Altar
| Religion in NetHack |
|---|
An altar is a dungeon feature that appears in NetHack and is represented by an underscore, _.
An altar is always dedicated to a god, and is co-aligned if its alignment matches the alignment of the hero, or cross-aligned if its alignment differs from theirs; altars to Moloch are always unaligned.
A temple is a special room that contains an altar with an aligned priest of the same alignment tending to it, and can occur randomly throughout the Dungeons of Doom and its branches, in addition to specific locations within them.
Most ways of interacting with an altar will break atheist conduct.
Contents
Generation
Randomly generated altars can appear in ordinary room-and-corridor levels in the Dungeons of Doom - there is an independent 1⁄60 chance that any room that is not a special room contains an altar, and this chance is not dependent on dungeon level.[1] Altars cannot occupy any square in a room that is cardinally adjacent to a door (diagonally adjacent altars are fine) or otherwise occupied by another dungeon feature.[2]
A randomly generated altar has an equal probability of being each of the three alignments, and is never unaligned. Altars that are part of a loaded bones level are adjusted to the pantheon of the hero's current role.
A randomly-generated temple that is not created in a "desecrated" state will always have an altar, usually placed in or near the center of the room - there are several special levels where temples can be encountered.
In addition, there are several guaranteed altars at the following locations:
- The Barbarian quest goal level has a chaotic altar in the northeastern portion of the cavern.
- The Healer quest home level has a neutral altar in the room directly west of the central room.
- The Monk quest goal level contains an unaligned altar placed on one of two squares within the level.
- The Wizard quest goal level contains a cross-aligned altar in the bottom of the two western-most rooms.
- Orcus-town has a room containing an unaligned altar, with the exception of a bones level where the altar was destroyed.
Description
An altar can be used for various purposes, including sacrifice as well as prayer. The alignment of an altar can be determined either by selecting it using far look, or else by standing on it and using near look.
Beatitude
If a character drops one or more objects on an altar, either manually or under certain circumstances (e.g. from polymorphing or slippery fingers, but not from throwing an object so that it lands on an altar), the altar will reveal the beatitude of the object(s):[3] A black flash marks a cursed item, while an amber flash marks a blessed one. Dropping an item on an altar this way breaks atheist conduct.
Characters cannot detect an item's beatitude if they are blind. Similarly, they cannot detect whether an item is blessed or cursed if they are hallucinating, as the flashes will be of random hallucinatory colors - uncursed items can still be detected, as there will be no flash at all.
Sacrificing corpses
Sacrificing fresh corpses at a co-aligned altar with a prayer timeout above zero will reduce the timeout, while sacrificing with a prayer timeout of zero can increase luck, improve the character's alignment record, and may even reward them with powerful artifact weapons.
Sacrificing at the altar of another god has a chance of converting that altar to the hero's alignment, potentially angering that altar's former god into sending a hostile minion after them - if their alignment record is poor enough, however, the hero themselves may be converted to that altar's alignment, angering their original god and making it difficult or impossible to complete the Quest (and thus possibly making the game unwinnable). A hero's alignment can only be converted this way once per game, and an already-converted hero instead incurs multiple penalties in any circumstance where another permanent conversion would occur from sacrifice.
Prayer
A prayer on a co-aligned altar has enhanced benefits compared to normal prayer, though normal prayer timeouts still apply.
Water prayer
If a character successfully prays on an altar while one or more potions of water are on it, then in addition to any other effects of that prayer, the potions of water will be made into holy water if the altar is co-aligned, or unholy water otherwise.[4] This breaks atheist conduct and occurs regardless of the water's initial beatitude - an unsuccessful prayer on a co-aligned altar will not change the beatitude of any water on that altar.
Scaring monsters
Standing on any altar, even an unaligned altar, scares vampires as if the character were standing on Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster.[5] This does not break atheist conduct.
Misusing an altar
A character that sits on, engraves on or kicks an altar will experience negative effects depending on the altar alignment and their alignment record.[6][7][8][9] If the altar is co-aligned and your character's alignment record is greater than -rn2(4), you lose one point of wisdom and one point of alignment record; otherwise, if your luck is greater than -5, you lose 0-2 points of luck.
Misusing an altar does not break atheist conduct.
