Talk:Polypiling

I got a message about 300 rocks shuddering when I dipped them into a potion of polymorph. Is the following really true?

"Also note that if you polymorph an object in your inventory by dipping it in a potion of polymorph, it won't get a system shock, so if you have enough potions, it's safe to try turning a pile of 300 rocks into diamonds, though if you quaff it or throw it at a monster, system shock will still apply."

Tjr 03:13, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

wizards and books

", unless you are Wizard, in which case you are very likely to succeed in writing a book of your choice"

I prefer to first polypile duplicate / useless books, then write the remaining spells (possibly on the books blanked by polymorph). Very early in the game, when you do not yet have many books to polypile, you most likely also don't have the necessary luck to write ones. Anyway, this is strategy advice and belongs in that section.Tjr 12:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

• I believe it is strictly correct for a wizard generated with a spellbook of cure blindness, a potion of polymorph and no ring of polymorph control to immediately polypile the spellbook; by the time cure blindness needs to be relearned, it will probably no longer be necessary; in the meantime, should the resulting spellbook be low-level, the player knows an extra spell -66.69.233.42 16:28, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

alternating material piles

[rgrn thread] -- is it really true golems will be generated from the top? IIRC, that was randomized. If not, it would be an efficient (and tedious) way to protect you rings etc. -Tjr 14:59, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes and no. Items are polymorphed from the top (the most recently dropped item) down. Once an item stack shudders and produces a golem, though more item stacks may shudder, nethack will NOT check for golem creation again. The first shuddering stack to produce a golem picks the type of the golem, and more importantly, the material the golem will consume. If you have a bunch of mithril items on top, and they shutter resulting in an iron golem (and since they are on top, they are likely to be the one's to pick the golem), then mithril items will be absorbed. Leather, iron (yes, iron), copper, stone, etc. will be safe. So the top materials pick which other materials are safe from absorption.

OTOH, golems absorb SO MANY items, that putting your stuff on the bottom will not keep it safe if it's made of what the golem wants to eat. (They consume their weight in items, forming iron golems attempt to consume 2000 items of whatever material spawned them, be that iron, mithril, or generic metal.) Blackcustard 20:06, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

polypiling artifacts

Is it really true artifacts cannot be polymorphed? I thought they just have a much higher chance to resists, and will never turn into another artifact. -Tjr 10:59, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

I just tried it in wizmode, and it looks like you're right. After zapping my pile fore more than 100 times, the artifacts eventually polymorph. The wand, potion and spellbook of polymorph, on the other hand seem to be completely immune to polymorph. Galehar 15:19, February 4, 2010 (UTC)

Strategy section

The strategy section reads like a list. Which is fine, or at least it would be if it were actually a list. I was thinking of adding, later, a bunch of sections to break them off into like "When to polypile," "When not to polypile," "General tips," etc, so that it's far easier to see what's relevant to a player's situation. Feagradze 13:50, June 29, 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to flesh out a separate list "the perfect polypiling" or some such. Your plans look very reasonable. (I'm the original author.) Tjr 23:51, June 29, 2010 (UTC)

• The rambler zaps a wand of nested formatting +4!
  Done. Can't help but think it's missing something, though. And I don't know what... « Feagradze 06:07, July 1, 2010 (UTC) »

• Speak of the devil, though. I was hoping to eventually make a complicated spreadsheet that forks out the ideal way to set up a line, as per a few constraints (namely, number of wand charges, though also a sanity switch for how much time they feel like spending). Something like Clippy for polypiling, albeit in desktop form. Currently, that's beyond my ability. Conversely, not for long. More limited by finding the notes for such in my god-awfully huge un-indexed pile of notes. With luck, expect an external link on this page to that eventually. « Feagradze 06:51, July 1, 2010 (UTC) »

polypiling spellbooks

The article is flat wrong; polypiling spellbooks is an amazing way to learn dozens of new spells for nearly free. 72.84.183.198 23:32, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. BTW, you can edit yourself, you don't need anybody's permission. --Tjr 01:27, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

SlashHack

The page states that upgrading an object will "fix" hazy, meaning it wont revert back. Either I dont understand this correctly or the info is wrong. I polypiled and got a chest, which I tinkered into an ice box. Then I stored my stash in it, left, and came back to a single unicorn horn. Just a friendly warning, upgrading has no effect on an object reverting back.

