Meatball
A meatball is a type of comestible that appears in NetHack. It is fleshy and not vegetarian or vegan.
Generation
Meatballs are not randomly generated, and can only be created by zapping a stone to flesh spell at rocks, valuable gems, gray stones, or statues that depict tiny-sized or non-fleshy monsters.
Description
When eaten, meatballs grant 5 base nutrition and take 1 turn to consume. Like tripe rations, meatballs are considered a treat for carnivorouspets, and they can be thrown to tame carnivorous domestic animals.
Strategy
Meatballs are easily gathered by smashing boulders and larger statues and casting the spell of stone to flesh at them: Healers always start with knowledge of the spell, and Wizards and Priests can also start with the spell. As they provide little nutrition, the most direct use of meatballs for a hero is to feed them to carnivorous pets, which is done to increase apport for stealing from shops, or else to maximize tameness if they plan on using a polymorph trap to turn it into an inediate pet. They are also useful in a pinch for taming hostile domestic carnivores.
Meatballs make excellent polyfodder for obtaining lightweight food such as lembas wafers, along with other uncommon comestibles such as tins of spinach and/or tengu meat and cockatrice eggs—distribute them carefully in order to avoid accidentally creating a flesh golem. This can also be used to deliberately create flesh golems in order to try obtaining resistances from their corpses, or else to tame one and turn it into a stronger stone golem using a cockatrice or their corpse.
History
The meatball is introduced alongside the spell of stone to flesh in NetHack 3.3.0.
Encyclopedia entry
Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.
