Talk:Prayer

I think that I lost my priest-purchased protection plan(tm) because I prayed too soon, but I can't find any mention of protection loss on the priest page or this page. Can we add it, or did I lose my Protection for some other reason? — Qwip 17:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Praying when you can't is probably the most common way to lose protection. Spazm 23:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Benefits of Prayer

I prayed while at an alter to create 1 potion of holy water, and I got the message "Your 2 elven daggers softly glow with a light blue aura. Unfortunately, I had not dropped them to test B/U/C before praying, so I don't know if praying simply identified them as blessed, or if they became blessed.

I didn't see either outcome described here or at the "altar" page, so I thought I'd see if anyone can clarify what went on.

Yidda 19:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at entry #2 under Favors and gifts. One of the possible prayer gifts is that your god will bless or uncurse your current weapon as though dipped in holy water. -- Killian 15:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The Killer Bee Shrinks Back!

I was near a couple of bees, and Weak with hunger. When I prayed, the bees kept trying to attack me, but instead "shrunk back" every time. However, I was standing on a statue of a gas spore at the time. I was using a level 6 human priestess with intrinsic telepathy at the time. Was the prayer what protected me, or something else? --MrGuy 19:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Your prayer protected you. When you pray and are permitted to do so, you are "surrounded by a shimmering light", which protects you from all monster attacks (and everything else which is dangerous) during the time you spend praying. If you pray unsuccessfully, you won't be surrounded by the light, and will be helpless for the turns of your prayer. The article should be edited to reflect this. -- Marcmagus 19:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Water Prayer

What does this mean: "When no water is present, praying at a co-aligned altar has no special effects compared to prayer anywhere else." I thought praying at a co-aligned altar was the only way to get a favor. Should this statement be changed to "After blessing the water, prayer at a co-aligned altar will have the normal effects."? I'm new to nethack, but it seems like that's what the code is doing. Derekt75 18:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. Thank you for pointing this out. -Tjr 19:25, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

SLASH'EM

Sometimes I get an angelic being or a unicorn when I pray. I don't have the ability to source dive, but I thought people should at least know that much. Not sure where to put it. --4.30.147.166 18:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

It belongs in a separate section named SLASH'EM. See Pet#Variants, Minion#SLASH.27EM for the info. --Tjr (talk) 05:28, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Prayer protection racket

My results in 3.4.3 with gaining protection from prayer differ from those in the Favors and Gifts table.

To keep from getting crowned (8+), I broke one mirror which resulted in getting spellbooks (7). Breaking a second mirror resulted in Castle tune messages (4). Feeding mutiple gems to an aligned unicorn got this back up to protection gift(6).

Now each time I win a protection level it leaves me getting golden glow (3) or tune (4) messages afterwards. Carrying the luckstone makes no difference.

Buying >200XL from the priest after each protection gift from prayer seems to be necessary before farming further protection gifts and its easier than feeding unicorns.

Maybe this will help anyone who is silly enough to try ;) --Barb.Neu (talk) 12:07, 27 April 2015 (UTC)