Altar
| Religion in NetHack |
|---|
An altar, represented by an underscore (_), is a place where you may worship gods. An altar with an aligned 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 (except as mimics), 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 (unless it was destroyed in a bones file).
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. You can not detect whether an item is blessed or cursed if you are hallucinating, as you will not be able to distinguish between amber flashes and black flashes; you can however still identify uncursed items as there will not be a flash at all.
If you #sit on, engrave, or kick an altar, it will lower your luck. If the altar is of your alignment, it will reduce Wisdom by one point instead.
If you (or a monster) [z]ap a wand of digging downwards, you get the message "The digging ray is ineffective" and nothing further happens. However, if you break a wand of digging or apply a drum of earthquake while standing on an altar, it will be destroyed (unless it is an high altar).
Standing on an altar scares V vampires as if you were standing on Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster[1]. Any altar will have this effect, including an altar to Moloch.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR GAY FUCKING WIKI
Contents
Making water holy/unholy
If you drop one or more 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.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR GAY WIKI
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. In addition, it is not possible to sacrifice monsters unless you are holding them, to stop you sacrificing the riders.
To correctly ascend, one must #offer the real Amulet of Yendor (held in main inventory, NOT dropped on the altar) at the altar of your alignment. Determining the alignment of the altar requires standing on its location and using the : look command. The ; farlook command does not give information about a high altar's alignment. Another method for detecting the correct altar is noticing if you are given sanctuary; that is, all monsters, other than the Riders, aligned priest, and angelic beings, will not be allowed to enter and cannot attack you with melee attacks.
Encyclopedia entry
Altars are of three types: 1. In Temples. These are for Sacrifices [...]. The stone top will have grooves for blood, and the whole will be covered with _dry brown stains of a troubling kind_ from former Sacrifices. [ The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones ]
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?
[ Lays of Ancient Rome, by Thomas B. Macaulay ]
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.[2] As in vanilla, the god will yell, "Thou shalt pay for thy indiscretion!"[3] Players with a high luck will have fewer minions dispatched against them.
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.[4] 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.[5]
Source code references
- ↑ Source:monmove.c#line129
- ↑ pray.c#line1396 in 3.4.3, src/pray.c#line1606 in S 0.0.7E7F2
- ↑ minion.c#line128
- ↑ src/pray.c in S 0.0.7E7F2
- ↑ src/pray.c in brass 040923
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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
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