Potion of sickness

!
Name	sickness
Appearance	random
Base price	50 zm
Weight	20
Monster use	Will not be used by monsters.

A potion of sickness is a type of potion that appears in NetHack.

Generation

Pestilence is known to generate with several potions of sickness.

Potions of sickness are created 22.5% of the time from alchemy with random potions.

Description

If you quaff a potion of sickness, but you are not a Healer and do not have the sustain ability property, you are subject to multiple detrimental effects. Despite its name, this potion does not cause the terminal sickness associated with, e.g., food poisoning.

The following effects can result from quaffing a potion of sickness:

Case	You have no poison resistance	You have poison resistance
blessed	You lose 1 hit point.	You lose 1 hit point.
uncursed	You lose 1-10 hit points, one of your attributes is reduced by 3-6, abuse constitution.	You lose 1 hit point, one of your attributes is reduced by 1, abuse constitution.
cursed	You lose 1-15 hit points, one of your attributes is reduced by 3-6, abuse constitution.	You lose 1 hit point, one of your attributes is reduced by 1, abuse constitution.

If you are a Healer, you are completely protected from these effects; if you have the sustain ability property, you are still subject to these effects, but your attributes are not reduced. Regardless of role or properties, quaffing a potion of sickness will also stop any hallucinating, shocking you back to your senses; this is the only beneficial effect of the potion.

Dipping

As indicated by the messages if you quaff a blessed potion or have poison resistance when quaffing one of any beatitude, the potion is biologically contaminated fruit juice; if you cancel the potion or #dip a unicorn horn into it, it will become a potion of fruit juice. Dipping a stack of fruit juice potions into a potion of sickness will 'contaminate' the stack, turning them into potions of sickness.

If you dip darts, arrows, shuriken, or crossbow bolts into a potion of sickness, it will coat the projectile in poison, using up the potion and prompting you to type-name it. Poisoned weapons do d6 extra damage and have a 10% chance of instant kill for non-resistant monsters; the poison has a 10% chance of wearing off on each successful attack.

Throwing and wielding

The potion can be thrown at monsters, or wielded and swung at them, to reduce their hit points - non-immune monsters have their current HP and maximum HP halved, subject to separate chances of resisting; if the monster's maximum HP is brought below the current HP, the current HP is reduced to the new maximum HP. This has no effect if the monster possesses a sickness attack or has poison resistance. While monsters do not throw or use potions of sickness, Pestilence will quaff potions of sickness to heal himself, much as other monsters would with a potion of healing; hitting Pestilence with the potion will have the same effect.

Strategy

Potions of sickness are typically best used for poisoning projectiles, though lawful characters will take a -1 hit to their alignment record for each use of a poisoned weapon; alchemy makes it somewhat easy to procure more potions for poisoning projectiles with. There are many powerful monsters, including some Quest nemeses, that lack poison resistance and can be easily felled by e.g. a stack of poisoned darts; Tourists in particular that can hold on to their stack of starting +2 darts can easily poison them to use as an effective weapon against the Master of Thieves.

While a potion of sickness can be used as a hallucination cure if you can mitigate the HP and attribute loss (e.g. with poison resistance, a potion of restore ability, or a ring of sustain ability), they are only worth using for this purpose if you lack potions of extra healing, full healing or a unicorn horn.

For players that have no interest in poisoned weapons, this potion is a good candidate for dilution.

Identification

Potions of sickness can be easily identified by dipping a unicorn horn into them, as discussed above; while cancelling the potions does the same, cancelling the potion of see invisible has the same effect. Dipping a non-poisoned missile weapon into a potion of sickness will form a coating on it, which is reliable for informal identification.

Messages

Yecch! This stuff tastes like poison.

You quaffed a potion of sickness.

(But in fact it was mildly stale <slime mold> juice.)

This line is added if the potion was blessed.

(But in fact it was biologically contaminated <slime mold> juice.)

This line is added if you quaffed a non-blessed potion and have poison resistance; you only lose one attribute point.

Fortunately, you have been immunized.

You are a Healer, so you suffer no ill effects.

You are shocked back to your senses!

You were hallucinating, and were cured by quaffing the potion.

You feel weaker.

Your strength was lowered.

Your muscles won't obey you.

Your dexterity was lowered.

You feel very sick.

Your constitution was lowered.

Your brain is on fire.

Your intelligence was lowered.

Your judgement is impaired.

Your wisdom was lowered.

You break out in hives.

Your charisma was lowered.

<monster> looks rather ill.

A monster without immunity was hit by a potion of sickness, or Pestilence was hit by a potion of healing.

<monster> looks unharmed.

A monster with a sickness attack or poison resistance was hit by a potion of sickness.

<potion> forms a coating on <item>.

You dipped a poisonable item into a potion of sickness.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, bladed weapons can be poisoned as well; poisoned weapons are also subject to a weight-based chance of losing their poisonous coating (1 in [10 - (weight/10)] chance).

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-360}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.