Kelp frond

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% Kelp frond.png
Name kelp frond
Base price 6 zm
Nutrition 30
Turns to eat 1
Weight 1
Conduct vegan

A kelp frond is a kind of veggy comestible that appears in NetHack.

Generation

Kelp fronds are only generated in pools and moats, and may appear in stacks of 2. There is a 110 chance of a pool square containing kelp fronds, and a 130 chance of a moat square containing kelp fronds.

Description

A kelp frond confers 30 nutrition when eaten and preserves the vegan and vegetarian conducts. Kelp fronds can be thrown to tame herbivorous domestic monsters, and herbivorous pets consider kelp fronds to be acceptable food.

Strategy

Kelp is generally not sought out in most games, and most characters that reach an area with kelp will generally have more than enough food on hand. One possible use is as a lightweight snack for vegan or vegetarian characters that decide to collect fronds; another possible use is for taming a domestic steed. Perhaps the easiest way for a character to harvest kelp fronds is to locate them with a means of object detection or food detection, then either fly or levitate over the water and apply a bullwhip down on the marked squares, or else submerge themselves in water (usually via magical breathing) and collect them manually. Juiblex's swamp and Medusa's Island are the best levels for kelp collecting, but are generally populated with eels.

History

The kelp frond first appears in NetHack 3.3.0.

Encyclopedia entry

I noticed that all the plants were attached to the soil by
an almost imperceptible bond. Devoid of roots, they seemed
not to require any nourishment from sand, soil, or pebble.
All they required was a point of support -- nothing else.
These plants are self-propagated, and their existence depends
entirely on the water that supports and nourishes them.
Most of them do not sprout leaves, but sprout blades of
various whimsical shapes, and their colors are limited to
pink, carmine, green, olive, fawn, and brown. I had the
opportunity to observe once more -- not the dried specimens
I had studied on the _Nautilus_ -- but the fresh, living
specimens in their native setting.
        [ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne ]