Ring of slow digestion
The ring of slow digestion is a ring that appears in NetHack.
Contents
Effects
When worn, the ring nullifies the ordinary consumption of one nutrition per turn. Nutrition consumption from all other sources, including the ring hunger from the ring itself, is unaffected; in practice, this means that a non-spellcasting player can go without being hungry twenty times longer than normal. Wearing two rings does not cause the effect to stack.
If a monster attempts to engulf and digest you while you are wearing this ring, you will be expelled immediately (i.e. the ring slows your digestion).
Strategy
With two rings of slow digestion, and good technique, the player can go indefinitely long without losing any nutrition, because the ring hunger for each hand is calculated on different turns. Normally, this is counterproductive due to the higher nutrition consumption from multiple rings, since the effect does not stack; however, ring hunger for your left hand is calculated turn 4 (mod 20), while right hand hunger is calculated on turn 12 (mod 20). The idea is to wear both rings, but removing one of the rings for the turn that its hunger is calculated. No known ascensions have made use of this trick alone to ascend with the foodless conduct intact.
Identification
The ring of slow digestion is somewhat difficult to informally identify. Dropping it into a sink does not consume the ring, and produces a message about the ring being "regurgitated", and you can them name it in a prompt. The ring can also be formally identified by testing for it while inside a digesting monster, as indicated above.
You can identify a ring of slow digestion by its nutrition-cancelling property alone, though it is a bit clunky if you're testing a lot of rings. As soon as your hunger level (Satiated, Hungry, Weak, Fainting) crosses into a hungrier level, put on the (ideally noncursed) ring and eat something that provides only a little nutrition (such as a 40-nutrition fortune cookie). If you go a long time (for a fortune cookie, as many as 800 turns) without recrossing the boundary, the ring is probably slow digestion.
Messages
- You get regurgitated! Obviously the <foo> didn't like your taste.
- You were engulfed by a digesting monster while wearing a ring of slow digestion.
- The ring is regurgitated
- You dropped a ring of slow digestion on a sin. If unidentified, this will prompt you to name it.
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-364}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
