User:Tomsod/YANIs and patches

I have several clever ideas on how to improve NetHack (don't we all?) and aim to make them into actual patches over time. Might as well use this wiki for remembrance of the former and promotion of the latter.

Wand of make invisible can turn doors into secret doors

Invisible doors
Author	Tomsod
Download	link
NetHack PatchDB	516

Only works on closed doors, doesn't work on Astral plane. Shop doors will reappear after a while.

Makes the wand significantly less useless (currently you only need one charge per game).

In terms of balance, the wand becomes about as useful as a wand of locking: while a secret door is giant-proof, you need to actually close the door first, so it's not strictly superior.

Surprisingly, wands of locking actually already have similar behavior in vanilla, but only on the Rogue level (for the lack of locked doors there).

I have written a patch for it (against 3.6.1), but it turns out secret doors can only imitate straight wall segments. If you dig out a room corner, make a door there, and turn it secret, there will be visual glitches (except on default symset)! It's not easily fixable, unfortunately.

Also there's a minor 3.6.1 shop bug that combined with this patch can allow you to break down the shop door without being fined. It's easy to fix, but I defer this right to devs for now. I will post a fix for it later, with authorship depending on their decision.

EDIT: DevTeam has fixed the bug. You can get their fix here; patch 3.6.1 with it, then with my patch, and just ignore rejects. Alternatively, here's a combined fix + patch against 3.6.1 that shouldn't cause errors.

EDIT2: here's the patch rebased against 3.6.2. The aforementioned bug is already fixed in 3.6.2.

You can sacrifice junk artifacts to reduce artifact counter

Artifact sacrifice
Author	Tomsod
Download	link
NetHack PatchDB	517

Because people love leaving bones with their Demonbanes in my game just as I'm about to wish for the Eye.

dNetHack actually implemented a similar idea with their Unknown God priests. With how many artifacts that variant has, it does seem even more necessary!

Of course, you cannot sacrifice artifacts that were gifted to you! That would be rude. Any other artifact acts like a high-value sacrifice, and after disappearing no longer counts as generated for wishing and gifting purposes (but cannot be generated again).

Here's the patch (3.6.1). I didn't notice any bugs.

EDIT: and I rebased it onto 3.6.2. Also, artifacts on the floor are now properly sacrificable. I'm still unhappy with the wording of rejected-sacrifice messages, but I couldn't think of anything better.

EDIT2: here's a 3.6.6 rebase.

A command to eat one turn's worth of food

Probably #bite or something. I have read recommendations to save K-rations into endgame because their not immobilizing you for several turns is apparently a major strategic advantage. Well, what logically forbids your hero from eating just a half of their lembas wafer when time is at a premium? You can even already do that, just not purposefully.

The only downside with this idea is balance: it removes the only flaw of a lembas wafer, making it into the uberfood.

Also, lizard corpses become multiple-use with this command. Neat.

Luggage (from Discworld)

Yes, it has already been proposed before, but I intend to write an actual patch. Coding-wise, it should be my most ambitious one (for this game, that is).

Anyway, the Luggage appears as an artifact chest when it is gifted to you. As soon as you touch it, it transforms into a tame unique monster. It has the resistances of a golem, high MR, the digesting attack of a purple worm (but probably lower base level), and you can #loot it to store items inside. There are downsides, though:

