History TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything / NetHack

* The spell of "turn undead" causes undead creatures to flee, as per DungeonsAndDragons. What does a Nethack "wand of undead turning" do?

** There is a condition in engrave.c that prevents gravestones warding monsters if the player from a bones file named his/her character Elbereth.

* Polymorphing into a monster that can eat metal and eating a ''trident'' gives the message "[[{{Pun}} That was pure chewing satisfaction]]." [[spoiler:It's a reference to Trident Gum, though the slogan is actually for Wrigley's Spearmint gum.]]

* Trying to write with a venom triggers a unique message. It is nearly impossible to see it within the course of the game, since Venoms only exist as items in wizard mode, and it is unlikely that a person would think to use venom for writing.

*** Speaking of polymorphing into a Dragon, if you are wearing (magical) Dragon Scale Mail, you will polymorph into a dragon of the colour of the DSM you are wearing.

** Another one: eating a [[{{Flintstones}} flint stone]] would result in the message "Yabba-dabba delicious!". Currently no monster can eat rocks, so this isn't actually seen. [[spoiler: Post Pebbles cereal, which features Fred and Barney from the ''Flintstones'' in its commercials.]]

** Why, makes undead run away of course... and also resurrects corpses.

** Monsters already fleeing from Elbereth will not attack you, even they have ranged attacks.

* "Thou hast angered me." If you anger a god enough to earn divine retribution, you will be zapped with a lightning bolt. If that fails, you are zapped with a wide-angle disintegration beam. If ''that'' fails, the god says "I believe it not!" and gives up (except in the final level, where it gets even angrier). Although you can survive these with a ring of shock resistance and black dragon scale mail (which provides disintegration resistance), you can also survive by being engulfed by a monster: the beams will hit the ''engulfing monster'' before they hit you. If the monster has shock resistance, but not disintegration resistance[[note]]No such monster exists in the vanilla game, but the code is in place anyway, just in case you try [[GameMod modding]].[[/note]], it will survive the lightning bolt, but die to the disintegration beam, freeing you. And then you get experience points for [[RefugeInAudacity pulling that off]]. But don't think you can keep a [[TechnicalPacifist pacifist conduct]] this way.

** Additionally, throwing a cockatrice corpse up (<) will result in it hitting you on the head and, unless you're wearing a helmet, petrifying you instantly. Cause of death? "Elementary Physics"

* Polymorphing into a monster that can eat metal and eating a ''trident'' gives the message "[[{{Pun}} That was pure chewing satisfaction]]." [[spoiler:It's a reference to Trident Gum.]]
** Another one: eating a [[{{Flintstones}} flint stone]] would result in the message "Yabba-dabba delicious!". Currently no monster can eat rocks, so this isn't actually seen. [[spoiler:''Flintstones'' brand of children's vitamin tablets.]]

* Zapping a cream pie with a wand of striking gives the message "What a mess!" and destroys the cream pie. Applying a cream pie will blind you for a few turns, as your character just shoved their face into a cream pie.

** Rings set with hard gems can be used to engrave messages. And rings made of stone or gems can be turned into meat rings via the Stone to Flesh spell.

* Here's a quick list of some of the more ingenious[[hottip:*:And deliberate. So no bugs like "drowned in a drowning" or "turned to slime by a scroll of genocide."]] death messages, along with spoiler'd instructions on what causes them:

** The player-character must be at the very bottom of the screen, just above the StatusLine. Only a few levels permit the player to get to that location, even after digging. That's because level maps are bounded by walls that are "too hard to dig" if the meaningful area is smaller than 24x80.

* With some "luck", it is possible to kill yourself on turn 1 (e.g. as a knight, slip off your saddled pony trying to mount it or zap an attack wand at yourself). The resulting message: [[TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}} "Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200]] [[{{Zork}} zorkmids."]]

* Zapping a cream pie with a wand of striking gives the message "What a mess!" and destroys the cream pie.

** Rings that are set with hard gems can be engraved with. And rings made of stone or gems can be turned into meat rings via the Stone to Flesh spell.

* With some "luck", it is possible to kill yourself on turn 1 (e.g. as a knight, slip off your saddled pony trying to mount it or zap an attack wand at yourself). The resulting message: [[{{Monopoly}} "Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200]] [[{{Zork}} zorkmids."]]

* Vaults full of gold are occasionally found sealed off from most of the dungeon. If you connive your way inside, a vault guard will appear to investigate. In most cases, he'll demand your name; most answers will lead to the guard demanding you leave all the money behind in the vault as the guard seals it back up. If you tell the guard that you're [[spoiler:"Croesus" (alternate translations "Kroisos" and [[Literature/{{Discworld}} "Creosote"]] can be found acceptable as well)]], the guard will leave without incident. If you're a lawful-aligned character, you receive a small alignment penalty for lying, unless you actually named your character [[spoiler:Croesus]], in which case ''no penalty is incurred''. If you try to pass yourself off as [[spoiler:Croesus]] after [[spoiler:you've gone to Fort Ludios and killed him]], the guard gets angry and attacks. If you're unable to speak (e.g., an amulet of strangulation is choking you), the guard leaves. If you're mimicking an object (most likely having eaten a mimic's corpse, turning you into a ''pile of gold''), the guard also leaves. If hallucinating when you eat a mimic corpse, you turn into an orange. The guard leaves puzzled, wondering "who left that orange in here". And if you're polymorphed into a small enough monster, you can hide under the gold and puzzle the guard again.

* With some "luck", it is possible to kill yourself on turn 1 (e.g. as a knight, slip off your saddled pony trying to mount it or zap an attack wand at yourself). The resulting message: [[{{Monopoly}} "Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200 zorkmids."]]

