T-shirt

[   T-shirt
Appearance	T-shirt
Slot	shirt
AC	0
Special	readable shop markup
Base price	2 zm
Weight	5
Material	cloth

A T-shirt is a type of shirt that appears in NetHack. It is made of cloth, and is nearly identical to the Hawaiian shirt.

Generation

The T-shirt makes up 0.2% of all randomly generated armor.

Description

While worn, a T-shirt provides no base AC.

T-shirts can be read, which breaks the illiterate conduct and displays a message describing the text on the shirt - this message is dependent on the item's object ID, so it will remain consistent for any one T-shirt, and the text will be degraded if the shirt is eroded.

Entering a shop with a visible worn T-shirt will cause the shopkeeper to charge an extra ¹⁄₃ markup and buy things for ¹⁄₃ of the base price.

T-shirt texts

The possible messages are:

• "I explored the Dungeons of Doom and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!"
• "Is that Mjollnir in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
• "It's not the size of your sword, it's how #enhance’d you are with it."
• "Madame Elvira's House O' Succubi Lifetime Customer"
• "Madame Elvira's House O' Succubi Employee of the Month"
• "Ludios Vault Guards Do It In Small, Dark Rooms"
• "Yendor Military Soldiers Do It In Large Groups"
• "I survived Yendor Military Boot Camp"
• "Ludios Accounting School Intra-Mural Lacrosse Team"
• "Oracle(TM) Fountains 10th Annual Wet T-Shirt Contest"
• "Hey, black dragon! Disintegrate THIS!"
• "I'm With Stupid -->"
• "Don't blame me, I voted for Izchak!"
• "Don't Panic"
• "Furinkan High School Athletic Dept."
• "Hel-LOOO, Nurse!"
• "=^.^=",
• "100% goblin hair - do not wash"
• "Aberzombie and Fitch"
• "cK -- Cockatrice touches the Kop"
• "Don't ask me, I only adventure here"
• "Down with pants!"
• "d, your dog or a killer?"
• "FREE PUG AND NEWT!"
• "Go team ant!"
• "Got newt?"
• "Hello, my darlings!"
• "Hey! Nymphs! Steal This T-Shirt!"
• "I <3 Dungeon of Doom"
• "I <3 Maud"
• "I am a Valkyrie. If you see me running, try to keep up."
• "I am not a pack rat - I am a collector"
• "I bounced off a rubber tree"
• "Plunder Island Brimstone Beach Club"
• "If you can read this, I can hit you with my polearm"
• "I'm confused!"
• "I scored with the princess"
• "I want to live forever or die in the attempt."
• "Lichen Park"
• "LOST IN THOUGHT - please send search party"
• "Meat is Mordor"
• "Minetown Better Business Bureau"
• "Minetown Watch"
• "Ms. Palm's House of Negotiable Affection -- A Very Reputable House Of Disrepute"
• "Protection Racketeer"
• "Real men love Crom"
• "Somebody stole my Mojo!"
• "The Hellhound Gang"
• "The Werewolves"
• "They Might Be Storm Giants"
• "Weapons don't kill people, I kill people"
• "White Zombie"
• "You're killing me!"
• "Anhur State University - Home of the Fighting Fire Ants!"
• "FREE HUGS"
• "Serial Ascender"
• "Real men are valkyries"
• "Young Men's Cavedigging Association"
• "Occupy Fort Ludios"
• "I couldn't afford this T-shirt so I stole it!"
• "Mind flayers suck"
• "I'm not wearing any pants"
• "Down with the living!"
• "Pudding farmer"
• "Vegetarian"
• "Hello, I'm War!"
• "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"
• "It is easier to curse the darkness than to light a candle"
• "rock--paper--scissors--lizard--Spock!" (The Big Bang Theory)
• "/Valar morghulis/ -- /Valar dohaeris/" (Common phrases from A Song of Ice and Fire series)

Strategy

Like the Hawaiian shirt, T-shirts are generally employed to enchant as an additional source of AC, but are best reserved until after a character obtains protection from polymorph traps - worn torso armor will be destroyed if they polymorph into a large form. In the early game, scrolls of enchant armor may be best reserved for other armor such as a helm, boots or gloves. T-shirts are typically most worth enchanting once a character has magic resistance, as well as solid enough enchantment on their other armor.

For characters not averse to polypiling, shirts are fairly easy to obtain with a wand of polymorph (or the polymorph spell for powerful enough casters) and a large pile of armor, which is most easily obtained in the Castle or Fort Ludios. The Castle's armor storeroom in particular has a 13.13% chance of containing either a Hawaiian shirt or a T-shirt. The random general store items in Orcus Town may also have a T-shirt among them.

History

The T-shirt first appears in NetHack 3.2.0. From this version to NetHack 3.3.1, there were only three possible T-shirt messages:

"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, but all I got was this lousy T-shirt"

The normal T-shirt message.

"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, and never did any laundry..."

You are hallucinating and currently wearing the T-shirt.

"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, and couldn't find my way out"

As above, but you are not currently wearing the T-shirt.

Many extra T-shirt messages are added in NetHack 3.4.0 from a patch by Scott Bigham, and several more are introduced in NetHack 3.6.0 and NetHack 3.6.1.

Variants

The November NetHack Tournament

In The November NetHack Tournament, the reward for completing the DevTeam Office quest is the Really Cool Shirt, an artifact T-shirt that acts as a luck item while carried and provides warning while worn. Reading the Really Cool Shirt has a ⁴⁹⁄₅₀ chance of producing a random rumor according to its beatitude: true only if blessed, false only if cursed, or either if uncursed.

The deathmatch opponent will have a blessed +4 or +5 erodeproof T-shirt if they represent a non-Tourist character that did not have a worn shirt.