Anger

Religion in NetHack
priests alignment alignment record altars atheism anger gods sacrifice prayer turn undead

In NetHack, anger is a measure of how angry your god is. Other gods may smite you or otherwise interact with you, but only your god keeps track of their long-lasting anger with you.

It is a Bad Idea to pray if your god is angry with you.

You can mollify your god by sacrificing sufficiently powerful monsters at a coaligned altar.

Ways to anger your god

Many of the following have other effects as well, such as on luck or your alignment record, but for brevity these are not shown here.

Action	Anger
Sacrificing your own race at an altar, and you are not chaotic	+3*
Sacrificing a unicorn of your alignment at an altar of your alignment	+1*
Sacrificing a former pet at an altar of your alignment	+1*
Praying before your prayer timeout	+1*
Praying to make unholy water when it was otherwise safe to pray	+1*
Killing your pet by displacing it into a trap.	+1
Attempting to change alignment through sacrifice a second time	+3*
Attempting to change alignment to unaligned outside Gehennom	+3*
Sacrificing on an altar of Moloch in Gehennom	+3
Sacrificing an identified Cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor	+3

* Your god will smite you after increasing anger.

Effects of anger

• Your god will smite you if you pray while they are angry.

• Luck (both good and bad) times out more quickly if your god is angry.

• Attempts to #turn undead will fail if your god is extremely angry.

• The manner in which your own god smites you is largely determined by their anger.

Checking your god's anger

Enlightenment by a wand or potion includes a statement of your god's anger, if any.

Message	Anger
"<God's name> is extremely angry with you"	7+
"<God's name> is very angry with you"	4-6
"<God's name> is angry with you"	1-3
<no message>	0

Ways to mollify your god

Anger never times out by itself. Sacrificing corpses is the major way to reduce anger.

Non-chaotics must sacrifice a corpse from a monster with 7 or greater monster difficulty, and chaotic players must sacrifice a corpse with monster difficulty of 11 or greater. For non-chaotic players, a cross-aligned unicorn will also work. See Sacrifice#sacrificing to your god for detailed information.

Action	Anger
Sacrificing a unicorn at an altar of its own alignment (not yours)	-1*
Sacrificing a former pet at an altar not of your alignment	-1*
Sacrificing any other corpse to your own god	<see below>

* The altar's god will smite you, but your god is slightly mollified because you upset another god.

Value of corpses

Your god's anger is reduced based on the value of the corpse sacrificed and your alignment.

Value is the difficulty of the monster plus 1, with some adjustments:

• A former pet of yours has a value of -1.
• A unicorn of the altar's alignment has a value of -5.
• A unicorn not of your alignment has +3 extra value.
• Undead have +1 value if you are not chaotic.

Otherwise, the actual reduction depends on your alignment:

• If you are not chaotic, your god's anger is reduced by value/8.
• If you are chaotic, your god's anger is reduced by value/12.

Other ways to get a god to smite you

In addition to the above, the following will result in one god or another smiting you, but will not affect your god's anger:

Action	Deity
Praying with negative luck, negative alignment record, or when your god is angry	Your god
Praying while in Gehennom	Moloch*
Sacrificing anything at a high altar not of your alignment	The altar's god**

* Moloch may not smite you if you have low positive alignment and/or good luck.
** That god zaps you (as a 10+ on the smite table). You don't lose your intrinsic protection. If you sacrificed a known Cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor, this is in addition to your own god getting angry.

Smiting

Sufficiently annoying any god will cause them to possibly smite you.

You will lose any intrinsic protection you may have if you anger any god to this point, regardless of the actual outcome of the attempt.

There may be an additional negative effect based on the following:

• Your god's anger
• Whether your own god or a different god is trying to smite you
• Your luck
• Your alignment record

The following algorithm and lookup table show how the negative effect is chosen.

1. Base value
   • If your own god is trying to smite you, start with three times your god's anger.
   • If a different god is trying to smite you, start with half your alignment.
2. Luck modifier
   • If your luck is positive, subtract one third of your luck from the base value.
   • If your luck is negative, subtract your luck from the base value (making things worse).
     • If your own god is trying to smite you and your alignment is at least strident, instead subtract only one third of your luck from the base value. (Your god relents somewhat due to your past piety?)
3. Adjustment
   • If the value is less than 1, increase it to 1.
   • If the value is greater than 15, decrease it to 15.
4. Roll 1d(value) and use the following lookup table.

Roll	Message	Effect
1–2	"You feel that <god> is displeased." ("You feel that <god> is bummed" if you are hallucinating.)	No further effect.
3–4	"Thou hast strayed from the path, mortal" if your alignment is negative and your own god is smiting you; "Thou art arrogant, mortal" otherwise. "Thou must relearn thy lessons!"	You lose 1 wisdom and one level. However, if you are already at experience level 1, you do not lose a level and do not die from this effect.
5–6	"Thou hast angered me." "A black glow surrounds you."	Items in your inventory will be randomly cursed.
7	"Thou hast angered me."	If you are not punished, you become punished. If you are already punished, treat as a roll of 5-6 above.
8–9	"Thou durst call upon me?" ("Thou durst scorn me?" if you are at an altar of a god other than the one smiting you) "Then die, mortal!"	The god summons a hostile minion.
10+	"Thou hast angered me."	The god zaps you with a fatal lightning bolt. If you are engulfed by a monster lacking shock-resistance, it dies. (Reflection will not save it.) If you are not engulfed, and you have neither shock resistance nor reflection, you die. If you survive for any reason, "<god> is not deterred..." and the god zaps you with a wide-angle disintegration beam. If you are still engulfed and the monster lacks disintegration resistance, the monster dies. If you are not engulfed, and do not have disintegration resistance, you die. Being hit by a wide-angle disintegration beam will also destroy your shield, cloak, body armor and shirt, even if you are disintegration-resistant. However, items that provide reflection or disintegration resistance will be unaffected, as will items worn under another item that grants it (such as a shirt worn under silver dragon scale mail). Reflection will not protect you from the disintegration beam, however. If you survive by means of disintegration resistance, "You bask in its black glow for a minute..." and the god says "I believe it not!" If you are on the Astral Plane or the Sanctum level, "Thou cannot escape my wrath, mortal! Destroy <him>, my servants!" and three hostile minions are summoned.

See also

• Prayer
• Sacrifice