Y

Printable ASCII characters
~	!	@	#	$	%	^	&	*	(	)	_	+	space
`	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	-	=	{	}	|
	Qq	Ww	Ee	Rr	Tt	Yy	Uu	Ii	Oo	Pp	:	"	[	]	\
	Aa	Ss	Dd	Ff	Gg	Hh	Jj	Kk	Ll	?	;	'	Ctrl
	Zz	Xx	Cc	Vv	Bb	Nn	Mm	,	.	/	<	>	Alt

In NetHack, the letter Y serves the following purposes:

• y represents a light:
  • y yellow light
  • y black light

• Y represents an apelike creature:
  • Y monkey
  • Y ape
  • Y owlbear
  • Y yeti
  • Y carnivorous ape
  • Y sasquatch

• It is also used as a direction key if numpad movement is off:
  • Press y to move northwest.
  • Press shift + y to move far northwest.

• If numpad movement is on:
  • Pressing y answers yes to questions with "yes/no" prompts. As such, be wary of moving by holding down the key or else pressing it repeatedly: you may risk attacking a powerful peaceful monster to your northwest, especially in areas like Minetown. See paranoid_hit for a way to avoid this.

Historical uses

In PDP-11 Hack, a variant of Jay Fenlason's Hack, yeti used the Y glyph as normal; this was also the case from Hack 1.0 to NetHack 3.0.10. The apelike creature monster class was introduced in NetHack 3.0.0, and its members - the ape and carnivorous ape - instead used A as their glyph. In NetHack 3.1.0, the apelike creatures were moved to Y with the yeti to make room for angelic beings, and the owlbear was changed from a giant humanoid, H, to an apelike creature.

Variants

SLASH'EM

While SLASH'EM does not introduce any new monsters using y or Y as their glyph, the z zruty is moved to the apelike creature monster class and has its glyph changed to Y.