Re: Eating

alexxx wrote:
eating corpses is possible. you will learn in time when it is advisable
and what corpses to avoid.

as with other things in NH I believed that each time the game
restarted, the poisonous state of a corpse's race changed. Well, I'll
start keeping notes!

Food management seems tough, but it's pretty simple with a few tricks
and I don't think I've starved to death in the last 200+ games (and
only once was food even a concern).

Moderately spoily:
Don't wait until you're hungry to eat corpses, each them as long as you
aren't satiated (until you have a stable food supply and get
comfortable dealing with hunger) unless you're planning on asking your
deity for help.

Save your food until the first turn that you're weak--when you get
hungry, if you find some good tasty monsters you can eat those and
still have the food for later.

With a couple of exceptions (bats and shapeshifters, your own race)
anything your pet eats is safe for you to eat. The reverse is not true
(if your pet doesn't eat it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's
unsafe for you).

Eating old corpses can give you food poisoning (which poison resistance
doesn't help with), except for acidic corpses and...

Lichen and lizard (only "lizard", not "iguana", "gecko", etc) corpses
never decay and you can carry them with you as makeshift food rations.
Save them until you need them (and lizards are valuable for other
reasons).

Most importantly, reread point #1. Don't wait until you're hungry to
eat, eat whatever you can eat safely as you come across it. Eventually
you want to learn not to be satiated, but the penalties for that are
far less than starving to death so wait until food isn't a big deal
before you worry about that.

Very spoily below


















If you #pray when you're weak, your god will fill your stomach (unless
you've prayed too recently). Usually alternating "eat a food ration
when I get hungry" with "#pray when I get weak" will be safe,
especially if you're eating all the corpses you can in the interim.

Zombies and other undead are already decaying (and unsafe to eat) when
killed.

As a healer, use your "stone to flesh" spell on rocks and boulders

Poisonous creatures (kobolds, snakes, etc) are safe to eat once you
have poison resistance

Polymorphing yourself resets hunger (even if you poly into the same
race).

Kicking trees can drop fruit.

If you can deal with the dangers, gnomes and dwarves in the Mines are
pretty nourishing. Sokoban has lots of food.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: nethack, help a rogue-like noob?
    ... die is due to food poisoning, how do i know what food is safe to eat? ... from corpses that got too old, or from inherently old corpses like undead ... has many inhabitants whose corpses you can eat. ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
  • Re: Killer Bees question
    ... Praying only for food ... > killer bees and kill them, and they drop corpses. ... > I thought maybe therefore unidentified ring I was wearing was a ring ... > poison was deadly.... ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
  • Re: Stone of Earth Elementals
    ... butchered corpse, you can eat those chunks.. ... I'd not thought of eating corpses. ... If you have a source of poison resistance, ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.misc)
  • Eat now vs Save for later- also, putting on weight.
    ... Does food eaten when weak/fainting give more nutrition than food eaten ... Make really big monster corpses too big to eat entirely. ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
  • Re: nethack, help a rogue-like noob?
    ... test them for cursed status...Cursed has less food value. ... gnome, you can eat gnomes, Pets won't eat vegetables, so the lichen ... Ponies won't eat animal corpses. ... be avoided by not eating corpses your pets won't eat. ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
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