Altar

Dungeon features
Air	_ Altar
# Corridor	# Cloud
#. Drawbridge	+-| Door
. Doorway	{ Fountain
| Headstone	.  Floor
>< Ladder	. Ice
# Iron bars	} Lava
} Moat	# Sink
Solid rock	>< Staircase
\ Throne	^" Trap
# Tree	- | Wall
~ Vibrating square

Religion in NetHack
priests alignment alignment record altars atheism anger gods sacrifice prayer turn undead

An altar, represented by an underscore (_), is a place where you may worship gods. Temples contain an altar and an aligned priest.

Altars are co-aligned if they are of the same alignment as you, cross-aligned if they are of a different alignment. To determine if an altar is co-aligned, either use far look or stand on it and use close look. Altars of Moloch are unaligned. Unaligned altars do not appear in the main dungeon (except as mimics), only in Gehennom and some quests.

Altars are scattered randomly throughout the dungeons. Minetown has a randomly aligned altar and unaligned altars can be found in the Valley of the Dead (in the temple of Moloch), Orcus-town and Moloch's Sanctum unless they were destroyed in a bones file.

Altars can be used to detect the BUC status of items. This is done by dropping the item onto the altar. A black flash marks a cursed item and an amber flash a blessed one. You can not detect the BUC status if you are blind. You can not detect whether an item is blessed or cursed if you are hallucinating, as you will not be able to distinguish between amber flashes and black flashes; you can however still identify uncursed items as there will not be a flash at all.

If you #sit on, engrave, or kick an altar, it will lower your luck. This can be used to deliberately lower your luck to prevent crowning. If the altar is of your alignment, it will reduce Wisdom by one point instead, indicated by the message "You feel foolish!". This does not break atheist conduct.

If you (or a monster) zap a wand of digging downwards, you get the message "The digging ray is ineffective" and nothing further happens. However, if you break a wand of digging or apply a drum of earthquake while standing on an altar, it will be destroyed (unless it is a high altar).

Standing on any altar scares vampires as if you were standing on Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster.

Randomly generated altars appear in ordinary room and corridor levels in the Dungeons of Doom. There is an independent 1 in 60 chance of each non-special room containing an altar, which gives 93% chance of at least one. The altar has an equal probability of any one of the three alignments. Altars will not be generated adjacent to doors (diagonal is ok), but otherwise could occupy any spot in the room not already occupied by something else. The chance of an empty room containing an altar does not change with dungeon level.

Sacrificing corpses

You can #offer fresh corpses to your god by sacrificing them on an altar, this loses the atheist conduct. The greater the monster's difficulty, the more your god will appreciate it.

If the corpse is a cockatrice and your hands are bare, you suffer the effects of touching it, even if it wasn't in your inventory.

Further effects depend on the details of the sacrifice.

Ordinary sacrifice

This applies to sacrifices made on your own god's altar that are not of your own race, not a pet, not a unicorn, and not made in the endgame.

If the creature is not an acid blob and is more than 50 turns old or more than 50 turns out of an icebox, it is rejected: "Nothing happens." acid blobs never expire for sacrifices, although they do rot. Otherwise, the sacrifice is accepted and you get "Your sacrifice is consumed in a burst of flame" if neutral or chaotic, "Your sacrifice is consumed in a flash of light" if lawful. If you are blind you will instead get the message "Your sacrifice disappears" and if you are hallucinating you get one of the following messages: "Your sacrifice sprouts wings and a propeller and roars away!", "Your sacrifice puffs up, swelling bigger and bigger, and pops!" or "Your sacrifice collapses into a cloud of dancing particles and fades away!".

Creatures have a particular sacrifice value depending generally on their toughness, In some special cases, the value may be negative if the offering displeases your god: see below. Partially-eaten corpses normally get their value decreased by roughly the percentage that's been eaten. For lawful or neutral characters, undead have an extra point of value, but this is only relevant to wraiths, since other undead's corpses are automatically aged too much to sacrifice them.

If your god is angry at you

His anger is decreased by 1/8 the value of the sacrifice, or if you're chaotic by 1/12 the value of the sacrifice (chaotic gods are harder to appease), the decrease in anger is always rounded down.

If this reduces your god's anger to zero, you'll receive the message that he "seems mollified" (if hallucinating, "seems astral (not a new fact)"), and your luck will be increased to zero if negative.

If anger is reduced but not to zero, you'll receive the message that your god "seems slightly mollified" ("seems groovy" if hallucinating), and your luck will be increased by one point if negative.

