Conduct

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Conducts are various limitations players may set to themselves to make the game more challenging[1]. The game keeps track of your conducts and shows them at the end of the game. You may also see them any time by using the extended command #conduct.

Conducts only apply to actions in game; a Priest "should" believe in a god but does not automatically lose atheist conduct, and classes that begin the game with learned spells can play illiterate.

Official conducts

The "official" conducts are the conducts that the game tracks.

When you start the game, the list of conducts looks as follows: 

Voluntary challenges:

You have gone without food.
You have been an atheist.
You have never hit with a wielded weapon.
You have been a pacifist.
You have been illiterate.
You have never genocided any monsters.
You have never polymorphed an object.
You have never changed form.
You have used no wishes.

If you have configured your options to attempt the zen or nudist conducts, the following additional lines appear at the top of the list: 

You have been blind from birth.
You have been faithfully nudist.

Certain conducts (vegan, vegetarian, and artifact wishless) must be fulfilled if you have followed other conducts (for example, being foodless implies that you have been vegetarian). The game does not show these conducts as long as you are still following the stricter version.

Foodless

Main article: Foodless

Foodless means not eating anything at all. This includes sucking brains when polymorphed into a mind flayer, or digesting monsters when polymorphed into a monster with a digest attack.

Vegan

Vegans refrain from eating anything which comes from an animal. Vegans may eat:

  • food rations, cram rations, K-rations, C-rations and lembas wafers
  • melons, oranges, carrots, pears, apples, bananas, kelp, eucalyptus, garlic, wolfsbane, and user-defined fruit
  • corpses and tins of any monster represented by b, j, or F
  • tins of spinach

The only corpses from which a vegan may gain an intrinsic resistance (% chance when eaten) are:

When polymorphed into something with a digest attack, vegans may consume monsters that leave vegan corpses, as well as corpseless monsters such as ghosts and yellow lights, which are hardly even food. Additionally, vegans may eat jewelry.

Vegetarian

Vegetarians may, on top of vegan foods, eat:

All other comestibles break the conduct.

All of the food restriction conducts make it much harder to gain intrinsics, as the main source of intrinsics is eating corpses. When paired with other conducts such as polyselfless and/or atheist, it can make gaining some intrinsics impossible.

Atheist

An atheist hero is not involved with religion in any way. You must not drop any objects on an altar unless blind, #pray, #turn undead as a Priest or Knight, #offer to gods (with the exception of offering the Amulet of Yendor to complete the game),[2] or even #chat with priests. Atheists may, however, make use of holy or unholy water if they obtain some without praying. You may engrave on an altar to decrease Luck or wisdom, or destroy it with a wand of digging or a drum of earthquake.

4.0% of all winning accounts on NAO have an atheist ascension.

Most religious benefits can be replaced:

In absense of curse testing at an altar, keep in mind the difference between formally known BUC and informally known BUC, and the implications for stacking and (un)cursing.

An "uncursed scroll of enchant armor" and a "scroll of enchant armor named uncursed" WILL NOT STACK FOR BLESSING, unless you formally BUC the second one. Formal and informal BUC together give you 10 states to worry about. Don't indiscriminately fully identify items, to make sure your inventory stacks appropriately.

Items which are formally IDed are formally BUCed, but an item can be formally BUCed without being formally IDed, e.g. by dipping it in (un)holy water.

If the BUC of a formally BUCed item changes, you will know immediately (e.g. a lich curses it). If the item is merely informally BUCed, you will not get any warning. This makes spellcasting monsters and Rodney's harrassment particularly nasty for atheists. It is a good idea to formally BUC your unicorn horn, bag of holding, and luckstone. At least retest your unicorn horn after a fight with a cursing monster.

List of ways to BUC items without breaking atheist

Pacifist

Main article: Pacifist

A pacifist is a player who does not directly kill any monster. A pacifist may, however, use a wielded weapon if they take care not to kill the victim.

Never hit with a wielded weapon

Main article: Never hit with a wielded weapon

This is mostly self-explanatory. Throwing weapons, firing missiles and using wands is allowed. Hitting with other objects than weapons does not break this conduct. Thus you may very well use a cockatrice corpse as a weapon should you acquire one. Pick-axes, unicorn horns, and grappling hooks, however, do count as weapons, even though they are shown in the tool-category. Applying a bullwhip only breaks conduct if the target is not wielding a weapon. When trying to maintain a weaponless conduct, one should be very careful when wielding a pick-axe for digging.

