Hallucination

Hallucination is a status-impairing property that appears in NetHack, and shows up on the status line as "Hallu". Hallucinating will cause the hero to perceive objects and monsters in a distorted fashion, using messages associated with stereotypes of cannabis or psychedelic drugs.

Description

While hallucinating, the hero's perception of their environment will change every time the screen is updated, even when simply far looking or starting and then aborting an action: object glyphs will be seen as continually changing items of the same class (e.g., a pick-axe may be seen as a sack or dagger, but not as a monster), although the actual appearance of their inventory or items on their square those items will be accurately reported when picking up or viewing those items. Monsters will also seem to cycle through various appearances and cannot be named, and whether or not they are hostile is obscured. Hallucination abuses the hero's wisdom every 5 turns for its duration.

Hallucination also replaces various standard messages with more humorous ones, including monster names cycling through non-existent monsters and various currencies replacing mentions of gold or zorkmids—see those linked articles for more details.

While hallucinating, the hero has a ³⁄₄ chance of ignoring the effects of gaze attacks, including the floating eye's paralyzing passive attack. The touch of death monster spell will not instantly kill a hallucinating hero, instead causing them to "have an out of body experience", but this does not protect against Death's special touch attack.

Monsters cannot hallucinate, with a monster that would be subjected to hallucination becoming confused instead.

Sources

There are several means to induce hallucination:

• The exploding attack of a black light is the only monster attack to use AD_HALU damage type flag, and causes the hero to hallucinate for 10d12 (more) turns unless they are blind or polymorphed into the form of a violet fungus, a black light or any monster with a stun-inducing attack.
• Eat the corpse or tin of a yellow mold, violet fungus or any monster with a stunning attack. This lasts 200 (more) turns.
• Quaff a potion of hallucination. This lasts 300–499 (more) turns for a blessed potion, 600–799 (more) turns for an uncursed one, and 900–1099 (more) turns for a cursed potion.
• Apply a crystal ball and fail the intelligence check, which has a ¹⁄₅ chance of "[zapping] your mind" and causing hallucination for 1–100 (more) turns.
• Apply a cursed unicorn horn, which has a ²⁄₁₃ chance of inducing hallucination for 10–99 (more) turns.
• Trigger a container trap, which has a ³⁄₂₆ chance of producing a "cloud of <random color> gas" unless the container trap fails. This causes hallucination for 16–20 (more) turns, and also stuns the hero for 16–22 turns.

Cures

Hallucination can be cured by:

• Applying a unicorn horn of non-cursed beatitude
• Quaffing a potion of sickness, extra healing, or full healing
• Prayer - hallucination is considered a minor problem
• Waiting for the effect to end on its own

Additionally, obtaining a source of hallucination resistance will suppress hallucination - the only source of the resistance is wielding Grayswandir.

Strategy

Hallucination can be both funny and dangerous - as indicated previously, inability to distinguish a peaceful monster from a hostile one can quickly prove fatal. It is an easy and somewhat common mistake to lose track of which monster is your pet in a melee situation and accidentally kill it. You will also be unable to distinguish one hostile monster from another, making it difficult to prioritize targets. Additionally, engraving while hallucinating has a high chance of failing.

If you have quaffed a potion of hallucination and have no way to cure yourself, it is wise to keep away from your pet and/or large concentrations of peaceful monsters for the duration - areas such as Minetown (and the rest of the Gnomish Mines if dwarves and/or gnomes are peaceful towards you) are made rife with peril, and you cannot name monsters to distinguish them.

Once you have a noncursed unicorn horn, hallucination is trivial to cure. Until then, you can avoid most causes of hallucination somewhat easily, with the exception of the typically-invisible black light. If you are aware of the light's approach (e.g. through see invisible, monster detection or noticing your pet fighting something invisible), you can blindfold yourself so that the explosion has no effect. Failing that, hallucination from a black light only lasts for around 100 turns at most, so you can shut yourself in a room and wait it out.

Identifying items and monsters

It is a Bad Idea to eat an unidentified tin while hallucinating. Your perception of the smell will be affected, and you might eat meat of your race without realizing it. Spinach is still identified normally (except to distort the color of cursed spinach), and cockatrice meat always "smells like chicken" when hallucinating - all other contents cannot be readily distinguished until the tin is eaten, or else identified beforehand. You may also wish to refrain from quaffing unidentified potions until you recover from hallucination.

When monsters are nearby, you can still #chat to a hallucinatory monster to potentially identify it by its response - e.g., your pet little dog will yip or bark, regardless of whether it appears as a lichen or Archon. Thus, it can be useful to determine if a monster is tame or peaceful before attacking. A stethoscope will also correctly identify a monster's attributes while misidentifying the monster itself. If you kill a hallucinogen-distorted monster and step onto the square containing its corpse, the corpse will be accurately identified.

History

Hallucination's effect on gaze attacks was introduced in NetHack 3.6.0.

Messages

For the different messages seen under the effects of hallucination, see hallucinatory messages.

Oh wow! Everything <looks/feels> so cosmic!

You are hallucinating—"feels" is used if you are also blind at the time.

Oh wow! Great stuff!

You ate the corpse or tin of a monster and began hallucinating.

You have a peculiar feeling for a moment, then it passes.

You quaffed a potion of hallucination while you had hallucination resistance—the hallucination is applied and immediately suppressed by the property.

Far out! Everything is all cosmic again!

You were blind, and either recovered or removed what was covering your eyes while hallucinating.

Everything <looks/feels> SO boring now.

You are no longer hallucinating—as with the first message, "feels" only occurs if you are also blind.

Your vision seems to flatten for a moment, but is normal now.

As above, but you had a source of hallucination resistance when it wore off.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, hallucination also distorts items the hero is standing on as well as their inventory, which makes it a far more hazardous ailment; additionally, you cannot name specific objects or object types until the effect wears off. Avoid quaffing a suspected potion of hallucination without a remedy on hand such as a unicorn horn, set to an inventory letter that you can remember.

In addition to the usual sources, eating a mushroom or a pink pill may also cause hallucination, and applying a medical kit can cure it. However, a hero's deity will still consider it a minor problem for purposes of prayer.

Hallucination can be moderately useful as a way to bless items without breaking atheist conduct: asking a shopkeeper to uncurse an item while hallucinating has a chance of blessing it instead.

GruntHack

In GruntHack, hallucination causes the walls and floor of the dungeon to oscillate through a rainbow of colors each time the screen updates. As in SLASH'EM, it obscures the appearances of monsters, as well as items on the ground and in your inventory, and additionally hides object types. The intensity of the effect depends on the length of time you are hallucinating for, and will gradually affect fewer items and monsters as it comes closer to wearing off.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, hallucination affects object appearances as well as monsters: this does not include the hero's inventory, but does affect prompts for looting containers with items as well as picking up multiple items from one square.

Eating a corpse that grants telepathy while hallucinating adds a point of insight, and as with SLASH'EM requesting item-uncursing from shopkeeper services while hallucinating may cause the item to be blessed instead.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, intelligent monsters can generate with a potion of hallucination as an offensive item, and will throw it at you accordingly.

Encyclopedia entry

All at once, and without further warning, my reason forsook me
altogether, and I started from Fr. Moffitt's house to go to my
boarding place. The sidewalks were to me one mass of living,
moving, howling, and ferocious animals. Bears, lions, tigers,
wolves, jaguars, leopards, pumas -- all wild beasts of all climes
-- were frothing at the mouth around me and striving to get to me.
Recollect that while all this was hallucination, it was just as
real as if it had been an undeniable and awful reality.

[ Fifteen Years in Hell, by Luther Benson ]

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-364}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.