T-shirt

[   T-shirt
Appearance	T-shirt
Slot	shirt
AC	0
Special	readable shop markup
Base price	2 zm
Weight	5
Material	cloth

A T-shirt is a type of shirt that appears in NetHack. It is made of cloth, and is nearly identical to the Hawaiian shirt.

Generation

The T-shirt makes up 0.2% of all randomly generated armor.

Description

While worn, a T-shirt provides no base AC.

T-shirts can be read, which breaks the illiterate conduct and displays a message describing the text on the shirt - this message is dependent on the item's object ID, so it will remain consistent for any one T-shirt, and the text will be degraded if the shirt is eroded.

Entering a shop with a visible worn T-shirt will cause the shopkeeper to charge an extra ¹⁄₃ markup and buy things for ¹⁄₃ of the base price.

T-shirt texts

The possible messages are:

• "I explored the Dungeons of Doom and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!"
• "Is that Mjollnir in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
• "It's not the size of your sword, it's how #enhance’d you are with it."
• "Madame Elvira's House O' Succubi Lifetime Customer"
• "Madame Elvira's House O' Succubi Employee of the Month"
• "Ludios Vault Guards Do It In Small, Dark Rooms"
• "Yendor Military Soldiers Do It In Large Groups"
• "I survived Yendor Military Boot Camp"
• "Ludios Accounting School Intra-Mural Lacrosse Team"
• "Oracle(TM) Fountains 10th Annual Wet T-Shirt Contest"
• "Hey, black dragon! Disintegrate THIS!"
• "I'm With Stupid -->"
• "Don't blame me, I voted for Izchak!"
• "Don't Panic"
• "Furinkan High School Athletic Dept."
• "Hel-LOOO, Nurse!"
• "=^.^=",
• "100% goblin hair - do not wash"
• "Aberzombie and Fitch"
• "cK -- Cockatrice touches the Kop"
• "Don't ask me, I only adventure here"
• "Down with pants!"
• "d, your dog or a killer?"
• "FREE PUG AND NEWT!"
• "Go team ant!"
• "Got newt?"
• "Hello, my darlings!"
• "Hey! Nymphs! Steal This T-Shirt!"
• "I <3 Dungeon of Doom"
• "I <3 Maud"
• "I am a Valkyrie. If you see me running, try to keep up."
• "I am not a pack rat - I am a collector"
• "I bounced off a rubber tree"
• "Plunder Island Brimstone Beach Club"
• "If you can read this, I can hit you with my polearm"
• "I'm confused!"
• "I scored with the princess"
• "I want to live forever or die in the attempt."
• "Lichen Park"
• "LOST IN THOUGHT - please send search party"
• "Meat is Mordor"
• "Minetown Better Business Bureau"
• "Minetown Watch"
• "Ms. Palm's House of Negotiable Affection -- A Very Reputable House Of Disrepute"
• "Protection Racketeer"
• "Real men love Crom"
• "Somebody stole my Mojo!"
• "The Hellhound Gang"
• "The Werewolves"
• "They Might Be Storm Giants"
• "Weapons don't kill people, I kill people"
• "White Zombie"
• "You're killing me!"
• "Anhur State University - Home of the Fighting Fire Ants!"
• "FREE HUGS"
• "Serial Ascender"
• "Real men are valkyries"
• "Young Men's Cavedigging Association"
• "Occupy Fort Ludios"
• "I couldn't afford this T-shirt so I stole it!"
• "Mind flayers suck"
• "I'm not wearing any pants"
• "Down with the living!"
• "Pudding farmer"
• "Vegetarian"
• "Hello, I'm War!"
• "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"
• "It is easier to curse the darkness than to light a candle"
• "rock--paper--scissors--lizard--Spock!" (The Big Bang Theory)
• "/Valar morghulis/ -- /Valar dohaeris/" (Common phrases from A Song of Ice and Fire series)

Strategy

Like the Hawaiian shirt, T-shirts are generally employed to enchant as an additional source of AC, but are best reserved until after a character obtains protection from polymorph traps - worn torso armor will be destroyed if they polymorph into a large form. In the early game, scrolls of enchant armor may be best reserved for other armor such as a helm, boots or gloves. T-shirts are typically most worth enchanting once a character has magic resistance, as well as solid enough enchantment on their other armor. An enchanted T-shirt may also be wished for in order to top off an otherwise-complete ascension kit.

For characters not averse to polypiling, shirts are fairly easy to obtain with a wand of polymorph (or the polymorph spell for powerful enough casters) and a large pile of armor, which is most easily obtained in the Castle or Fort Ludios. The Castle's armor storeroom in particular has a 13.13% chance of containing either a Hawaiian shirt or a T-shirt. The random general store items in Orcus Town may also have a T-shirt among them.

History

The T-shirt first appears in NetHack 3.2.0, where it generates if the TOURIST compile-time option is defined. From this version to NetHack 3.3.1, there are only three possible T-shirt messages:

"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, but all I got was this lousy T-shirt"

The normal T-shirt message.

"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, and never did any laundry..."

You are hallucinating and currently wearing the T-shirt.

"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, and couldn't find my way out"

As above, but you are not currently wearing the T-shirt.

Many extra T-shirt messages are added in NetHack 3.4.0 from a patch by Scott Bigham, and several more are introduced in NetHack 3.6.0 and NetHack 3.6.1.

Variants

dNetHack

In dNetHack, the Tie-Dye Shirt of Shambhala is an unaligned artifact T-shirt that can be enchanted to +7, and alters carrying capacity while worn: it confers a ¹⁄₂ increase while blessed, a ¹⁄₄ increase while uncursed, and a ¹⁄₄ penalty while cursed. The shirt also enhances charisma if worn without body armor and enhances wisdom if worn with it, and can be read to cure status properties like a unicorn horn if not covered by non-crystal body armor. Invoking the Tie-Dye Shirt confers enlightenment.

The November NetHack Tournament

In The November NetHack Tournament, the reward for completing the DevTeam Office quest is the Really Cool Shirt, an artifact T-shirt that acts as a luck item while carried and provides warning while worn. Reading the Really Cool Shirt has a ⁴⁹⁄₅₀ chance of producing a random rumor according to its beatitude: true only if blessed, false only if cursed, or either if uncursed. Due to its generation method, it will revert to a normal T-shirt if left in a bones file.

The deathmatch opponent will have a blessed +4 or +5 erodeproof T-shirt if they represent a non-Tourist character that did not have a worn shirt.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, T-shirts can be made of other materials such as leather, which provides some base AC and may make them more valuable to wear early on. T-shirt wishes are just as popular as in NetHack if not more so: object materials and properties make the shirt slot valuable for non-giant characters. An example of such a wish is "blessed greased fixed +3 dragonhide T-shirt of decay" (which provides drain resistance).