Alignment

Religion in NetHack
priests alignment alignment record altars atheism anger gods sacrifice prayer turn undead

Alignment in NetHack is a trichotomy: lawful, neutral or chaotic. The following things have an alignment:

• Monsters
• Altars
• Quest artifacts
• Artifact weapons
• Dungeon branches
• Your character
  • Additionally, your character has an alignment record

Altars to Moloch are considered unaligned - that is, not lawful, neutral or chaotic. Additionally, some artifact weapons are non-aligned. This means they express no preference for the alignment of their wielders, not that they are in some way allied to Moloch.

The interactions between objects of different alignments are many and varied. Two things are considered co-aligned when their alignments are the same, and cross-aligned when they are different.

Your alignment

You choose your alignment at the beginning of the game. It can be changed by wearing a helm of opposite alignment, or by sacrificing at a cross-aligned altar under certain circumstances.

Lawful

Advantages

• Easy access to Excalibur
• More peaceful monsters in the Gnomish Mines
• Nasties such as titans and golden nagas will be peaceful
• Only way to play Knights and Samurai
• Grayswandir

Disadvantages

• The mysterious force is harsher

Neutral

Advantages

• Best choice of artifacts to wish for
• All alignments available with a helm of opposite alignment

Chaotic

The chaotic alignment consists of players who aim for convenience and care not for order.

Every elf is chaotic.

Even the priest(ess) of Moloch is chaotic. You might expect such a person to be unaligned as Moloch is, but apply a stethoscope and check. The Wizard of Yendor is also chaotic.

Advantages

• An elf might be a difficult race to play, but much of the best weapons and armour in the game is elven, and elves start the game with knowledge about them. Every elf is chaotic, so if you want to play as one, you will be that alignment. The best common dagger is an elven dagger, and like other elven items it is wooden so it never rusts.
• There is no alignment penalty if a chaotic player murders another of its own race or shoplifts. Unlike lawful and neutral characters, chaotic adventurers simply need not worry about such things. Chaotic players can even attack peaceful monsters if they so choose.
• Chaotic adventurers can even sacrifice corpses of their own race on altars; lawful and neutral characters do not act in such manners, so there is less available for them to sacrifice. When a chaotic player sacrifices in this manner, the chaotic god sometimes dispatches a peaceful unique demon to the altar, one less demon to fight in Gehennom.
• Lawful characters like social settings and orderly group activity, while chaotic characters prefer individual action. Remember that NetHack is a one-player game. NetHack is best suited for chaotic players, especially as chaotic players can own pets just as well as lawful and neutral players can. (Though in SLASH'EM, a lawful god will sometimes dispatch a tame monster to defend a lawful player who prays while having low hit points.)

Monster alignment

A monster's alignment can determine whether it is peaceful or not towards you.

White, gray, and black unicorns are lawful, neutral and chaotic respectively. Your god expects you to respect co-aligned unicorns and destroy cross-aligned ones.

Altar alignment

Co-aligned altars can be used to pray and offer things to your god. Cross-aligned altars can be converted, but this is not always possible if there is an attendant priest.

Artifact alignment

See also: Intelligent artifacts

Most artifacts have an alignment. If the artifact is not intelligent, then you have only a 1/4 chance of being blasted if you have a different alignment from the artifact or have negative alignment (these two criteria not applying for unaligned artifacts), or are in the form of something the artifact specially attacks; damage is 4d4 (2d4 if you have magic resistance). In any case, you will be able to use the artifact.

Dungeon alignment

Branches of the dungeon can be aligned in the sense that monster generation in that branch is biased towards monsters of that alignment. For example, the Gnomish Mines is lawful, while Vlad's Tower is chaotic.

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