Ring of hunger
A ring of hunger is a type of ring that appears in NetHack.
Contents
Generation
9⁄10 of rings of hunger are generated cursed.
Wizards will never receive a ring of hunger as either of the two random rings in their starting inventory.[1][2]
Description
The ring of hunger conveys the hunger extrinsic, which causes you to burn nutrition very quickly; every even-numbered turn your nutrition is decremented, in addition to normal hunger and the ring hunger applied every 20 turns.[3]
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.
As of commit 50084750, hunger prevents you from choking on food when oversatiated by making you vomit, similar to magical breathing, except that instead of draining 1000 nutrition, you are left with 60 nutrition.Strategy
The ring of hunger is not an entirely useless ring, but is only actively worn in rare circumstances. A non-cursed ring of hunger can be used to make room for a meal consisting of several large corpses, such as those of various giants, if you do not have an amulet of magical breathing. Outside of this scenario, the ring is primarily used as polyfodder.
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 changes to the hunger property make the ring much more viable when eating several corpses for strength gain or other intrinsics.Identification
Dropping a ring of hunger into a sink while another item is present on that square produces a unique message and removes that item. It is recommended to have a junk item that you can place on the sink whenever testing rings for this reason.
History
The ring of hunger first appears in Hack 1.21, a variant of Jay Fenlason's Hack, and is included in the initial item list for Hack 1.0.
In NetHack 3.6.0 and earlier versions, including variants based on those versions, the ring of hunger could be worn to lower nutrition quicker while wearing a ring of sustain ability, followed by removing the latter ring once you are weak from hunger, then eating to raise strength by one point (since being weak from hunger would normally lower your strength by 1). This is no longer possible in NetHack 3.6.1.
Messages
- Suddenly, <item> vanishes from the sink!
- You dropped a ring of hunger down a sink while another item was on its square.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, a cursed ring of hunger named free action can be found within the Chamber of Junk in the Lawful Quest.
SpliceHack
In SpliceHack, a ring of conflict can be created at a furnace by combining a ring of hunger and a ring of aggravate monster.
