Altar

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

An altar, represented by an underscore (_), is a place where you may worship gods. An altar with a priest in the same room is a temple.

Altars and priests are co-aligned if they are of the same alignment as you, cross-aligned if they are of a different alignment. An altar is aligned if it has lawful, neutral or chaotic status. Altars of Moloch are unaligned. Unaligned altars do not appear in the main dungeon, only in Gehennom and some quests.

Altars not located in temples are scattered randomly throughout the dungeons. The Valley of the Dead has an unaligned altar located in the temple of Moloch. Minetown is also guaranteed to have a temple altar.

Altars can be used to detect the BUC status of items. This is done by dropping the item onto the altar. A black flash marks a cursed item and an amber flash a blessed one. You can not detect the BUC status if you are blind or hallucinating.

Sacrificing corpses

You can #offer fresh corpses to your god by sacrificing them on an altar. The greater the monster's difficulty, the more your god will appreciate it. You can offer partially eaten corpses but they are worth less. Since you have to touch the offering you must be wearing gloves when sacrificing cockatrice corpses. Additionally, sacrificing will tell you if your prayer timeout has expired.

If you are lucky, sacrificing on an altar of any alignment other than your own converts the altar and the power of your god increases. If you are unlucky, the altar may resist, or you might be converted to the altar's alignment yourself. Trying to convert the altar in a temple will anger the priest. Altars in Gehennom are unaligned and cannot be converted. Other unaligned altars in the game, found on some quests, however, can be converted.

Danger in sacrificing

Sacrificing can be dangerous in the following circumstances:

• Sacrificing at an altar of Moloch.
  • You gain 3 anger, lose 5 alignment, lose 2 wisdom, lose 5 luck, and get a negative effect.
• Sacrificing at an altar not of your alignment type (ie. Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic) when your alignment is negative.
  • This may convert you to the altar's alignment, you lose 3 luck, and your prayer timeout increases by 300. Note that if this happens before you have been admitted to the quest, the game will be unwinnable.
• Sacrificing at an altar not of your alignment type (ie. Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic) when your alignment is high and you are at least level 7.
  • This will convert the altar but may summon a minion of the altar's original god. The probability varies, but is never greater than 1/4. The probability is higher in NetHack brass and SLASH'EM, see #Variants.
  • Additionally, if you do this to convert an altar in a temple with attending priest, the priest will become angry at you.
• Sacrificing former pets.
  • You lose 3 alignment and gain the aggravate monster intrinsic.
• Sacrificing your own race if you are not chaotic.
  • You lose 5 alignment and 5 luck, and your god's anger increases by 3. On a chaotic altar, this will summon a hostile demon lord or other major demon. Other altars are converted to chaotic.
• Sacrificing a unicorn on an altar of its own alignment.
• Sacrificing a unicorn of your alignment.

Sacrificing your own race

If you are not chaotic, it is very bad to sacrifice corpses of your own race. Doing so will cause wisdom, luck, and alignment to be abused, and will anger your deity. However, chaotic characters can do this safely. It's a guaranteed method of converting a lawful or neutral altar to chaotic; if the altar is already chaotic, it will cause a peaceful demon lord to be summoned while luck and alignment are exercised.

Sacrificing unicorns

Sacrificing Unicorns is tricky because the altar's alignment, your alignment, and the unicorn's alignment all factor into the outcome. A unicorn's alignment is represented by its color. The white is lawful, grey neutral, and black chaotic. The points to remember are:

• Never sacrifice a unicorn on an altar of its own alignment.
• Never sacrifice a unicorn of your alignment.

The rest of the effects are summarized in the following table:

