Nutrition

In NetHack, nutrition is essential for keeping your character alive. Too little and you starve; too much and you choke.

Sources of nutrition

Comestibles are the main source of nutrition. eating increases your nutrition (equivalently, decreases your hunger) by a set amount. For example, a non-rotten food ration grants 800 units of nutrition (rotten food only gives 50% of its usual nutrition). If polymorphed into a metallivore, metal objects can also be eaten for nutrition.

Wraith corpses can be eaten, but provide zero nutrition. It is nevertheless possible to choke on them (see below).

A player starts with 900 nutrition points.

Hunger status

On the status line, your hunger is displayed if you are anything other than "Not hungry". The following table lists the hunger states and the corresponding amount of nutrition remaining.

Nutrition	Hunger
2000 or more	Oversatiated
1000 to 1999	Satiated
150 to 999	Not hungry
50 to 149	Hungry
0 to 49	Weak
Below zero	Fainting
Below minimum	Starved

The minimum in the table above is −100 − (10×Con). For a Con:18 character, that's −280.

You can choke if you eat while satiated, and you will not reliably get a warning. If your nutrition is 1500 or more, you may get a warning that you're having a hard time getting the food down. If you continue to eat, you risk choking to death. Sometimes NetHack will give you an option to "Stop eating? (yn) <y>". If you continue to eat, you risk choking. If you select y and eat something else, you will usually immediately choke.

If you consume any food while oversatiated, even a zero-nutrition wraith corpse, you choke, killing you instantly.

In precise terms, you choke if and only if you would be oversatiated after the meal and you were already satiated before the meal, or if you eat an amulet of strangulation. Here, "before the meal" refers to before this individual food item, i.e., interruptions do not make a meal unsafe as long as you do not eat something else in between and you do not save and restore the game.

You cannot choke to death if you possess magical breathing—instead you will "stuff yourself, then vomit voluminously", losing 1000 points of nutrition. This also has a 1/20 chance of occurring anyway when you would otherwise choke but do not possess magical breathing. Magical breathing can be gained extrinsically from the amulet, intrinsically through eating the amulet or else polymorphing yourself into a creature with unbreathing.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

As of commit 50084750, the hunger property also prevents you from choking on food when oversatiated by making you vomit, except that instead of draining 1000 nutrition, you are left with 60 nutrition.

While weak, your strength is decreased and abused. While fainted, you are vulnerable to attack as if paralyzed. Being satiated abuses dexterity, as well as wisdom for Monks. Monks also exercise wisdom while weak from hunger, but still abuse strength as with other roles. Being "not hungry" (but not "satiated") exercises constitution.

When a Valkyrie, a Wizard, or an elven hero of any class becomes weak, the player will receive the message "(Valkyrie|Wizard|Elf) needs food, badly!" This is a reference to the series of Gauntlet dungeon crawler arcade games, where food is usually a far more pressing issue since it is a healing item; the games' narrator will boom the same message when your player is dying.

Losing nutrition

Every turn you lose one point of nutrition, unless you are wearing a ring of slow digestion or are polymorphed into an inediate monster. If you are asleep or fainted, there is only a 10% chance this point of nutrition will be lost.

In addition, the following conditions also result in losing points of nutrition:

• Every twenty turns, you lose one point of nutrition:
  • For each ring you wear, unless it is a chargeable ring and is at +0; the turn that this is calculated is different for your left and right hands.
  • If you're wearing an amulet.
  • If you're carrying the Amulet of Yendor.
• Every even turn you lose one point of nutrition if:
  • You are generating conflict and this is not caused by an artifact
  • You have intrinsic or extrinsic hunger
• Every odd turn you lose one point of nutrition if:
  • You have regeneration and this is not caused by an artifact
  • You are stressed or worse

All of these sources stack, so it is possible to burn nutrition at up to 320% of the normal rate. Note that 'turn' refers to game turn, not movement turn. The nutrition is lost as the turn counter advances, not as you move.

Attacking a monster uses the same amount of nutrition you'd consume on a whole turn, in addition to the normal hungering. For this purpose, attempting to move into the same square as a monster counts as an attack, even if, e.g., the monster is a pet which you displace. Since NetHack 3.6.0, declining to attack a peaceful monster when prompted does not consume nutrition. The m command never incurs this extra hunger.

Jumping incurs a 1d25 hunger penalty, regardless of its source.

