Cream pie
% 
| |
|---|---|
| Name | cream pie |
| Base price | 10 zm |
| Nutrition | 100 |
| Turns to eat | 1 |
| Weight | 10 |
| Conduct | vegetarian |
A cream pie is a type of veggy comestible that appears in NetHack.
Generation
Keystone Kops frequently generate with cream pies.
Description
Eating a cream pie provides 100 nutrition and breaks the vegan conduct, but preserves the vegetarian conduct. Throwing a cream pie at a monster will blind them; monsters can throw cream pies at you for the same effect, which blinds you for up to 25 (more) turns.[1] Applying a cream pie will smash it onto your face, blinding yourself for the same amount of turns. Wielding a cream pie and attacking with it will splatter the pie in the target monster's face.
Attacking with thrown and/or wielded cream pies do no damage, and thus does not break pacifist conduct.
If you are hit by a cream pie, you can #wipe your face or apply a towel to regain sight faster; applying a cursed towel may cause cream pie gunk to cover your face.
Any cream pie in the path of a bolt from a force bolt spell or a zapped wand of striking is destroyed.
Strategy
The viability of cream pies as a long-term food source is limited due to their low nutrition to weight ratio. Instead, cream pies are most frequently employed as a one-off source of blindness (e.g., to use intrinsic telepathy) if you have not obtained a blindfold or towel. They can also be useful if you are wearing a pair of lenses or the Eyes of the Overworld and do not want to use up turns removing them.
Cream pies are also useful against gaze attacks, either by blinding yourself (e.g., to hit a floating eye safely) or the gaze-possessing monster (e.g. an Archon); the cream will eventually clear off, so repeated applications may be necessary in either case. Pacifist players will often wield a cream pie (or a whole stack of them) to avoid doing any damage if they accidentally hit a monster.
Keystone Kops are a readily-accessible source of cream pies, provided you can reliably kill them before they have a chance to throw any.
History
The cream pie first appears in NetHack 1.3d.
In NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions, applying or otherwise destroying a wielded cream pie can crash the game; this is bug C343-218, and was fixed in October 2006.[2][3][4]In versions and derived variants that do not have this bug patched, you are safe if you immediately wield something else (or even nothing -), or else save and restore the game. The Bilious Patch Database also has a patch that addresses this - Bilious #342, added in January 2009.
Messages
- What a mess!
- A cream pie was destroyed by a force bolt from a spell or wand.
