Infidel
In EvilHack and Hack'EM, the Infidel, abbreviated as Inf, is one of the roles is available to the player character, and it is incorporated from the Infidel patch by Tomsod.
The Infidel is highly unique in several aspects, the foremost of which being that they are a playable servant of the unaligned deity Moloch and are themselves unaligned—they are compatible with any race that can start as chaotic in alignment, and can be played as humans, elves, orcs, illithids, giants, centaurs, drow, draugr or vampires.
Starting equipment
Each Infidel starts with the following equipment:
- 250-500 gold pieces
- the uncursed Amulet of Yendor
- an uncursed +1 dagger
- a cursed fireproof +1 leather jacket
- a cursed fireproof +0 cloak of protection
- two uncursed scrolls of charging
- an uncursed spellbook of drain life
- an uncursed spellbook for a level 1 attack, clerical, divination, or enchantment spell
- 3 potions of unholy water
- an uncursed oilskin sack
- an uncursed fire horn
The following racial conditions also apply:
- Draugr Infidels will not be given spellbooks since they cannot cast spells, and also start with 5 eggs.
- Drow Infidels are given a dark elven dagger in place of a normal dagger and a dark elven tunic in place of a jacket, and will also never start with a spellbook of light.
- Elven Infidels are given an elven dagger in place of a normal dagger.
- Giant Infidels are given a pair of low boots and gauntlets of protection in place of the starting armor, and may also start with random valuable gems.
- Orcish Infidels are given an orcish dagger in place of a normal dagger, and are given two extra stacks of 1-2 comestibles.
Infidels start with knowledge of the scroll of charging and any applicable racial equipment.
The Infidel's default starting pet is a lesser homunculus.
Intrinsics
Infidels gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:
- XL 1: Fire resistance (if not a draugr or a vampire)
- XL 15: Warning
- XL 20: Shock resistance
Attributes
The Infidel's starting attributes are distributed as follows:
| Attributes | Strength | Dexterity | Constitution | Intelligence | Wisdom | Charisma | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum attributes | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 7 | 30 |
| Distribution percentages | 20% | 15% | 20% | 10% | 25% | 10% |
Skills
Infidels have the following skills available to them:
| Infidel skills | |
|---|---|
| Max | Skills |
| Basic |
|
| Skilled |
|
| Expert | |
Infidels start with Basic skill in daggers and attack spells. They use the wisdom stat to cast spells, and their special spell is fireball. Draugr Infidels are restricted in all spell skills, since they lack the ability to cast spells.
Special rules
Infidels offer a very unusual play experience in several aspects.
As noted above, Infidels start the game with the real Amulet of Yendor, and must keep it in their possession for both normal HP regeneration and the ability to cast spells without losing HP: energy drain from casting spells with the Amulet of Yendor in the inventory is more lenient to compensate, draining at most half of the energy normally required to cast a given spell.
Due to the Infidel possessing the Amulet of Yendor, they will also draw the attention of agents and champions that serve the other gods, with the pantheon randomly chosen akin to the Priest of NetHack—these agents and champions are only randomly generated for Infidel player characters and will always be hostile towards them.
As primary casters, Infidels wearing any form of body armor are only penalized when casting spells of level 4 or higher. Infidels also sustain a spellcasting penalty of 2 for each worn piece of armor that is blessed (weapons and jewelry are not counted), while any worn cursed armor (such as the starting armor) reduces this penalty by 1.
Infidels are weldproof, which prevents cursed items that they wear or wield from sticking to their person, as well as cursed loadstones that they pick up—cursed weapons will not slip when shot or attack an Infidel wielding them. Other detrimental cursed effects will occur as usual, such as the effects of a cursed luckstone.
Infidels may receive spellbooks as sacrifice gifts from their deity, and illiterate Infidels will instead be given spell knowledge directly. Sacrifice gifts given to an Infidel will never be made of silver.
Infidels do not gain a multishot bonus for reaching Skilled in any weapon skill other than daggers, though they still get the normal multishot bonus for Expert skill with any weapon.
Infidels only take 1⁄5 damage from explosions caused by destroyed wands.
Alignment
Many of the Infidel's quirks are due to them being unaligned followers of Moloch, and in the context of the Infidel being unaligned can be succinctly described as "chaotic evil"—as such, a worn helm of opposite alignment will always make an Infidel lawful, and permanent conversion is not possible. A worn helm of opposite alignment will also temporarily suppress any of the effects listed in this section.
