Egg
% 
| |
|---|---|
| Name | egg |
| Base price | 9 zm |
| Nutrition | 80 |
| Turns to eat | 1 |
| Weight | 1 |
| Conduct | {{{conduct}}} |
An egg in NetHack may be "just an egg" (presumably an ordinary unfertilised hen egg) or it may be the egg of a monster, in which case it might eventually hatch. When the egg hatches, the hatched monster may become your pet
For the purpose of conducts, eggs count as vegetarian but not vegan.
Note that eating eggs can be dangerous. They may be rotten, in which case you will vomit, or on the later levels they may be cockatrice eggs, which will turn you to stone if you eat them. If you are already satiated, you won't get a warning about eating an egg, even if it would choke you to death. It is safer to leave eggs around as food for carnivorous pets. (Because eggs break when thrown, they cannot be used to tame dogs or cats.)
If you polymorph into a female egg-laying monster, you can lay an egg with the #sit command, and when it hatches it will become your pet. A randomly generated dragon egg will also become your pet if you are carrying it when it hatches. If you are male, there is a 50% chance that any egg which hatches while you are carrying it will become your pet.[1] If an egg will hatch, it will do so after no less than 151 turns, and no more than 200 turns.[2][3] Therefore it may be useful to #name a found/created egg with the current turn. Winged gargoyles lay very few winged gargoyle eggs - most will be gargoyle eggs.
Cockatrice eggs are popular as projectiles that will petrify any stoning-susceptible monsters they hit (referred to as "grenades" in this role). When you throw an egg, there is a risk that it will miss its target and go to waste, so you may prefer to wield the egg. If using cockatrice eggs that you have laid yourself, note that there is a Luck penalty for breaking your own eggs[4]. There is no luck penalty for eating your own eggs.
Encyclopedia entry
But I asked why not keep it and let the hen sit on it till it
hatched, and then we could see what would come out of it.
"Nothing good, I'm certain of that," Mom said. "It would
probably be something horrible. But just remember, if it's a
crocodile or a dragon or something like that, I won't have it
in my house for one minute."
[ The Enormous Egg, by Oliver Butterworth ]
References
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
