User:Klepto

About

Hi! I welcome you to my very own corner of this wiki. I'm gonna try my best to put up useful stuff on here mostly for my own purposes, but feel free to take anything you like to do your own thing. I'd be highly appreciative of any corrections/feedback so feel free to reach out to me. I'm u/Haunting_Concept_670 on reddit and klepto on hardfought (though that might change anytime). You can also just e-mail me if none of that works for you.

dNetHack and Binders

Since having recently becoming obsessed with this class it has irked me to no end that there is
a) no concise way to look up info on the Spirit page and
b) limited info on both basic and advanced strategy beyond what is in the Binder page strategy section.
For players new to the role it can be daunting to have to memorize so many spirits right off the bat, making it more difficult to actually engage with the fun aspects of it IMO. My take here is that potential for experimentation should not overshadow practicality.

As it stands right now, the role front loads the player with a bunch of info and asks them to memorize it all if they want to survive the harsh early game or die ad infinitum until they figure it out themselves - which might not be a problem for everyone! But having an alternative for those who don't want to memorize the 31+ spirits sure would be nice. See below for my rendition of what addressing points a) and b) would look like.

All of the info below is my interpretation of what the corresponding documents say and bound to be flawed. In short, take it all with a grain of salt.

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Here's a rudimentary simplification of the Spirits page. First, a gargantuan general table with everything summarized and explained. Then, damage calculations for XL.1 & 30. Other things I'm considering if these first three turn out well is making a table just immunities, marks and binding requirements but for now this will have to do.

Making Spirits less memorization heavy

These are spirit die. They determine damage for many - but not all - spirit powers both active and passive. They're tied to your level and will increment according to the table below.

Level range	Rank Title	Die size
1-2	Exile	1
3-5	Heretic	d2
6–9	Cultist	d3
10–13	Binder	d4
14–17	Akousmatikoi	d5
18–21	Mathematikoi	d6
22–25	Doctor	d7
26–29	Unbinder	d8
30	Gnostikos	d9

