Potion of sickness
! 
| |
|---|---|
| Name | sickness |
| Appearance | random |
| Base price | 50 zm |
| Weight | 20 |
| Monster use | Will not be used by monsters. |
The potion of sickness is biologically contaminated fruit juice.
Quaffing effects
If you are a Healer then you are not subject to the following effects:
| Case | Effect |
|---|---|
| blessed | You lose one hit point. |
| uncursed | You lose up to ten hit points, and one of your statistics is randomly reduced. |
| cursed | You lose up to fifteen hit points, and one of your statistics is randomly reduced. |
Additionally, if you are hallucinating then you are shocked to your senses.
Despite the name, this potion does not cause the terminal condition known as sickness (which is instead caused by food poisoning or demonic attacks).
Messages
| Message | Reason |
|---|---|
| "Yecch! This stuff tastes like poison." | You always receive this message. |
| "But in fact it was mildly stale [fruit; default is slime mold] juice.)" | The potion was blessed. |
| "(But in fact it was biologically contaminated [fruit; default is slime mold] juice.)" | The potion was not blessed, but you have poison resistance, so you only lost one point from one of your statistics. |
| "Fortunately, you have been immunized." | You are a Healer, so you suffer no ill-effects (hallucination is still cured). |
| "You are shocked back to your senses!" | You were hallucinating, and were cured by the potion. |
| "You feel weaker." | Your strength was lowered. |
| "Your muscles won't obey you." | Your dexterity was lowered. |
| "You feel very sick." | Your constitution was lowered. |
| "Your brain is on fire." | Your intelligence was lowered. |
| "Your judgement is impaired." | Your wisdom was lowered. |
| "You break out in hives." | Your charisma was lowered. |
Identification
Potions of sickness can be identified by #dipping a unicorn horn into them, which turns them into fruit juice. Zapping with a wand/spell of cancellation also converts to fruit juice.
However, if neither of those are available, dipping a missile weapon into a potion of sickness should form a coating on it.
Strategy
You can #dip darts, arrows, shurikens and crossbow bolts into potion of sickness to coat the projectile weapon in poison. Poisoned weapons do d6 extra damage and have a 10% chance of instant kill for non-resistant monsters. However, the poison wears off 1/10 of the time. Unfortunately, in vanilla NetHack, this does not work on daggers, although it does in SLASH'EM.
