Stealing from shops

Some characters prefer to obtain items from shops in the normal way: buying them with zorkmids. For everyone else, there is theft.

Indirect theft

For those who prefer not to steal directly, there are a few options for all the fun of theft and minimal risk.

Shopkeepers in NetHack, when it comes to taking items, do not care about any creature or monster other than you. Thus, a common practice is to let a monster or pet pick up items and drop them either outside the shop or in the square right in front of the doorway, which is considered outdoors. To obtain the shopkeeper's gold, sell valuable items back to him and repeat. This technique is sometimes known as shoplifting.

The process of robbing a shop with the aid of a pet can be sped up considerably by training it. When the pet drops an item near you, reward it with a treat. Tripe rations and meatballs are treats for carnivorous pets, while apples and carrots are treats for herbivorous pets. Using a magic whistle to teleport your pet out of the shop as soon as it picks something up also helps.

If you have a strong pet, they may be able to kill the shopkeeper for you. Large cats and dogs will not attempt this unless you have fed them wraith corpses to level them up beyond their natural growth limit. A fully-grown warhorse will attack shopkeepers but may well lose the fight. As always in NetHack, neither the shopkeeper nor your god will punish you for your pet's actions, although it is considered very bad form to allow Izchak to die, even if playing an extinctionist. This is a faster way of obtaining all the shopkeeper's property than shoplifting, and the only way to get the wands most shopkeepers have in their personal inventory. The disadvantages are that the pet might die and that the shopkeeper will no longer be available for price identification.

Another method of indirect theft is credit cloning: dropping gold in the store to establish credit, and then getting monsters or pets to take the gold back outside for you to repeat.

Direct theft

• Kill the shopkeeper: This carries the usual murder penalties, as well as being somewhat suicidal for a weak character.

• Teleport the shopkeeper: This works if you want to avoid Kops and murder. This angers the shopkeeper unless he lands his shop. Grab all the items you want, teleport the shopkeeper, then make a run for it, or dig down with a slow implement like a pick-axe.

• Dig out of the shop with unpaid items: If you move away from the shopkeeper, then use a fast method, like a wand of digging, not a pick-axe, then you can escape a shop before the shopkeeper can move adjacent and intervene.

• Jump out of the shop: This is done with a spell or with boots of jumping. This only takes you a few squares away, however, so you'll want to get away quickly.

• Walk through the shop: If you're polymorphed into a xorn or some other creature that can walk through walls, just pick up the items and walk through the wall of the shop.

• Teleport out of the shop: You just need to have some method of teleport, such as intrinsic teleportitis, a wand of teleportation, a spell, or a scroll of teleportation, ready to take you and your unpaid items out of the shop. Wands or scrolls are easier to control as teleportitis might send you out of the shop before you're ready.

A riskier method of teleportation for characters with low intelligence is to read a low-level spellbook and hope that it sends you out of the shop. However, the few turns of paralysis that follow make it potentially treacherous.

It is possible to accidentally steal from a shop if you have uncontrolled teleportitis. Read the teleportitis page for a useful guide on how to avoid this.

Consequences of theft

Indirect theft carries no consequences. Direct theft, however, is dangerous. First of all, successfully stealing from a shop summons Keystone Kops - for higher level characters more of a nuisance, but numerous. The larger worry is the shopkeeper, who tends to be both high level and equipped with dangerous wands.

The Keystone Kops are only summoned if you leave the shop without paying with the shopkeeper present. Killing the shopkeeper, or teleporting him out of his store, does not generate Kops.

Theft carries a -1 alignment penalty for lawful characters and a +1 alignment bonus to chaotic non-rogue characters.