Food appraisal
Food appraisal is a property obtained by reading a blessed scroll of food detection or casting a spell of detect food when at skilled or expert in divination spells. This intrinsic warns you when eating food that cause harmful effects and gives you the chance to stop eating or continue.
Intrinsic Effects
When eating a detrimental comestible, you will be given one of the warning messages in the messages section below as well as a prompt that says Eat it anyway? [yn]. In the case of tins of harmful meat, e.g. tinned green slime, you will get a warning before opening the tin, and therefore you will not discard the tin if you choose to not eat it. Intrinsic food appraisal will warn you only once of harmful food; after the one warning you lose the intrinsic. Warnings will occur if eating it has the potential to harm you - if you are resistant to the detrimental effect of the food being eaten you will not get a warning and the intrinsic will not be lost.
The following warnings occur in order of priority:
| Warned if: | Example | Not shown if you: |
|---|---|---|
| May be tainted | very old corpses; corpses left by most undead creatures | |
| May cause petrification | Cockatrices, chickatrices, Medusa | have petrification resistance |
| May cause sliming | green slime | are a green slime or wearing amulet of unchanging |
| May be rotten | corpses or some comestibles of a certain age | have sickness resistance |
| May be poisonous | all poisonous monsters | have poison resistance |
| May break a Monk's dietary conduct | non-vegetarian comestibles | are not a Monk |
| May be acidic | all acidic monsters | have acid resistance |
| May be rustproof (if polymorphed into a rust monster) | rustproof metal items | are not a rust monster |
| May break the vegan conduct | non-vegan but vegetarian corpses or animal-matter items (dragonhide/leather/wax/bone) |
are eating other non-vegan comestibles (see Warning Bug below) OR already broke conduct |
| May break the vegetarian conduct. | meat comestibles | already broke conduct or eating non-corpse meat comestibles (see Warning Bug below) |
When you have this intrinsic the description You can recognize detrimental food appears upon enlightenment.
Food appraisal will not warn from the following harmful effects:
- choking from over-eating
- the instadeath from eating the corpse of a Rider
- hallucination from eating certain corpses (such as yellow molds)
- stunning effects from certain corpses (such as bats, stalkers)
- corpses that would constitute cannibalism for your race
- corpses that aggravate monsters (such as dogs, cats)
- corpses that polymorph you (such as doppelgangers)
- corpses that would give you a potentially unwanted intrinsic such as teleportitis or lycanthropy
Warning Bug
Eating non-corpse, non-tin comestibles can break vegan and/or vegetarian conducts and the player will not be warned. For example, eating an egg or a candy bar will break the vegan conduct but you will not be warned. Similarly, eating a meatball or huge chunk of meat will break the vegan and vegetarian conducts but you will not be warned. When polymorphed to a form that can eat wax/bone/leather/dragon scale items, you will be warned about breaking the vegan (for eating wax items) or vegetarian (for eating bone/leather/dragon scale) conducts but will still not be warned for non-corpse comestibles.
Messages
Replace <food> with the comestible that is being eaten (for regular forms, includes corpses, tins, and other food items like eggs). This may also be the item that you are eating if you are eating irregular food, such as "long sword" if you are a rust monster eating a rustproof long sword. Replace <nose> with the nose of the form that you are in.
- Your <nose> starts to tingle and you smell food.
- You read a blessed scroll or cast the detect food spell at skilled or better.
- You gain the food appraisal intrinsic.
- Your <nose> twitches then starts to tingle.
- You read a blessed scroll or cast the detect food spell at skilled or better.
- You gain the food appraisal intrinsic.
- Your <nose> starts to tingle.
- You read a blessed scroll or cast the detect food spell at skilled or better.
- You gain the food appraisal intrinsic.
- This message is appended to various other messages depending on where food is on the level.
- Your <nose> stops tingling and your sense of smell returns to normal.
- You were warned of detrimental food. You lose the food appraisal intrinsic.
- <food> smells like it could be tainted!
- The food can cause food poisoning if consumed.
- <food> smells like it might be poisonous!
- The food has a chance of being poisoned.
- <food> smells like it could be something very dangerous!
- The food will cause petrification or sliming if consumed.
- <food> smells foul and unfamiliar to you.
- The food will break vegan conduct if consumed.
- <food> smells unfamiliar to you.
- The food will break vegetarian conduct if consumed.
- <food> smells disgusting to you right now.
- You are a rust monster try to eat a rustproof item.
- <food> smells rather acidic.
- The food is acidic.
- <food> smells unhealthy.
- You are a Monk and the food will violate your dietary conduct.
Strategy
Most food-related deaths are entirely avoidable; the Eating Corpses For Food and Intrinsics spoiler can warn you if a corpse is bad to eat. That being said if you have a blessed scroll and you aren't planning on using it for blanking, or preferably the food detection spell, it could assist in preventing YASD from mistakenly eating some foods.
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.