Looks like whoever added that misread the opening paragraph on Upgrading objects - it says that upgraded objects do not need to be fixed. That is true, but upgraded objects don't lose the "hazy" status, they just don't gain it. Why would you polypile for a chest, by the way? They're quite common. -Ion frigate 13:45, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

how much polyfodder

Somebody should add a section how large the piles should be. Say a table of expected number of morphs per item if the pile is x large, or such. --Tjr 03:17, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Item generation - athames

If I'm reading the linked spoiler correctly, polmorphing will never generate items that aren't randomly generated, such as Athames. Can anyone confirm that? Maybe a note should be added to the section about when not to polypile. 184.8.61.28 02:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

True. --Tjr 03:05, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

golem type

coud there be a list on the page of which golems get created by what? paper=paper and iron=iron, sure, but corpses/gems/wood/gold? and in SLASH'EM, will polypiling candles generate a wax golem? --194.116.198.179 13:02, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Material	Golem	Material description
Iron Mithril metal	Iron	metal
Copper Silver Platinum Gemstome Mineral	Clay or stone (equal chance)	lithic
Food ("Fleshy" or not)	Flesh	organic
Wax	Wax	wax
Wood	Wood	wood
Leather	Leather	leather
Cloth	Rope	cloth
Plastic	Plastic	plastic
Bone	Skeleton	bony
Gold	Gold	gold
Glass	Glass	glassy
Paper	Paper	paper
"if all else fails"	Straw

That's everything from SLASH'EM. Source: zap.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1186. It could probably use some cleanup before being placed on the main page. -- Qazmlpok 13:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Range

Someone changed the range from 3-6 to 4-7. I believe that's half right. The range is 3-7 piles.

bhit is called with range rn1(8, 6) which is 6 to 13 inclusive. (http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Zap.c#line2470 , http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Rn1)

#include <iostream>

void test(signed int range) {
    while (range-- > 0) {
        range--;
        std::cout << range << std::endl;
    }
}

int main() {
    std::cout << "Go!" << std::endl;
    std::cout << 6 << ":" << std::endl;
    test(6);
    std::cout << 13 << ":" << std::endl;
    test(13);
    char c = '\0';
    std::cin >> c;
    return 0;
}

Output:
Go!
6:
4
2
0
13:
11
9
7
5
3
1
-1

That also agrees with wiztesting. The wand can definitly hit 7 piles; it's harder to be sure with this one, but I'm pretty sure it's possible for the wand to also hit only 3 piles (it's always possible it hit a 4th but had no effect).

Blackcustard 15:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

One Large Pile

This technique can be improved if you know the Stone to Flesh spell, so that you can turn the Rocks to Meatballs:

1. You can pick up a lot more meatballs at a time than rocks, so that you can curse them with a single Potion of unholy water.
2. There are fewer desirable Flesh items than Mineral items, so instead of the polymorph consuming stone rings, wands, and Luckstones, it consumes Eggs and Tripe rations, which are less valuable.
3. Flesh golem corpses convey great Intrinsics. --Elestan (talk) 18:34, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Another Idea: As a warrior-role, drop Spellbooks on top. The arising Paper Golem will drop scrolls of blank paper, that can be used to write scrolls (if you have a magic marker). This is usefull because casting spells from books requires good physical abilities (INT,WIS,POW) and non-metal armour, while casting spells from scrolls will always suceed (exept you are confused, blind or the scroll is cursed). If you play a Barbarian, Caveman, Tourist or Walkyrie, you will have to eat a lot of Mindflayers to be able to learn a spell at all, so converting spellbooks to scrolls is a considerable idea. --79.210.105.216 15:30, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I stumbled upon this situation by accident in the late midgame, while doing some Altar work. I got tired of waiting for large monsters to finish sorting through the piles of dropped gear (one Ice Troll tried on three helmets and three different shields) before they finally walked over to attack (hence standing upon the altar on which I had planned their sacrifice). So I decided to take advantage of golem generation and shuddering to eliminate as much of the junkpile as possible (I wasn't trying to obtain anything in particular from the loot). Thus, I used the One Large Pile technique without having read your note, above. The bit about what you put on top is interesting when the pile is large (25 or more items). Putting stones on top always generated a stone golem (when any golem was generated at all). Also the bit in the article about luck is really significant. My luck was maximized at that point, so I obtained very few golems, which was frustrating. Stupidly forgetting that golems do not die a Nethack-normal death, I had hoped for golems to wander over the altar to become the next sacrifice. When I finally did obtain a golem or two, they were *always* stone golems, which--like all non-flesh golems--do not leave a proper corpse (leaving statues instead, which led to more rocks--after my pickaxe--and more stone golems, until I read this spoiler and stopped putting the rocks on top). Bottom line: max luck = min golems, but doesn't really make much diff in the shuddering (which has more to do with item type, count and B/U/C) and therefore loss of items. (Once I gave up on the golems and stopped putting rocks on top, I reduced the large pile to five items or so in about eight or ten attempts, and ended up with a nice Hawaiian Shirt for my trouble). This indicates a useful time-minimizing technique for the huge piles you get from Fort Ludios. --Clothos

Behavior of the Golem

Are Golems produced by polypiling tame or hostile ? Since the player is their creator it would make sense beeing tame, but a golem is considered to be something bad so haow doe they behave ? -79.210.58.215 17:58, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

• Hostile, added to article Bulwersator (talk) 20:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC)