Bad Idea

Many things in NetHack are a Bad Idea, although that often only becomes apparent after your demise, which may well be YASD.

A few bad ideas include:

• Genociding @
• Pasting stuff into Nethack unless you are sure what is in the clipboard.
• Casting force bolt while in a shop.
• Picking up items in shops while afflicted with teleportitis.
• Teleporting the Riders' corpses.
• Eating "just one more" giant corpse/royal jelly.
• Eating old (rotten) corpses.
• Strength training by overburdening your self.
• Wielding a cockatrice corpse while burdened and deciding to go down stairs.
• Walking around with a cockatrice corpse wielded. Levitation is safe, as long as you don't pass over a sink.
• Walking around while blind, without gloves. Note that if you press "m" before taking each step, your character will not attempt to feel the objects on the square where he or she is standing, making this a safer way to cross a square with a cockatrice or chickatrice corpse. A source of levitation is a more convenient way to deal with this problem.
• Breaking a drawbridge while standing adjacent to it.
• Having your wand of wishing in your main inventory instead of a bag.
• Putting a wand of cancellation, a bag of tricks, or another bag of holding into your bag of holding.
• Sacrificing at a cross-aligned altar while having bad alignment record.
• Killing a co-aligned unicorn, breaking a mirror, et cetera...
• Killing a nymph with a force bolt.
• Killing the Wizard of Yendor before collecting seven candles for the invocation ritual.
• Picking up non-identified gray stones (identification is done by first kicking and then rubbing the stone on an iron object).
• Reading a scroll of genocide while confused.
• Throwing your highly enchanted metal daggers at a metallivore.
• Slowly engraving more than 1 letter of Elbereth at once while under attack.
• Using fountains and sinks at a low experience level.
• Kicking doors when there is a store somewhere on the floor, even if the doors are locked. Note that a shopkeeper's locked door will always have the phrase "Closed for inventory" written in the square outside of the door. If you can pick the lock, the shopkeeper will not be angered if you unlock and enter the store.
• Letting that monster hit you just one more time before you heal yourself.
• Saving the game in the middle of a wish or genocide selection.
• Attempting to mount a pony before leveling at least once.
• Offering the corpse of a werecreature at an altar as a non-chaotic human character.
• Eating werecreatures, particularly as a human.
• Walking around in the Gnomish Mines before acquiring poison resistance.
• Killing your quest leader.
• Killing your quest guardians (probably).
• Eating kittens (or at least, you feel it was).

See also

• Lessons learned the hard way

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