Sickness

Sickness is a negative status property that occurs in NetHack. If left untreated, sickness will result in a delayed instadeath after some amount of turns. The main causes are eating too old corpses, special attacks, and cursed unicorn horns. The main remedies are applying a non-cursed unicorn horn, casting cure sickness, and quaffing certain potions.

The game uses "deathly sick" to specifically herald this condition, whereas there are many other cases where you simply "feel sick".

Sickness resistance in vanilla NetHack is possessed only by ghouls, which happily feast on old corpses, and fungi.

Contrary to its name, potion of sickness does not cause sickness.

Types of sickness

There are two distinct types of sickness, indicated separately on the status line. You can also suffer both conditions simultaneously. The effects and remedies are identical, except that only food poisoning can be cured by vomiting.

Food poisoning

Food poisoning is only acquired by eating an old ("tainted") corpse or glob. It is marked by the text FoodPois on the status line. The initial time until death is set to 10–19 turns.

Food poisoning is completely preventable in vanilla NetHack if you don't eat old corpses. A corpse is too old to eat after 6 × (9 + 1d20) turns, where 6 is replaced with 8 if blessed and 4 if cursed. Corpses left by undead except wraith are always pre-aged by 100 turns; eaten immediately, they have 40% chance of causing food poisoning. Old corpses can be rendered safe to eat by tinning them. Lichen and lizard corpses never rot and may be safely eaten regardless of age.

Despite the name, food poisoning is unrelated to poison and is unaffected by poison resistance.

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.

You have a constitution in 100 chance of surviving food poisoning. If you do, you lose 1 point of constitution and abuse constitution.

Illness

Illness is conferred by the disease attacks of certain monsters, listed below, or by applying a cursed unicorn horn. It is marked by the text Ill on the status line.

• & Demogorgon
• & Juiblex
• s Scorpius
• & Pestilence

The first time you contract the illness, a turns-to-live timer is started, set to between 20 and (19+Con). Each additional illness attack while you are Ill divides the remaining turns-to-live by roughly 3.

Remedies

Sickness can be easily cured with any of the following:

• applying a non-cursed unicorn horn
• praying to your god
• quaffing a non-cursed potion of extra healing or full healing, a blessed potion of healing, or (unless chaotic) a potion of holy water
• casting a spell of cure sickness
• eating a non-cursed eucalyptus leaf
• invoking the Staff of Aesculapius

The full list of less common remedies also includes:

• vomiting from eating tripe or a rotten egg. This cures food poisoning only, not illness. Quite unreliable, but it's there.
• polymorphing into a new version of yourself or a sickness-resistant monster (ghoul or some fungi). (A new version includes if you "fail" to change form, but get your attributes adjusted.)
• getting healed by a nurse's attack.
• sitting on a throne (¹⁄₁₃ chance).

The only sure-fire cures are the potions, prayer if safe, the spell at 0% failure rate, and polyself. A unicorn horn is good enough if you weren't made sick multiple times.

Importantly, poison resistance is not a remedy; if you become food poisoned and rely on this you will die.

Messages

Ulch - that <food type> was tainted!

The corpse you are eating is old enough to cause food poisoning.

You feel deathly sick.

You have contracted sickness and will soon die if untreated.

It doesn't seem at all sickening, though...

You would have contracted sickness but are resistant.

You feel even worse.

You feel much worse.

Your sickness has worsened your sickness, further shortening your time to live ("much" if reduced by at least half).

You feel somewhat better.

Vomiting cured your food poisoning, but not illness. This doubles your time to live.

You are no longer ill.

The cure sickness spell is curing your sickness (even if it was food poisoning).

What a relief!

You have fully cured your sickness.

Enlightenment may reveal any of the following, which are self-explanatory:

You are sick from food poisoning.

You are sick from illness.

You are immune to sickness.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, rot worms have an illness-inducing attack. You may also get food poisoning from swallowing a pill, and you can cure food poisoning by sitting on a toilet. The Necromancer and the Undead Slayer roles start the game with innate sickness resistance.

Keep in mind that here unicorn horns need to be enchanted in order to be reliable.

SporkHack

SporkHack introduces locusts and gray fungi, which have illness-inducing attacks. Drinking a potion of salt water can induce vomiting to cure food poisoning.

EvilHack

EvilHack adds several monsters that can cause illness:

• Locusts appear in swarms and can "stun lock" the player by inflicting illness very fast.
• Zombies now have a brain-eating attack that causes illness, among other effects.
• Gray fungi have a passive illness attack.

Thankfully, EvilHack also includes more sources of immunity to sickness.

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.