Oilskin sack
( 
| |
|---|---|
| Name | oilskin sack |
| Appearance | bag |
| Base price | 100 zm |
| Weight | 15 |
| Material | cloth |
| Monster use | May be used by monsters as misc items. |
An oilskin sack is a type of tool that appears in NetHack. It is a container that made of cloth, and appears as a bag when unidentified.
Generation
Oilskin sacks make up 1⁄200 (0.5%) of all tools that are randomly generated on the ground, in general shops or as death drops, and hardware stores can also stock oilskin sacks. Oilskin sacks that are normally generated (i.e. outside of bones levels and trap "bones") are always created as uncursed and may contain a random item.[1][2]
Description
An oilskin sack can be applied or looted by a hero to store and remove items as with other containers.[3] Oilskin sacks that are not cursed will protect their contents from water damage in addition to the direct effects of fire, cold, shock, and cancellation[4][5]—a cursed oilskin sack will only protect its contents from water damage 2⁄3rds of the time.[6] An oilskin bag that prevents water from getting inside it will auto-identify if the hero sees this occur.[7]
Tipping an oilskin sack can deposit all of its contents on the floor or transfer them to another container, whether in the hero's inventory or on their current square. As a cloth container, an oilskin sack will gradually rot away if buried underground, and its organic contents will be not subjected to rotting until the container is fully rotted away first. An oilskin sack that is thrown, kicked, or dropped while levitating or on a down stair may have any fragile contents inside be damaged or broken.
Monsters that are hostile, intelligent, have hands, and collect items can pick up oilskin sacks and will sometimes rummage through them for items that interest them. A gelatinous cube that picks up and eats an oilskin sack will engulf its former contents and add them to its inventory, and will then spend subsequent turns on digesting any organic items in that inventory (other than bone or dragon hide) unless a hero or monster that it can attack is close enough to it[8][9]—a hero polymorphed into a gelatinous cube can manually eat sacks using e, but only if the chosen sack is empty.[10]
Strategy
An oilskin sack is incredibly useful for protecting your potions, scrolls and spellbooks alongside rust-prone weaponry and armor—other bags require the hero to apply a charge from a can of grease to offer similar protection, and the grease has a 1⁄2 chance of washing off each time water damage would occur.[11]
Placing your bag of holding in an oilskin sack is useful for protecting the first bag's contents from water damage and the curse items monster spell—this comes at the cost of some tedium when retrieving items in from it, and most heroes prefer to grease the bag instead. Blessing the oilskin sack itself is optional, but may be worthwhile to give it a layer of protection from being cursed, especially once you start the ascension run and approach the Plane of Water. As with a plain sack, an oilskin sack can also be used to protect a wand of cancellation that is stored outside your main bag of holding. Unlike a plain sack, the oilskin sack's water protection also allows you to reliably store other items such as blessed potions of full healing and scrolls of remove curse without greasing it beforehand.
Identification
Oilskin sacks can be auto-identified by dipping them into any type of water, such as a moat—be sure to empty any bags that you plan to dip-test this way. They are also fairly easy to detect via price identification: Looting a bag with a base price of 100zm and not being bitten eliminates the bag of tricks from object candidates, and stashing heavier items in a bag to observe its effects on encumbrance can eliminate the bag of holding.
History
The oilskin sack first appears in NetHack 3.1.0. The hero's ability to tip out the contents of an oilskin sack is introduced in NetHack 3.6.0 via commit d0e4d1e3.
In versions up to NetHack 3.6.0, including some variants based on these versions, the oilskin sack is the only bag to not produce a message when subjected to possible water damage, allowing it to be informally identified by process of elimination.[12] The feedback for water sliding off an oilskin sack is added in NetHack 3.6.1 via commit 2b7b2af9, and originated when Alex Smith asked on IRC about an idea for a small, easily implementable feature.
NetHack 5.0.0 gives monsters the ability to rummage through oilskin sacks they pick up via commit b12ea03d, and grants the hero the ability to tip an oilskin sack's contents into another container via commit 0f132470.
Messages
- Some water slides right off your <sack>.
- Your oilskin sack stopped water from damaging its contents, auto-identifying it.
Variants
NetHack variants may allow monsters to utilize oilskin sacks and other containers, and some of them may change how oilskin sacks function: a common quality-of-life addition is to allow placing an oilskin sack or other container on an altar to identify the beatitude of both the container and its contents. Variants that implement object materials may also alter a container's properties based on its material.
Variants based on NetHack 3.4.3 and prior versions may not adopt the auto-identifying properties of a freshly-wet oilskin sack that are included in later versions of NetHack.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, upgrading a sack successfully will produce an oilskin sack 4⁄5 of the time, while upgrading a bag of holding successfully always produces an oilskin sack and vice versa.[13][14][15]
Among other things, the ability to upgrade oilskin sacks makes the amulet of reflection from Sokoban a much more valuable prize, and also provides an additional use case for multiple bags of holding, including creating a safe container for wands of cancellation and other explosion-inducing items.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, an oilskin sack is among the various items that may appear as the Christmas present within the advent calendar branch on day 24.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, Pirates start each game with an oilskin sack.
SpliceHack
In SpliceHack, Pirates start with an oilskin sack, while merfolk heroes in roles that start with a sack will start with an oilskin sack instead.
An oilskin sack can be created at a furnace by combining a can of grease with any other type of bag except a bag of tricks.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, the Infidel role starts with a fireproof oilskin sack. Tortle heroes have a 1⁄4 chance of starting the game with an oilskin sack, except for Archeologists: a tortle Archeologist will always start with an oilskin sack in place of the role's normal sack.
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, in addition to SLASH'EM details, Pirates, Corsairs and Rogues start the game with an oilskin sack, while Divers begin each game with the oilskin sack identified.
Hack'EM
In Hack'EM, Rogues start the game with an oilskin sack, while Pirates have a 1⁄2 chance of starting a game with an oilskin sack. Infidels start each game with a fireproof oilskin sack as in EvilHack—similarly, tortle heroes other than Archeologists have a 1⁄4 chance of starting the game with an oilskin sack, while a tortle Archeologist will always start with an oilskin sack in place of the role's normal sack.
Upgrading a sack will produce an oilskin sack, while upgrading an oilskin sack will produce a bag of holding.
Encyclopedia entry
Summer passed all too quickly. On the last day of camp, Mr.
Brickle called his counselors together and paid them what he
owed them. Louis received one hundred dollars - the first
money he had ever earned. He had no wallet and no pockets,
so Mr. Brickle placed the money in a waterproof bag that had
a drawstring. He hung this moneybag around Louis' neck,
along with the trumpet, the slate, the chalk pencil, and the
lifesaving medal.
References
- ↑ src/mkobj.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 322-L328: starting sacks are always empty, though this is not a concern for oilskin sacks in practice
- ↑ src/mkobj.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1019-L1022
- ↑ src/apply.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 4276-L4278
- ↑ src/trap.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 4759-L4770
- ↑ include/obj.h in NetHack 5.0.0, line 341-L344
- ↑ src/trap.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 4751-L4758
- ↑ src/trap.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 4763
- ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1400-L1401: eating a container in m_consume_obj() calls meatbox()
- ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1352-L1382: meatbox() function; engulf_contents is set if a cube is the one eating the container
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 114-L118
- ↑ src/trap.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 4736-L4743
- ↑ src/trap.c in NetHack 3.6.0, line 3333
- ↑ potion.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 2398
- ↑ potion.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 2401
- ↑ potion.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 2404