• Spirits
• Damage for XL 1
• Damage for XL 30
• Lookup for math

Spirit	Active power	Active power	Passive power	Passive power	Passive power	Passive power	Immunity	Skills	Taboo
Ahazu	Abduction		Engulf	Shadow Well. When attacking monster lose their next turn with a 20% chance.	Swallow. Eat any meal in 1 turn, including trolls. Doesn't protect negative effects from the corpse.	Hunger. Same as in the intrinsic.	Engulfing. E.g. fog cloud & Illurien.	Flails & Iron balls.	Must not get weak with hunger. It's best to avoid being hungry.
Amon	Fire breath. Shoots a ray of fire.		Horns. Make a 1d9 butt attack additionally to your melee one.	See in darkness. See everything as though it were a lit square (corridors, dark levels, mines etc.). If playing a drow allows you to see in light, superseding the need for invoke darkness.			Cold damage.	Clerical spellcasting.	Praying.
Andrealphus	Transdimensional ray. Fire invisible ray attack that can hit through walls and rock up to maximum distance.	Teleport. Same as the spell. Is controlled.		Angle-fighter. Gain (XL/2)+1 AC while standing in corners.	Strange angles. Always fit through diagonal gaps ignoring weight. Same as greased cloak, useful in mines & arcadia.		Escape spells	Digging walls, but not rock. Any room or vault and similar count.
Andromalius	Jester's Mirth. Make adjacent monster helpless w/ laughter. Is die dependent.	Thief's instincts. Detect hidden doors and traps.	Detect thieves. Gain warning against monsters with theft attacks.	Sneak attack. Same as rogue	Know stolen. Stolen items will say so in their description. Use this to avoid the taboo.		Immune to theft attacks, e.g l and n. Doesn't protect from seduction.	Daggers.	Using stolen items, e.g. zapping, eating, reading/quaffing consumables. (Applying as well?)
Astaroth	Astaroth's assembly. Fires an invisible beam up to 5 squares. Deals damage inversely proportional to distance traveled. Grants protection directly proportional to distance traveled.	Astaroth's shards. Is a wide attack. Fires shuriken in the chosen direction. Will be single file in corridors. Deals your bd in damage to you.	Rusting. As the name implies, you take damage 1 damage per turn being underwater.				Crossbows and shuriken.	Shock resistance & breathlessness. As in magical breathing.	Breaking items. Includes mulching ammo when fired.
Balam	Icy glare. Deals damage in a cone in the direction specified.	Balam's anointing. Touch attack. Head but no thick skin: 10% chance of instakill. Head, eyes & thick skin: 2x damage + blind.	Balam's martyrdom. When you have more than 10 DR in a slot you take the best of two rolls when hit.				Half spell damage.	Whips.	Sacrificing intelligent creatures. Non intelligent creatures are fine to sacrifice.
Berith	Blood mercenary. Hits all targets in a line with an invisible ray. Total damage is subtracted from your visible gold, and attacks will fail if you do not have gold in open inventory.	Sow discord. As with ring of conflict, for a time limit.	Blood-price. Monsters may drop gold instead of corpses.				Your mount benefits from the same resistances as you. Includes death resistence but not reflection.	Lances, sabers, riding. Increases BAB to 1.0. Doubles normal hp regeneration rate.	Killing pets, even former pets. Beware if had you crows from Malphas.
Buer	Gift of healing. Heal yourself or a pet.	Gift of health. Cures statuses like confusion, stun and even sickness. Notably also cures wounded legs and restores abilities, same as the blessed potion. Does not restore lost ability points, nor do unicorn horns.	Keen nose. You permanently gain food appraisal.				Increases you health regeneration by a lot. Very useful early on.	Healing spells and unarmed. Permanently unlocks martial arts.	Using wands of death casting finger of death.
Chupoclops	Throw webbing. Throws a web in the chosen direction, stopping when you hit either a wall or monster.		Poisonous bite. Add a 2d4 poisonous bite to your attack routine.	Grave eater. Eating tainted corpses doesn't afflict you with sickness.	Aura of despair. Withing 5 squares of you monsters move slower. Scales with your level.	Ethereal strike. Your attacks ignore armor and hit intangible monsters, e.g. shades, sharab kamerel.	Sleep and being trapped in webs.	Engraving wards.
Dantalion	Thought travel. Teleport next to a creature you can sense telepathically. Works like covetous warping. Works on most no-teleport levels (not astral or wizard's).	Dread of Dantalion. Causes all monsters in line-of-sight to flee.	Read thoughts. Gain to-hit to monsters you sense telepathically.	Telepathy. Extrinsic telepathy. As with helm of telepathy.	Perfect strikes. You add your intelligence bonus on top of all other bonuses to any and all attacks you make.		Immune to being blinded. Blindfolds and similar still work.	Two-handed swords, broadswords, scimitars.	Destroying thrones. Includes them dissapearing in a puff of logic.
Echidna	Echidna's venom. Spits a glob of acid like with Cobras. Does not blind.	Lullaby. Tries to tame adjacent monster. Can't be mindless, have no hands or be snake-like e.g. daughter of naunet.	Squamous. Grants bonus AC and DR based on your constitution.	Acid blood. Deals acid damage to monsters that hit you.	Mother of monsters. Your pets follow you more closely.	Monstrous claws. Doubes you damage die for unarmed. d2 to d4 without martial arts, d4 to d8 with. Is superseded by half-dragon claws.	Acid immunity and thick skinned.	Unicorn horns.	Eating or throwing eggs.
Eden	Purifying blast. Delayed attack. Fires a fireball in the chosen direction. Needs to charge for 5 turns. Gain 7 AC while charging. WILL blow up in your face if the monster is adjacent to you/crosses the distance during charging.	Recall to Eden. Tries to remove a monster from the game, getting rid of their inventory. Doesn't count as you killing it. Is based on relative hp totals. Useful for mandrakes, disenchanters, etc.	Stargate. Delayed branchport. Drains most or all of your energy. Needs to charge for 5 turns. Gain 7 AC while charging.	Silver Hull. Deals silver damage to monsters that hit you.			Dragonbreath reflection.	Long swords.	Chopping or digging trees and fountains. Includes fountains drying up after dipping/quaffing.
