Comestible

A comestible % is anything edible; it is food. There are several types of comestibles in NetHack. They are important because without a sufficient supply, you will die from hunger. You must eat food to survive, though less frequently when you wear a ring of slow digestion.

Note that the word edible does not imply that you should eat it. Some food is bad to eat. For example, some corpses are poisonous.

If you want to read about corpses specifically, see the corpse page.

List of comestibles

• prepared foods
  • rations
    • food rations
    • cram rations
    • C-rations
    • K-rations
    • tripe rations
    • lembas wafers
  • cream pies
  • fortune cookies
  • tins (see tinning kit, tin opener, spinach)
• produce
  • apples
  • oranges
  • bananas
  • sprigs of wolfsbane
  • pears
  • slime molds (the customizable fruit)
  • cloves of garlic
  • melons
  • carrots
  • eucalyptus leaves
• artificially created meat (by stone to flesh spell)
  • huge chunks of meat
  • meatballs
  • meat sticks
  • meat rings
• corpses
• eggs
• kelp fronds

Meat	COST	WGT	PROB	NUTR	NUTR/WGT	TIME
meatball	$ 5	1	0	5	5	1
meat ring	5	1	0	5	5	1
meat stick	5	1	0	5	5	1
egg	9	1	85	80	80	1
tripe ration	15	10	140	200	20	2
huge chunk of meat	105	400	0	2000	5	20
corpse	5	vary	0	vary	vary	vary
Fruits and Vegetables	COST	WGT	PROB	NUTR	NUTR/WGT	TIME
kelp frond	6	1	0	30	30	1
eucalyptus leaf	6	1	3	30	30	1
clove of garlic	7	1	7	40	40	1
sprig of wolfsbane	7	1	7	40	40	1
apple	7	2	15	50	25	1
carrot	7	2	15	50	25	1
pear	7	2	10	50	25	1
banana	9	2	10	80	40	1
orange	9	2	10	80	40	1
melon	10	5	10	100	20	1
slime mold	17	5	75	250	50	1
People food	COST	WGT	PROB	NUTR	NUTR/WGT	TIME
fortune cookie	7	1	55	40	40	1
candy bar	10	2	13	100	50	1
cream pie	10	10	25	100	10	1
lump of royal jelly	15	2	0	200	100	1
pancake	15	2	25	200	100	2
C-ration	20	10	0	300	30	1
K-ration	25	10	0	400	40	1
cram ration	35	15	20	600	40	3
food ration (gunyoki)	45	20	380	800	40	5
lembas wafer	45	5	20	800	160	2
tin	5	10	75	vary	vary	vary

Sources of food

• Some monsters have a chance of dropping a corpse.
• Sokoban often contains food.
• Antholes and beehives sometimes contain food.
• Ice boxes may contain up to 20 fresh corpses.
• A Horn of plenty dispenses a random food item or potion when applied
• Soldiers often carry C- or K-Rations, so places with a large concentration of soldiers (such as Fort Ludios) are a good place to find these rations.

Food strategy

Some adventurers don't carry enough food to the dungeon entrance. Recall from the Guidebook:

"In the morning you awake, collect your belongings, and set off for the dungeon. After several days of uneventful travel, you see the ancient ruins that mark the entrance to the Mazes of Menace. It is late at night, so you make camp at the entrance and spend the night sleeping under the open skies. In the morning, you gather your gear, eat what may be your last meal outside, and enter the dungeon..."

You packed enough food for "several days" of journey. However, some roles didn't think ahead and start the game with a small pile of 2 food rations, and some roles start with no food at all. Thus, one of the early goals of the game is to secure a food supply.

To stay alive, many players at the start of their dungeon exploration will eat any safe corpse, which "tastes terrible" but is not poisonous or harmful. When you kill a monster, they have a chance of leaving a corpse. It is common to find adventurers eating anything that their pet does not reach first (eating some corpses breaks the vegan or vegetarian conduct).

Good sources for food early on are the corpses of gnomes and dwarves in the Gnomish Mines (provided that you are not a dwarf or gnome in the first place, or are a cave(wo)man), and Sokoban.

A main food supply is the hives of ants and bees, somewhere below the Oracle. Some of these hives will contain one food item per square, which should yield a reasonable stack of food rations.

Even then, the supply is finite, so some players continue to eat monster corpses. Random Number God helpfully continues to provide them. Monster corpses may be stored for later use in tins using the tinning kit, or in ice boxes.

Should I eat dessert first?

When an adventurer is able to obtain several different types of comestibles in their inventory, the next question is:

"What should I eat first?"

Using the NUTR/WGT column in the table above, we see that lembas wafers are the most weight-efficient forms of nutrition in NetHack (excepting prayer, of course!), with royal jelly, pancakes and candy bars closely following the Elven treats. Therefore, the adventurer is generally advised to eat other foodstuffs first.

Cream pies and meatballs are particularly inefficient for travel, but they have other uses that may out-weigh (heh-heh) their low NUTR/WGT factor.

Tins weigh 10 and vary in nutrition, but only pureed monsters and spinach equal or exceed the NUTR/WGT of rations. So any unidentified tin should probably be eaten before any other food. (Plus you'd hope to get the benefits of spinach or floating eye corpses sooner than later.)

General order of consumption:

1. Tins
2. Meatballs, huge chunks of meat
3. Cream pies
4. Tripe (may make you sick!)
5. Fruits and Vegetables
6. Food rations, fortune cookies,
7. Candy bar
8. Pancakes and royal jelly
9. Lembas wafers

Of course, other factors in deciding the menu for today's meal can include the benefits conferred by eating each food (e.g. intrinsics, healing), the dietary needs of pets, and if your inventory slots are constrained because you don't have a container.