar, make one sacrifice, and end this.

• Conflict and teleportation wands clear a path through the crowds
• Identify the correct altar quickly—farlook (;) shows alignment
• The Riders will follow you. Outrun them, don’t outfight them
• When you offer the Amulet on the correct altar: you ascend. The game is won. You’ve done what so few have done. Congratulations.

Command Counts (Multi-Digit Prefixes)

The Problem: You want to search the same spot ten times. You type s ten times. Your finger hurts. There must be a better way.

The Solution: Type 10s. The dungeon will search ten times in a row, stopping early if something interesting happens (like finding a secret door, or a monster appearing, or your HP changing).

This works for any command. 20. waits twenty turns. 5h moves west five times. 99s searches ninety-nine times (though you’ll probably find the secret door before then, or conclude it doesn’t exist).

The Limits: You can type up to five digits, for a maximum count of 32,767. If you type more, the count caps at 32,767. If you need to repeat something more than 32,767 times, you have bigger problems than this guide can solve.

When It Stops: Multi-command sequences are interrupted automatically when: - A hostile monster appears adjacent to you - Your HP changes (you take damage or heal) - A --More-- prompt appears

Press ESC to cancel a multi-command sequence early.

Example: Standing next to a likely secret door location, you type 10s. The game searches once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth search: “You find a hidden door!” The sequence stops. You didn’t type s ten times — you told the dungeon to search up to ten times, and it knew to stop when it found something.

Repeat Last Command (Ctrl+A)

The Problem: You searched. Nothing. You want to search again. You could type s again, but there must be a better way.

The Solution: Press Ctrl+A. The game repeats whatever you just did — same command, same count if you used one.

Searched once? Ctrl+A searches again. Moved west with h? Ctrl+A moves west again. Searched ten times with 10s? Ctrl+A searches ten more times.

This is one of the most commonly used advanced commands. Once you learn it, you’ll use it constantly. It’s faster than retyping, and it works for any command.

What It Remembers: The last command you executed successfully. Not attempts that failed or were canceled — the last thing that actually happened.

When to Use It: Whenever you want to “do that again.” Searching repeatedly. Moving in the same direction. Waiting multiple times. Reading the same scroll. (Okay, maybe not that last one.)

Prefix Commands (Command Modifiers)

Sometimes you want to modify how the next command behaves. NetHack has a system for this: type a prefix command, then type the command you want to modify. The prefix applies to the next command only, then clears.

Navigation Tips

Capital Letters = Run: H runs west. J runs south. K runs north. L runs east. The diagonals work too: Y runs northwest, U runs northeast, B runs southwest, N runs southeast.

The Run Rule: Running stops when something interesting appears. A monster. An item. A branch. A door. Anything that might require a decision. The dungeon is trying to help you not run into trouble.

Arrow Keys: Work like you’d expect. Arrow key movement also runs if you hold Shift, but capital letters are usually faster for experienced players.

Message History (Ctrl+P)

Press Ctrl+P to see the last message. Press it again to see the one before that. Keep pressing to scroll back through message history.

When to Use It: You saw something important flash by. A warning about poison. A monster’s special ability. A shopkeeper’s price quote. Ctrl+P lets you review it.

The Limit: Message history stores the last several dozen messages. Beyond that, they’re gone. Write down the important ones.

Redraw Screen (Ctrl+R)

Press Ctrl+R to redraw the screen. Useful if your terminal gets garbled or if you suspect a display bug.

When to Use It: Rarely. But when you need it, you really need it.

The Learning Curve

You don’t need to memorize all of these at once. Start with command counts (10s) and repeat last command (Ctrl+A). Those two alone will save you thousands of keystrokes over the course of a game.

The prefix commands can wait until you need them. The first time you suspect an invisible monster, you’ll remember F exists and look it up. The first time you’re running across a long corridor, you’ll remember G or capital letters exist. Let the game teach you when the tools are useful.

The dungeon rewards efficiency, but it doesn’t demand it on day one.

Related Options

Several options affect how commands and controls work. Access them with the O command (that’s capital O, not zero).

number_pad: Enables numeric keypad for movement (1-9 for directions). Off by default. If you enable this, digit prefixes for command counts work differently — you’ll need to press n first to enter a count.

autopickup: When implemented, this will make you automatically pick up certain items when you walk over them. The m prefix will let you move over items without triggering autopickup. Currently not yet implemented in this version.