If anger has not been reduced at all, "You have a feeling of inadequacy" (if hallucinating, "The gods seem tall").

If your god is not angry at you, but your alignment is negative

Your alignment is increased by the value of the sacrifice, up to a maximum of 0 alignment, and "you feel partially absolved".

If your god is not angry and your alignment is positive but your prayer timeout is greater than zero

Your prayer timeout is decreased by 12.5 times the sacrifice's value if you're lawful or neutral, or 125/6 (about 20.8) times its value if you're chaotic, to a minimum of zero.

If this decreases your prayer timeout to 0, then "you have a feeling of reconciliation" (if hallucinating, "Overall, there is a smell of fried onions"), your luck is increased to zero if negative, and it's safe to pray. If your prayer timeout is not yet zero, "You have a hopeful feeling" (if hallucinating, "You realize the gods are not like you and I"), your luck is increased by one if negative, and it is not yet safe to pray.

Gifts

If you can pray, have positive alignment and your god is not angry you generally have a chance of getting an artifact. Your level must be greater than 2, and your luck must be nonnegative. If those conditions are met, the chances of your getting an artifact are 1/(10 + 2 × Number of existing artifacts × Number of gifts granted by your god):

If you do receive an artifact, you'll get the message "An object appears at your feet!", and your god will tell you to "use my gift wisely!" You exercise your wisdom, your prayer timeout is set to rnz(300 + 50 × Number of existing artifacts), and your skill in using the artifact's type of weapon becomes unrestricted. The artifact will also be made erodeproof.

Whether or not you get the artifact, your luck increases by 5/24 (about 20.8%) the value of the sacrifice, and is set to 0 if still negative. You receive the message "You glimpse a four-leaf clover at your feet" (if hallucinating, "You see crabgrass at your feet. A funny thing in a dungeon"). This luck bonus occurs even if you're below level 3 or have negative luck, but not if you had an angry god, negative alignment, or nonzero prayer timeout.

Your first gift will be a co-aligned artifact that does not hate your current form. Some roles have a guaranteed first sacrifice gift, which is noted below; its alignment will be adjusted to your starting alignment if necessary. Excalibur, quest artifacts, and cross-aligned ones cannot be gifted.

Once a co-aligned artifact has already been given, then unaligned ones also become eligible.

Lawful gifts: Demonbane, Grayswandir, Snickersnee (Samurai), Sunsword

Neutral gifts: Cleaver (Barbarian), Giantslayer, Magicbane (Wizard), Mjollnir (Valkyrie), Vorpal Blade

Chaotic gifts: Grimtooth, Orcrist, Sting, Stormbringer

Unaligned gifts: Dragonbane, Fire Brand, Frost Brand, Ogresmasher, Trollsbane, Werebane

Sacrificing creatures of own race

If the creature you sacrifice is of your own race, you get good effects if you're chaotic, bad effects otherwise:

If you are chaotic

• You gain five alignment.
• If you are a demon, you exercise your wisdom.
• If the altar is chaotic, you gain two luck, and if the altar is unaligned, you lose two luck. Your luck is unaffected if the altar is cross-aligned.

If you are non-chaotic

• Whatever the altar is, You abuse your wisdom.
• You lose 5 alignment.
• Your god's anger increases by three.
• your luck decreases by 5
• Outside of Gehennom, your god will punish you as for praying too much (depending on the level of anger).
• Finally, if the altar is chaotic, you'll destroy it and anger any attendant priest.
• If the altar is lawful or neutral, it will be immediately converted to chaotic – independently of the hero's alignment (except on the Astral Plane). This will anger any priests but apparently not suffer the other effects of conversion.

Whether or not you are chaotic, if the altar is chaotic or unaligned, a demon may be summoned. The demon will be peaceful if you are chaotic and hostile otherwise. The first two demons will be Juiblex and Yeenoghu in any order, followed by foocubi.

The check for same race is done before the check for a former pet and ignores the check for age, so same-race corpses are always fit for sacrifice until they rot away completely. Note that this is just about the only time an undead creature is a valid sacrifice.

Keep in mind that werecreatures are considered human, so sacrificing them if you're human will have the consequences described above.

Sacrificing pets

Sacrificing creatures that died while tame will generally cause you to lose three alignment and gain the aggravate monster intrinsic. The pet will have a sacrificial value of -1. It proceeds as an ordinary sacrifice. Former pets that have gone feral no longer count as pets, and may be killed and sacrificed as usual.

