Intrinsic protection

Intrinsic protection is an intrinsic property which grants a bonus to AC independent of any armor or other equipment you may be wearing. It is commonly known as divine protection, as it is typically gained and lost via divine intervention.

Gaining intrinsic protection

You can gain one or more points of intrinsic protection by doing any of the following:

• Donating to a peaceful aligned priest of any alignment in a temple.
  • Donate at least 400 but less than 600 times your XL; guaranteed up to 9 points of intrinsic protection, unlikely after that.
• As a favor from prayer.
  • Luck must be at least 6.
• Eating a ring of protection.
  • Gain intrinsic protection equal to the ring's bonus if successful.

Losing intrinsic protection

All of your intrinsic protection is lost if you do any of the following:

• Incite any god to smite you. This includes:
  • Praying when it is unsafe to pray.
  • Sacrificing a former pet.
  • Sacrificing a coaligned unicorn.
  • Sacrificing any unicorn on an altar of the same alignment as the unicorn.
  • (If not chaotic) Sacrificing a member of your own race.
  • Offering an identified cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor on your own high altar in the Astral plane.
• Kill a coaligned priest.
• Put on or remove a helm of opposite alignment.
• Convert yourself to another alignment through sacrifice.
• Have your protection stolen by a gremlin.

Strategy

The ability to purchase protection from priests makes donations one of the most common uses for gold, especially gold in very large quantities.

As unholy water prayer is one of the means of losing intrinsic protection, if you intend to pray to make unholy water, it is a good idea to do so before purchasing protection.

The protection racket meta-strategy is an approach to purchasing a great deal of divine protection via donating to the priest in Mine Town early in the game.

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 Information on this page may be out of date.

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