NetHackWiki:Sandbox
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Introduction
An altar, represented by an underscore _, is a place where you may worship gods. Altars are either lawful, neutral, or chaotic. An altar with a priest in the same room is a temple.
Altars are located in temples or scattered randomly throughout the dungeons. The Valley of the Dead has an unaligned altar located in the temple of Moloch. Minetown is also guaranteed to have a temple altar.
Altars can be used to detect the BUC status of items. This is done by dropping the item onto the altar. A dark glow marks a cursed item and an amber glow a blessed one. You can not detect the BUC status if you are blind or hallucinating.
Sacrificing corpses
Altars of any alignment other than your own can be converted by #offering a fresh corpse to the gods. If you are lucky, the power of your god increases and the altar is converted. If you are unlucky, the altar may resist, or you might be converted to another alignment yourself. Trying to convert the altar in a temple will anger the priest.
You have to touch the corpses you are offering. This means that if you are going to sacrifice cockatrice corpses, you must be wearing gloves.
The tougher the monster you offer the more your god will appreciate it.
Sacrificing your own race
It is considered bad for a human or an elf to sacrifice corpses of their own race. Doing so will cause wisdom, luck, and alignment to be abused. However, chaotic characters can do this safely. Doing so will cause a peaceful demon lord to be summoned while luck and alignment are exercised.
Sacrificing unicorns
Sacrificing Unicorns is tricky. Offering a unicorn on an altar of its own alignment will cause bad things happen to you. If the altar was not aligned with you but the unicorn was, you will be converted to the alignment of that altar. Offering a unicorn of different alignment on the altar of your god is considered a good action. Other combinations convert the altar. The white unicorn is considered lawful, grey neutral, and black chaotic.
| Lawful Altar | Neural Altar | Chaotic Altar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
| Row heading 1 | Cell 2 | Cell 3 | |||
| Row heading A | Cell B | Cell C | White Unicorn | Cell 2 | Cell 3 |
| Grey Unicorn | Cell 2 | Cell 3 | |||
| Black Unicorn | Cell 2 | Cell 3 |
| × | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| 3 | 3 | 6 | 9 |
| 4 | 4 | 8 | 12 |
| 5 | 5 | 10 | 15 |
| Column heading 1 | Column heading 2 | Column heading 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Row heading 1 | Cell 2 | Cell 3 |
| Row heading A | Cell B | Cell C |
| abc | def | ghi |
| jkl | mno | pqr |
| stu | vwx | yz |
Praying
If you drop a potion of water or several potions of water onto the altar and #pray, the potions are converted into holy water if the altar was aligned with you and unholy water if the altar was not aligned with you. Normal prayer timeouts apply when praying on altars.
Praying on an altar may also make your god reward you by fixing your problems, such as lycanthropy, or with a spellbook, an artifact or an intrinsic. Praying on the altar of some other god will anger your god, decrease your luck, and you might be punished in some other way.
