Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance allows you to intermittently map an area of the dungeon around you, showing elements such as corridor walls and stairs.

Effects

When the effects of clairvoyance occur, a 19×11 region around you is mapped and revealed. Like magic mapping, the map will remain unlit and will not reveal secret doors or traps. As of NetHack 3.6.2, clairvoyance will also reveal objects (but not their appearances) and mark unseen monsters as I in the affected area. Also, having intrinsic or extrinsic clairvoyance allows you to cast the spell of clairvoyance as if you were Skilled in divination spells.

If you have clairvoyance as an intrinsic or extrinsic, the effect of mapping the area around you is not constant, but will occur with 50% probability every 15th turn.

Gaining clairvoyance

Intrinsic

You can only ever get intrinsic clairvoyance temporarily, for a random length of between 500 and 999 turns, by donating between xplevel*200 and xplevel*400 to an aligned priest and it is at more than one-third of your visible gold. This action stacks and is an important strategy in speed running. By losing levels (see drain for gain) a character can get clairvoyance for only 200 gold by stashing all gold in a sack and removing 200 at a time and donating it. For 1000 gold you can get between 2500 and 5000 turns of clairvoyance which means you can get enough clairvoyance to last the rest of the game which makes exploring Gehennom much faster.

Extrinsic

Clairvoyance can only be obtained as an extrinsic by wearing a cornuthaum as a wizard, or by carrying the Amulet of Yendor.

Single-use

You can get a single application of clairvoyance by casting the spell of clairvoyance, which is a level 3 divination spell. It has slightly different effects when cast at Skilled or above; see the spell's page for details.

Strategy

Clairvoyance is similar to a limited form of magic mapping; however, clairvoyance will reveal the map surrounding you on levels that cannot be mapped by magic mapping, such as the Valley of the Dead. A common strategy is to obtain intrinsic clairvoyance from an aligned priest just prior to entering the Valley and Gehennom beneath it.

Variants

DynaHack, FIQHack and GruntHack

DynaHack, FIQHack and GruntHack have the clairvoyance object property that is applicable to armor.

SLASH'EM

Besides these sources of clairvoyance, there is also the potion of clairvoyance. A blessed potion will give you intrinsic clairvoyance for between 100 and 149 turns; an uncursed potion gives you a single application of clairvoyance.

See Also

• Astral vision

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.

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