Ring of hunger
The ring of hunger is a ring that appears in NetHack.
Contents
Identification
Dropping a ring of hunger into a sink produces the message, "Suddenly, <item> vanishes from the sink!" but only if there's another item on the sink. Otherwise, "You hear the ring bouncing down the drain pipe." This will not give you a chance to name the ring.
Effects
The ring of hunger conveys the hunger extrinsic, which causes you to burn nutrition very quickly; every even-numbered turn your nutrition is decremented. This in addition to normal hunger and the ring hunger every 20 turns.[1] It is usually generated cursed.
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, hunger prevents you from [choking on food when oversatiated by making you vomit, similar to magical breathing, except that instead of draining 1000 nutrition, you are left with 60 nutrition.Strategy
The ring of hunger is not an entirely useless ring, but would only be worn in rare circumstances. If, for example, one wanted to eat multiple giant corpses without an amulet of magical breathing, you might wear this ring to make more room for the meal. Another use is getting weak of hunger more quickly while wearing a ring of sustain ability to remove it and gain strength this way (no longer possible in NetHack 3.6.1). However the ring of regeneration and the ring of conflict also come with additional hunger while actually doing something useful, making this ring primarily used as polyfodder.
References
