Bloodthirsty
In NetHack, a weapon is described as bloodthirsty if it attacks peaceful and hostile monsters indiscriminately when you move towards them while wielding that weapon.
Contents
Description
Bloodthirstiness is solely associated with the artifact weapon Stormbringer, and is not formally defined with a singular flag in artilist.h - it is instead handled in mhitu.c code that pertains specifically to Stormbringer.
While you wield a bloodthirsty weapon, attempting to move into a monster's space will attack with that weapon regardless of whether or not it is peaceful, tame or hostile. This skips the confirmation prompt that normally comes up when you would attack in the direction of a non-hostile monster, automatically angering peaceful monsters and abusing tame ones.[1][2]
Messages
- Your bloodthirsty blade attacks!
- Stormbringer caused you to automatically attack a non-hostile monster.
Variants
Variants of NetHack may add other artifact weapons with bloodthirsty properties.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, it is possible to two-weapon two artifacts, and wielding Stormbringer in the offhand will cause you to automatically attack monsters as if it were wielded.
Messages
- The black blade will not be thwarted!
- Stormbringer caused you to attack a non-hostile monster while in the offhand.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, there are additional bloodthirsty artifact weapons, and all of them use the flag ARTI_BLOODTHIRSTY in artilist.h:
Furthermore, the bloodthirsty property functions completely differently. Instead of only attacking on careless movement, bloodthirsty weapons in dNetHack lash out at monsters around you passively: Every turn, the weapon will attempt to attack each adjacent monster, with the chance to attack scaling inversely with your sanity. For each adjacent peaceful monster, a second check is made to avoid including it as a target. This chance functions identically to permanent madnesses, so it becomes exponentially likelier with lower sanity and becomes exceedingly rare at high sanity. Regardless of sanity, at most one extra bloodthirsty attack will be made per turn, though for peaceful monsters each monster is rolled separately, meaning that more adjacent targets will increase the chance of an attack occurring.
Bloodthirstiness is therefore a double-edged sword. When in combat it can grant extra attacks vs. your enemies, but you must avoid wielding such a weapon next to peaceful or tame monsters lest your weapon force you to attack your allies.
Clear Thoughts prevents bloodthirsty attacks vs. peaceful and tame monsters while permitting bloodthirsty attacks vs. hostile monsters, so it represents the best of both worlds.
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, Stormbringer being two-weaponed in the offhand behaves as it does in SLASH'EM.
