Talk:Sprig of wolfsbane

From NetHackWiki
Revision as of 21:38, 11 December 2019 by Aximili (talk | contribs) (Wolves)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Odd. On NAO (3.4.3), despite max luck and both a cloak of MR and Magicbane, I somehow contracted lycanthropy and transformed into a wolf one turn after I had taken my wolfsbane out of my BoH. I ate the wolfsbane as a wolf, and nothing happened. Assuming I was somehow "cured," but left in wolf form, I was able to put on my ring of polymorph control and zap a /oPolymorph to return to human form. Two turns later I was asked if I wanted to turn into a wolf (still had on the =oPC). So clearly the wolfsbane did nothing.

Thus the absolute statement "Eating a sprig of wolfsbane cures lycanthropy." is clearly subject to one or more of: restrictions (such as "does not apply when in wolf form"), a "chance to resist," or like nearly all actions within the dungeon, some odds of failure.

Of course, prayer can work wonders in such situations. --Clothos

Now that's odd. Did you finish eating the sprig of wolfsbane? Did you get the message "You feel purified."? As I read the code, you should always get cured if you eat it up. Call trace: eat.c, line 2091, eat.c, line 1368, eat.c, line 412, eat.c, line 433, eat.c, line 1681, were.c, line 156.
Prayer only calls the same code path.
Maybe you could check your ttyrec, and provide a pointer if you really ate it up. --Tjr (talk) 07:06, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
I forgot to come back and update this. You were correct. I don't recall being interfered with, but for some reason my wolf form did not completely finish the wolfsbane sprig. A few days later, I noticed the partially-eaten sprig in my inventory. (Maybe eating was interfered with by a "Where do you wish to teleport?" prompt.) I wonder if a partially-eaten sprig will cure lycanthropy? Hmmm. Thanks for looking it up! --Clothos

Wolves

"Wolves were often killed by Christians for two reasons: first, wolves sometimes prey on livestock and were considered a pest; second, wolves were considered sacred by Germanics (for example Wotan is accompanied by the wolves Geri and Freki), and the monotheist Christians desecrated their values by killing them (or chopping down old oaks which were used to worship Tyr)."

Is there any actual cite for this? It looks rather dubious; I daresay someone believes it but that doesn't make it true. (In particular, if wolves were killed for preying on livestock, was it accomplished with wolfsbane or, say, bows?)

It seems to have been added by https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/79.200.66.30 as a bald assertion. Pinkbeast (talk) 20:10, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

We should probably just remove that sentence. Firstly this is the article about wolfsbane, not about all the myriad reasons to kill wolves. Secondly this is all only tangentially related to the in-game item anyway. --Aximili (talk) 21:38, 11 December 2019 (UTC)