Spellcasting without hungerless casting or reduced-hunger casting (both of which are granted only to high-intelligence wizards) incurs a hunger penalty, unless the spell is detect food, which costs 0. The base penalty is ten times the level of the spell you're casting. Spellcasting with the Amulet of Yendor incurs an additional d(spell level * 4) hunger penalty (which is also affected by wizard hunger reduction).

Teleporting at will uses 100 nutrition; teleporting using a trap or the teleport away spell does not use any additional nutrition outside of the cost of the spell in the latter case.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

A +0 ring of protection now causes ring hunger if it is your only source of extrinsic protection. If you are wearing two rings of protection and the one on your left hand is +0, ring hunger applies to it, even if the right ring is charged. A meat ring or cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor no longer incurs extra hunger.

Nutrition and pets

All pets, except for inediate pets, require nutrition to stay alive, though 2–8 times less than the player, depending on its size. Carnivorous and omnivorous pets will generally kill enough monsters on their own to be able to live off the corpses of the monsters they kill. Herbivorous pets have a harder time, since the majority of monsters do not leave vegetarian corpses. However, fruit and vegetable items such as apples, carrots, melons, and so on provide a herbivorous pet with many more turns of nutrition than they provide to you. It is thus optimal to save these items for a herbivorous pet, if you have any, rather than consuming them yourself. Feeding also affects the tameness and apport of a pet.

500 turns after becoming hungry, a pet will temporarily lose two thirds of its max hp, become confused, and will be willing to eat some food it would not otherwise eat. Pets who run out of nutrition points completely (250 turns after becoming confused) will die if they are on the same dungeon level as you, and otherwise they will go feral. If the pet went feral while suffering from hit point reduction, the hit point reduction becomes permanent. If you leave their level before the hit point reduction, and only return to their level after they go feral, their hit points will not be reduced. Chatting with a pet often gives a clue about its nutrition level. If a pet is about to starve, and you have no way to feed it, one way to save its life is to abandon the dungeon level and come back later once you have a way of re-taming the pet. This works especially well with domestic animals, which are easy to tame. To preserve your pet's max hit points, leave the level before the pet becomes confused, and stay away until after it would starve.

If a hungry pet eats, it will first become not hungry, then receive nutrition; this applies even with food that gives zero nutrition, such as a wraith corpse.

Strategy

Starvation is a common cause of death during the early stages of the game. Here are some tips for maintaining a healthy caloric intake. This discussion concerns only quantitative aspects of nutrition; for a more sophisticated overview of the relative qualitative advantages of different types of food, see the article on food.

The most basic advice is, of course, to eat - always pick up and retain non-perishable comestibles where possible. Monster corpses are perishable, so when a monster dies, eat its corpse immediately if the corpse is safe to eat. Novice players often forget to eat corpses when the opportunity presents itself, and end up dying of starvation as a result. However, don't eat too much, as this may abuse dexterity and there is the risk of choking to death. You will also want to avoid overeating if you still lack some intrinsics that you'd like to get from eating corpses.

Your pet, if you have one, will often eat monster corpses before you have a chance to get to them. To mitigate this problem, stand next to the monster while your pet is fighting, and pounce on the corpse afterwards. This works best if you are fast or if you can whistle away your pets; you can also kill another nearby monster. Inediate pets will not cause this problem.

Once you reach either Minetown or Sokoban, you will most likely encounter a lot of food; Minetown often has a deli of some sort, and most randomly generated items in Sokoban are comestibles. Some players prefer to descend quickly to either destination for a lasting supply of food. Generally speaking, Minetown is easier to reach if you are playing a dwarf or a gnome, and Sokoban is easier otherwise.

If you have the stone to flesh spell, you can cast it on boulders to turn them into huge chunks of meat, which provide 2000 points of nutrition. Healers are guaranteed to start with this spell.

In an emergency, if you are not trying for an atheist conduct, you can pray while weak to restore your nutrition status, provided that it is safe to pray. Since all games start with an initial prayer timeout of 300 turns, this means that, unless you do something out of the ordinary (such as receiving a wish), you can always pray safely after 300 turns. However, prayer is a very useful tool, which you may want to save for other things.

The foodless article describes a number of the more obscure ways of gaining nutrition without consuming food.

History

Before NetHack 3.6.1, being fainted did not reduce energy consumption (only being asleep did), and to compensate, the nutrition threshold at which you starved to death was double its current value.

References

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