*** ...But you can dip it in holy water to keep it fresh for significantly longer.

** Perhaps the best example of this involving cockatrices is this. When you are blind and walk over an item, the game states "you try to feel what is lying on the floor. It is a [item]." This is literal; if you walk over a cockatrice corpse while blind, "you turn to stone..."

* Polymorphing into a monster that can eat metal and eating a ''trident'' gives the message "[[AWorldwidePunomenon That was pure chewing satisfaction]]." [[spoiler:It's a reference to Trident Gum.]]

* If you see a pit viper fall into a pit, you get the message [[AWorldwidePunomenon "How pitiful! Isn't that the pits?"]]

** There are magical items that let you control your transformation, change gender or remain in a form indefinitely.

** Elbereth can be engraved permanently with Wand of Lightning or Wand of Fire. It will protect your stash from hostile monsters permanently. Such squares will revert to normal squares if you engrave with Wand of Polymorph on it. Also, keep in mind that using the wand of lightning will blind you if you don't have suitable protection.
** Non-permanent Elbereth engravings degrade over time if you move on it, attack someone while on it, or if you just stand on it, as you cannot stay perfectly still.
*** If you are levitating on it, however, the engravings does not degrade whatever you do, and monsters will still respect it.

* Vaults full of gold are occasionally found sealed off from most of the dungeon. If you connive your way inside, a vault guard will appear to investigate. In most cases, he'll demand your name; most answers will lead to the guard demanding you leave all the money behind in the vault as the guard seals it back up. If you tell the guard that you're [[spoiler:"Croesus" (alternate translations "Kroisos" and [[DiscWorld "Creosote"]] can be found acceptable as well)]], the guard will leave without incident. If you're a lawful-aligned character, you receive a small alignment penalty for lying, unless you actually named your character [[spoiler:Croesus]], in which case ''no penalty is incurred''. If you try to pass yourself off as [[spoiler:Croesus]] after [[spoiler:you've gone to Fort Ludios and killed him]], the guard gets angry and attacks. If you're unable to speak (e.g., an amulet of strangulation is choking you), the guard leaves. If you're mimicking an object (most likely having eaten a mimic's corpse, turning you into a ''pile of gold''), the guard also leaves. If hallucinating when you eat a mimic corpse, you turn into an orange. The guard leaves puzzled, wondering "who left that orange in here". And if you're polymorphed into a small enough monster, you can hide under the gold and puzzle the guard again.

* The Quantum Mechanic monster is basically one big physics joke. Its attack will randomly teleport you, and eating a Quantum Mechanic corpse will give you the intrinsic speed ability (or remove intrinsic speed from you if you were already fast). Upon death, the Quantum Mechanic also has a small chance to drop a box. When you open the box, a cat named [[UsefulNotes/SchrodingersCat Schrodinger's Cat]] will be found inside. 50% of the time, the cat will be alive, and 50% of the time, the cat will be dead. What brings this into TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything territory is that if you look at the game's source code, you discover that unlike every other box in the game, the state of the box's contents (whether the cat is alive or dead) is ''not determined until you open the box and look''.

* Removing a blindfold while blind for some other reason results in the message "You were wearing a blindfold. You still cannot see".

* "Thou hast angered me." If you anger a god enough to earn divine retribution, you will be zapped with a lightning bolt. If that fails, you are zapped with a wide-angle disintegration beam. If ''that'' fails, the god says "I believe it not!" and gives up (except in the final level, where it gets even angrier). Although you can survive these with a ring of shock resistance and black dragon scale mail (which provides disintegration resistance), you can also survive by being engulfed by a monster: the beams will hit the ''engulfing monster'' before they hit you. If the monster has shock resistance, but not disintegration resistance[[note]]No such monster exists in the vanilla game, but the code is in place anyway, just in case you try [[GameMod modding]].[[/note]], it will survive the lightning bolt, but die to the disintegration beam, freeing you. And then you get experience points for [[RefugeInAudacity pulling that off]].

*** Conclusion: whilst playing as a female character, polymorph into a cockatrice, lay dozens of eggs, revert to human, and [[CrossesTheLineTwice throw the eggs at enemies to petrify them instantly!]] ...And the [=DevTeam=] has even thought of that, as causing your own eggs to break carries a significant guilt (luck) penalty.

** Perhaps the best example of this involving cockatrices is this. When you are blind and walk over an item, the game states "you try to feel what is lying on the floor. It is a [item]." This is literal, as "you turn to stone..."

** Elbereth is case sensitive. It will still work if you write in minor cases, but if you write it with proper capitalized E, you will exercise wisdom.

* "Thou hast angered me." If you anger a god enough to earn divine retribution, you will be zapped with a lightning bolt. If that fails, you are zapped with a wide-angle disintegration beam. If ''that'' fails, the god says "I believe it not!" and gives up (except in the final level, where it gets even angrier). Although you can survive these with a ring of shock resistance and black dragon scale mail (which provides disintegration resistance), you can also survive by being engulfed by a monster: the beams will hit the ''engulfing monster'' before they hit you. If the monster has shock resistance, it will even survive the lightning bolt, and then the disintegration beam will kill it, freeing you. After all of this, if you survive, you ''get experience points'' for having the guts to pull this off.

* With some luck, it is possible to kill yourself on turn 1 (e.g. as a knight, slip off your saddled pony trying to mount it or zap an attack wand at yourself). The resulting message: [[{{Monopoly}} "Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200 zorkmids."]]

** Petrified by deliberately meeting Medusa's gaze. [[spoiler:You were polymorphed into a monster that had a gaze attack, and you attempted to use it on Medusa.]]

* If, when trying to [[BribingYourWayToVictory bribe a demon lord to leave you alone]], you enter a negative number as the amount of gold pieces to give, the demon attacks you for trying to short-change it.