Enki	Walker of thresholds. Teleport to an open doorway.	Geyser. Moderately damaging attack aimed at a single monster. Wets monster's inventory, as a water nymph's death would.	City-dweller. Grants +2 with 4 monsters adjacent to you. +4 if completely surrounded by 8 monsters.	Alley-fighter. Per wall adjacent to you add +1. +5 in corners, +6 in corridors.	Fruits of civilization. Eating non corpse, non-perishable food e.g. food rations, tins but not slime mold heals you for how much nutrition you gained. Food ration/lembas:800, Cram ration:600, K-ration:400, C-ration:300. Potions of booze heal you by an 10 times your level.		Makes you waterproof.	Short swords, hammers, slings, darts, boomerangs. Increase BAB to 0.75. Permanently teaches swimming.	Saying no to seduction attempts. If you want to avoid seduction use rings of engagement.
Eurynome	Vengeance. Moderately damage all adjacent monsters that have hit you in melee.	Shape the wind. Creates pets scaled to your level for 5 turns.	Retaliation. Automatically make two unarmed attacks against creatures that hit you. Can only happen once per turn, with a 20% per monster that attacked you.	Water dancer. You move faster on water.	Form dancer. Unarmed attacks now use exploding dice. You now roll for between your base damage and an upper limit for every attack. Increases damage on average.		Free action and water walking.	Unarmed combat. Sets BAB to 1.0 but only if you're not wielding a weapon in your main hand. Two-weaponing with weapon in offhand is allowed.	Resting with '.', but not healing with '.' for clockwork automatons. WILL count as taboo if fully healed and using '.'.
Eve	Barrage. Must be wielding a launcher and have ammo. Shoots more than multishot maximum.	Thorns and stones. Create appropriate ammo for weapon wielded. Otherwise creates flint. Take 1 die in damage.	Harvester. Double damage for all attacks but only against plants.	Hunter-gatherer. Creatures leave a corpse more often. Kicked trees drop more fruits.			Half physical damage. Very useful.	Scythes, sickles, bows	Eating any fruit, including slime molds.
Fafnir	Breathe poison. Creates a stinking cloud at the chosen location. Same as blessed stinking cloud scroll.	Ruinous strike. Digs out adjacent square or untraps if trapped. If used on a non-living creature moderately damages them. Instantly destroys golems.	Flame aura. Deals fire damage to monsters that hit you.	Infravision. Lets you see monsters in dark squares from any distance.	Dragon's hoard. Increase carrying capacity proportionally to XL. 1% per level.		Fire resistance.	Pick-axes.	Not having any gold in open inventory at any moment. Is effective the moment you bind him, so be sure to have some. Use Croesus for guards.
Huginn and Muninn	Raven's talons. Damages adjacent monster and permanently blinds them. Deals less damage against blind monsters.		Gallow-sense. Grants warning.	Memory and thought. Grants 25 INT & WIS while bound. Drains true stats of both by 1 afterwards.			Hallucination resistance. Also one instance of sleep or amnesia, however this unbinds the spirit.	Spears.	Falling asleep (doesn't include Cthulu madness) or getting hit with amnesia by any means e.g. mind flayer, scroll, lethe elemental.
Iris	Horrid wilting. Deal moderate damage to adjacent monster and heal by the same amount. 2x damage against water E, fog e and Illurien. No damage to nonliving anhydrous.	Horrid rainbow. You turn animals, humanoids and humans in line-of-sight. Works like turn undead for these monsters. Very effective against soldiers at higher levels. Freezes you for 5 turns.	Wilting tentacles. Gain one tentacle attack, two if two-weaponing or with two-handed weapon, and 4 with Miska's arms active. 1d4 per attack.				Disease resistance. Includes that from corpses or demon lords attack.	Morning stars.	Applying a mirror at yourself or attacking monsters with the "reflecting" attribute. E.g. aoa droplets and aoa.
Jack	Hellfire blast. You need to be wielding any lit lantern, potion of oil or lightsaber. Asks where to center the explosion, acting similarly to the fireball spell at skilled.	Refill lantern. Refills/charges your lantern or lightsaber.					Life saving. When your life is saved by this effect you break the taboo, unbinding and draining a level.	Entering Gehennom/the planes or dying. Includes the valley of the dead.
Malphas	Call murder. Summons one tame crow next to you. Your pet's level is based on your own XL.		Murderer. For every crow adjacent to you at the start of your turn, gain 2 AC. Is very inconsistent unless you have a whistle.	One of the flock. When your crows eat a corpse, gain XP as though you had killed it. Works even if it was you who killed the monster.			Punishment and murder. Also means you maintain telepathy when incurring murder.	You must not harm crows, i.e. maintain a pacifist conduct with respect to crows.
Marionette	Root shout. Fires a digging beam, same as with the wand but also damages monsters in the way. Careful with Andrealphus' taboo.	Yank wires. Flings you in the chosen direction as with a thrown Iron ball. After landing again, will ask you five more times. Can be cancelled. Useful for no teleport levels. Works diagonally through doors.	Marionette shadow. In melee combat, when you hit a monster will also hit the square behind it and any monsters on it. Works both the orthogonal and diagonal axis'. Useful for crowd control. Deals extra damage (see next power).	Marionette's edge. When hitting monsters with Marionette shadow double your melee weapons die sizes. E.g. 1d14 vs. large with long sword.	Root fingers. Moving into boulders prompts you to destroy them. Creates a stack of stones in its place and moves you to its square.		Stoning. Useful against Acererak's stoning spell.	Quaffing - but not dipping into - holy water and removing curses through any means. E.g scroll, prayer, black goat mother.
Mother	Disgusted gaze. You must not be wearing gloves other than crystal ones. Also doesn't work with mummy wrappings. When successful, forces you to drop your weapon(s). Asks where to center the lightning bolt, potentially paralyzing struck targets. Useful for getting rid of cursed weapons.		Evaluate. Gives an indication of a monsters hp, both in farlook and combat messages. Similar to the android visor.				Magic resistance. Also grants clairvoyance. Very useful in the mines to avoid poly traps.	Divination magic.	Genociding any monsters, e.g. scroll or throne.