• Unlike the books, the space inside the chest is not dimensionally packed or whatever. That means storing wands of cancellation is safe, but the Luggage can become encumbered.
  • The basic mechanics are as for a strong player, slowing down at 1000 weight units, and collapsing at 3000.
    • You can chat to it to reveal its level of encumbrance.
  • The engulfing attack is much rarer with many items inside the Luggage (too little space), and at (say) 2000+ weight doesn't occur at all.
    • That means you have to choose between using it as a pet or as a container.
  • At 3000+ not only the Luggage stops moving, it also stops responding to a magic whistle, so you can't really use it as a teleportable main stash (unless your main stash is really small).
• The items inside Luggage are technically its inventory, but behave more like as being inside a proper chest:
  • Luggage won't pick up or drop anything on its own.
  • Items are protected from elemental damage.
    • But not from nymphs! (Probably.)
  • Monsters attacking Luggage in melee (especially with kicks) can damage fragile items (like with kicking chests).
• Luggage is very loyal, and will not go wild due to neglect or abuse.
  • Relatedly, it is inediate despite the digestion attack.
• When killed normally, Luggage will leave behind its item form with its inventory inside.
  • It can be revived with undead turning, I guess.
  • It will or course always revive tame.
• The loyalty is not transferable, and bones Luggage will always be hostile and non-tamable.
  • It will transform into ordinary chest on death.
• Its letter is probably 'm'.
• As an artifact, it really should be unaligned, but 'unaligned' has a different meaning for monsters, so let it be neutral.

So it's really more gimmicky than useful: you can't store potions or orbs in it because they can break, you can't store wands because nymphs may use them against you... actually, there's a lot of items nymphs can use, so I may make the Luggage nymph-proof after all. At least, it should be useful as a pet. Not sure if I want it to be more useful as a pet than as a container, though.

Scroll of epitaph

Scroll of epitaph
Author	Tomsod
Download	link
NetHack PatchDB	unknown

When read, you are prompted for a message that is then engraved on the up stairs, to be hopefully read by your successor. Beatitude affects quality of message (burned/carved/written in dust). Blessed scrolls may also read themselves when you die. Confused reading creates a headstone.

While mostly useful on public servers, you can possibly engrave Elbereth with it? It's mostly for improving your bones, though.

EDIT: and I wrote the patch. The scroll shares the 50 zm price slot with the scroll of light, so it's easy to ID in the early game when you're most likely to leave bones. Also sometimes generates on top of graves. When you die, have a chance to leave bones, and have at least one blessed scroll of epitaph in open inventory, there's a 50% chance of it reading itself for the usual effect. Non-blessed scrolls miswrite some letters, so Elbereth is not guaranteed. The scroll correctly chooses the upstair, downstair, portal or ladder that leads towards DL 1. There seem to be no bugs.

EDIT2: fixed some incorrect code, updated the link.

EDIT3: here's a 3.6.2 rebase. I also slightly changed the chance of miswriting short engravings.

A 'moneyless' conduct for variants with shop services

Because services provide conduct-proof ways to do many important things, including enchanging/charging (illiterate), holy/unholy water (atheist), formal ID (zen/illiterate) etc. Also there are some very cheap tricks, like horn of plenty + credit cloning + tool shop -> infinite potions and food.

Not sure about the name. Maybe 'commie'? There must be a word for 'a person who deliberately avoids using money', I just don't know it.

For completeness, this conduct should also track regular buying/selling, donation to priests, paying to foocubi, bribes, vault guards and Oracle. Feels restrictive enough to qualify for a proper conduct.

EDIT: or I could throw out selling to shops and call it 'frugal'! Makes much more sense and doesn't really change anything important gamewise.

Monks should get a unique spell when crowned

Restore ability is quite useless and everyone acknowledges that. Similarly to getting an unique (artifact) weapon for other roles, Monks could get a unique (not randomly generated) spell that is otherwise only obtainable through wishing.

I think that restore ability was chosen because it's the highest-level spell of Monks' highest-proficiency spell school. So, enter new spell: rejuvenation. Healing level 7 (or 6?), non-directional (self only), mostly duplicates full healing, except for max HP increase (of course), and heal amount is level-dependent (say, XLd10). At skilled restores drained levels, like blessed potion. Also restores attributes (we've come full circle!) and cures wounded legs. Not too cheesy, I hope?

This should both provide reasons for Monks to be crowned and to advance healing spells beyond basic.

Or maybe it doesn't have to be unique, just rare? Wizards get their finger of death after all and nobody's complaining.

EDIT: or if it is too OP, I could make it give temporary regeneration instead. Possibly improved regeneration, since at high levels PCs tend to recover ~3 HP/turn on their own and plain regeneration (0.67 HP/turn) becomes no big deal.

