Spellbook of insulate
| spellbook of + insulate 
| |
|---|---|
| Appearance | random |
| Base price | 200 zm |
| Weight | 50 |
| Turns to read | 4 |
| Ink to write | 10–19 |
| Spell type | protection |
| Level | 2 |
| Power cost | 10 Pw |
| Direction | non-directional |
In SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM, the spellbook of insulate allows the hero to learn the spell of insulate. It is a level 4 protection spell, and the spellbook takes 4 actions to read.
Generation
Wizards have a 1⁄9 chance of receiving a spellbook of insulate as their fourth spellbook.[1]
Spellbooks of insulate comprise approximately 1.52% of all spellbooks randomly generated on the ground, in general shops or as death drops.[2] Second-hand bookstores and rare books stores can also stock spellbooks of resist sleep.
Writing a spellbook of insulate with a magic marker uses up 10 to 19 charges.
Description
Successfully casting the spell gives the hero temporary shock resistance for 500 to 1499 (more) turns—this does not interfere with gaining fire resistance normally, e.g. through eating appropriate corpses. It has no effect if the hero casts it while they already have intrinsic shock resistance.
Strategy
Compared to the spells of resist sleep and resist poison, the spell of insulate is noticeably less useful: its spellbook is rarer, it costs twice as much power to use, and it is not as immediately applicable against sources of shock damage compared to those spells and their protection against the dangers that sleep and poison present. Note that the spell also does not protect against inventory damage and destruction, e.g. it will not prevent shock damage from possibly destroying rings and causing wands to explode—the latter is especially dangerous in these variants, which treat shock-destroyed wands as though they were broken by applying.
While shock resistance is important and sources of the property are often obtained late in the game, it is usually not urgent if a hero is careful, with the relative exception of energy vortices that can deal significant damage and also drain energy. A source of reflection can block rays of lightning from wands and breath attacks, which also cover a majority of shock damage sources. Various blob, pudding or ooze monsters can also grant shock resistance as a result of eating their corpses, and black puddings and brown puddings can both be split repeatedly to increase the odds—black puddings in particular can be reliably generated by kicking sinks. Once the hero gains a long-term source of shock resistance, the spellbook becomes a prime candidate for blanking.
Heroes adhering to a food-restricting conduct, e.g. vegetarian or foodless may find this spell to be useful for a longer duration, though there are also more vegan- or vegetarian-friendly sources of shock resistance in SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM. The spell is also especially useful if a player is observing atheist conduct alongside the given conducts, which prevents crowning to obtain the intrinsic.
History
The spellbook of insulate first appears in NetHack Plus and SLASH 6, ancestors of SLASH'EM. In NetHack Plus, the item name is misspelled as the spellbook of insolate.
Messages
- You are not at all shocked by this feeling.
- You cast the spell, gaining temporary intrinsic shock resistance.
- Bummer! You've been grounded!
- As above, while hallucinating
- You feel a little static cling.
- Your temporary shock resistance timed out.