Naberius	Bloody tongue. Makes a adjacent monster flee. Doesn't anger that creature if it was peaceful.	Silver tongue. Tries to tame a adjacent monster. Pet cap applies (1 pet per 3 points of CHA).	Crimson fangs. Adds a 1d6 bite to your attack routine. If it hits and the target is fleeing - e.g. via bloody tongue - heals you for 1d8. If used against peaceful monsters, stuns, confuses and angers them.	Rhetoric of magic. Explosions are now 5x5, rays are 2x as long and all spells do an additional 50% damage. Stacks with other sources of double spell magic damage, e.g. knight w/ magic mirror of merlin.	Arts and sciences. Causes all skills to be treated as at least basic, even if previously restricted. Includes lightsaber forms	See invisible.	Attack spells and quarterstaff.	Naberius will immediately unbind after the confusion passes unless you have drunk 1 potion of booze per level. Drinking 10 will keep Naberius bound at level 30.
Orthos	Exhalation of the rift. Is a wide attack. Blasts back monsters caught in the line, damaging the ones in the center line for full damage and at the sides for less.		Flickering outline. You gain displacement.	Void sight. You gain astral vision. Useful for seeing things behind solid rock, like vaults/magic item vaults.			Disintegration. Useful if you don't already have dragonbreath reflection.	Musicalize skill.	You must not be in the dark, i.e. unlit squares without a light source. There is a grace period, and you will receive messages indicating that the spirit is about to be unbound.
Ose	Querient thoughts. Damage all monsters on the level with a 100% chance if the monster is telepathic (e.g. mind flayers), 20% otherwise.	Great leap. Allows level teleport but costs 625 nutrition. It's not a good idea to use this while hungry or without food available.	Plain leap. You can jump at will, without any cost.	Gain the lower of Xl or insight to-hit on your weapon. I.e. not useful until you have more insight.	Opened mind. Use your charisma score to cast spells like the madmen role/psionics. Useful if it's higher than your INT/WIS.		Death effects. Includes touch of death, death ancients, finger of death, wands and others.	Tridents.	Falling into water. Effective immediately after binding. Make sure have a way to avoid it, like flying or levitation. Binding eurynome is useful for this.
Otiax	Open. Opens a door on a solid surface, like a shop wall. If used against a monster heavily damages them, with a chance to instantly killing them.		Tendrils. Add mist tendril attacks to your attack routine. Make either your die size or 1d5 mist tendril attacks, whichever is lower. Each attack deals 1d5 damage and also has a 10% of stealing an item from the monster you attacked, putting the item in your inventory.	Fingers of mist. You gain automatic searching.	Concealing mist. 20% of all melee attacks made against you automatically miss. Very useful, especially against crowds/monsters with many attacks. Mist key. You can use #force to use the mist fingers to unlock doors/containers.	None.	None.	Locking or kicking down unlocked doors. Kicking down locked doors doesn't count.
Paimon	Read spell. Need to be wielding a spellbook. Casts the spell associated with the spellbook without energy cost at 0% spell failure.	Detect spellbooks. Detect spellbooks on your current level. Works like a scroll of detect gold, but for spellbooks.	Lives to pages. Needs to be wielding a spellbook. Monsters struck by the spellbook have a chance of loosing a level (10% chance per hit). When this happens you restore one reading to the book. Useful for restoring spellbooks you've used a lot.	Power of learning. When wielding spellbooks your damage is instead the spellbooks level + your die size. E.g. a spellbook of fireball wielded by a 14th level character deals 1d5+4. 1d9+4 at lvl. 30.	Warning against magic. You gain warning specifically against spellcasting monsters.	Master magician. Gain a bonus to spellcasting failure. Same as a robe, but stacks with wearing an actual robe.	MC 3 and hungerless casting. 50% cost at INT 15, 25% at 16-19 and no cost for INT >20.	Wand damage.	Reading scrolls while confused. It's best to erodeproof your armor before binding her/use shops.
Shiro	Earth swallow. Create a pit in a adjacent square and throw a boulder on top. If a monster is on that square, it will get stuck in the pit and buried in you kill it there. Untrap it if you want the loot. Can be used to cheat at sokoban.		Stone choir. You add a volley of stones to your attack routine.	As a stone. You are invisible and have stealth.			None.	Polearms.	Becoming visible by wearing mummy wrappings. You can't be affected by spells that remove invisibility while Shiro is bound so this is the only way to loose the invisibility. See the section on bypassing shops for ideas.
Simurgh	Unite earth and sky. Create a tree in a adjacent square. If the square has a pit, make a water square instead. Gives you a eucalyptus leaf.	Hook in the sky. You rise through the ceiling. Has the same effect as quaffing a cursed potion of gain level. Good escape option.	Enlightenment. Has the same effect of quaffing a potion of enlightenment.	Lion's calws. Deal extra iron damage with your melee attack. Useful against elves.	Siraeng's radiance. Deals your die in extra damage if the target doesn't have one of a long list of resistances. The exact resistance that it checks for is randomized for every hit.		Immune to falling down a level through trap doors, pit traps or holes.	Enchantment magic.	Falling through trap doors or holes, such as pressing '>' over a hole.
Tenebrous	Damning darkness. Creates darkness around you, like with a cursed scroll of light. Damages monsters (not demons, undead or drain-resistant ones) caught in the radius. More if the squares were lit, less if they were already dark.	Echoes of the last word. Removes adjacent monster from the game along with their inventory. Needs to be non-unique, drain-resistant, non-genocidable or demonic. If unique, instead teleports them to a random dungeon level. Doesn't work on Dread seraphs and unbinds Tenebrous if you try.	Touch of the void. Drain levels from adjacent monster.	Vital sense. Works like monster detection, but lasts for as long as Tenebrous is bound.			Life drain aka drain resistance.	Maces.	Creating lit squares by any means, e.g. scroll of light or wand.
Ymir	Poison gaze. Asks what monster you want to gaze at. Deals poison damage to single target.	Gap step. You gain levitation. Lasts for the duration of the binding. After unbound grants 5 turn grace period before ceasing. You can cancel levitating with '>'.	Footsteps of giants. You can move over and pick up/throw boulders like a giant.	Poison-born. Quaffing potions of sickness heals you.	Putrescent life. Ability score damage quickly heals over time.	Formidable stature. You count as one size higher than your actual height, but only for your weapons. Allows you to dual wield two-handed weapons.	Poison resistance.	Clubs.	Eating or sacrificing giants. Includes tinned giants.

