Venom
Some monsters spit venom at you, which acts as a projectile attack. This takes the form of either:
- blinding venom, which blinds you as a cream pie when you are hit by it, or
- acid venom, which deals 2d6 acid damage.
Juiblex and black nagas spit acid venom; guardian nagas and cobras spit blinding venom.
Generation
Internally, objects for venom exist (to act as the projectiles), but they almost always disappear upon hitting anything. However, you can create them by polymorphing into the respective mosters and spitting venom into water with the #monster command, e.g., on Medusa's Island or any pool if you manage to hit it exactly. The permanent venom objects can then be picked up the usual way by diving or by levitating with a bullwhip. And of course, a wizard mode wish can create them.
Effects
They are listed under the inventory heading "Venoms", and both appear as "a splash of venom" when unidentified. When thrown, they will have the expected effects. A stack of them can also be quivered. Attempting to engrave with this item prompts a YAFM: "Writing a poison pen letter?"
They can be greased (even though science is unsure how that works), but that is not necessary as they are surprisingly robust and waterproof. Getting venom objects out of a container is tricky, because the menu code doesn't expect them to exist. You must either switch the menustyle option to traditional or use the #tip command.
Strategy
A fun use is to blind the Riders with them: it's easier than polymorphing into a guardian naga on the Astral Plane, and they weigh less than a stack of cream pies.
History
NetHack 3.4.3 would crash when listing the contents of a container with venom objects in it while generating the dumplog at the end of a game. In particular this meant you had to take all venom out of your bag of holding into your main inventory before ascending; otherwise, NetHack would segfault immediately before the ascension was counted as complete in the server stats.[1] This bug has been fixed since 3.6.0.
SLASH'EM Extended
Occasionally, acid/blinding venom objects can be randomly generated in Slash'EM Extended.
References
- ↑ incomplete dumplog due to NAO server segfaulting
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.1. Information on this page may be out of date.
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