Illiterate

Main article: Illiterate

Being illiterate means that you do not read or write anything. This includes scrolls, spellbooks and even fortune cookie messages and t-shirts. Scrolls of mail (e.g. from users viewing your game on public servers) also break the conduct (although this is a bug), so it is advisable to turn off the mail option when attempting to be illiterate (except on NAO, where this bug is fixed). Using a magic marker is also banned. Reading random engravings you may encounter does not break this conduct. Engraving anything but an x, such as Elbereth, also breaks this conduct.

Never polymorph an object

"Polyless" conduct means never causing an object to be polymorphed via spell, wand, or potion of polymorph. Polymorphing monsters does not break this conduct. You don't need to worry about polymorphing previously carried items dropped by the monster as a result of polymorphing; they will not be polymorphed.[3] However, there may be objects on the floor below the monster which you cannot see.

This conduct is comparatively easy: 42.3% of all winning accounts on NAO have a polypile-less ascension.

Never change form

"Polyselfless" conduct means never changing into another monster, including from lycanthropy. Turning into a pile of gold/orange by eating a mimic corpse also counts as of NetHack 3.6.0 or later. Becoming a new man/woman/orc/etc does not count as changing. (In NetHack 3.4.3, eating a mimic corpse did not break this conduct.)

This conduct is easy to break inadvertently by wandering into an unknown polytrap. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy: 73.5% of all winning accounts on NAO achieve it.

Genocideless

Genocideless conduct is pretty obvious; refrain from causing genocide. Reverse genocide does not break this conduct. (You may not kill a mail daemon, either.)

Fully 33.1% of all winning accounts on NAO achieve this conduct at least once.

Wishless, artifact wishless

Main article: Wishless

Two wishing-related conducts are tracked: wishing for anything and wishing for artifacts. If you wish for, say, a silver dragon scale mail, you still have the artifact-wishless conduct. However, if you wish for any artifact, you lose both conducts, regardless of whether you actually receive the artifact.

Zen

Main article: Zen

The zen conduct is being blind throughout the entire game. It is one of the most difficult conducts, and only a handful of people are known to have ascended zen games. In order for this conduct to be tracked in your game, you must edit your configuration file to enable the blind option.

The difficulty in zen comes in that it is like a mixture of other conducts with additional twists to make it even harder. Reading is impossible (though there are ways to make scrolls readable, and the Book of the Dead can be read when blind). You cannot use altars to find the beatitude of objects because you cannot see any flash. You also do not see what your objects look like by their material or color, so all potions are only shown as "a potion", wands as "a wand" and so on.

Nudist

Nudism means not wearing any armor throughout the game. Accessories like rings, amulets, lenses and blindfolds are permitted. Beginning the game with armor will automatically break the conduct, so in order to prevent this, turn on the nudist option in your configuration file.

Some success stories: Solidsnail, Ron Copeland.

Unofficial conducts

Main article: Unofficial conduct

Unofficial conducts are conducts that are not tracked by the vanilla version of the game. They are enforced by the players themselves only.

History

The blind option and nudist option were added in NetHack 3.6.0. Prior to 3.6.0, the zen and nudist conducts were unofficial but supported by certain variants.

In NetHack 3.4.3, eating a mimic corpse did not break the "polyselfless" conduct.

Candle considerations

When playing versions prior to 3.6.0, it is theoretically possible to explore the entire dungeon, and not come across seven candles. Izchak's lighting shop is guaranteed, but it is not guaranteed to have enough of them. If you have explored all branches of the dungeon and still not enough have been generated, you will have to obtain the remainder through one of the following means:

  • Wishing for them: violates wishless conduct
  • Polymorphing tools: violates polypileless conduct
  • Death drops: violates pacifist conduct

In effect, a lack of candles can make a game unwinnable without violating one of these three conducts.

This problem is solved by several variants. AceHack and NetHack 4 allow for gnomes to death-drop candles even if killed using a pet (and thus, spare candles are obtainable without breaking pacifist conduct); likewise, wax golems drop candles no matter how they die, in the variants in which they exist. GruntHack guarantees at least seven candles in the lighting shop. UnNetHack includes wax golems and sometimes generates gnomes with candles in their inventory.

NetHack 3.6.0 guarantees at least 8 candles at Vlad's Tower. Gnomes have a small chance of being generated with a candle, as well.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ See the Guidebook's section on conduct.
  2. ↑ The Astral Escape patch (download) lets atheist characters win the game without sacrificing the Amulet of Yendor.
  3. ↑ zap.c in NetHack 3.6.1, line 1799

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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.1. Information on this page may be out of date.

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