Talk:Potion of unholy water

Weapon

Does this have any applications as a thrown weapon, as the inverse of holy water?--PeterGFin 10:37, August 3, 2010 (UTC)

Cursed directly even if blessed

Anyone happen to know if the fountain dipping for unholy water is a one or two step process when done with holy water? (This is somewhat important/relevant in illiterate and atheist games where one often has, or atleast I do, three stacks of water pots: buc id blessed, named blessed and named uncursed, but no buc id'd uncursed. So I'm just wondering if it's easier to just use one buc id'd blessed for it and keep checking inventory or use a named uncursed and see if it re-stacks with named uncurseds) --Kynde (talk) 07:48, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

To answer myself, the Source:Ref/dipfountain 403-405 reveals that the chance is one in 30 and it's indeed cursed straight up even if it's holy water to begin with. (moreover, it seems that aside from dipping into holy/unholy waters, the game more often just curses on blesses no matter the original status than take it through the twostep process) --Kynde (talk) 08:07, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The item gets cursed outright. So you could dip your BUC-identified holy water, and it either stays holy or becomes unholy. That's an option if you can afford to dilute unidentified potions early on to make a stack of holy water, i.e. you are not a pacifist and you already have holy water.

This is how I make unholy water without breaking any of the 12 conducts:

1. Acquire reasonably powerful pets, and some pet management tool (magic whistle, eucalyptus, leash, tin whistle, key).
2. Find a leather drum or tooled horn. Alternatively, deplete their magical counterparts. This is to keep the snakes at distance until the pets arrive. You can't keep your pets nearby unless you don't mind drowning them in pools.
3. Work out which potions you can afford to water down, since a pacifist doesn't get death drows -- only the items found on the floor in freshly generated levels. This means Price identification and whether it's monster starting inventory.
4. Dig down on a fountain (near your stash and a shop) to create non-magical water. (Don't drown your pets!) Dilute those two expendable potions, and name them "uncursed".
5. Tour the dungeons, and at each fountain: 1) lock up pets in case you get pools, 2) ready your drum/horn in case you get snakes, and unstack the two uncursed water, 3) repeatedly #dip one of the waters into the fountain, and test whether it still stacks with the other one. Once it doesn't, you've made unholy water. Name it "cursed".
6. Later, when you need to use it, dip a stack of plain water into the unholy water. Don't use up your last unholy water! Good things to curse are: second unicorn horn (source of confusion before you forget spells), bag of holding (trash can while farming), potions of gain level for the Sanctum and emergencies, blessed alchemy input, and the Book of the Dead if you need to level up your pet purple worm fast.

However, it's probably a better idea to dip the second unicorn horn directly, since such a game needs the potions for nutrition. If you're really foolhardy, you can also let spellcasting monsters curse your inventory. More info on all-conducts strategy can be found at https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/FifqgKIC6y0 --Tjr (talk) 08:44, 2 April 2013 (UTC)