Blindness

Blindness is an inability to see. If you lack telepathy, this makes it very dangerous to move around, because you could inadvertently kill your pet or blunder into a peaceful monster. If you have telepathy, though, blindness can be quite useful as it enables you to see all monsters with brains on the level. Intrinsic telepathy is only active when you are blind; extrinsic telepathy will work like intrinsic telepathy when you are blind.

Being blind has the beneficial "side effects" of protecting against Medusa and pyrolisks, as well as any other monster with a gaze attack.

Ways to be blinded

• Drink a potion of blindness. This is not recommended.

• Wearing a blindfold or a towel. If the blindfold or towel is cursed and you cannot remove it, you have an increased chance of success when praying for its removal, as this is considered a major problem.

• Being attacked by a yellow light or raven (preventable by wearing a blindfold or towel)

• Eating rotten food (one possible outcome)

• Being hit by a wielded or thrown cream pie (you can also apply one to yourself to cause the same effect)

• Applying an expensive camera at yourself

• Being zapped by a wand of lightning

• Engraving with a wand of lightning

• Fighting an aligned priest and having them blind you ("Scales cover your eyes!")

Inflicting blindness

A blind enemy will move and attack erratically and are much less dangerous, especially if you can keep moving. There are six main ways to inflict blindness.

• Apply an expensive camera. The tourist relies on this to survive early levels. Other adventurers tend to find them in the Gnomish Mines, where they may appear either in a cavern level or the Minetown hardware store. This will also cause enemies to flee, and is the only thing that will make the Riders flee from you.

• Throw a potion of blindness. This effect is much briefer than when quaffing.

• Zap a wand of lightning. Blinding is a secondary effect.

• Break (apply) a wand of light or lightning.

• Throw a cream pie. A run in with Keystone Kops allows you to really stock up.

• Polymorph yourself or your pet into a creature with a blinding attack.

Curing blindness

There are a few ways to cure intrinsic blindness.

• You can wait for it to heal - this can take a few turns if the blindness was caused by eating rotten food or being hit by a potion of blindness, but will take many hundreds of turns if you quaffed a potion of blindness.

• Apply a unicorn horn.

• Eat a carrot.

• Cast a spell of cure blindness or extra healing.

• Drink a potion of extra healing, potion of full healing or non-cursed potion of healing.

• Praying to your god may help, but be aware that blindness is only considered a minor problem.

Extrinsic blindness, such as getting hit in the face with a cream pie, can be cured by wiping your face using the #wipe command or applying a towel, or removing whatever it is that is blinding you (a blindfold for example). Having a cursed blindfold or towel stuck to your face is considered a major problem, so if it is safe to pray, your god is likely to help you out of this predicament.