Food appraisal

Food appraisal is an intrinsic property that appears in NetHack, and warns a hero that possesses it of potentially harmful food effects.

The food appraisal intrinsic can only be obtained from either reading a blessed scroll of food detection or casting the detect food spell with Skilled level or higher in divination spells. Monsters cannot obtain this intrinsic, but will generally avoid food they consider harmful regardless.

Description

When the hero attempts to eat a comestible item, the food appraisal intrinsic will warn if that comestible has a potentially detrimental effect or breaks a given conduct, and prompts the player if they want the hero to continue eating or to stop, disappearing after a successful warning—this warning will not occur if the hero is either resistant to the harmful effect, or else if that effect would not apply. In the case of tins, the warning will be given before opening the tin, and declining to eat the tin in response will not discard the tin.

In order of priority, food appraisal will warn of the following: tainted food that causes illness; food that causes stoning; food that causes sliming; food that might be rotten; food that can be poisonous; food that violates a Monk's diet; food that is acidic; metal "food" that may be rustproof if the hero is a rust monster; food that violates vegetarian conduct; and food that violates vegan conduct. The latter two are also applied for a hero that is polymorphed into a monster capable of eating wax, bone, leather, or dragon hide items—eating wax breaks vegan conduct, while eating the other materials breaks vegetarian conduct. There is also a second check for tainted corpses or similar items that occurs even if the hero has immunity to sickness.

The traits that cause warnings from the food appraisal property and the circumstances where the intrinsic will not warn the player occur as follows:

Warned if:	Example	Not shown if you:
May be tainted	very old corpses; corpses left by most undead creatures	have sickness resistance
May cause petrification or sliming	Cockatrices, chickatrices, Medusa, green slime	have stoning resistance for stoning food, be a green slime or wear an amulet of unchanging for sliming food
May be rotten	corpses or some comestibles of a certain age	have sickness resistance
May be poisonous	all poisonous monsters	have poison resistance
May be poisoned to put the hero to sleep	cursed apples	have sleep resistance
May break a Monk's dietary conduct	non-vegetarian comestibles	are not a Monk
May be acidic	all acidic monsters	have acid resistance
May be rustproof (if polymorphed into a rust monster)	rustproof metal items	are not a rust monster
May break the vegan conduct	non-vegan but vegetarian corpses or animal-matter items (dragonhide/leather/wax/bone)	are eating other non-vegan comestibles (see Warning Bug below) OR already broke conduct
May break the vegetarian conduct	meat comestibles	already broke conduct or eating non-corpse meat comestibles (but see below)
May be tainted, while the hero has sickness resistance	very old corpses; corpses left by most undead creatures

Food appraisal will not warn against the following harmful or undesired effects:

• choking from over-eating
• the instant death from eating the corpse of a Rider
• hallucination from eating certain corpses (such as yellow molds)
• stunning effects from certain corpses (such as bats and stalkers)
• corpses that would constitute cannibalism for the hero's race
• corpses that aggravate monsters (such as dogs and cats)
• corpses that polymorph the eater (such as doppelgangers)
• corpses that would give a potentially unwanted intrinsic, such as teleportitis or lycanthropy
• non-corpse, non-tin comestible items such as eggs or candy bars that would break vegan and/or vegetarian conducts - this may be bugged behavior

Strategy

Most food-related deaths that are covered by food appraisal are entirely avoidable, with both this wiki and various spoilers (such as the Eating Corpses For Food and Intrinsics spoiler from voxl.org) containing a wealth of information on which corpses are safe for which heroes. Despite this, the property can still be useful to prevent YASD from certain typos, e.g. accidentally eating a cockatrice corpse that the hero is wielding.

History

The food appraisal intrinsic first appears in Hack 1.0 with the scroll of food detection.

Messages

You can recognize detrimental food.

You are viewing the food appraisal intrinsic via enlightenment.

Your <nose> starts to tingle and you smell food.
Your <nose> twitches then starts to tingle.
Your <nose> starts to tingle.

You read a blessed scroll of food detection, or cast the detect food spell at Skilled or better, and gained the food appraisal intrinsic; the exact message depends on where you are able to smell food if there is any elsewhere on the level.

Your <nose> stops tingling and your sense of smell returns to normal.

You were warned of detrimental food, using up the intrinsic.

This <food> smells like it could be tainted!

You were warned of potential food poisoning.

This <food> smells like it might be poisonous!

The food has a chance of being poisonous.

This <food> smells like it could be something very dangerous!

The food will cause petrification or sliming if consumed.

This <food> smells foul and unfamiliar to you.

The food will break vegan conduct if consumed.

This <food> smells unfamiliar to you.

The food will break vegetarian conduct if consumed.

This <food> smells rather acidic.

The food is acidic.

This <food> smells unhealthy.

You are a Monk, and the food will violate your dietary conduct.

This <food> smells disgusting to you right now.

You are polymorphed into a metallivore and trying to eat a rustproof item.

Variants

EvilHack

In EvilHack, hobbit heroes start each game with permanent food appraisal.