Atheist

The atheist conduct requires the player to abstain from religious activity in most ways. 4.0% of all winning accounts on NAO have an atheist ascension.

Prohibited actions

• Prayer
• Using the Knight or Priest's turn undead command
• Sacrificing a corpse
• Dropping items on an altar while not blind
• Chatting with an aligned priest, regardless of the result

Permitted actions

• Being a Priest (or any role; all games start with this conduct intact)
• Casting clerical spells, including turn undead
• Offering the Amulet of Yendor on a high altar (actions required to complete the game never break conducts)
• Dropping items on an altar while blind
• Entering a temple and taking advantage of sanctuary
• Sitting or engraving on an altar
• Fighting or killing an aligned priest
• Hearing the voice of your god, e.g. when entering the End Game
• Any interaction with holy or unholy water, other than creating it by praying at an altar
• Any interactions with unicorns, other than sacrificing the corpse of one
• Any interaction with Elbereth

Strategy

Most religious benefits can be replaced:

• Holy water is most easily made with a confused blessed scroll of remove curse, or wished for if also illiterate. Once created, (un)holy water can be replicated by dipping uncursed water into it.
• Luck can be maximized by throwing valuable gems at a coaligned unicorn.
• An artifact weapon can be wished for. Other sources include dipping for Excalibur, finding one in bones or randomly generated, or simply doing without.
• Divine protection: enchant your armor to compensate partially. In theory, you can also eat rings of protection.
• Blessing/curse identification can either be done with a pet or by formally identifying objects. Both methods have drawbacks that characterize an atheist game—see below.
• Emergency prayer is not a reliable substitute for an escape item to begin with, but atheists need to be especially well-prepared and cautious.

In absense of curse testing at an altar, keep in mind the difference between formally known BUC and informally known BUC, and the implications for stacking and (un)cursing.

An "uncursed scroll of enchant armor" and a "scroll of enchant armor named uncursed" WILL NOT STACK FOR BLESSING, unless you formally BUC the second one. Formal and informal BUC together give you 10 states to worry about. Don't indiscriminately fully identify items, to make sure your inventory stacks appropriately.

Items which are formally IDed are formally BUCed, but an item can be formally BUCed without being formally IDed, e.g. by dipping it in (un)holy water.

If the BUC of a formally BUCed item changes, you will know immediately (e.g. a lich curses it). If the item is merely informally BUCed, you will not get any warning. This makes spellcasting monsters and Rodney's harrassment particularly nasty for atheists. It is a good idea to formally BUC your unicorn horn, bag of holding, and luckstone. At least retest your unicorn horn after a fight with a cursing monster.

List of ways to BUC items without breaking atheist

• Everything in Curse-testing EXCEPT altar testing. Do not drop items on an altar. Do not even go near one. You do not want to drop something on it by mistake.
• Scroll of identify. If you identify an item, it will no longer stack with unIDed items of its type and BUC. A stack of "Q - 15 daggers named +0 probably uncursed, maybe blessed" (enchantment derived from price ID) will automatically merge with any more +0 uncursed daggers you pick up, identifying their BUC for free. If you identify your stack of daggers "Q - 15 uncursed +0 daggers", that won't happen.
• Scroll of remove curse. Read a uncursed one and none of your worn or wielded items remain cursed. Read a blessed one and none of the items in your inventory stay cursed.
• Uncursed potions of water have a base cost of 5, blessed and cursed ones both have a base cost of 100.
• Potions of water or juice are uncursed if made by #dipping a unicorn horn into confusion, hallucination, blindness, or sickness. Exception: a cursed horn makes cursed juice.
• Unicorn horns dropped by unicorns will always be uncursed (and +0).
• If you pick up a scroll of scare monster from the ground, you know for a fact that its uncursed, though you don't know whether the scroll was blessed (and therefore safe to pick up once more).
• Use the item and see what it does. Don't do this unless you know it won't hurt you or waste resources unduly.
• Relative frequency. For most items, uncursed is more common. If you have two stacks of teleport scrolls, the stack of 15 is probably uncursed, whereas the stack of 2 is probably either cursed or blessed.
• Watch your stacks. "a scroll labeled HACKEM MUCHE" and "a scroll labeled HACKEM MUCHE" will stack, unless they are of different BUC. If you pay attention, and subsequently BUC one of the stacks, (say it turns out to be uncursed), then you know for a fact that the other is either blessed or cursed and can name it accordingly.