Cross-aligned altars

You can convert cross-aligned altars by sacrificing at them if they're not in Gehennom. If you fail, you will lose 1 Luck and possibly have monsters sent in to defend the altar. If you succeed then you gain 1 Luck and the altar becomes coaligned. The chances to convert an altar go up with character level. Converting an altar with a Priest present will cause the Priest to attack you

The probability to convert an altar is: (YourLevel+2)/(YourLevel+8)

(Level + 2) / (Level + 8)

When attempting to convert an altar, you will get the message "You sense a conflict between <your god> and <the god of the altar>". A successful conversion will produce the message "You feel the power of <your god> increase", while a failed one will result in "Unluckily, you feel the power of <your god> decrease."

A sacrifice with negative value, such as a former pet, will not cause an attempted conversion. Instead, it will anger the altar's god, which will actually decrease your own god's anger by one. You will still suffer the usual effects of angering a god, including the loss of any divine protection and being smitten by the angry god.

Attempting to convert an altar while your alignment is negative may convert your alignment to that of the altar, take away 3 of your luck and increase your prayer timeout to 300. If this happens before you have been admitted to the quest, the game will be unwinnable.

As with coaligned altars, if you get a message saying "Nothing happens", then the corpse was too old and, indeed, nothing happened.

Sacrificing unicorns

Sacrificing unicorns is complicated because the altar's alignment, your alignment, and the unicorn's alignment all factor into the outcome. A unicorn's alignment is represented by its color. The white is lawful, grey neutral, and black chaotic. The points to remember are:

• Never sacrifice a unicorn on an altar of its own alignment; You lose one point of wisdom and the altar's god becomes angry – with the same effect as angering that god through prayer . If the altar is not of your alignment, your god's anger is reduced by one.
• Never sacrifice a unicorn of your alignment. This increases your god's anger by one and acts as above if the altar is also of your alignment. If the altar is cross-aligned, this will set your alignment score to -1, which makes your sacrifice convert you instead of the altar.
• If you have already been converted once before then an attempted conversion sacrifice will be rejected by the altar's deity (-5 to luck and alignment score, -2 to wisdom) and you will anger and be punished by your current deity.

Each time you sacrifice a unicorn of a different alignment on your own altar, you get a +5 boost to your alignment and the message "You feel appropriately {lawful | neutral | chaotic}", or "You feel you are thoroughly on the right path" if alignment is at maximum.

The rest of the effects are summarized in the following table:

You	Unicorn	Altar	Effect
Lawful	White	Lawful	Bad
Lawful	White	Neutral	You become neutral
Lawful	White	Chaotic	You become chaotic
Lawful	Grey	Lawful	Good
Lawful	Grey	Neutral	Bad
Lawful	Grey	Chaotic	Attempt to convert altar
Lawful	Black	Lawful	Good
Lawful	Black	Neutral	Attempt to convert altar
Lawful	Black	Chaotic	Bad
Neutral	White	Lawful	Bad
Neutral	White	Neutral	Good
Neutral	White	Chaotic	Attempt to convert altar
Neutral	Grey	Lawful	You become lawful
Neutral	Grey	Neutral	Bad
Neutral	Grey	Chaotic	You become chaotic
Neutral	Black	Lawful	Attempt to convert altar
Neutral	Black	Neutral	Good
Neutral	Black	Chaotic	Bad
Chaotic	White	Lawful	Bad
Chaotic	White	Neutral	Attempt to convert altar
Chaotic	White	Chaotic	Good
Chaotic	Grey	Lawful	Attempt to convert altar
Chaotic	Grey	Neutral	Bad
Chaotic	Grey	Chaotic	Good
Chaotic	Black	Lawful	You become lawful
Chaotic	Black	Neutral	You become neutral
Chaotic	Black	Chaotic	Bad

Note: You will lose any intrinsic protection whenever your alignment changes.

Making water holy/unholy

If you drop one or more potions of water onto an altar and #pray, the potions become blessed if the altar was aligned with you and become cursed if the altar was not aligned with you. This occurs regardless of whether the water was blessed or cursed before. Be aware that water praying on a cross-aligned altar will anger your god, decrease your luck, and you might be punished in some other way.

Normal prayer timeouts apply when praying on altars.

Altar camping

It is possible to survive indefinitely on a level with an altar. Under normal circumstances, the need for food drives you to deeper unexplored levels. However, you can instead pray when weak, and sacrifice to reduce your prayer timeout back to zero. Doing this for extended periods of time can net you many death drops, and a collection of gifts from your god if your luck is substantially high. This is considered by some as degenerate. It is most effectively done with black puddings, which is known as "pudding farming".