Below are all thirty-one starting spirits listed for active spirit powers. Damage is calculated assuming a lvl. 1 character with no extra abilities/edge cases applied (half dragon w/ echidna, --)

Spirit	Attack 1	Attack 2	Attack 3	Notes
Ahazu	Abduction
Amon	5*1'fire' ray
Andrealphus	1d5 teleport monster
Andromalius
Astaroth	5*1-X* damage. Grants 5-X pts. of protection	1+(XL/10+1) shuriken attack. Line of attack is 3 squares wide		Where X = distance from monster
Balam	5*1 'cold' touch attack. 1/2 damage beyond 1st square	5*1 cold. 2x damage against thick skinned
Berith	5d1 'blood mercenary' ray
Buer
Chupoclops
Dantalion	Example	Example	Example
Echidna	5*1 spit 'acid'	Example	Example
Eden	10*1 ray + 10*1 'fireball'
Enki	8*1 'wet' (1d5 on miss)
Eurynome	5*1 'retaliation'	Example	Example
Eve	Max multishot + XL/10 shoot projectile
Fafnir	???(approx. ~per round?)	(5*1 to nonliving)
Huginn and Muninn	5*1 + 1d5 'blinding'
Iris	5*1 'desiccating'
Jack	(approx. to fireball)
Malphas
Marionette	d5*1 'digging'
Mother	5*1 'lightning'
Naberius
Orthos	5*1 'exhalation'
Ose	(approx. to mind-blast)
Otiax
Paimon
Shiro
Simurgh
Tenebrous	5*1 'darkness' (1d5 in darkness)
Ymir	5*1 'poison'

Weapon	Not silver-hating	Silver-hating
+0 silver saber	$\frac{1+8}{2}=\bold{4.5}$	$\frac{1+8}{2}+\frac{1+20}{2}=\bold{15}$
+7 silver saber	$\frac{1+8}{2}+7=\bold{11.5}$	$\frac{1+8}{2}+\frac{1+20}{2}+7=\bold{22}$

What I think players should know that Isn't explicitly stated

config stuff: This section is about config modifications specifically meant to improve or help with playing the binder role. I wrote this section with people in mind that without prior knowledge of config files or how to use them. You can skip this part or take a look at my config directly here.

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To start making modifications to your config file if you're on hardfought go to https://www.hardfought.org/nethack/rcedit/ to start modifying it. On NAO go to https://alt.org/nethack/webconf/ and select the version you want to play on. If you're running it locally, take a look at Options. In doubt, if you can't find what you're looking for here on the wiki either find someone on https://web.libera.chat/ at #nethack, or reddit/discrord to help you out.

If you managed to open your config file for dnh, here's what I recommend for playing binders. Copy paste all the stuff that sounds interesting to you into you file.

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1. utility for binders

Bind=K:seal Bind=L:power Bind=U:ward,

1. avoids accidentally unbinding eurynome, but pressing '.' in shops becomes dangerous bc of mimics.

Bind=.:search

1. I play with autodig on but it might be a good idea to turn off if you play with Andrealphus or lightsabers a lot. Don't add this bit unless you actually want autodig.

OPTIONS=autodig

1. This will stop you from accidentally unbinding otiax, but can be a bit annoying if you're not used to it.

MSGTYPE=stop "Lock it?*"

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Spoiler free: M. res. and playing orcs. What each race gets and lacks. Getting to know your spirits.

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Spoilery: Useful spirits in the early, mid and end game Important intrinsics and what spirits grant them. + what situtations they're useful in. Mobility. Mari, eden, dant, andrea (could you skip soko w/ thougth travel?). Soko 1, ?oConsecrationa and other things unique to dnh: gehennom items, wishing, good artifacts, branches, object properties. Using shops. Dangerous monsters. Wards. Maybe a table here? The one in wards is clunky Artifact wishing. Armor shredding. Demon lords. Madnesses. Insight.