DECgraphics: Changes how walls and corridors are drawn. Doesn’t affect controls, but might affect how quickly you can read the map.

verbose: Controls whether the game gives you detailed messages. When on, interruptions to multi-command sequences explain why they stopped.

msg_window: Lets you see multiple messages at once in a dedicated message window, rather than one message at a time on the status line. Extremely useful for reviewing what just happened without Ctrl+P.

The options system is deep and intimidating. Don’t worry about most of them when starting out. The defaults are reasonable. But if you find yourself annoyed by some aspect of the interface, check the options — there’s probably a setting for it.

Level 1, Version A

            11111
   12345678901234
 1 ┌────┐  ┌───┐
 2 │····│  │···│
 3 │·A··└──┘·B·│
 4 │·C······D··│
 5 │··┌─┐@┌─┐E·│
 6 ├──────┼─┘·──┐
 7 │··^^^<│·····│
 8 │··┌───│F····│
 9 └┐^│   │·G···│
10  │^└───┘·H···│
11  │··^^^^I·J··│
12  │··┌────────┘
13  └──┘

1. Push A right one square.
2. Push C up one square.
3. Push D right one square.
4. Push D left to (4,4).
5. Push E down to (11,8).

The map now looks like this:

            11111
   12345678901234
 1 ┌────┐  ┌───┐
 2 │····│  │···│
 3 │·CA·└──┘·B·│
 4 │··D········│
 5 │··┌─┐>┌─┐··│
 6 ├──────┼─┘·──┐
 7 │··^^^<│··@··│
 8 │··┌───│F·E··│
 9 └┐^│   │·G···│
10  │^└───┘·H···│
11  │··^^^^I·J··│
12  │··┌────────┘
13  └──┘

6. Push H left one square.
7. Finish I, J, E, G, H, F, B, D, and C.

One boulder (A) remains. The two scrolls at (3,12) and (4,12) are always scrolls of earth.

Level 1, Version B

            111111
   123456789012345
 1 ┌──────┐ ┌────┐
 2 │<│@···└─┘····│
 3 │^│┐·AB····C··│
 4 │^││··DE│·F·G·│
 5 │^││····│·····│
 6 │^│┴────┘H────│
 7 │^│    │······│
 8 │^└────┘······│
 9 │··^^^^IJKL···│
10 │··┌───┐······│
11 └──┘   └──────┘

1. Push A down one square.
2. Push B right to (11,3).
3. Push H down to (10,8).
4. Push J up one square.
5. Finish I.
6. Push L up one square.
7. Finish K, J, H, and L.

The map now looks like this:

            111111
   123456789012345
 1 ┌──────┐ ┌────┐
 2 │<│>···└─┘····│
 3 │^│┐······BC··│
 4 │^││·ADE│·F·G·│
 5 │^││····│·····│
 6 │^│┴────┘·────│
 7 │^│    │······│
 8 │·└────┘······│
 9 │@············│
10 │··┌───┐······│
11 └──┘   └──────┘

8. Push C down one square.
9. Push B left to (6,3).
10. Push G down one square, then left to (10,5).
11. Finish G.
12. Finish C and F like G.
13. Move B right to (11,3), then down two squares, then left to (10,5).
14. Finish B.
15. Move A up one square.
16. Finish A like B.

Two boulders (D and E) remain. The two scrolls at (2,10) and (3,10) are always scrolls of earth.

Level 2, Version A

            11111111112222222222
   12345678901234567890123456789
 1 ┌─────────┐       ┌─────────┐
 2 │····│····└─┐     │·········│
 3 │··AB│CD···@│     │·········│
 4 │·····E···┌─┘     │·········│
 5 │····│····│       │····<····│
 6 ├─·──┼─────┐      │·········│
 7 │··F·│·····│      │·········│
 8 │·GH·│I·J·K│      │·········│
 9 │··L·····M·│      │·········│
10 │·NOP│Q··R·└───────────────+│
11 │····│··S·T·^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^·│
12 └───────────────────────────┘

1. Push E left to (3,4).
2. Push L right to (9,9).
3. Push R right one square.
4. Finish T, S, M, R, K, J, and L.
5. Finish N, O, P, G, and E.
6. Push F left one square.
7. Finish H.
8. Push F up to (3,4).
9. Finish F and A.

