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 (i.e., 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 (i.e., 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.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, if the Guild of Disgruntled Adventurers is generated (50%), then it has a guaranteed two Hawaiian shirts, from the two guaranteed tourists.
Other shirts
Other variants add new types of shirts, besides the T-shirt and Hawaiian shirt, that form part of the starting inventory of new roles:
- striped shirt: worn by Convicts, present in UnNetHack, DynaHack, dNetHack, Slash'EM Extended, SLASHTHEM
- ruffled shirt: worn by standard Noblemen, in dNetHack, Slash'EM Extended, and SLASHTHEM
- Victorian underwear: worn by standard Noblewomen
- black dress: worn by (female) Drow Nobles in dNetHack
- bodyglove: future tech, worn by some Anachrononauts in dNetHack
- expensive suit: worn by Undertakers in SLASHTHEM (from the obsolete variant NetHack--)
Ruffled shirt and Victorian underwear
The Noble role, introduced in dNetHack and incorporated into Slash'EM Extended and SLASHTHEM, features new gender-specific starting shirts for Nobles: the ruffled shirt for Noblemen and Victorian underwear for Noblewomen.
The exact behaviour of these new shirts differs between variants.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, the ruffled shirt grants a +1 bonus to charisma and can be enchanted to raise AC like any other shirt. Victorian underwear grants a charisma bonus of +2 and MC 3 (maximum magic cancellation), at the cost of a -2 penalty to AC and reduction of the AC bonus from dexterity.
Slash'EM Extended
In versions v45 and later of Slash'EM Extended, a cursed ruffled shirt or Victorian underwear grants a 25% chance of life saving on death.
SLASHTHEM
In SLASHTHEM, the ruffled shirt behaves as an ordinary shirt, with no unusual bonuses or penalties. The Victorian underwear grants MC3—making it the "shirt" with the highest MC in the game—at the cost of an AC penalty.
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.
