Nurse

@ nurse
Difficulty	13
Attacks	Claw 2d6 heal

@ nurse
Difficulty	13
Attacks	Claw 2d6 heal
Base level	11
Base experience	245
Speed	6
Base AC	0
Base MR	0
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	3 (Rare)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	1450
Nutritional value	400
Size	Medium
Resistances	Poison
Resistances conveyed	Poison (73%)
A nurse: has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. is omnivorous. is not a valid polymorphable form. is a human. is normally generated hostile. can be seen through infravision.
Reference	monst.c#line2245

A nurse, @, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The nurse is an omnivorous human that can be seen via infravision, and is one of the few monsters that can actively heal the hero under certain circumstances.

A nurse has a single "claw" attack that functions as follows: if the nurse is not cancelled and attacks the hero, and the hero is unarmored, empty-handed (i.e. not wielding a weapon) and not generating conflict, the attack will instead heal the hero for the same amount of HP it would have dealt as damage. If the hero is a Healer, a non-cancelled nurse will not damage them regardless, and their attacks may print a special message. The section below further details how the attack functions.

Chatting to a nurse results in various messages being printed, depending on if they are healing the hero or if the hero has items left to remove and unwield.

Eating a nurse corpse or tin has a ¹¹⁄₁₅ chance (73%) of granting poison resistance, and will always fully restore HP while curing blindness.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Nurses can now heal you even when you are wielding something, as long as it is not a weapon or weapon-tool.

Generation

Randomly generated nurses are always created hostile. They are not an eligible form for polymorph.

Strategy

If you encounter a nurse, and there are no other dangerous monsters nearby, the easiest way to strip yourself is to press shift + A and select all of your armor, plus your wielded weapon, for removal. Once disrobed and disarmed, you can let the nurse start healing. Letting many nurses heal you at once this way is known as nurse dancing, most often done by reverse-genociding nurses on a non-teleport level - see that article for more details.

Healing attack

While you are unarmored and not wielding anything, the nurse's attack will restore 2d6 HP per hit and cure food poisoning and illness; being healed this way has a ¹⁄₃ chance of exercising strength and constitution. After healing you, a nurse has a ¹⁄₃₃ chance of teleporting away - if you are on a non-teleport level, the nurse will become scared for a while instead; if your maximum HP was raised, the nurse also has a ¹⁄₁₃ chance of vanishing entirely. A cancelled nurse will attack and damage you as normal.

The chance of a nurse raising your max HP is ¹⁄₇ for each hit, provided that your maximum is less than 5 × XL + (2 × XL)d10 - nurses are thus most effective when you have fewer than 7 HP/level, and become completely ineffective at 25 HP/level. No such restrictions apply to polyself, but any max HP increases acquired while polymorphed will only last until you revert to your original form.

Tinning nurses

Characters with a tinning kit should ideally tin nurse corpses when possible; the tin and/or the kit itself should be blessed, as it will take two turns at most to open and eat without a tin opener. Tins of nurse meat are often carried alongside blessed potions of full healing during the late game and the eventual ascension run, as they are comparable major sources of healing.

Nurse meat will always restore you to full HP, while potions of full healing are limited to restoring 400 HP at most; the latter is still sufficient for a majority of cases, and quaffing non-cursed potions while under 400 maximum HP can increase that maximum by up to 8 per potion. Tins of nurse meat in open inventory cannot be destroyed by cold or fire, but opening and eating a blessed tin may take two turns, while a potion can be downed in one go - do not wait until you are one turn from death to consume tinned nurse.

Eating nurse meat is also cannibalism for humans, with the exception of human Cavewomen and Cavemen - those playing humans in other roles may still want to keep a few tins on hand for dire emergencies, as they may consider it better to live as a cannibal and eventually restore lost Luck than die of hit point loss.

History

The nurse first appears in Hack 1.0. From this version to NetHack 2.3e, nurses use the n glyph - in NetHack 3.0.0, the nymph is split into its three subtypes and moved to the n glyph, and nurses are moved from that glyph to the @ glyph with other human and elven monsters.

The blindness-curing property of nurse meat is introduced in NetHack 3.6.1 via commit 0840974b.

In NetHack 3.6.1 and earlier versions, including some variants based on those versions, a bug prevents nurse meat from properly granting poison resistance; this is fixed in NetHack 3.6.2 via commit a97d0b72.

Messages

"Put that weapon away before you hurt somebody!"

You chatted to a nurse while wielding a weapon or other item.

"Please undress so I can examine you."

As above while you are wearing armor, possibly hiding a shirt.

"Take off your shirt, please."

As above while you are only wearing a shirt.

"Relax, this won't hurt a bit."

You chatted to a nurse while fully disrobed and wielding no weapon.

"I hate this job!"

You chatted to a cancelled nurse.

The nurse hits! (I hope you don't mind.)

You were hit by a nurse and were healed instead of damaged.

"Doc, I can't help you unless you cooperate."

You are a Healer and wearing armor or wielding something while a nurse is "attacking" you.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, a peaceful nurse has a ²⁄₅ chance of generating in the prison cell within the northern half of Grund's Stronghold at level creation.

GruntHack

In GruntHack, nurses are one of the various racial monsters.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, nurses function much differently from their counterparts in NetHack, and nurse dancing is not possible.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, nurses have a ¹⁄₅ chance of generating with a scalpel.

Encyclopedia entry

See the encyclopedia entry for Human (monster).