High altars

The three altars on the Astral Plane and the altar in Moloch's Sanctum are considered to be high altars. They act largely as normal altars, but cannot be converted under any circumstances; doing so will cause the god in question to attempt to zap you and, failing this, will summon three minions to protect the altar. In addition, it is not possible to sacrifice monsters unless you are holding them, to stop you sacrificing the riders.

To correctly ascend, one must #offer the real Amulet of Yendor (held in main inventory, NOT dropped on the altar) at the altar of your alignment. Determining the alignment of the altar requires standing on its location and using the : look command. The ; farlook command does not give information about a high altar's alignment. Other methods to detect the correct altar are to zap probing at the high priest, or to note if you are given sanctuary; that is, all monsters, other than the Riders, aligned priest, and angelic beings, will not be allowed to enter and cannot attack you with melee attacks.

You can destroy the chaotic altar with non-chaotic same-race sacrifice, but you cannot convert the others.

Hallucinating colors

If you drop a blessed or cursed item on an altar while hallucinating you will see a <color> flash, where <color> is randomly selected from: "ultraviolet", "infrared", "bluish-orange", "reddish-green", "dark white", "light black", "sky blue-pink", "salty", "sweet", "sour", "bitter", "striped", "spiral", "swirly", "plaid", "checkered", "argyle", "paisley", "blotchy", "guernsey-spotted", "polka-dotted", "square", "round", "triangular", "cabernet", "sangria", "fuchsia", "wisteria", "lemon-lime", "strawberry-banana", "peppermint", "romantic", "incandescent".

List of sacrificing messages

"You have a hopeful feeling."

You may not pray yet because your prayer timeout hasn't expired.

"You have a feeling of reconciliation."

You may pray because your sacrifice reduced your prayer timeout to zero.

"An object appears at your feet!"

You may not pray because you received a gift and your prayer timeout has been increased.

"You have a feeling of inadequacy."

You may not pray. Your god is still angry at you; your sacrifice did nothing to reduce his anger.

"<Deity> seems slightly mollified."

You may not pray. Your god's anger has been reduced but it is not yet zero.

"<Deity> seems mollified."

Your god's anger has been reduced to zero. Sacrifice again to to find if it's safe to pray.

"You feel partially absolved."

You may not pray because your alignment was negative, and has been increased by the level of the corpse, to a maximum of zero. Sacrifice again to find if it's safe to pray.

"You glimpse a four-leaf clover at your feet."

Your luck was increased; you may pray.

"You think something brushed your foot."

Your luck was increased while blind; you may pray.

"You see crabgrass at your feet. A funny thing in a dungeon."

Your luck was increased while hallucinating; you may pray.

"Your sacrifice is consumed..." and no further message

You may pray

Encyclopedia entry

Altars are of three types:
1. In Temples. These are for Sacrifices [...]. The stone
top will have grooves for blood, and the whole will be covered
with _dry brown stains of a troubling kind_ from former
Sacrifices.

[ The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones ]

To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?

[ Lays of Ancient Rome, by Thomas B. Macaulay ]

Variants

Players of NetHack brass and SLASH'EM need to be wary when converting altars, because of the increased chance that the altar's original god will dispatch a minion against you. At experience level 7 or above with high alignment, the chance of a minion appearing after converting the altar is the same as vanilla. As in vanilla, the god will yell, "Thou shalt pay for thy indiscretion!" Players with a high luck will have fewer minions dispatched against them.

Even worse, there's an additional chance of one or more minions appearing post-conversion. In SLASH'EM, if you are at experience level 4 or above, there is a chance that "You feel (god) is very angry at you!" and the god dispatches two minions. Afterwards, you still have the original chance of another minion, as above. Again, luck is a factor.

In NetHack brass, you will always receive "You feel (god) is very angry at you!" For all experience levels, at least one minion will appear. Two rolls are made: the first from 0 to 9, the second from 0 to 19. For each roll, if your level is less than the generated random number, a post-conversion minion is summoned. Luck is not a factor. Thus in brass it is very dangerous to convert altars. You might convert an altar at experience level one and have to flee to another level from one minion, or three minions if the game rolled 0 twice, thus giving you no use of the converted altar. If converting an altar at experience level 7 or above, you might still get the pre-conversion minion, forcing you to fight as many as four summoned minions.

Also, there seems to be a possibility in SLASH'EM to have equipment being worn blessed if you sacrifice enough.

See also

Prayer is closely related to sacrifice. See that page for altar-related intrinsics, crowning, etc.

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.