Bloodthirsty
In NetHack, a weapon is described as bloodthirsty if it attacks peaceful and hostile monsters indiscriminately when you move towards them while wielding that weapon.
Contents
Description
Bloodthirstiness is solely associated with the artifact weapon Stormbringer, and is not formally defined with a singular flag in artilist.h - it is instead handled in mhitu.c code that pertains specifically to Stormbringer.
While you wield a bloodthirsty weapon, attempting to move into a monster's space will attack with that weapon regardless of whether or not it is peaceful, tame or hostile. This skips the confirmation prompt that normally comes up when you would attack in the direction of a non-hostile monster, automatically angering peaceful monsters and abusing tame ones.[1][2]
Messages
- Your bloodthirsty blade attacks!
- Stormbringer caused you to automatically attack a non-hostile monster.
Variants
Variants of NetHack may add other artifact weapons with bloodthirsty properties.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, it is possible to two-weapon two artifacts, and wielding Stormbringer in the offhand will cause you to automatically attack monsters as if it were wielded.
Messages
- The black blade will not be thwarted!
- Stormbringer caused you to attack a non-hostile monster while in the offhand.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, there are additional bloodthirsty artifact weapons, and all of them use the flag ARTI_BLOODTHIRSTY
in artilist.h:
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, Stormbringer behaves in the offhand as it does in SLASH'EM.