EDIT2: another spell idea: iron skin, which gives half physical damage and some natural AC (not cumulative with body armor) for several hundred turns. It does feel very Monk-y, although it probably doesn't fit into the Healing school, which invalidates some of the above arguments. Perhaps "stone skin"? There is the "stone to flesh" Healing spell, after all. "Stone form"? (And make it give petrification resistance as well!) Something to think about, for sure.

The spell of Voodoo

This isn't really my idea, but I sort of want to code it. Voodoo was proposed as part of Fyr's Pirate YANI, and while b (gelatinous cube called SLASH'EM Extended) did implement that role, I believe Amy had never coded the voodoo part. Well, I wanna try!

Making it a special ability of a single role out of like 100 is a bit wasteful, so let it be a spell, available to all, that Korsairs simply start with. Since figurines are rare, Korsairs (and a select few other roles/races) will also get a mold technique that attempts to create a figurine of a monster you have seen before. Bonus for having killed or maybe eaten, large bonus for taking a picture or polymorphing into one. A good roll gives you a blessed figurine, partial failure gives you a cursed one; critical failure gives either nothing or a figurine of some blob.

To bind the figurine, wield it and cast the spell at an appropriate monster. The monster may or may not resist; perhaps at high skill levels the spell has a high chance to ignore MR. Voodoo seems somewhat gimmicky overall, and the MR piercing should make it sufficiently useful.

One effect I do not want to replicate is insta-taming by applying the figurine: it seems a bit OP (you get a pet AND you remove an enemy, all ignoring MR); instead applying will 'stick a pin' in it, doing damage. In fact, 'selfmade' figurines should have some penalty when used for pet-creating purposes, because balance.

Perhaps sticking a pin or kicking will have a BUC-dependent chance to shatter the figurine, to prevent pinning the monster to death too easily.

Cone of cold should not explode at Skilled

What are 'explosions of cold' anyway? Cold things don't explode! You have named this spell a cone, you should stick to it:

....... ...///
../---- ..///.
.@----- .|//..
..\---- .@-...
....... ......

The diagonal one looks slightly malformed, but such is life. The wide ray will not bounce (it would be difficult to implement) and will deal less than d6 damage, but higher than the current d1 on skilled. Perhaps d3 or d4. Hit monsters will not decrease the ray's range as much; perhaps not at all, but then the ray must be made shorter in general. Otherwise, it's just three rays of cold animated in parallel.

Overall, it's similar to the sigil of discharge, but that one imitates a wide ray by creating continuous explosions, and I certainly do not want to go that route!

On a side note, the variants that have other elemental spells also could benefit from giving them some flavor: explosions of lightning or poison don't make much sense either. Skilled lightning could act like chain lightning, changing direction on each hit to target other (non-immune?) monsters; poison spell can very easily be made to imitate stinking cloud.

Guiding candle

Guiding candle
Author	Tomsod
Download	link
NetHack PatchDB	515

Heavily inspired by the "lamp of detect unseen" idea from here, except it's a candle.

Basically, it's an enchanted wax candle that continuously casts detect unseen in its light radius, detecting traps and doors and illuminating invisible monsters (so you can actually see them). Of course, since it's just a wax candle, it has a light radius of 2, lasts only 400 turns, and cannot be recharged -- the original (chargeable) lamp idea seemed a bit OP to me (traps, by nature, shouldn't be too easy to evade).

So, if you find one in Izchak's shop, it can help when dealing with the odd invisible enemy, or to avoid polymorph traps and trap doors, but it won't change your game like a magic lamp might, thus it needn't be so rare. Later in game it can, perhaps, substitute for a confused scroll of gold detection, but should probably be polypiled instead.

(And now I wonder why I feel compelled to only create marginally useful items. Whatever. It's fun.)

Note to self: think up some BUC effects other than the usual flickering.

