Novel
A novel is a special type of item that appears in NetHack. Though they do not teach spells, novels are considered spellbook items. A novel appears as a paperback book when unidentified and is always named with the title of a Discworld book.
Contents
Generation
Novels comprise 0.1% of randomly generated spellbooks, and can also be wished for or found in bones. The first second-hand bookstore or rare books shop generated is guaranteed to have a novel among its wares.[1][2]
Spellbooks in the hero's starting inventory will never be novels, nor will spellbooks generated as part of monster starting inventory be novels, nor will your god give you novels as a prayer boon.
Novels cannot be written. If you attempt to use a magic marker to write one, you will merely be given a YAFM and have a 1⁄3 chance of destroying the blank spellbook you used, though it will not use up any charges from the marker.
Description
A hero reading a novel breaks illiterate conduct[3] and displays a quote from the Discworld book bearing its title.
The list of possible titles is:
- A Hat Full of Sky
- Carpe Jugulum
- Equal Rites
- Eric
- Feet of Clay
- Going Postal
- Guards! Guards!
- Hogfather
- Interesting Times
- I Shall Wear Midnight
- Jingo
- Lords and Ladies
- Making Money
- Maskerade
- Men at Arms
- Monstrous Regiment
- Mort
- Moving Pictures
- Night Watch
- Pyramids
- Raising Steam
- Reaper Man
- Small Gods
- Snuff
- Soul Music
- Sourcery
- The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
- The Colour of Magic
- The Fifth Elephant
- The Last Continent
- The Last Hero
- The Light Fantastic
- The Shepherd's Crown
- The Truth
- The Wee Free Men
- Thief of Time
- Thud!
- Unseen Academicals
- Wintersmith
- Witches Abroad
- Wyrd Sisters
The first novel that a hero reads also grants 20 points of experience and a score bonus, while subsequent novels have no additional effect.[4]
It is not possible to rename a novel.
Strategy
Novels are among the many sources of experience that a low-level hero can make use of early on, and is one of few such sources that are available to pacifists. Outside of this, they tend to have little practical use, other than wetting or cancelling them into blank spellbooks to write spells in.
Messages
Reading a novel does not produce a normal message, but instead opens a multi-line text window displaying a passage from that book. However, there are some messages from other interactions with novels:
- Your novel already has a published name.
- You attempted to rename a novel.
- You [prepare/try] to write the Great Yendorian Novel, but lack inspiration.
- One possible YAFM for attempting to write a novel. If you are hallucinating, you will instead "have too much inspiration".
- You [start to] produce really lame fan-fiction.
- Another possible YAFM for attempting to write a novel. If you are hallucinating, the fan-fiction will instead be "really awesome".
- You give up on the idea.
- The blank spellbook is preserved.
- You tear it up.
- The blank spellbook is destroyed.
History
Novels first appear in NetHack 3.6.0. They are added as a tribute to Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld series who passed away in 2015 (the year of NetHack 3.6.0's release).
Variants
EvilHack
In EvilHack, two new novels are added that can be found in some of the branches introduced to the variant:
- The Blacksmith's Cookbook can be found in a chest within the Goblin Town branch, and details what can be done with the #forge extended command.
- The Adventurer's Journal is found on the first floor of the Ice Queen's Realm, and contains hints on what can be encountered in that branch.
References
- ↑ src/shknam.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 461
- ↑ src/shknam.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 751
- ↑ src/spell.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 488: conduct for novels is handled separately from other books and scrolls
- ↑ src/spell.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 491-L496: experience for novels
