Astral call bug
The Astral call bug was a fairly serious loophole in NetHack 3.4.3's handling of the call command when using telepathy. It has been fixed in NetHack 3.6.0. The bug was listed as:
SC343-11: It's possible to easily find the identity of a high priest on the Astral plane. SC343-12: Hero using telepathy can abuse Call on the Astral Plane.
It works as follows:
- Reach the Astral Plane with telepathy, then blind yourself
- Use call (C) to select a @ which looks like it might be a high priest(ess)
- Call him or her anything you like
The game will then tell you:
The high priestess of <DEITY> doesn't like being called names!
where <DEITY> is the name of a god in your pantheon. Repeat the procedure until you find a high priest(ess) of your god. You then know which high altar to go to first, significantly cutting down the time spent (and hence danger) on the Astral Plane.
This bug is serious in that it can be used on public servers. If you are caught using it, people will think less of your ascension.
paxed has fixed this bug on nethack.alt.org.
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