Five boulders (B, C, D, I, and Q) remain.

Level 2, Version B

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1  ┌──┐          ┌─────────┐
 2 ┌┘·@└──────┐   │·········│
 3 │··········│   │·········│
 4 │·A┌───┐B─·│   │·········│
 5 │··│···│·C·│   │····<····│
 6 │·D·E····F─│   │·········│
 7 │·G··H··│··│   │·········│
 8 │·────I·└┐·│   │·········│
 9 │··J···K·│·└┐  │·········│
10 │·──┐L─···M·└───────────+│
11 │···│··N─·O·^^^^^^^^^^^^·│
12 │··P······┌──────────────┘
13 └───┐··│··│
14     └─────┘

1. Push B down two squares.
2. Push C left one square.
3. Push P right three squares, then up one square, to (7,11).
4. Finish O.
5. Push N down one square, then left to (3,12).
6. Push M left one square.
7. Push F up one square.
8. Push B left two squares.
9. Push K down two squares.

The map now looks like this:

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1  ┌──┐          ┌─────────┐
 2 ┌┘·>└──────┐   │·········│
 3 │··········│   │·········│
 4 │·A┌───┐·─·│   │·········│
 5 │··│···│CF·│   │····<····│
 6 │·D·E·B···─│   │·········│
 7 │·G··H··│··│   │·········│
 8 │·────I·└┐·│   │·········│
 9 │··J·····│·└┐  │·········│
10 │·──┐L─@·M··└───────────+│
11 │···│·PK─····^^^^^^^^^^^·│
12 │·N·······┌──────────────┘
13 └───┐··│··│
14     └─────┘

10. Push M right one square, then down to (11,11). Finish M.
11. Push N right to (10,12), then up to (10,10). Finish N like M.
12. Push K down one square, then left to (3,12). Finish K like N.
13. Push P right one square, then down one square. Finish P like N.
14. Push L down two squares, then left to (3,12). Finish L like N.
15. Push I down one square, then right one square, then down to (8,12). Finish I like N.
16. Push J right to (8,9), then down to (8,12). Finish J like N.

The map now looks like this:

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1  ┌──┐          ┌─────────┐
 2 ┌┘·>└──────┐   │·········│
 3 │··········│   │·········│
 4 │·A┌───┐·─·│   │·········│
 5 │··│···│CF·│   │····<····│
 6 │·D·E·B···─│   │·········│
 7 │·G··H··│··│   │·········│
 8 │·────··└┐·│   │·········│
 9 │········│·└┐  │·········│
10 │·──┐·─·····└───────────+│
11 │···│···─·········@·^^^^·│
12 │·········┌──────────────┘
13 └───┐··│··│
14     └─────┘

17. Push H left one square.
18. Push B down one square, then right one square, then down to (8,12). Finish B.
19. Push C down one square, then left two squares, to (7,6). Finish C like B.
20. Push F left one square, then down one square, then left to (7,6). Finish F like C.
21. Push G right one square. Push D up one square.
22. Push E right two squares, to (7,6). Finish E like F.

Four boulders (A, D, G, and H) remain.

Level 3, Version A

            11111111112
   12345678901234567890
 1 ┌──────────────────┐
 2 │········│···│·····│
 3 │·AB··─CD│·─·│·····│
 4 │··│·E·F·│GH·│·····│
 5 │─·│··─··│·─·│··<··│
 6 │···┌─·······│·····│
 7 │···│·I·─···┌│·····│
 8 │·J·│K·│···┌┼│·····│
 9 │─L·│··└──────────+│
10 │··M····^^^^^^^^^^·│
11 │···│·@┌───────────┘
12 └──────┘

1. Push M left one square. Finish M.
2. Push J right one square.
3. Finish L, J, A, and B.
4. Push D down to (9,6).
5. Finish I.
6. Push K down two squares, then left to (3,10). Finish K.
7. Push E up one square.
8. Push F right one square, then up one square, to (9,3).
9. Push E down one square, then left one square, to (5,4).
10. Push E up one square, then left two squares. Finish E.
11. Push C down one square, then left three squares, to (5,4). Finish C like E.
12. Push D right two squares, then left to (8,6).
13. Push D up two squares, then left to (5,4). Finish D like E.

Three boulders (F, G, and H) remain.

Level 3, Version B

            11111111112
   12345678901234567890
 1   ┌──────┐
 2 ┌─┘·│····│
 3 │···A····├─────────┐
 4 │·─·BC─DE│·│·······│
 5 │·FG─······│·······│
 6 │·─··H·│···│·······│
 7 │····─I└─J─│·······│
 8 │··KL··M···│···<···│
 9 │·──···│···│·······│
10 │····─N├───│·······│
11 └─┐··O·└──────────+│
12   │··P@^^^^^^^^^^^·│
13   └────────────────┘

1. Push O left two squares, to (4,11).
2. Finish P and N.
3. Push L down one square, to (5,9).
4. Push O up one square, to (4,10).
5. Finish L.
6. Push K right one square, to (5,8). Finish K.
7. Push O right one square, to (5,10). Finish O.

The map now looks like this:

            11111111112
   12345678901234567890
 1   ┌──────┐
 2 ┌─┘·│····│
 3 │···A····├─────────┐
 4 │·─·BC─DE│·│·······│
 5 │·FG─······│·······│
 6 │·─··H·│···│·······│
 7 │····─I└─J─│·······│
 8 │······M···│···<···│
 9 │·──···│···│·······│
10 │····─·├───│·······│
11 └─┐····└──────────+│
12   │···>···@·^^^^^^·│
13   └────────────────┘

8. Push G down to (4,8), then one square right, to (5,8). Finish G.
9. Push F one square right. Finish F like G.
10. Push M two squares right, to (10,8), then left to (5,8). Finish M.
11. Push J up two squares, to (10,5).
12. Finish I.
13. Push H right one square. Finish H.
14. Push A right two squares, to (7,3).
15. Push C down two squares, to (6,6). Finish C like H.

Five boulders (A, B, D, E, and J) remain.

Level 4, Version A (prize: bag of holding)

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1 ┌────────────────────────┐
 2 │@······^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^·│
 3 │·······┌──────────────┐·│
 4 └──────·└────┤         │·│
 5  │···········│         │·│
 6  │·A·B·C·D·E·│         │·│
 7 ┌───────·────│         │·│
 8 │···F·G··H·I·│         │·│
 9 │···J········│         │·│
10 └────·───────┘   ┌─────│·│
11  │··K·L·M···│  ┌─│·····│·│
12  │·····N····│  │·+·····│·│
13  │·O·P···Q·┌┘  ├─│·····│·│
14 ┌──────·───┘   │·+·····+·│
15 │··R·····│     ├─│·····├─┘
16 │········│     │·+·····│
17 │···┌────┘     └─│·····│
18 └───┘            └─────┘

1. Push A left one square.
2. Push B left one square.
3. Push C left one square.
4. Push E right one square.
5. Push D right one square.
6. Push G to (9,8), then up three squares, then left one square. Finish G.
7. Finish H and I like G.
8. Push J left two squares, to (3,9).
9. Finish F like G.
10. Push N right three squares, to (11,12).
11. Push L to (6,11), then up three squares. Finish L.
12. Finish M and K like L.
13. Push N left three squares, then up one square, to (8,11). Finish N like L.

The map now looks like this:

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1 ┌────────────────────────┐
 2 │>············@·^^^^^^^^·│
 3 │·······┌──────────────┐·│
 4 └──────·└────┤         │·│
 5  │···········│         │·│
 6  │A·B·C···D·E│         │·│
 7 ┌───────·────│         │·│
 8 │············│         │·│
 9 │·J··········│         │·│
10 └────·───────┘   ┌─────│·│
11  │··········│  ┌─│·····│·│
12  │··········│  │·+·····│·│
13  │·O·P···Q·┌┘  ├─│·····│·│
14 ┌──────·───┘   │·+·····+·│
15 │··R·····│     ├─│·····├─┘
16 │········│     │·+·····│
17 │···┌────┘     └─│·····│
18 └───┘            └─────┘

14. Push R to (8,15), then up four squares. Finish R like L.
15. Push Q to (8,13), then down three squares, then left to (3,16). Push Q up one square. Finish Q like R.
16. Finish P and O like Q.
17. Push J to (6,9), then down three squares. Finish J like L.
18. Push C to (9,6), then down three squares. Finish C like J.
19. Finish B and D like C.

