Bag of digestion
| ( | |
|---|---|
| Name | bag of digestion |
| Appearance | bag |
| Base price | 100 zm |
| Weight | 5 |
| Material | cloth |
| Monster use | Will not be used by monsters. |
The bag of digestion is a container in NetHack: The Next Generation which also appears in Slash'EM Extended and SLASHTHEM.
Every time you loot or apply a bag of digestion, each of the items inside has a chance of disappearing, as with a cursed bag of holding. Unlike the bag of holding, the bag of digestion will still "eat" items even if non-cursed; the BUC status merely determines the probability that each item inside will disappear when you loot it:
| Case | Probability |
|---|---|
| blessed | 5% |
| uncursed | 10% |
| cursed | 50% |
As with a bag of holding, you will have to pay for any unpaid items destroyed by a bag of digestion in a shop.
Contents
Strategy
Identification
The bag of digestion weighs and costs as much as the bag of holding and bag of tricks, making price identification of unknown bags slightly more challenging in variants that include this item. A (charged) bag of tricks can be distinguished by applying it, but the bag of holding and bag of digestion will both behave as ordinary containers. Be careful not to put any valuables into unidentified bags with a base price of 100!
One way to determine which type of bag you have—short of identification—might be to determine its BUC status by curse-testing, uncurse it if necessary, and, once you are certain that it is not cursed, put junk items inside and loot it several times. If an item disappears even though the bag is non-cursed, you can be sure that you have a bag of digestion.
You may get faster results if the bag is uncursed rather than blessed (since an uncursed bag is twice as likely to destroy an item) and if you put in more than one item. If you put a single item into an uncursed bag, there is a 10% chance that it will disappear the next time you loot the bag, but if you put in five, the probability that at least one of them will disappear will be 40%, and if you put in ten, the probability will be 65%. Worthless glass may be useful for testing for a bag of digestion, as it's lightweight and available in different colors, naturally forming multiple stacks.
Or, if the unidentified bag is known to be cursed and you have showweight enabled, you can recognize a cursed bag of holding if it doubles the weight of items put inside. Purists may feel that this is cheating, however.
Uses
For obvious reasons, using a bag of digestion to store your items is risky. Since use as a container is out of the question, the only possible use for a bag of digestion is as a garbage disposal, for destroying troll corpses and items like attack wands that you don't want to keep but don't want monsters to get. Putting all of your unwanted wands into a bag of digestion and looting it until they disappear may be less tedious than zapping each one until it's burned out. You may wish to curse the bag so it empties faster.
Unfortunately, this is not a valid way of getting rid of loadstones, since they resist being put into containers.
References
- Slash'EM Extended objects.c 1205
- Slash'EM Extended pickup.c 2418
