Lump of royal jelly
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| Name | lump of royal jelly |
| Base price | 15 zm |
| Nutrition | 200 |
| Turns to eat | 1 |
| Weight | 2 |
| Conduct | vegetarian |
A lump of royal jelly, sometimes referred to as just royal jelly, is a type of comestible that appears in NetHack. It is veggy and considered vegetarian.
Contents
Generation
Lumps of royal jelly are not randomly generated.
Health food shops can sell lumps of royal jelly.[1]
There is a 1⁄3 chance of each square in a beehive being generated with a lump of royal jelly at level creation.[2]
Applying a charged horn of plenty has a 1⁄20 chance (5%) of producing a lump of royal jelly or two.[3]
Description
When eaten, a lump of royal jelly grants 200 base nutrition and has several other effects: a non-cursed lump of royal jelly heals wounded legs and increases the hero's strength by one point if possible, along with possibly restoring up to 20 HP;[4] if this would raise the hero's HP of their base form above its maximum, there is an additional 1⁄16 chance of increasing their maximum HP by 1. A cursed lump of royal jelly will instead lower strength by one point and may decrease the hero's HP by up to 20.
Lumps of royal jelly can be thrown to tame carnivorous domestic animals.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.
Per commit fe664435: Applying royal jelly to objects will smear it on them; per commit d44c83d4, the only applicable objects are monster eggs. Cursed royal jelly will render an egg inert, while uncursed royal jelly will rejuvenate it; blessed royal jelly will additionally make the egg recognize the hero as its parent if it hatches in their inventory. Using royal jelly of any beatitude on a killer bee egg will turn it into a queen bee egg.
Per commit 4159dd9, killer bees will eat royal jelly and become queen bees if a queen bee is not present on the level; tame killer bees will seek out nearby lumps of royal jelly, while hostile killer bees will eat any royal jelly that they move across when pursuing the hero. Per commit 5e26589, a hero polymorphed into a killer bee can also become a queen bee by eating royal jelly.Strategy
Royal jelly has a very good nutrition-to-weight ratio and can be eaten in one turn, making it a popular food item to store for the late game and ascension run.
History
The lump of royal jelly first appears in Hack 1.0.2 alongside the beehive.
Starting in NetHack 3.6.0, "royal jelly" is recognized as an alias for the item for wishing purposes, per commit dfd9586a.
Origin
Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion that is secreted from the glands in the hypopharynx of nurse bees and fed to all larvae in the colony. During the process of creating new queens, the workers construct special "queen cells", and the larvae in these cells are fed with copious amounts of royal jelly - this jelly contains various proteins secreted by the honey bees, and triggers the development of queen morphology, including the fully developed ovaries needed to lay eggs.
Royal jelly is sometimes used in alternative medicine, and is often sold as a dietary supplement for humans - though this is reflected by its uses in NetHack, in real life the European Food Safety Authority has concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the claim, and the United States' Food and Drug Administration has taken legal action against companies that have marketed royal jelly products using unfounded claims of health benefits. Also unlike NetHack, the Vegetarian Society considers royal jelly non-vegetarian.
Variants
EvilHack
In EvilHack, honey badgers will dig their way towards any beehives on the level in order to try and eat the royal jelly present.
Encyclopedia entry
"'Royal Jelly,'" he read aloud, "'must be a substance of
tremendous nourishing power, for on this diet alone, the
honey-bee larva increases in weight fifteen hundred times in
five days!'"
"How much?"
"Fifteen hundred times, Mabel. And you know what that means
if you put it in terms of a human being? It means," he said,
lowering his voice, leaning forward, fixing her with those
small pale eyes, "it means that in five days a baby weighing
seven and a half pounds to start off with would increase in
weight to five tons!"
References
- ↑ src/shknam.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 323
- ↑ src/mkroom.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 375
- ↑ src/mkobj.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2219: most comestibles including royal jelly are eligible
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2205
