Rumors
Rumors are a way to learn about the game without reading spoilers. Rumors come in two forms: true and false. The true ones are useful hints, while the false ones are useless or incorrect.
Getting rumors
- The Oracle always tells you a true rumor when you pay for a minor consultation.
- The following items give you a true rumor if blessed, a false rumor if cursed and either if uncursed:
- Fortune cookies contain a rumor that is revealed when you eat the cookie. You may also just read the cookie, if you want to keep the vegan conduct.
- The quest artifacts of the knight and rogue roles, The Magic Mirror of Merlin and The Master Key of Thievery, give a rumor when applied or wielded.
- You can sometimes find rumors in the dust on the dungeon floor. Sometimes these can be difficult to read.
- You can write something on the dungeon floor, then engrave with a wand of polymorph to get a rumor.
Examples
True rumors
- Rumor #330: Throwing food at a wild dog might tame him.
This encourages the player to throw tripe at dogs to tame them.
- Rumor #47: Eating a freezing sphere is like eating a yeti.
This suggests that by eating a freezing sphere or a yeti you may get the cold resistance. Unfortunately, freezing spheres never leave corpses.
- Rumor #326: They say the gods get angry if you kill your dog.
This suggests that if you kill a pet, you get an alignment record penalty (-15 to be exact, and also lose 1 point of Luck).
False rumors
- Rumor #7: A cockatrice corpse is guaranteed to be untainted!
This encourages the player to eat a cockatrice corpse, which is usually a fatal mistake.
- Rumor #157: Sorry, no fortune this time. Better luck next cookie!
This is just plain useless.
- Rumor #195: They say that a hacker named David once slew a giant with a sling and a rock.
Some false rumours are just random references to random things.
See also
- Source:rumors.tru — the data file that contains all the true rumors
- Source:rumors.fal — the data file that contains all the false rumors
- Rumor messages — explains the meaning of each rumor
External links
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 Information on this page may be out of date.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.