Digging an altar
If a character or a monster zaps a wand of digging downwards while on an altar, the digging ray will be ineffective, and nothing further happens. If a character applies a wand of digging to break it, or applies a drum of earthquake, altars are not affected by the resulting creation of pits and holes.
High altars
Some special temples contain a high altar with a high priest tending to it: Moloch's Sanctum has a temple of Moloch with a high altar to him, and temples with high altars of each alignment always appear on the Astral Plane - every character's goal is to reach their co-aligned temple on the Astral Plane and offer the Amulet of Yendor on the temple's high altar in order to ascend.
High altars cannot be converted under any circumstances, and attempting to convert one will cause its god to reach maximum anger immediately and smite the offender - should they somehow survive, the god will also summon three hostile minions to protect the altar.
Far looking at a high altar only reveals if the altar is aligned or unaligned, and an "aligned" high altar can be of any alignment, not necessarily your character's alignment! Near looking at an altar functions as normal.
Strategy
An altar is an excellent source of various gifts such as artifact weapons, intrinsic protection and various other intrinsic properties, spellbooks, holy water, nutrition, and other benefits. Because nutrition is available through prayer, it is possible to stay at an altar indefinitely, a practice known as altar farming.
Misusing an altar can be used to deliberately lower luck or alignment record in order to prevent crowning: you can use a ring of sustain ability or a noncursed unicorn horn to counter wisdom loss, and a MSGTYPE to hide the complaints from the altar's god.
To find the correct high altar on the Astral Plane, you can:
- visit each of the high altars
- zap a wand of probing at a high priest
- note if you are given sanctuary in a particular temple
- use a helm of opposite alignment to change your alignment opportunistically
History
In NetHack 3.4.3 and previous versions, including variants based on those versions, various mechanics related to altars functions differently: breaking a wand of digging or applying a drum of earthquake is capable of destroying an altar, and the Astral call bug enabled players to find their correct high altar trivially. Pudding farming is also possible in these versions, and is employed to generate large numbers of corpses for altar fodder by repeatedly splitting puddings.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, sacrifice at a co-aligned altar can grant various other boons, such as having wielded and worn items blessed or even being granted tame minions. If a sacrifice at a cross-aligned altar converts that altar, there is a chance that the altar's original god will send two hostile minions after them[10] - this chance is calculated independently of the original chance that the altar's original god will send a hostile minion, which is increased compared to NetHack.[11] This makes altar conversion very dangerous for the unprepared, though high luck reduces the chance of minions generating in either case.
Messages
- You feel <god> is very angry at you!
- A god sent two hostile minions after you.
NetHack brass
In NetHack brass, sacrificing at a cross-aligned altar will always cause that altar's god to send a hostile minion after you, with two independent chances of an additional hostile minion being generated, all of which occur before the chance of the altar being converted is calculated.[12] Once the first pre-conversion minion is generated, two rolls are made: the first is from 0 to 9, while the second is from 0 to 19, and for each randomly rolled number that is less than the character's experience level, a hostile minion is summoned; luck has no effect on any of these rolls. This means that an especially unfortunate character attempting to convert an altar at low experience levels may end up being forced to flee from or contend with up to four hostile minions.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, altars that belong to specific gods rather than a generic alignment can be generated - these altars are used for temple altars that have priests tending to them, and can also be generated in certain locations. These altars will not be set to the hero's pantheon when loaded in a bones level, and it is even possible to perform a conversion from one pantheon to another.
Encyclopedia entry
Altars are of three types:
1. In Temples. These are for Sacrifices [...]. The stone
top will have grooves for blood, and the whole will be covered
with _dry brown stains of a troubling kind_ from former
Sacrifices.
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?
References
- ↑ src/mklev.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 832
- ↑ src/mklev.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1613: function mkaltar
- ↑ src/do.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 269: function doaltarobj
- ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1230: function water_prayer
- ↑ src/monmove.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 153
- ↑ src/sit.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 137: sitting on altars
- ↑ src/engrave.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 576: engraving on altars
- ↑ src/dokick.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1061: kicking altars
- ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2232: function altar_wrath
- ↑ pray.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1583
- ↑ pray.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1606
- ↑ src/pray.c in brass 040923
