Portable electrode

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Name	portable electrode
Appearance	ball-topped spike
Base price	300 zm
Weight	15
Material	iron
Monster use	Will not be used by monsters.

A portable electrode is a type of tool that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. It is a small-sized tool that has the base material of iron that appears as a ball-topped spike when unidentified.

Generation

Portable electrodes do not randomly generate.
Altars that are aligned to the College have a ¹⁄₂ chance of having a portable electrode generated on their square, containing a bell otherwise.
A portable electrode is generated on the square where the Index wolf is killed, who is the nemesis of the Undead Hunter quest.

Description

Applying a portable electrode on a square that contains a corpse will attempt to reanimate it. If your current energy is higher than 3 × Monster difficulty, and the monster attempting to be reanimated has innards, the monster will be revived as a Spark skeleton template monster (same as the skeleton monster template), marked as a permanently summoned, and your current energy will be reduced by the same amount. Otherwise, energy is set to 0, but nothing else happens. If more than 50 turns have passed since the monster was killed, or it is untamable, it will be revived hostile and is permanently crazed. Otherwise, it is made tame. If a hero who is a student of the reanimation philosophy revives a monster with a portable electrode, they will have their research counter incremented by a value between 1 and monster difficulty + monster difficulty. Reanimating a corpse that has previously already been reanimated instead only increases research by a value between 1 and monster difficulty.

Students of the philosophy of reanimation may also use the portable electrode to obtain reanimation upgrades. Undead Hunters who apply the portable electrode over a workbench to the College, and who have performed sufficient reanimation research, will then be prompted to advance along their research path by choosing an upgrade. Having a dissection kit in open inventory may substitute for the altar, allowing upgrades to be taken anywhere and by any role, so long as they can source one.

The reanimation research path has 11 upgrades that may be obtained in any order, with the exceptions of the 3 weapon attunement upgrades, which require the hero to already have obtained the "arcane forces" upgrade beforehand, and the "catoptrics of the silver rays" upgrade, which requires the hero to have made contact with The Silver Flame. Obtaining these upgrades counts towards making a "great breakthrough" and meeting the conditions for a full-scoring ascension, which requires a minimum of 6 upgrades total. While characters of other roles may still perform undead hunter research, they cannot ascend under an undead hunter ascension.

Obtaining a reanimation upgrade will advance the hero in their research and grant an appropriate upgrade, while also reducing their current intelligence and wisdom scores by 1. Every third upgrade taken on the research path will also permanently reduce the maximum intelligence and wisdom possible for that character's race by 1. Fully advancing into the reanimation research path will thus reduce their intelligence and wisdom maximums by 3, superseded by helms of brilliance and the spirit Huginn and Munnin while it is bound.

Strategy

For lawful Undead Hunters, obtaining their portable electrode will be their priority during the early to mid-game. While they may still advance their reanimation research by researching corpses on a workbench, they must first defeat the Index Wolf before being able to obtain any of their upgrades, or find a workbench to the college in the main dungeon that contains one otherwise. Since most reanimation Undead Hunters won't have 27 insight until after they have explored a bit of the Lost Cities, this isn't their biggest priority early on, but should likely be incorporated into the player's route so as not to lose out on the benefits of the upgrades.

The portable electrode fulfills a niche use for pet monger builds, and can be used to pad out their ranks with fodder monsters. As undead skeletons with natural resistance to slashing and piercing weapons, they are a bit sturdier when fighting against most weapon-wielding foes. Their natural resistance to cold, sleep and poison may also be of good use, though they are also notably slower. As a source of pets, they are in many regards more reliable and far cheaper to use than other magical sources, with the caveat that the better higher difficulty monsters require large amounts of energy to reanimate. Incantifiers are notably exempt from this drawback, and can use it essentially as much as they want.

Other play styles do not particularly benefit from the portable electrode's reanimating properties; however, a character who wishes to benefit from the reanimation upgrades will still find themselves in need of this item, which necessitates spending a wish to obtain it.

Messages

You jolt the corpse, but nothing happens!

You applied a portable electrode to reanimate a corpse but didn't have enough energy.

You jolt the corpse, and its flesh burns away in great arcs of lightning!

You applied a portable electrode to reanimate a corpse. Counts towards reanimation research, if currently a student of the philosophy.

You have devised a new experiment into the great animating thoughts.

You reanimated a corpse while an active student of the reanimation philosophy.