EDIT: I wrote it! Here's the patch against 3.6.2. In addition to the effects described above, the candle also reveals hidden monsters and illuminates buried and underwater treasure. Also, blessed guiding candles have increased light radius -- by the midgame, when you can liberally bless objects, a radius 2 light is probably too useless. And cursed candles work like ordinary wax candles until uncursed. Another interesting side-effect of the candle is that it allows monsters to see you if you're invisible, because you're illuminated as well.

This patch turned out to be larger than I expected. Firstly, buried objects are not stored per-tile, so I felt it necessary to optimize locating buried treasure instead of looping through the entire buried object list for every illuminated square on every map redraw. As such, I added a flag denoting whether the current square has anything under it. There were no free bits for a new flag, though, so I optimised the 3.6 re-diggable trapdoors flag away. Now it's in wall flags.

Secondly, the invisibility mechanics permeate the entire game, and so I had to make several dozen changes to bits of code checking whether you can see a monster, or if a monster can see you, or if a monster can see another monster, or if you can see yourself, or if a monster can see itself... I don't look forward to rebasing this onto 3.6.3.

The patch is not perfect. Some edge cases I knowingly missed:

• If you're blind, the game doesn't calculate light sources as an optimization; still, if you're invisible and carry a lit guiding candle, monsters will be able to see you. But if the candle is nearby, say, on the ground, they won't -- because checking for that would require to calculate light sources anyway, and I decided it's not worth it.
• Due to the particulars of the detecting function, a hiding monster on top of an undetected trap may not be immediately revealed by the candle.
• If a mimic mimics a boulder, it will block sight. If the mimic is invisible, it will only block sight if you can see invisible. But if you can see an invisible mimic because of a guiding candle, it will not block sight because of a circular dependency -- to know whether it blocks light we need to know if it's illuminated, but to calculate light sources we need to know which squares block light. Honestly, I think an invisible mimic should not block sight even if you can see it, because invisible monsters are canonically see-through, so I just dropped it.
  • Also, as I write it, I realize it may be a non-issue, given that the candle also causes mimics to stop hiding.
• The optimized re-diggable trapdoors flag conflicts with a unphasable wall flag. It's okay in vanilla, as the Castle doesn't have unphasable walls, but any variants that have levels with unphasable walls that can still be dug into holes on a level that only allows holes on some squares should not include this patch.
• I also slightly changed the shopkeeper and priest behavior: they used to act differently if you were invisible; now, they only do if you're invisible and they can't see you. This essentially allows the candle to work like a mummy wrapping in a shop, but it also means, for instance, that the high priests on the Astral Plane will always avoid you.

I've tested this patch extensively, but it's fairly large so there're probably still some other bugs somewhere. Time will tell.

EDIT2: I made some tweaks and fixes. I've fixed Castle re-diggable trapdoors flag a bit (it erroneously disappeared after digging a pit in the square in question). It also turned out that the flag never was in danger of conflicting with wall flags, but it could conflict with door flags if Castle had trapdoors in doorways. Thankfully, it is not the case.

I also realized that the candle can last very long if the player lights it one turn at a time in suspect locations. As the main idea behind making it a candle was its limited lifespan, I nerfed this and now each time a non-cursed guiding candle is lit, it instantly loses 10 turns from its burn time.

Lastly, I made the player unable to hide (mostly if polymorphed) when lit by the candle. For symmetry, neither can the monsters, even if the player doesn't see them. Ideally, both restrictions would only work when observed, but telling if the hero can be seen by someone is hard and spoiler-y.

On a more technical note, the previously uploaded patch version was munched by Pastebin because of an empty (but necessary) last line. I had to reorder patch chunks to prevent this.

EDIT3: I rebased the patch against 3.6.6: here it is. I also fixed a minor bug wherein a blind invisible player would still be illuminated by a cursed guiding candle.

Spell of summon familiar

Because the current create familiar is a 6th-level spell that summons kitties. It needs rework.

Create familiar is not, strictly speaking, a completely useless spell: while it's essentially a combination of create monster and charm monster, the 'charming' part ignores monster MR, so it's not reducible. Still, to get a decent pet that is hard to tame otherwise (perhaps a ki-rin or an Archon), one pretty much has to fill up entire level with pets, which are then abandoned. I find that distasteful.

