Teleportitis

Teleportitis is a property that causes the player to teleport occasionally. In the NetHack source code, the property is simply called "teleport" or "teleportation"; the name "teleportitis" is used to distinguish the property from the act of teleporting.

Teleportation caused by teleportitis works like other sources of teleportation, being blocked by no-teleport levels and sometimes by the Amulet of Yendor, controlled by teleport control, and landing you somewhere "safe".

Teleportitis is significantly more useful with teleport control. "Controlled" or "uncontrolled" teleportitis refers to whether a character has teleport control along with their teleportitis.

Sources

Teleportitis may be gained by eating some corpses:

• l leprechaun 50%
• ​n nymphs:
  • n wood nymph 30%
  • n water nymph 30%
  • n mountain nymph 30%
• i tengu 20%
• @ Wizard of Yendor 25%

It may also be gained by wearing or eating a ring of teleportation.

Effects

Teleporting randomly

Every game turn, there is a ¹⁄₈₅ chance you will try to teleport. This does not cost nutrition or energy. Unlike most other forms of teleportation, this happens at the beginning of your turn, rather than at its end. This means you will act immediately after teleporting, before monsters have a chance to move.

Teleporting at will

If you have teleportitis and you have reached experience level 12 (or level 8 for a Wizard), then you can use ctrl + T to teleport at will. Like the teleport away spell, this costs 30 points of energy. It also consumes 100 nutrition (unaffected by hungerless casting), except in some rare cases where your pet prevents you from teleporting (see below). These costs are incurred even if you are on a no-teleport level or cancel the prompt to choose a location with teleport control.

This can be useful; for example, with controlled teleportitis, you can repeatedly teleport to rapidly decrease your nutrition, so as to eat a set of giant corpses before they rot away.

If your leashed pet is standing too far away from you, cannot be moved next to you, and the leash is cursed, you will be prevented from teleporting at will with no nutrition cost. The same will happen if you are riding a mount that is carrying the Amulet of Yendor. Both cases will still cost Pw however.

If you cannot teleport at will, then ctrl + T will attempt to use your teleport away spell instead, or will make use of a teleport trap if you are standing on one.

Strategy

Curing teleportitis

Teleportitis can be troublesome without teleport control, but it is not as easily removed as other harmful properties. One cure is to have it stolen by a gremlin at night. However, it will likely steal a lot of other useful intrinsics, and once you have teleport control, teleportitis becomes a boon anyway.

Another cure is to eat disenchanter corpses. Each time you eat one, you have a ¹⁄₁₁ chance of curing teleportitis. Like with gremlins, though, you will likely lose a lot of other useful intrinsics before you get rid of this one.

Trying to get teleport control is usually better than trying to get rid of teleportitis. Strategies for doing this include reverse-genociding tengu (on a non-teleport level) or polypiling rings.

Shopping with uncontrolled teleportitis

If you need to visit a shop when you have uncontrolled teleportitis, you should use the following procedure to avoid accidentally stealing items:

1. Find out how much the shopkeeper is charging for the item you want to buy (e.g. 60 zorkmids).
2. Drop that much gold on the shop floor by using a numeric prefix. The shopkeeper will recognize it and establish a line of credit for you (e.g. "You drop 60 gold pieces. 60 zorkmids are added to your credit.")
3. Pick up the item. (If you are randomly teleported out of the shop at this point, your credit will be used to pay for the item without angering the shopkeeper. If your credit is greater than the amount owed, the extra credit is lost.)
4. If you are not teleported out, use the pay command as usual, and the shopkeeper will use up your credit before asking you for any more gold. (Do not pick up the gold afterward and attempt to pay it to the shopkeeper.)

History

In NetHack 3.6.1 and earlier versions, teleporting at will only used 19 Pw, rather than 30.

SLASH'EM

Although SLASH'EM is based on NetHack 3.4.3, teleportating at will requires 30 Pw. Carrying the Amulet of Yendor blocks teleportation from all sources.

Teleportitis can be acquired by consuming some other corpses (not an exhaustive list):

• s phase spider 40%
• n brownie 80%
• n Aphrodite 100%
• l leprechaun wizard ??%
• P Giant shoggoth 20%
• e Blinking eye 80%
• @ Gypsy 100%
• Q doctor Frankenstein 100%

Of the four new n, only brownies and Aphrodite give teleportitis.

References

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.