Two boulders (A and E) remain. There is a bag of holding in one of the small chambers ((17,12), (17,14), or (17,16)) next to the treasure zoo.

Level 4, Version B (prize: amulet of reflection)

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1   ┌──────────────────────┐
 2   │··^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^··│
 3   │··┌─────────────────┐·│
 4 ┌──┐·│    ├───┤        │·│
 5 │··│A└┐  ┌┘···│        │·│
 6 │·····├──│·N··│        │·│
 7 │·BC··│··│··O·│        │·│
 8 └┐··DE│···PQ·┌┘        │·│
 9  │F··G···│R··│   ┌─────│·│
10  │·HI·│··│··S│ ┌─│·····│·│
11  │·J·K└──│·T·│ │·+·····│·│
12  │·······│··┌┘ ├─│·····│·│
13  └──┐·L··│·┌┘  │·+·····+·│
14     └──·─┘·│   ├─│·····├─┘
15      │·M···│   │·+·····│
16      │@·│··│   └─│·····│
17      └─────┘     └─────┘

1. Push M right three squares, then up four squares.
2. Push T up one square.
3. Push S up two squares.
4. Push Q up one square.
5. Push P left three squares.
6. Push G left two squares.
7. Push D up two squares, then left one square.
8. Finish A.
9. Push B up one square.
10. Push C right one square. Finish C.
11. Push B down one square.

The map now looks like this:

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1   ┌──────────────────────┐
 2   │····^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^··│
 3   │··┌─────────────────┐·│
 4 ┌──┐·│    ├───┤        │·│
 5 │··│·└┐  ┌┘···│        │·│
 6 │·@D··├──│·N··│        │·│
 7 │·B···│··│·QO·│        │·│
 8 └┐···E│P····S┌┘        │·│
 9  │FG·····│R··│   ┌─────│·│
10  │·HI·│··│·T·│ ┌─│·····│·│
11  │·J·K└──│M··│ │·+·····│·│
12  │·······│··┌┘ ├─│·····│·│
13  └──┐·L··│·┌┘  │·+·····+·│
14     └──·─┘·│   ├─│·····├─┘
15      │·····│   │·+·····│
16      │>·│··│   └─│·····│
17      └─────┘     └─────┘

12. Push D right one square. Finish D.
13. Push B right two squares. Finish B.
14. Finish I.
15. Push E down one square, then left one square. Finish E.
16. Push F up three squares, then right two squares. Finish F.

The map now looks like this:

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1   ┌──────────────────────┐
 2   │·······@·^^^^^^^^^^^··│
 3   │··┌─────────────────┐·│
 4 ┌──┐·│    ├───┤        │·│
 5 │··│·└┐  ┌┘···│        │·│
 6 │·····├──│·N··│        │·│
 7 │·····│··│·QO·│        │·│
 8 └┐····│P····S┌┘        │·│
 9  │·G·····│R··│   ┌─────│·│
10  │·H··│··│·T·│ ┌─│·····│·│
11  │·J·K└──│M··│ │·+·····│·│
12  │·······│··┌┘ ├─│·····│·│
13  └──┐·L··│·┌┘  │·+·····+·│
14     └──·─┘·│   ├─│·····├─┘
15      │·····│   │·+·····│
16      │>·│··│   └─│·····│
17      └─────┘     └─────┘

17. Push G right one square. Finish G.
18. Finish H and J like G.
19. Push P down one square, then left three squares, to (5,9). Finish P.
20. Push K to (6,9), then left one square. Finish K.
21. Push L right one square, then up one square, then left two squares. Finish L like K.

The map now looks like this:

            11111111112222222
   12345678901234567890123456
 1   ┌──────────────────────┐
 2   │·············@·^^^^^··│
 3   │··┌─────────────────┐·│
 4 ┌──┐·│    ├───┤        │·│
 5 │··│·└┐  ┌┘···│        │·│
 6 │·····├──│·N··│        │·│
 7 │·····│··│·QO·│        │·│
 8 └┐····│·····S┌┘        │·│
 9  │·······│R··│   ┌─────│·│
10  │····│··│·T·│ ┌─│·····│·│
11  │····└──│M··│ │·+·····│·│
12  │·······│··┌┘ ├─│·····│·│
13  └──┐····│·┌┘  │·+·····+·│
14     └──·─┘·│   ├─│·····├─┘
15      │·····│   │·+·····│
16      │>·│··│   └─│·····│
17      └─────┘     └─────┘

22. Push T down one square.
23. Push R to (11,8), then left three squares. Finish R like P.
24. Finish M like R.
25. Push T left one square. Finish T like R.
26. Push N right one square.
27. Push Q down to (12,9), then left one square. Finish Q like R.
28. Push N left one square. Finish N like Q.