The idea is to bring the spell closer to its D&D origins, where you would summon just one creature ever (until it died, anyway), but it would be magically linked to you and would provide various benefits above that of a regular pet.

So, on the first cast the spell would roll a monster that is co-aligned to you (a common theme in D&D familiar mechanics) and is not too low-level -- so, hopefully no kitties (or lichens). Having the monster be at or above your level would be ideal, but since non-unique monsters only go up to level 25, it's not practical. So, perhaps above half your level with a bias towards higher levels still. The spell may possibly still fail, e.g. by casting it as a lawful in Gehennom, where no lawfuls can spawn, but that's reasonable. Also, some filter on monster type might be sensible, since having a dwarf familiar feels improper. (Or a blue jelly.)

Anyway, the summoned familiar would be linked to you -- which, in practical terms, makes you warned of it and gives you some rough status info on farlook (wounded, confused, paralysed/asleep, etc.). More importantly, further castings of the spell would summon the familiar to you (and perhaps re-tame it if necessary), like a magic whistle, but across levels. Useful enough already? As a guy who regularly hauls rocks around just so his pets wouldn't scatter them all around the level, I dare say yes. (One possible caveat: a long-neglected familiar is summoned and immediately dies from hunger. Need to consider that somehow.)

But, you say, that's still more or less a 'summon random pet' spell, so what's stopping me from summoning and brutally slaughtering multiple unfit familiars until I get my Archon? Well, some D&D editions had various penalties for allowing your familiar to die (up to a save-or-die effect), so I don't even have to invent anything! I think a penalty to Con and maximum HP seems fair enough in NetHack reality.

And check this out: this spell improves on Skilled, becoming a 'summon specific pet' spell, so you can still get your Archon -- without any animal abuse, even! (Or, more likely, a ki-rin, looking at who can cast Skilled clerical spells.) It still can fail if the monster cannot (or is unlikely to) be generated randomly -- you, in essence, are 'calling' for a monster that must already live in this dungeon. (I'll need to tweak the probabilities so that summoning rare monsters won't be too easy -- but, in optimal conditions, still practical.)

Lastly, the above death penalty necessitates some improvement to weak familiars' survivability. That is also present in D&D -- I believe the familiars got boosted HP in some editions, among other things. Need to think what will it be, specifically.

Overall, the idea is to shift the spell from 'a horde of kittens' to 'just one, but powerful, companion', and the implementation seems to fit? I have some doubts over whether the Skilled version is too OP and/or abusable, but many spells improve dramatically on that skill level, so it's not that odd. Also it's a 6th-level spell. Polymorph is a 6th-level spell, and it's probably the most abusable spell in the game! Might still want to do something about the starting inventory, or else it will be a Sunsword-conjuring spell.

Circle of Silence monster spell

Inspired by D&D, this is a spell that removes all sound in the affected area, making spellcasting impossible, among other things. The original spell allowed a saving throw, but where's the fun in that? No, the only escape is literally leaving the circle! Or just waiting it out. Besides, too many perfectly good monster spells are completely negated by MR, turning fearsome liches into minor nuisances. That will not do.

The mechanics are as follows: the monster, standing safely away, casts the spell at your location; it affects a circular area, but the silence is 'thickest' at the center, gradually weakening towards the perimeter. Each turn, silenced tiles decrement their silence counter until it's zero and you can hear and speak again. As the counter is higher the closer to center, this has the effect of the circle gradually shrinking.

The effects of silence are many. They're somewhat easier to implement in 3.6.1, which has deafness and restrictions on silent spellcasting. Basically:

• You are effectively deaf.
• You cannot cast spells, as if you were polymorphed into a silent monster.
• You also cannot chat.
• Musical instruments do not work. (Except perhaps the drum of earthquake.)
• Shriekers can't shriek.
• Sound effects that originate on a silenced tile are ignored.
• You cannot be deafened further.
• Monsters also cannot cast spells.