Moloch expects regular sacrifices from his servants: after the 6,000th game turn without a sacrifice, the alignment record of an Infidel is drained at an increasing rate, with a chance of incrementing Moloch's anger if their alignment record becomes negative—an Infidel play will be given messages when approaching this threshold, and can view this status in the base attributes window. Performing a sacrifice can delay this effect by 500 turns per point of sacrifice value—this is non-cumulative, and only the higher delay value between the current delay and the delay from the Infidel's sacrifice is kept. Any sacrifice to Moloch is acceptable for this purpose regardless of the altar, as long as the sacrifice would not convert the Infidel to another alignment (since none of the other gods will accept an Infidel's allegience).
An Infidel sacrificing to Moloch on an aligned altar without their quest artifact has a 4⁄5 chance of failing to convert the altar, but performing same-race sacrifice on a lawful or neutral altar will always convert it to an unaligned altar, while doing so with a chaotic altar will destroy it. Successful sacrifices from an Infidel on an altar to Moloch will reduce prayer timeout further than a chaotic hero's sacrifice to their god, and sacrifices of former pets are allowed, but a sacrifice with a value of 16 is required for an Infidel to mollify Moloch if he is angry.
Infidels that pray to Moloch and are not in Gehennom, are not standing on an unaligned altar, or not in possession of their quest artifact have a 4⁄5 chance of that prayer going unheard as a result of being on the surface—this "failure" does not increment prayer timeout or anger Moloch, but also does not grant invulnerability as a successful prayer does.
Moloch's prayer boons for Infidels are different from those other gods:
- Moloch can curse a wielded weapon instead of blessing it, while repairing the weapon as normal and unrestricting its skill if necessary.
- Moloch can curse and repair a random worn piece of armor.
- Moloch can cast a black aura upon an Infidel that curses all non-cursed armor and weapons in their open inventory.
- Moloch will always curse any potions of water that are placed on an unaligned altar if an Infidel successfully prays to him while standing on it.
- Crowning is subject to the most drastic changes of all—see the section below.
Chaotic monsters have half the chance of generating as peaceful towards an Infidel that they do of generating as peaceful to a chaotic hero, and major demons have a chance to generate as peaceful toward an Infidel—carrying the Amulet of Yendor has no effect on monster hostility. Infidels are not penalized for murder or attacking peaceful monsters, including peaceful chaotic monsters (since they are not truly co-aligned).
Infidels are discouraged from using Elbereth even if they learn it: scaring monsters with an engraved "Elbereth" incurs a -5 penalty to alignment record, but attacking while standing on the engraving does not penalize them (though the engraving will still disappear).
Infidels that step into a cross-aligned temple will cause the temple's aligned priest to become hostile: this also angers the Watch if it occurs in Minetown (with the obvious exception of Orcish Town).
Infidels take 4d6 damage from quaffing or being hit by holy water (compared to 2d6 for chaotic heroes), and restore 4d6 HP when quaffing unholy water.
Crowning
Crowning for an Infidel is also much different from the heroes of other gods.
As draugr cannot become truly fire-resistant and are incapable of casting, a draugr Infidel that is crowned by Moloch gains permanent see invisible and shock resistance, and their crowning gift is the cursed and rustproof +1 Angelslayer: if a draugr is already wielding the artifact when they are crowned by Moloch, the artifact will be identified for them.
Otherwise, the crowning gift for a non-draugr Infidel is a spellbook of fireball, the Infidel's special spell: an Infidel that knows the fireball spell upon being crowned by Moloch and is wielding a weapon will instead have that weapon given the fire object property, additionally unrestricting the weapon's skill if necessary. The Infidel will also gain the trident skill if it was previously restricted (though all Infidels start with the skill unrestricted in practice), and has its cap set to Expert.
In addition, an Infidel that is not a draugr and is crowned by Moloch will be transformed into a full-fledged major demon, gaining wings and a barbed tail—this will overwrite almost all of their former race's traits and grant them the following properties:
- They gain infravision.
- They gain complete sleep resistance.
- They gain see invisible, fire resistance, poison resistance, immunity to sickness, drain resistance, and death resistance from demonhood.
- They also gain flight from their wings, which is blocked by worn suits of body armor that are made of a rigid material—crystal plate mail and any armor made of cloth, leather, spider silk, or dragonhide will not constrict the Infidel's wings.
- They can use their barbed tail to perform an auxiliary sting attack that can poison monsters, and like most extra attacks it is suppressed when attacking a monster with a stoning or disintegration passive.
- They become vulnerable to silver and cannot wear, wield or use silver items of any kind, other than the Bell of Opening during the invocation.
- They effectively gain slow digestion, as demons are inediate.
- They become medium in physical size and humanoid in shape (important for giant and centaur Infidels).
