Purse

Your purse or wallet is the implied (non-physical) item that acts as the slot used to hold the gold pieces in your open inventory, and what the game will refer to for any interactions involving any money on your person. The game uses both terms somewhat interchangeably; as such, the article will use the appropriate term based on the context and related messages.

The amount of gold in your purse appears on the status line; any gold stashed in a bag or other container is not included in the count.

Relevant player actions

You can display the amount of gold you have in your wallet at any time by pressing $.

Relevant monster actions

Leprechauns will approach you or run from you depending on the gold in your open inventory; if a leprechaun successfully hits you with gold in your purse, they will steal it and attempt to teleport away. The stolen gold will be added to the gold they were created with upon generation, and can be retrieved by killing them.

If a vault guard enters the vault while you are inside, and your answer is not one of Croesus, Kroisos or Creosote, you will be asked to drop all of the gold you are carrying; this includes gold you also have stashed in carried containers as opposed to just in your wallet. The guard will lead you out once you have done so, and will attack if you take too long.

Relevant items

One of the effects of reading a spellbook but failing to learn the spell, or randomly from sitting on a throne, is removing all the gold in your purse ("You notice you have no gold!").

Dipping an item in a fountain may occasionally cause you to lose some of the gold in your purse ("You lost some of your gold in the fountain!"), but no more than 10% of it.

Unlike leprechaun stealing, gold lost to thrones, fountains, and spellbooks is gone forever.

Strategy

When you are in situations where you might lose your gold, you can protect it by removing it from your purse. If you have a bag, you can hide your gold in there. You could also stash your gold into a chest or large box, or just drop or throw it on the floor. Note that leprechauns can still snatch gold from underneath your feet, if you are standing directly on it.

Since bribable demon lords only care about gold visible in your purse and will ask for an amount less than or equal to it, it may be worth carrying around a few gold pieces when you're about to encounter one, if you would prefer to pay them off.

Messages

Your wallet contains <x> zorkmid(s).

You used $ to check the gold in your open inventory.

Your wallet is empty.

As above, but you have no gold.

Your purse feels lighter.

A leprechaun hit you and stole some or all of the gold in your open inventory.

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-364}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.