Shirt
There are two types of shirt in NetHack: the T-shirt and the Hawaiian shirt. Both are the innermost piece of armor and are mostly identical.
Contents
T-shirt
A T-shirt is the first of the two shirts. T-shirts can be read. If you go shopping when wearing a T-shirt and the shopkeeper sees it (ie, there is no body armor or cloak over it), he will charge an extra 1/3 markup and buy things for 1/3 of the base price.
Reading T-shirts
Reading a T-shirt will display a message. The message is dependent on the item's object ID, so it should remain consistent for any one T-shirt.[1] If the shirt is eroded, some of the text might be altered, just as an engraving would be.[2]
Reading a T-shirt breaks the illiterate conduct.
The possible messages are:[3]
- "I explored the Dungeons of Doom and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!"
- "Is that Mjollnir in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
- "It's not the size of your sword, it's how #enhance'd you are with it."
- "Madame Elvira's House O' Succubi Lifetime Customer"
- "Madame Elvira's House O' Succubi Employee of the Month"
- "Ludios Vault Guards Do It In Small, Dark Rooms"
- "Yendor Military Soldiers Do It In Large Groups"
- "I survived Yendor Military Boot Camp"
- "Ludios Accounting School Intra-Mural Lacrosse Team"
- "Oracle(TM) Fountains 10th Annual Wet T-Shirt Contest"
- "Hey, black dragon! Disintegrate THIS!"
- "I'm With Stupid -->"
- "Don't blame me, I voted for Izchak!"
- "Don't Panic"
- "Furinkan High School Athletic Dept."
- "Hel-LOOO, Nurse!"
History
The extra T-shirt messages were added in NetHack 3.4.0 from a patch by Scott Bigham. Previously, the only messages were:[4]
- "I explored the Dungeons of Doom, and never did any laundry..."
- if hallucinating and currently wearing the T-shirt
- "I explored the Dungeons of Doom, and couldn't find my way out"
- if hallucinating and not currently wearing the T-shirt
- "I explored the Dungeons of Doom, but all I got was this lousy T-shirt"
- otherwise
Hawaiian shirt
[ Hawaiian shirt 
| |
|---|---|
| Appearance | Hawaiian shirt |
| Slot | shirt |
| AC | 0 |
| Special |
|
| Base price | 3 zm |
| Weight | 5 |
| Material | cloth |
All Tourists start with a +0 Hawaiian shirt.
If you go shopping when wearing a Hawaiian shirt and the shopkeeper sees it (ie, there is no body armor or cloak over it), he will charge an extra 1/3 markup and buy things for 1/3 of the base price.
Generation
T-shirts comprise 0.2% of all randomly generated armor items, while Hawaiian shirts are 0.8%.
Strategy
| Confidence | Base Chance | 25% | 50% | 75% | 95% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polymorphs | 1 in 100 | 28.62 | 68.97 | 137.94 | 298.07 |
| Armors needed (blessed) | — | 3.59 | 8.66 | 17.32 | 37.41 |
| Armors needed (uncursed) | — | 5.51 | 13.29 | 26.58 | 57.42 |
Neither shirt confers any AC bonus unless enchanted, but since each can be safely enchanted up to +5 (reading a blessed scroll of enchant armor with the shirt at +3), there is no disadvantage to wearing them, and hence they are excellent ascension kit items.
Since they are comparatively rare, a shirt may even be worth wishing for, simply for something to hang the extra +5 AC bonus on. Those not averse to polypiling should also note that a shirt is non-magical and as such are fairly easy to obtain by polymorphing a large pile of armor objects (try The Castle or Fort Ludios). Many players are even known to ascend with a +7 t-shirt through polymorphing elven armor.[1]
The armor store in the Castle level, which has fourteen randomly selected armors, makes for a significant 13.13% chance of having either a Hawaiian or normal t-shirt. The forty general store items in Orcus Town, assuming there are no mimics, also has nontrivial ~8% chance of having a shirt spawned.
A Hawaiian shirt in a bones pile is a strong indicator that the deceased was a Tourist.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In slashem, if the Guild of Disgruntled Adventurers is generated (50%), then it has a guaranteed two hawaiian shirts, from the two guaranteed tourists.
==Various Some variants add a striped shirt. Convicts start the game wearing a cursed striped shirt. Shopkeepers will bar entry to their shop if they see a striped shirt uncovered by armor or cloak. Once a particular shopkeeper bars entry to a shop, he/she will remember the player and still bar entry even if the player no longer wears a visible striped shirt. An exception to this is in the Black market, where the convict will be offered reduced prices instead.