Two boulders (O and S) remain. There is an amulet of reflection in one of the small chambers ((17,11), (17,13), or (17,15)) next to the treasure zoo.

The Food Conducts

These form a hierarchy: foodless is stricter than vegan, which is stricter than vegetarian.

Vegetarian. Don’t eat meat. Specifically, don’t eat the corpses of non-vegetarian monsters, and avoid items made from animal products (meat sticks, eggs from carnivorous creatures). In practice, this means living on permissible corpses (lichens, most blobs, brown and yellow puddings, shriekers, and many others), fortune cookies, lembas wafers, and whatever food you find on the ground. The vegetarian monster list is broader than you might expect: all b (blobs), all j (jellies), all F (fungi and molds), all v (vortices), all y (lights), all E (elementals) except stalkers, all ' (golems) except flesh golems and leather golems, and all ghosts. Most puddings are also vegetarian.

Vegan. Follow all vegetarian restrictions, plus avoid eggs, pancakes, lumps of royal jelly, cream pies, candy bars, and anything involving wax, leather, or bone. This eliminates many useful items: no wax candles for Vlad’s Tower (use tallow or find oil lamps), no leather armor unless you can avoid eating it while polymorphed. Vegan monsters are a subset of the vegetarian list, excluding puddings and a few others.

Foodless. Don’t eat anything at all. This is one of the hardest conducts in the game. Your only nutrition sources are prayer (which cures hunger when you’re Weak or Fainting), the spell of stone to flesh on rocks in your inventory (which creates meatballs, but eating them breaks the conduct), and a ring of slow digestion (which stops nutrition loss entirely). Most foodless runs rely on finding a ring of slow digestion early or praying through hunger until one appears. Polymorphing and chewing through walls also breaks this conduct.

Atheist

Don’t interact with the divine. Specifically: don’t #pray, don’t #offer corpses at altars, don’t #turn undead, and don’t #chat with priests. This removes your safety net for starvation, stoning, illness, and cursed items. You’ll need to solve every problem through items and knowledge alone.

Atheist runs require careful resource management. Without prayer to cure hunger, you need reliable food sources. Without sacrifice, you get no artifact gifts. Without BUC testing on altars (you can still use them passively by dropping items on an altar), identification is harder. The reward is a particularly satisfying ascension.

Weaponless

Never hit a monster with a wielded weapon. You can throw weapons, fire them from bows and crossbows, and use wands and spells. You can also fight bare-handed or with martial arts (Monks excel here). What you cannot do is swing a sword, axe, mace, or any other weapon in melee while it’s in your wielded slot.

This is less restrictive than it sounds. Monks start with strong martial arts and get better. Other classes can rely on spells, wands, and thrown daggers. A wielded cockatrice corpse still works (it’s not a weapon). The main sacrifice is giving up the damage output of late-game artifact weapons.

Pacifist

Don’t kill any monsters. Not directly, not with pets, not through any means that the game attributes to you. This is one of the most demanding conducts. You’ll rely on pets to do your fighting, on conflict to make monsters attack each other, on Elbereth to keep them at bay, and on creative use of the dungeon environment.

Pacifist ascensions are possible but require deep knowledge of the game’s mechanics. Most pacifist players use a large, well-trained pet (often polymorphed into a purple worm or similar), the spell of charm monster, and extremely patient tactics.

Illiterate

Don’t read anything. No scrolls, no spellbooks, no fortune cookies, no T-shirts, no gravestones. You can still write (engraving is fine), and you can use scrolls by other means (such as having a pet step on a scroll of teleportation). Blank scrolls and spellbooks don’t count against you.

Without scrolls, you lose access to identify, enchant weapon/armor, teleportation, remove curse, and genocide in their most common forms. Without spellbooks, you have no spells. This forces extreme reliance on wands, potions, and creative workarounds.

