Carrot
A carrot is a type of comestible that appears in NetHack.
Carrots are vegan and considered treats for herbivores; they grant 50 nutrition points and can be used to cure blindness that is not caused by a cream pie.[1] Blinded pets also consider carrots a 'treat', and will eat them to cure their own blindness regardless of diet.[2][3]
Generation
All Knights start the game with 10-20 uncursed carrots.
Strategy
Any character planning to keep herbivorous pets may want to keep carrots they find on-hand. Knights in particular should not eat their starting carrots on a whim unless curing blindness - vegetarian food is fairly scarce in the dungeon, making them ideal for keeping the starting pony fed.
History
Carrots first appear in Hack 1.0.
Origin
The carrot is a root vegetable that is typically orange in color; various other color cultivars exist, and all of them are domesticated forms of the wild carrot native to Europe and Southwestern Asia. The plant is believed to have originated in Persia and been originally cultivated for its leaves and seeds. While the most commonly eaten part of the plant is the taproot, although the stems and leaves are also eaten.
The use of carrots to cure blindness originates from the real life rumor that the vitamin A in carrots helps improve your vision, as alluded to by the encyclopedia entry - while vitamin A and other nutrients from carrots do play some role in eye health, the benefits were exaggerated to the point of propaganda being spread about "night vision" during the Second World War.[4]
Encyclopedia entry
In World War II, Britain's air ministry spread the word that
a diet of these vegetables helped pilots see Nazi bombers
attacking at night. That was a lie intended to cover the real
matter of what was underpinning the Royal Air Force's successes:
Airborne Interception Radar, also known as AI. ... British
Intelligence didn't want the Germans to find out about the
superior new technology helping protect the nation, so they
created a rumor to afford a somewhat plausible-sounding
explanation for the sudden increase in bombers being shot down.
... The disinformation was so persuasive that the English public
took to eating carrots to help them find their way during the
blackouts.
References
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.1, line 2166
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.1, line 230: 'eyes' is used in line 348 to cure blindness
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.1, line 822
- ↑ Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Vitamin A and Carotenoids
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.1. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-361}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
