Saving grace

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Added in commit 08a2a2a1 and slightly changed in commit 03ee609c

As of commit ec7781b9, saving grace has been removed entirely from the game, based on a few reasons: players were already too aware of and reliant on it; several common instadeath sources had been mitigated in the meantime; and it was becoming overly complex with every potential source of damage needing to be classified as saving-grace-eligible or not.

Variants branching off the 3.7.0 dev version may still contain an implementation of saving grace.

Saving grace was a hidden mechanic which will save you from dying from HP loss once per game, leaving you with 1 HP. It was added and subsequently removed during the development of NetHack 3.7.0.

Saving grace triggers if you take damage from a single source when saving grace has not been used up, your current HP is above 90% of maximum, and the damage you would take is more or equal than your HP. It will also stop multi-turn actions, sleeping, and fainting. Once it triggers, your HP is prevented from being reduced below 1 until the end of the current turn or until you get another action, which avoids the case in which you get zapped with a ray, reduced to 1 HP from the first hit, and then finished off when it bounces and hits you again.

If the HP damage is from your own actions (i.e. it happened on the player's turn, not the monsters' turn), saving grace does not trigger.

Saving grace does not protect against the wand of death, because it does not kill via HP damage.

Whether or not saving grace triggered is shown in the end-of-game disclosure, but it is impossible to know its status before then unless one of the following two things is true:

• You are able to read events in the game's livelog file that are flagged LL_SPOILER. Saving grace will be recorded there.
• You are in wizard mode or explore mode, in which case enlightenment will display its status.

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