You	Unicorn	Altar	Effect
Lawful	White	Lawful	Bad
Lawful	White	Neutral	You become neutral
Lawful	White	Chaotic	You become chaotic
Lawful	Grey	Lawful	Good
Lawful	Grey	Neutral	Bad
Lawful	Grey	Chaotic	Altar becomes lawful
Lawful	Black	Lawful	Good
Lawful	Black	Neutral	Altar becomes lawful
Lawful	Black	Chaotic	Bad
Neutral	White	Lawful	Bad
Neutral	White	Neutral	Good
Neutral	White	Chaotic	Altar becomes neutral
Neutral	Grey	Lawful	You become lawful
Neutral	Grey	Neutral	Bad
Neutral	Grey	Chaotic	You become chaotic
Neutral	Black	Lawful	Altar becomes neutral
Neutral	Black	Neutral	Good
Neutral	Black	Chaotic	Bad
Chaotic	White	Lawful	Bad
Chaotic	White	Neutral	Altar becomes chaotic
Chaotic	White	Chaotic	Good
Chaotic	Grey	Lawful	Altar becomes chaotic
Chaotic	Grey	Neutral	Bad
Chaotic	Grey	Chaotic	Good
Chaotic	Black	Lawful	You become lawful
Chaotic	Black	Neutral	You become neutral
Chaotic	Black	Chaotic	Bad

Prayer timeouts and sacrifice

Sacrificing on an altar reduces your prayer timeout and you get a message indicating the status of your prayer timeout.

"You have a hopeful feeling."

You may not pray yet because your prayer timeout hasn't expired.

"You have a feeling of reconciliation."

You may pray because your sacrifice reduced your prayer timeout to zero.

"An object appears at your feet!"

You may not pray because you received a gift and your prayer timeout has been increased.

"You have a feeling of inadequacy."

You may not pray. Your god is still angry at you.

"<Deity> seems slightly mollified."

You may not pray. Your god's anger has been reduced but it is not yet zero.

"<Deity> seems mollified."

You may pray because your god's anger has been reduced to zero.

"You feel partially absolved."

You may not pray because your alignment was negative, and has been increased by the level of the corpse, to a maximum of zero. Sacrifice again to find if it's safe to pray.

"You glimpse a four-leaf clover at your feet."

Your luck was increased; you may pray.

"You think something brushed your foot."

Your luck was increased while blind; you may pray.

"You see crabgrass at your feet. A funny thing in a dungeon."

Your luck was increased while hallucinating; you may pray.

"Your sacrifice is consumed..." and no further message

You may pray

Making water holy/unholy

If you drop a potion of water or several potions of water onto an altar and #pray, the potions become blessed if the altar was aligned with you and become cursed if the altar was not aligned with you. This occurs regardless of whether the water was blessed or cursed before. Be aware that praying on a cross-aligned altar will anger your god, decrease your luck, and you might be punished in some other way.

Normal prayer timeouts apply when praying on altars.

Camping/scumming

It is possible to survive indefinitely on a level with an altar. Under normal circumstances, the need for food drives you to deeper unexplored levels. However, you can instead pray when weak, and sacrifice to reduce your prayer timeout back to zero. Doing this for extended periods of time can net you many death drops, and a collection of gifts from your god if your luck is substantially high. This is considered by some as degenerate. It is most effectively done with black puddings, which is known as "pudding farming".

High altars

The three altars on the Astral Plane and the altar in Moloch's Sanctum are considered to be high altars. They act largely as normal altars, but cannot be converted under any circumstances; doing so will cause the god in question to attempt to zap you and, failing this, will summon three minions to protect the altar.

Variants

Players of NetHack brass and SLASH'EM need to be wary when converting altars, because of the increased chance that the altar's original god will dispatch a minion against you. At experience level 7 or above with high alignment, the chance of a minion appearing after converting the altar is the same as vanilla. As in vanilla, the god will yell, "Thou shalt pay for thy indiscretion!" You'll see less minions with high luck.

Even worse, there's an additional chance of one or more minions appearing post-conversion. In SLASH'EM, if you are at experience level 4 or above, there is a chance that "You feel (god) is very angry at you!" and the god dispatches two minions. Afterwards, you still have the original chance of another minion, as above. Again, luck is a factor.

In NetHack brass, you will always receive "You feel (god) is very angry at you!" For all experience levels, at least one minion will appear. Two rolls are made: the first from 0 to 9, the second from 0 to 19. For each roll, if your level is less than the generated random number, a post-conversion minion is summoned. Luck is not a factor. Thus in brass it is very dangerous to convert altars. You might convert an altar at experience level one and have to flee to another level from one minion, or three minions if the game rolled 0 twice, thus giving you no use of the converted altar. If converting an altar at experience level 7 or above, you might still get the pre-conversion minion, forcing you to fight as many as four summoned minions.