L---+---T1----+-T--2----T----3--T-+----4T---+---T5----+-T--6----+----7----+-R
The following is a segment of Revision 8.00 of the WCST Nethack Spoilers.  It 
is Copyright (C) 1993, Paul Waterman, with all rights reserved.  Distribution 
is to be governed by the WCST Nethack Spoiler License Agreement.  Summarized, 
the WCST Nethack Spoiler License Agreement states that you may distribute 
this file freely in unmodified format so long as you do not make money from 
it.  For the complete text of the WCST Nethack Spoiler License Agreement 
please send electronic mail to the following address:

          water@wheaton.wheaton.edu

Alternately, you may send normal mail to the following address:

          Paul Waterman
          WCST
          1361 Westchester Drive
          Glendale Heights, IL 60139

If you wish to be placed on WCST's e-mailing list, you may send e-mail to the 
address above requesting to be placed on the list.  Please include your e-
mail address in the text of the message, as some mail sites strip or 
improperly format the return address in the message headers.

                                     The
                                   Nethack
                                   Spoilers

                                Revision 8.00
                         Copyright Paul Waterman, 1993
                             All rights reserved


(C) Copyright Paul Waterman, 1993.  All rights reserved.

(C) Some Illustrations are Copyright Peter Waterman, 1991 and 1992.  All 
rights reserved. 

No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any 
means, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopy, 
photograph, magnetic or other record, for any purpose without prior agreement 
and the express written permission of the author, Paul Waterman. 

This document has been compiled from various sources (including play, usenet 
e-mail and news groups, long term experience, source code, and general 
hearsay).  Information in this file has been verified as well as possible. 
However, information in this document is not guaranteed to be correct, is 
subject to change without notice, and does not represent a commitment on the 
part of the author. 

Paul Waterman and WCST are not affiliated with any other group, including but 
not limited to the Nethack Development Team or Wheaton College. 

Special thanks to:
      Alan Light, for the original compilation of rec.games.hack postings.
      Ken Roth, for proving that a human could beat the comm script I built 
        to play Nethack.
      Laura Waterman, for constant encouragement and intelligent questions.
      Peter Waterman, for showing me what a great artist you are.
      Greg and Sandy Della-Croce, for proofreading.
      Mark and Ruth Della-Croce, for constantly asking for more information.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Section 1:  The Beginning

   1.1 Introduction                     1.4 Credits           
   1.2 The Spoilers                     1.5 Using The Spoilers
   1.3 Revision Numbers

Section 2:  Commonalities

   2.1 Common Questions

Section 3:  The Character

   3.1 Alignment                        3.4 Character Stats
   3.2 Carrying Capacity                3.5 Score          
   3.3 Character Classes                3.6 Status Line    

Section 4:  The Dungeon

   4.1 Castle Level                     4.4 The End Game 
   4.2 Special Levels                   4.5 Special Rooms
   4.3 Quest Levels

Section 5:  The Game

   5.1 Damage                           5.9  Praying        
   5.2 Fountain Effects                 5.10 Removing Curses
   5.3 Game Messages                    5.11 Robbing Shops  
   5.4 Hit Probability                  5.12 Sink Effects   
   5.5 Kicking                          5.13 Survival       
   5.6 Luck                             5.14 Throne Effects 
   5.7 Magic                            5.15 Wishes         
   5.8 Pets

Section 6:  The Items
   6.1 Amulets                          6.16 Ring Effects           
   6.2 Identifying Amulets              6.17 Identifying Rings      
   6.3 Amulet Effects                   6.18 Scrolls                
   6.4 Armor                            6.19 Scroll Effects         
   6.5 Armor Effects                    6.20 Confused Scroll Effects
   6.6 Identifying Armor                6.21 Identifying Scrolls    
   6.7 Food                             6.22 Spellbooks             
   6.8 Food - Corpses                   6.23 Tools                  
   6.9 Gems                             6.24 Tool Effects           
   6.10 Potions                         6.25 Identifying Tools      
   6.11 Potion Quaffing Effects         6.26 Wands                  
   6.12 Potion Throwing Effects         6.27 Wand Effects           
   6.13 Potion Vapor Effects            6.28 Identifying Wands      
   6.14 Identifying Potions             6.29 Weapons                
   6.15 Rings                           6.30 Artifacts              

Appendices
   A. Nethack Abuse






            Section 1:
            The Beginning

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once upon a time, there was a game called Hack.  Hack was a pretty good game, 
and a lot of people really enjoyed playing it.  Then a strange and wonderful 
creature called "The Dev Team" got hold of it, and hack was never the same 
again.  For starters, it suddenly got a name change, and was called Nethack. 
But the biggest change was in the game itself.  No longer was it a fun 
afternoon show to watch in black and white on a nine inch set.  It suddenly 
became a three dimensional color holovision show with Dolby surround sound 
and much, much more.  The Dev Team has continued to put a lot of work into 
the game, and with the release of Nethack version 3.1 the game is better than 
ever before!  (Our thanks to the Dev Team for a job well done.) 