No Genocide

Never genocide any monster. When offered genocide (through a scroll or the Astral Plane’s final wish), answer “none” or leave it blank. This means you’ll face the full bestiary throughout the game, including master and arch-liches, mind flayers, cockatrices, and everything else that experienced players routinely eliminate.

This is one of the milder conducts, since many players ascend without genociding anything simply because they never find the scroll. But deliberately maintaining it against late-game threats takes discipline.

Polymorph Restrictions

Two related conducts track polymorphing:

No polymorph. Never polymorph yourself. Avoid polymorph traps, don’t quaff potions of polymorph, don’t wear a ring of polymorph, and don’t read a cursed scroll of polymorph. This locks you into your starting form for the entire game, forgoing the advantages of powerful monster forms (master mind flayer, xorn, various dragons).

No polymorph objects. Never polymorph items. Don’t zap items with a wand of polymorph, don’t dip items in potions of polymorph, and avoid other means of transforming objects. This eliminates a powerful item-generation strategy (polypiling) that many players use to obtain specific high-value items.

Wishing Restrictions

Two related conducts:

Wishless. Never make a wish. Refuse wishes from wands, fountains, thrones, and all other sources. This is extremely challenging because wishes are the primary way to obtain critical items (silver dragon scale mail, speed boots, a bag of holding) when the dungeon doesn’t provide them. Wishless players must make do with whatever the random number generator provides.

No wishing for artifacts. Make wishes, but never wish for an artifact. This prevents the most efficient wish strategy (wishing for Grayswandir, the Eye of the Aethiopica, or similar game-changing artifacts) while still allowing wishes for mundane necessities.

Combining Conducts

The real prestige comes from combining multiple conducts. A vegetarian atheist run is substantially harder than either alone. A pacifist illiterate vegan foodless atheist weaponless run is the stuff of legends (and has been done). The game’s end screen lists all maintained conducts, and the community has long celebrated players who push the boundaries of what’s possible within self-imposed constraints.

Recent editions of the Mazes have added several more tracked conducts:

Nudist. Never wear any armor, shirt, cloak, gloves, boots, helmet, or shield. Set the nudist option at game start. You fight the entire dungeon in your underwear. Officially tracked since version 3.6.0.

Blind (Zen). Play the entire game without sight. Set the blind option at game start. You’ll need telepathy and other senses to navigate. Officially tracked since version 3.6.0.

Pauper. A starting handicap enabled via the pauper option. You begin with no starting equipment, skills, or item discoveries. It cannot be broken mid-game — you either started pauper or you didn’t.

Petless. Never have a pet at any point. Start by disabling pets in your options. No taming spells, no charm monster, no figurines. You fight every battle yourself.

Permadeaf. Play the entire game while deaf, set via the deaf option. You get no audio cues — no “you hear some noises” warnings, no shop announcements, no prayer feedback sounds.

Sokoban. Complete Sokoban without cheating — no phasing through walls, no levitating over boulders, no teleporting. Just honest puzzle-solving.

Your #conduct screen also tracks whether you’ve used an amulet of life saving, which some players consider an informal conduct of its own.

How Prices Work

Every item in the game has a base price in zorkmids. This is the starting point for all shop transactions. The actual price you see depends on several modifiers applied in sequence.

List price starts with the base price, then adjusts for:

• Enchantment: Each point of positive enchantment adds 10 zm to the base price. Negative enchantment has no effect on price.
• Charges: An empty wand (0 charges) is worth less. A wand that has been recharged reduces the base price in proportion.
• Erosion: Rusted, corroded, burnt, or rotted items sell for less.
• Artifacts: Artifact items have their base price multiplied by
  25. This makes them extraordinarily expensive to buy but also easy to identify by price.

Buying price adds further markups to the list price:

• Tourist surcharge: Tourists pay a 33% markup (the “sucker” tax). This applies only to the Tourist class.
• Charisma modifier: Your Charisma stat adjusts prices significantly:

• Angry shopkeeper: If you’ve angered the shopkeeper (by stealing, attacking, or similar offenses), prices increase by 33%.
• Random variation: About one time in four, an unidentified non-gem item gets a 33% random surcharge. In current editions, this surcharge is fixed per shopkeeper — the same shopkeeper will always give you the same price for the same unidentified item, so you can’t exploit price variation by repeatedly dropping and picking up items.

