Conduct

Conducts are various limitations players may set to themselves in order to make the game more challenging. The game keeps track of your conducts and shows them at the end of the game. You may also see them any time by using the external command #conduct.

Official conducts

The "official" conducts are the conducts that the game tracks.

When you start the game, the list of conducts looks as follows:

Voluntary challenges:

You have gone without food.
You have been an atheist.
You have never hit with a wielded weapon.
You have been a pacifist.
You have been illiterate.
You have never genocided any monsters.
You have never polymorphed an object.
You have never changed form.
You have used no wishes.

Foodless

Main article: Foodless

Foodless means not eating anything at all. This includes sucking brains when polymorphed into a mind flayer, or digesting monsters when polymorphed into a monster with a digest attack.

Vegan

Vegans refrain from eating anything which comes from an animal. Vegans may eat:

• food rations, cram rations, K-rations, C-rations and lembas wafers
• melons, oranges, carrots, pears, apples, bananas, kelp, eucalyptus, garlic, wolfsbane, and user-defined fruit
• the corpse of any monster represented by b, j, or F.
• tins of spinach.

There are other monsters which are classified as vegan food, but which don't leave corpses.

Vegetarian

Vegetarians may, on top of vegan foods, eat:

• brown puddings, gray oozes and green slimes
• eggs, pancakes, fortune cookies, candy bars, royal jelly and cream pies
• wax candles (but not tallow candles)

All other comestibles break the conduct.

Atheist

Being an atheist means that you are not involved with religion in any way. You must not drop any objects on an altar, pray or offer to gods (with the exception of offering the Amulet of Yendor to complete the game), or even chat with priests. Atheists may, however, make use of holy or unholy water if they obtain some without praying.

Gaining the necessary alignment to join the quest may also prove difficult particularly to neutral players.

The worst problem for a late-game atheist character is likely to be the lack of divine protection. Holy water and an artifact weapon can be wished for or obtained in other ways, and Luck can be maximised by throwing valuable gems to a coaligned unicorn in lieu of sacrificing.

Christian Cooper's NetHack page includes a patch enabling atheist characters to win the game without sacrificing the Amulet of Yendor.

Pacifist

Main article: Pacifist

A pacifist is a player who does not get experience from killing any monster. A pacifist may, however, use a wielded weapon if they take care not to kill the victim.

Never hit with a wielded weapon

Main article: Never hit with a wielded weapon

This is mostly self-explanatory. Throwing weapons, firing missiles and using wands is allowed. Hitting with other objects than weapons does not break this conduct. Thus you may very well use a cockatrice corpse as a weapon should you acquire one. Pick-axes, unicorn horns, and grappling hooks, however, do count as weapons, even though they are shown in the tool-category. When trying to maintain a weaponless conduct, one should be very careful when wielding a pick-axe for digging.

Illiterate

Main article: Illiterate

Being illiterate means that you do not read or write anything. This includes scrolls, spellbooks and even fortune cookie messages and t-shirts. Scrolls of mail from users viewing your game also break the conduct, so it is advisable to turn off this option when attempting to be illiterate. Using a magic marker is also banned. Reading random engravings you may encounter does not break this conduct. Engraving anything but an x, such as Elbereth, also breaks this conduct.

Never polymorph an object

"Polyless" conduct means never causing an object to be polymorphed via spell, wand, or potion of polymorph. Polymorphing monsters does not break this conduct.

Never change form

"Polyselfless" conduct means never changing into another monster, including from lycanthropy. Becoming a new man/woman/orc/etc does not count as changing.

Genocideless

Genocideless conduct is pretty obvious; refrain from causing genocide. Reverse genocide does not break this conduct.

Wishless

Main article: Wishless

Two wishing-related conducts are tracked: wishing for anything and wishing for artifacts. If you wish for, say, a silver dragon scale mail, you still have the artifact-wishless conduct. However, if you wish for any artifact, you lose both conducts, regardless if the wish was granted.

Unofficial conducts

Main article: Unofficial Conducts

Unofficial conducts are conducts that are not tracked by the vanilla version of the game. They are enforced by the player themself only.

Celibate

Celibacy means not having sex. Having sex with an incubus or succubus may have positive effects such as gaining levels. Slash'EM officially tracks this conduct.

Nudist

Nudism means not wearing any armour throughout the game, except for the first turns during which you remove any starting armor.

Petless

The starting pet can be turned off from the options file.

Zen

The zen conduct is one of the most difficult conducts. It means wearing a blindfold through out the whole game. Only a handful of people are known to have ascended zen games and all of them have been zen samurai.

The difficulty in zen comes in that it is like a mixture of other conducts with additional twists to make it even harder. While blind, you may not read, though you may still use scrolls after you get the shopkeepers to name them to you (you only need to know those magic words). You cannot use altars to find the BUC status of an object because you do not see if the objects glow and what color. You also do not see how your objects look like by their material or color, so all potions are only shown as "a potion", wands as "a wand" and so on.

The zen conduct makes an exception for reading the Book of the Dead, as you cannot win the game without doing so.

Inventoryless

Inventoryless conduct requires you to not pick up or carry any items (with limited exceptions made only for actions required to win the game).

On turn one, remove all your armor and drop all inventory on the ground. You may not pick up any more items for the rest of the game, with the following exceptions:

• You may take your quest artifact to your quest leader. Since you won't be using it, you should just leave it with him. You should not wield, wear, apply, or invoke any properties of the artifact other than those it grants merely by being carried. Do not carry it any longer than necessary.
• You may take the Bell of Opening, the Candelabrum of Invocation, and the Book of the Dead from their previous owners' locations to the Vibrating Square. Again, do not use any of their powers except to perform the Invocation, and do not carry them any longer than necessary. Locating the Vibrating Square before collecting the items and bringing them straight down is an acceptable course of action.
• You may pick up candles. You should attach them to the Candelabrum at the first available opportunity.
• You may carry the Amulet of Yendor from Moloch's Sanctum to the Astral Plane.