Orc (starting race)

For other uses, see Orc.

The orc, o, is a playable race in NetHack. (You will see yourself as @, unless you have showrace turned on.) According to the guidebook:

Orcs are a cruel and barbaric race that hate every living thing (including other orcs). Above all others, Orcs hate Elves with a passion unequalled, and will go out of their way to kill one at any opportunity. The armor and weapons fashioned by the Orcs are typically of inferior quality.

Orcs are always chaotic. They can be Barbarians, Rogues, Rangers or Wizards.

Racial benefits and restrictions

Orcs have intrinsic infravision and poison resistance. Like Cavemen, they suffer no penalty for cannibalism, eating cats and dogs, and can easily eat tripe rations without becoming nauseous. As an orc, early-game orcish monsters are likely to be peaceful, and humans, gnomes and elves are always hostile.

From an attribute perspective, they are somewhat terrible; at their maximum they can have moderately high strength, average dexterity and constitution, but suffer in all other aspects—intelligence, wisdom and charisma. Each of their maximum attributes is lower than or equal to the corresponding maximum of every other race except elves. The following table outlines their maximum (unaided) attribute levels:

Character race	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
Orc	18/50	18	18	16	16	16

Starting equipment

All weapons or armor are replaced with their orcish equivalents where possible, meaning that the starting equipment of an orc is inferior to that of other starting races; however, orcish characters that are not Wizards start with two stacks of 1-2 random food items as a means of compensating for equipment quality. Lembas wafers or cram rations in both the initial inventory and the random food items are replaced with tripe rations. Orcish arrows shot from an orcish bow receive a +1 multishot bonus as well.

Strategy

For orcs, poison resistance not only means being able to eat poisonous corpses from monsters such as kobolds or giant spiders early in the game, but also less chance that you will suffer early-game instadeaths to certain traps or poisoned projectiles. The corpses of poisonous monsters and tripe rations provide more early sources of nutrition, though tripe cannot be used as a source of confusion later on.

In addition to being yet another available nutrition source, peaceful goblins and orcs that you meet early on can be used for same-race sacrifice to automatically convert cross-aligned altars and summon peaceful demon lords; subsequent orc sacrifices will summon peaceful foocubi, giving orcs an easy way to power up in the mid-to-late game.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, orcs have several more options for roles. An orc can play as a Barbarian, Flame Mage, Ice Mage, Necromancer, Ranger, Rogue, Undead Slayer, or Wizard. Beyond that, they are largely the same as Vanilla, good physical fighters, low mental stats and charisma, start with poison resistance, can commmit cannibalism without penalty, and start with inferior equipment. Unlike most races, do not gain any race-based techniques.

dNetHack

Orcs are substantially buffed, especially attribute-wise. They get increased constitution, dexterity, and strength on leveling up, which can exceed the racial maximum. Their basic max strength is changed to 18 flat to compensate. They get 1 added to each of their scores every three levels, for a total of +7 at level 21 (and all levels beyond). This bonus is lost upon level drain. In addition to being able to commit cannibalism, orcs gain an alignment bonus for eating orc corpses. ("You feel evil and fiendish!")

Orc attributes	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
Level 30, maximum stats	25	25	25	16	16	16
Level 1, maximum stats	18	18	18	16	16	16

Orcs also get intrinsic magic resistance at level 15. The message for this is "You feel magic resistant!" on level-up, "You feel magic-sensitive!" on level drain.

Orcs get 2 extra points of AC on level-up, for a total of -10 naked AC. This is calculated by the formula (2*level)/3, so a level 30 orc would get −20 AC from their natural armor, in addition to −7 AC at 25 dex, for a total of −17 naked AC.

Lastly, orcs get a level+2/3 to-hit and damage bonus and a (level/3)*10 bonus to carry cap. Along with gnomes, they get double the radius of low-light vision.