The last point adds nuance: why would a monster who likely relies on spellcasting shoot itself in the foot by casting this spell? Especially if you're a barbarian. I can see two use cases: (1) monster is running away, so it doesn't care if your surroundings are silenced. It's not going to melee you anyway. (2) Monster can see you're a spellcaster (we'll need some heuristic based on the number of learned spells and casting failure) and you're unlikely to run away yourself, being engaged in combat with someone else. (This will check the amount of adjacent monsters and walls.) In that case it'll hang out at a safe distance and spawn nasties. Sounds like a winning strategy! In general, spellcasters should be wary of entering a silenced area, unless they think they can defeat you in physical combat. (The heuristic here needs thought.) And if they don't, they'll become scared while in it.

One important note is that the only vanilla non-melee offensive monster spells are summon nasties and summon insects, so the silence spell should be above them in level to preclude monsters having no means of attacking after silencing you. This makes it available to clerical casters on a much lower level, which fits nicely with D&D where silence is a clerical spell.

Now, such a rich mechanic can afford to be reused. So, let's also add a scroll of silence, to make the effect (ab)usable by the player! In practice, bearing in mind the above paragraph, it'll likely make spellcasters to run/teleport away instead of fighting you on your terms, but maybe they're trapped, or you just need a safe space? So, what the uncursed scroll does is create a circle of silence around you. Duh. But the blessed scroll actually allows you to center the circle, like the blessed scroll of fire! And the cursed scroll just makes you deaf. (The joke here is that the message is the same -- "All sound fades around you.") And let's make the confused reading remove silence -- scrolls can still be "cogitated" while silent, so that's okay. Uncursed in an area, blessed in the entire level, cursed still deafens you. So there's still some protection against silence, and that's the kind of protection I like -- having to carry a lizard corpse, a wand of fire, holy water and half a dozen other items on you at all times is an integral NetHack experience.

Speaking of protection, an amulet of vocalization would also be nice. Simply put, it allows you to cast spells while silent. The amulet slot is contested already, but it should have some use cases. Spellcasting monsters also can use it. Making it digestible would probably be unfair: as I don't intend to give any monster intrinsic vocalization (not even to liches which logically should have it), the player shouldn't have it either.

In summary, this can make lich fights a bit more interesting/annoying for unprepared players that rely on spells heavily, but like most NetHack hazards, it can be avoided by packing necessary items. The scroll can also make fighting an odd Titan a bit easier.

Infidel role

Infidel role
Author	Tomsod
Download	link
NetHack PatchDB	unknown

Started as a silly idea of a "backwards" role that starts with the Amulet of Yendor and has to bring it to the Sanctum, it has since grown considerably more fleshed out. Infidels are evil, ultra-chaotic cultists of Moloch that have a lot of unique quirks, and special winning conditions (I was inspired by the Anachrononaut role here). I'd say they're harder than average, as while they start with good equipment, they cannot pray reliably, cannot buy protection until the Valley, must find a convertible altar before the turn 7000 or so, encounter less peaceful monsters, have two role-specific hostile monsters that can generate out-of-depth, and the quest nemesis is fairly tough. Infidels are not supposed to be a challenge like Convicts, however; they're just extra quirky. Ascending an atheist Infidel can be a challenge, though.

The patch is done, tested, and polished, and can be downloaded here (apply against 3.6.5). It must be noted that the patch lacks tiles for all the new monsters, as I can't draw to save my life.

EDIT: I somehow managed to overlook a statusline glitch that displayed Infidels as lawful. This is despite it being evident every time I tested the patch! Ugh. The corrected version can be downloaded here.

EDIT2: fixed a major bug wherein Moloch crowning wasn't preserved after a save and restore. Also, black unicorns were erroneously considered coaligned to Infidels. Also also, the patch is now against 3.6.6, although the difference is not noticeable. Download here.