- Riding is unrestricted if applicable and can be trained to Skilled (important for centaur Infidels).
| Character race |
Strength | Dexterity | Constitution | Intelligence | Wisdom | Charisma |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demon | 18/** | 20 | 20 | 18* | 18* | 18 |
| Level bonuses | Starting | Pre-cutoff | Post-cutoff |
|---|---|---|---|
| HP gain | 8 | d8 | 4 |
| Energy gain | 4 | 6 | 6 |
Demons also have very good maximum attributes as well, and inherit the intelligence and wisdom attribute caps of their previous forms: an orcish Infidel that become a demon will retain their mental maximums of 16, while a human Infidel-turned-demon retains their mental maximums of 18, and so on. Demons also have the highest HP and energy growth of any other race, and an Infidel that has attained demonhood will often want to polymorph into their own race or otherwise re-roll their experience level bonuses after crowning. Unlike normal polyself into a demon, a crowned Infidel cannot gate demons via bare-handed combat.
Orcs and other major demons will often generate peaceful to demonic Infidels, but all other races will always generate as hostile.
Crowning by Moloch and "aligned crowning" are mutually exclusive, so it is not possible to be crowned while wearing a helm of opposite alignment and then obtain the Infidel's intended crowning benefits.
Rank titles
The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:
- XL 1-2: Apostate
- XL 3-5: Heathen
- XL 6-9: Heretic
- XL 10-13: Idolater/Idolatress
- XL 14-17: Cultist
- XL 18-21: Splanchomancer
- XL 22-25: Maleficus/Malefica
- XL 26-29: Demonologist
- XL 30: Heresiarch
Gods
As covered in several sections above, Infidels will always be worshippers of the unaligned god Moloch, so they are given a random pantheon in the style of the Priest, which determines the gods served by the agents and champions that are sent after the Infidel. Their first gift is Secespita.
Quest
The Infidel's quest sees them fighting the Paladin for the Idol of Moloch, an artifact figurine of a horned devil. While carried, The Idol of Moloch grants magic resistance and half spell damage, and Infidels additionally gain improved energy regeneration similar to The Eye of the Aethiopica, with the amount of enhanced regeneration depending on their alignment record: 'piously unaligned' Infidels will get the most energy regeneration from the Idol, while Infidels that are in bad standing with Moloch or serving another god see no change in energy regeneration.
Invoking The Idol of Moloch while standing on an aligned altar will instantly convert it into an altar to Moloch, while invoking it on any other square or else applying it summons a random major demon without using up the figurine—both are subject to the same invocation timer. If the Idol is cursed, it will occasionally generate a random major demon on its own, similar to a normal cursed figurine and with the same odds of hostility (i.e., 80% chance of a hostile demon, 10% chance of a tame one, and 10% chance of a peaceful one).
Ascension
Like other aspects of the role, the Infidel's quest artifact is also quite unique and serves as a necessary component of their primary objective—the Idol of Moloch thus has the following traits for an Infidel player character:
- The Idol of Moloch is immune to cancellation and is indestructible like other unique items, and thus it cannot be placed into a container, lost permanently in open air, or disintegrated by any means. The goal of an Infidel is to bring both the Idol and the Amulet of Yendor to the high priest in Moloch's Sanctum and offer the Amulet on the high altar there—should the Idol somehow be lost by any other means, the game is rendered unwinnable.
- Once Moloch imbues the Idol of Moloch with the Amulet's power, the Infidel's ascension run begins, and the imbued Idol must be brought to the correct high altar on the Astral Plane and invoked upon it, giving Moloch dominion over Heaven and all the Gods. To this end, if the quest is completed without incident, the Archbishop will give the Infidel one of the hints regarding which high altar in the Astral Plane to avoid invoking the imbued Idol of Moloch on, and the high priest of Moloch provides the other hint.
- If the Archbishop demands the Idol of Moloch from an Infidel due to alignment record abuse, they will become hostile regardless of that Infidel's compliance, so it is always possible to retain the Idol—the high priest will give both hints if the Archbishop is dead.
- The Idol of Moloch imbued with the power of the Amulet of Yendor suppresses the HP-draining spellcasting and non-regeneration effects that normally occur if an Infidel does not have the Amulet, though teleportation is still suppressed as with other player characters carrying the Amulet.
- The Red Horse is not generated upon reaching the Astral Plane as with other roles, and no minions of Moloch will be present—additionally, all monsters on the Astral Plane will be hostile.
- Selecting the wrong high altar to invoke the imbued Idol on will subject the Infidel to that god's wrath, up to and including wide-angle disintegration beams, while selecting the right altar will end the game in Moloch's victory and a full-scoring ascension, with the Infidel obtaining archfiend status.
Strategy
As a role, the Infidel specializes in offensive magic, with some similarities to Priests as well as to Flame Mages from SLASH'EM.
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