Spellbook of turn undead
| spellbook of + turn undead 
| |
|---|---|
| Appearance | random |
| Abundance | 1.62% |
| Base price | 600 zm |
| Weight | 50 |
| Turns to read | 48 |
| Ink to write | 30–59 |
| Spell type | clerical |
| Level | 6 |
| Power cost | 30 Pw |
| Direction | beam |
| Equivalent | wand of undead turning |
| Special for | knight |
Allows you to learn the turn undead spell. This is the knight's special spell. It produces a beam which works like that from a wand of undead turning.
Turn undead creates a beam which deals 1d8 damage to undead monsters it hits (doubled for a knight with the Magic Mirror of Merlin), and causes them to flee if they fail a resistance check.
The beam has a second, less obvious, but arguably more useful function in NetHack: unturn dead [1]. This will revive corpses and rejuvenate eggs.
Strategy
It is not at all useful as an offensive function due t its very high power cost. It can freshen corpses so that they are edible or sacrificable, but create monster (and the spellbook of create monster) does this better, as reviving and re-killing the monster runs the risk of not leaving a corpse. The same can be done to rejuvenate eggs for eating.