EDIT3: a few more tweaks. Notably, demonic crowning now preserves mental faculties, so former orcs will still have 16 max Int and Wis. Also, Infidels can now properly drop cursed loadstones. Also, I backported a commit from 3.7 that allows you to ring the Bell of Opening (on the vibrating square only) even if you're hurt by silver. Obviously, it's very important in the context of this patch! The updated patch is here.

EDIT4: a bunch more tweaks and bugfixes, mostly stolen from User:K2's EvilHack implementation of the role. Among them: removed many murder-related alignment penalties for unaligned infidels; peaceful covetous monsters don't follow the player around anymore (and in particular, demon princes have ceased wishing "good hunting" to crowned Infidels like every turn); some changes to Moloch's prayer boons (mostly cosmetic, but he now curses armor instead of blessing the weapon, and water prayer produces unholy water); Amulet energy drain is reduced by about 3/4th for Infidels; and I added some actual tiles for the new monsters. Download from here.

Reasonable foocubi

Reasonable foocubi
Author	Tomsod
Download	link
NetHack PatchDB	unknown

This patch changes the behavior of foocubi to be more reasonable: they no longer actively try to seduce you while hostile, and when you initiate an encounter with them, they ask for money upfront. The second change is merely sensible, but the first one removes a fairly distasteful game mechanic, as, if you think about it, what hostile foocubi try to do is quite rape-y.

Instead of the seduction attack, foocubi now have a life-draining bite, like with SEDUCE=0. They have a chance to be pacified with a bribe or an applied mirror, as well as the usual magical methods. Also, if you carry a lot of gold in open inventory, foocubi may be generated peaceful. The price the foocubus will ask for depends on your Charisma and XL, and lies between 200 and 1000 zm. Tame foocubi will work for free.

In addition to making game saner, this patch also provides a decent money sink for the mid-late game, as by Castle most players have far more gold than they can use.

The patch against 3.6.6 can be downloaded here. As always, I'm unhappy with the dialogue, but as I don't know how actual people talk, this can't be helped.

Ice cream

Ice cream
Author	Tomsod
Download	link
NetHack PatchDB	unknown

I lapsed into adding borderline useless items again, so here's a new comestible! Ice creams are similar to pancakes stat-wise, except with cold resistance they're tastier, and also they melt away after a while, so they're not permafood. Consequently, ice cream doesn't appear during initial level generation (except in ice boxes, which usually have one). On the plus side, it is never rotten. Valkyries start with one occasionally (which must be eaten quickly). Ice cream can be destroyed by fire damage, and cold-resistant carnivore pets consider it a treat. That's about all. The patch is against 3.6.7 and includes a 16x16 tile for the new item.

Self- improving Banes

Self-improving Banes
Author	Tomsod
Download	link
NetHack PatchDB	unknown

Most Banes are considered somewhat useless, because at +0, even with double damage, they're worse than a good +7 sword, and nobody wants to spend enchant weapon scrolls on a weapon that's only useful 5% of the time. Okay, but what if you didn't need scrolls? This patch is yet another attempt to make Banes useful, this time by letting them enchant themselves whenever they're used to kill a monster they hate. With this, the player is not only encouraged but actively rewarded by using the proper artifact against its nemeses, and with some effort can obtain a +7 (or higher) weapon that, in absence of better artifacts, may even be fit for general use. (I got the idea from Crawl's Wyrmbane.)

The chance for a Bane to improve itself is based on monster level and type, and for some common monsters like orcs and undead is actually rather low. Revived monsters get a penalty; unique monsters (that weren't revived) may grant as much as +4 at once, but otherwise only increments of +1 are allowed. The weapon will never vaporize from over-enchanting itself, although there are progressively severe penalties above +5. Frankly, I'm not sure how balanced the whole thing is, but the numbers may be tweaked.

Grimtooth can also improve upon killing elves, despite its universal damage bonus, and there's a very small chance of the Sceptre of Might getting an occasional +1 -- mostly to make life easier for illiterate cavepeople. The patch is against 3.6.7. Inter-monster combat is also handled, although I didn't cover monsters killing players, it being a comparatively rare occurrence.