Clear thoughts

Clear thoughts is a property that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack.

Description

A hero with clear thoughts has their sanity always treated as the maximum of 100 for any effects that check their sanity level. As a result, both chance-based and guaranteed madness effects are entirely ignored or suppressed, and a character will never suffer the negative effects of suddenly losing sanity, such as screaming or panicking: this does not affect their actual sanity level, which will continue to rise or drop as normal, and madness can still be gained, but are also suppressed like other pre-existing types of madness. If temporary clear thoughts expires or an extrinsic source of the property leaves the hero's inventory, the effects of their madnesses will immediately resume as normal.

If a hero has walking nightmares, the clear thoughts property is partially blocked and the effects of losing sanity are no longer suppressed:

• The hero's sanity loss is treated as ¹⁄₅ of its current value, with every 5 points of sanity loss corresponding to one point while afflicted by nightmares (e.g., 0 normal sanity is 80 effective sanity).
• The effects of sanity loss scale with this lowered sanity loss, and last for only ¹⁄₅ of their normal duration.

Sources

The following items confer clear thoughts:

• The Spear of Peace, extrinsically while wielded
• The Star of Hypernotus, extrinsically while carried
• A doll of clear thinking, intrinsically for 100 turns when applied

Strategy

Hold on to an extrinsic source of clear thoughts as tightly as possible - losing clear thoughts while at low normal sanity is very dangerous.