The problem with Nethack is that people started getting addicted to the 
action, the adventure, their character getting killed over and over again... 
In order to prevent the untimely demise of characters whose rated life span 
was about double the actual life span, a bunch of people came together on a 
Usenet newsgroup called rec.games.hack and began giving each other hints 
about how to dodge that nasty shopkeeper, and how to get rid of that awful 
wizard. This worked well... for a time. 

There was still a problem with this, though, for once a suggestion was given, 
unless you carefully hoarded it away, it was gone forever, and there were 
always new people who hadn't heard the suggestions.  Thus, the WCST Nethack 
Spoilers were created. 

Within this work is a large collection of lore about the game of Nethack. 
Some of it may not be true, but I have made the best effort possible to 
verify all of the information contained herein.  With the release of revision 
8.0 of the Spoilers, I have spent a lot of time going through source code in 
order to give you the maximum amount of detail possible about every aspect of 
the game. 

Be warned:  If you use the knowledge contained herein, your game will never 
be the same.  Your horizons will suddenly be expanded, but you may end up 
thinking that the game is less than it once was.  That is the risk you must 
take if you choose to read this file. 

Good luck, and happy hacking!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Spoilers:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The information contained in this file is relevant to Nethack version 3.1a 
(i.e. Nethack version 3.1, patch level a), the most recent version of Nethack 
available at the time this file was posted.  Although much of the information 
contained within the Spoilers is also relevant to previous versions of 
Nethack, don't depend on it.  Our suggestion is that you get a copy of the 
latest and greatest version of Nethack - version 3.1a. 

Additionally, for the sake of simplicity we have assumed that all the compile 
options are at their default settings unless otherwise specified.  This means 
that all the optional code is compiled in, the HARD setting is on, etc. 

I would like to request that any corrections, modifications, suggestions, 
etc. be e-mailed directly to me (my e-mail address is:  
water@wheaton.wheaton.edu) and not posted to the net on rec.games.hack.  I 
will attempt to verify any information sent to me and then will both add it 
to the Spoilers (for the next release) and post an official correction or 
addition to rec.games.hack. 

Additionally, WCST does have an electronic mailing list, and I try to send 
out regular updates about WCST, Nethack, and the Spoilers.  If you would be 
interested in getting on the list, please send me e-mail asking to be placed 
on the list.  You should get a confirmation message back within a week or so. 

Note:  Please do not send e-mail to me asking for a copy of the Spoilers or 
for a copy of Nethack itself (or the source code, etc.).  I do not honor 
these requests, and often just ignore them. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Revision Numbers:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In order to keep a decent idea of how the Spoilers are progressing, I have 
set up an official policy on how Revision Numbers will change.  Any minor 
revisions, corrections, or amplifications will advance the revision number by 
.01. New sections added or complete re-writes of existing sections will 
advance the revision number by .10.  Any complete rewrite of the entire file 
will advance the revision number to the next integer. 

Following is the revision history of the Spoilers:

      Revision 1.00
      Revision 2.00
      Revision 3.97
      Revision 4.69
      Revision 5.35
      Revision 7.00
      Revision 8.00

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Credits:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, this should actually be a very large list.  Some people who have made
contributions to the cause of the Spoilers above and beyond the call of duty,
however, are listed here:

      Kenneth Arromdee
      Bill de Beaubien
      Alan Edwards
      Walter Fergusson
      David Goldfarb
      Laurence Gordon
      Kate Gregory
      Dolf Grunbauer
      David Hairston
      Michael Heggen
      Douglas Henke
      Greg Hudson
      Lucas B. Kruijswijk
      Alan Light
      Stephen Marino
      Andrew Pearce
      Robert Potter
      Ken Roth
      Brajesh K. Singh
      C. G. J. Thompson, et.al
      David Throop
      Steve Warren
      Laura C. Waterman
      Dominik Zemmler

If any of the rest of you out there know you contributed something to the
cause, but don't see your name listed here - don't get me wrong.  It's not
that I'm ungrateful!  I probably just nuked your name by mistake!

Note:  All names are listed in alphabetical order by last name, and not by
order of importance of contribution.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Using The Spoilers:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's really not much to say on this subject, other than a few intuitive 
pointers.  How you use the spoilers is simple:  You read them, and apply the 
knowledge contained within to your game of Nethack. 

Those of you who have a copy of the commercial version of the Spoilers will 
have a complete index at your disposal, which should aid you greatly in 
looking up just about anything you'd like to know about.  For those of you 
who are using the public version, however, I do have one major hint for 
getting at what you want within the file quickly. 

The section titles tend to be fairly unique, and are always followed by a 
colon.  This should make it very simple to get to whatever section you want 
quickly.  Just load the file into your editor (or if you're on a unix system, 
even use the 'more' command for that matter), and use the search function to 
look for the section.  For instance, from within more or vi, use the slash 
key ("/") and what you'd like to search for ("Armor:" for example). 

This technique is also very useful for finding every reference to a 
particular topic.  If you'd like to know about wishing for instance, just 
search for every occurrence of the word "wish" in the file. 