Selling price is simpler. Identified items sell for half the list price. Unidentified items sell for one-third. This means identifying items before selling them is worth a 50% profit increase.

Price Identification

The most valuable use of shop pricing is identifying unknown items. When you pick up an unidentified item in a shop, the shopkeeper announces a price. Working backward from that price to the base price tells you what the item is.

The process:

1. Note the shopkeeper’s asking price.
2. Divide by your Charisma modifier (from the table above).
3. Account for the tourist surcharge if applicable.
4. If the result doesn’t match a known base price, the item may have the 33% random surcharge. Divide by 1.33 and check again.
5. Compare the resulting base price to the known prices for that item class.

For example: a shopkeeper asks 80 zm for an unidentified scroll, and your Charisma is 12 (modifier ×1.00). The base price is either 80 zm or, after removing a possible 33% surcharge, 60 zm. Checking the scroll price table: 80 zm scrolls are enchant armor and remove curse—both excellent. A 60 zm scroll is blank paper or enchant weapon. Either way, you’ve narrowed the possibilities dramatically.

Common base prices by item class:

Scrolls: 20 zm (identify), 50 zm (light), 60 zm (blank paper, enchant weapon), 80 zm (enchant armor, remove curse), 100 zm (confuse monster, destroy armor, fire, food detection, gold detection, magic mapping, scare monster, teleportation), 200 zm (amnesia, create monster, earth, taming), 300 zm (charging, genocide, punishment, stinking cloud).

Potions: 50 zm (booze, fruit juice, see invisible, sickness), 100 zm (confusion, extra healing, hallucination, healing, restore ability, sleeping, water), 150 zm (blindness, gain energy, invisibility, monster detection, object detection), 200 zm (enlightenment, full healing, levitation, polymorph, speed), 250 zm (acid, oil), 300 zm (gain ability, gain level, paralysis).

Wands: 100 zm (light, nothing), 150 zm (digging, enlightenment, locking, magic missile, make invisible, opening, probing, secret door detection, slow monster, speed monster, striking, undead turning), 175 zm (cold, fire, lightning, sleep), 200 zm (cancellation, create monster, polymorph, teleportation), 500 zm (death, wishing).

Rings: 100 zm (adornment, hunger, protection, protection from shape changers, stealth, sustain ability, warning), 150 zm (aggravate monster, cold resistance, gain constitution, gain strength, increase accuracy, increase damage, invisibility, poison resistance, see invisible, shock resistance), 200 zm (fire resistance, free action, levitation, regeneration, searching, slow digestion, teleportation), 300 zm (conflict, polymorph, polymorph control, teleport control).

Gem Identification Through Selling

Gems deserve special mention. When you sell unidentified gems to a shopkeeper, the price depends on whether the gem is valuable or worthless glass. More importantly, different shopkeepers pay slightly different amounts for the same worthless glass, while valuable gems always sell consistently. By selling the same unidentified gem at two different shops and comparing prices, you can determine whether it’s genuine.

Alternatively, a touchstone (gray stone, base price 45 zm) identifies gems directly: rubbing a hard gem against it produces a streak that names the gem.

Credit and Debt

Shopkeepers maintain a credit and debt system:

• Credit accumulates when you sell items or drop gold in the shop. Credit applies against future purchases.
• Debt accrues if you use unpaid items within the shop (reading a scroll, quaffing a potion, zapping a wand). You’re charged a fraction of the item’s purchase price.
• Leaving the shop with unpaid items makes the shopkeeper hostile. The Keystone Kops will pursue you through the dungeon. The shopkeeper is a formidable fighter and should not be engaged lightly.

Shopkeeper Behavior

Shopkeepers are among the toughest NPCs in the game. They have high hit points, good armor class, and they hit hard. A few things to know:

• Shopkeepers block the door when you have unpaid items.
• They track everything you pick up and everything that enters their shop.
• If you break something in the shop (a potion, a wand), you pay for it.
• Telepathically, shopkeepers know their inventory. Even invisible theft is detected.
• Shopkeepers can be killed for their entire stock and gold inventory, but this carries significant penalties (Keystone Kops, alignment loss) and forfeits all future service from that shop.

The best strategy is usually to play fair: sell what you don’t need, buy what you do, and use the pricing system to identify as much as possible before spending your gold on scrolls of identify.