Teleportation

Teleportation provides a quick escape to a different (often random) location. Some escape items can teleport you away from monsters. Some monsters can also teleport themselves to flee from you.

Teleportation comes from:

• ring of teleportation
• scroll of teleportation
• spellbook of teleport away
• wand of teleportation
• teleportitis
• teleport trap
• quantum mechanic attack
• cursed spellbook, especially low-level ones

There are three teleport-related properties: teleportitis, which teleports you horizontally at random; teleport control, which lets you choose where teleports land; and teleport at will, which lets you trigger teleportitis to happen whenever you want at a power cost.

Horizontal teleportation almost always moves you away from your current position, but there is a very small chance of landing on the exact same square.

Valid destinations

You cannot teleport to a square that is already occupied by a monster, or to one that is considered unsafe for you to occupy. If you try to do so deliberately with teleport control, you will receive the message "Sorry..." and be teleported randomly instead.

In particular:

• You cannot teleport into water unless you are levitating, flying, water walking, magical breathing, or polymorphed into a swimming or amphibious monster.
• You also cannot teleport onto lava, unless you are levitating, flying, are fire resistant and wearing fireproof water walking boots, or are polymorphed into a monster such as a salamander or fire elemental that likes lava.
• If you're polymorphed into a sea monster, you only have a 1 in 13 chance of successfully teleporting onto dry land.
• You cannot teleport onto a trap, unless there are no other valid locations to teleport to. (The game will try 200 times to pick a safe location for you before considering trapped locations.) In particular, magic portals are considered traps, so you cannot teleport directly onto your quest portal.
• Only phasing monsters can teleport into solid rock, into walls, trees, iron bars or a raised drawbridge, or into a secret door or a secret corridor. Teleporting onto a closed door is only possible for phasing or amorphous monsters, and only giants and phasing monsters can teleport onto boulders.
• You cannot teleport into a teleport region's exclusion area (such as the inside of the Wizard's Tower) from outside it, nor outside it from the inside.

There is also some code that could prevent the player from teleporting in and out of force fields, but those do not exist in vanilla NetHack.

Teleporting monsters

Monsters may teleport themselves in several ways: randomly as part of their movement, after they steal something from you, or using a teleport item to escape from you. You can also teleport them by zapping them with a wand of teleportation or the teleport away spell. Interestingly, when you teleport a monster, it ignores whether you are on a non-teleport level.

When a monster is teleported, it is placed on a random square on the level that is considered safe for it to occupy. If the monster is a tengu teleporting under its own power, it teleports next to you 50% of the time unless it has less than 7 HP. If the monster is a Rider and you are trying to teleport it, it will be placed next to you ¹²⁄₁₃ of the time.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Any monster with teleport control (tengu, the Wizard of Yendor, and erinyes in some cases) will respond to you trying to teleport them by teleporting next to you 12/13 of the time, just like with the Riders.

Messages

A mysterious force prevents you from teleporting!

You are on a non-teleport level.

You feel disoriented for a moment.

You would have teleported, but it failed because you are carrying the Amulet of Yendor.

Sorry...

You chose an unteleportable destination with teleport control.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

The following two messages are added.

You materialize in a different location!

You teleported to a different space on your level.

You materialize in the same location!

You teleported to your current space.

See also

• Level teleport
• Teleport control
• Non-teleport level

References

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

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.