Altars ====== by Dion Nicolaas (dnicola@cs.vu.nl). Altars can be quite mysterious to a beginning player. Yet, they are very important for finishing the game. Here follows the most important information on altars in NetHack. Altars can occur anywhere in the main dungeon, sometimes even more than one on a level. Altars generally don't appear on special levels (like the Oracle or Medusa's Island.) In the Gnomish Mines there is only one altar, which is predefined (it is not generated randomly). In Gehennom, altars are not generated randomly either: there are always three altars in Gehennom. The following altars are present in each game (from top to bottom): three altars on the Astral Plane, an altar on the Mines' Town level in the Gnomish Mines, an altar in the Valley of the Dead, an altar in Orcus' Lair (the Ghost Town), and an altar in Moloch's Sanctum at the bottom of Gehennom. Various quests have their own (predefined) altars in it. See the quest.map file for more information on these. When standing on an altar, there are two useful things you can do: sacrificing and praying. The effect of your actions depends not only on your luck and your current standings with your god, but most of all on the altar's alignment, compared to your own. Every altar has an alignment, which determines to what god it belongs. The alignment of randomly generated altars is, as expected, random, and so is the altar in the Mines' Town. The altars in Gehennom are unaligned, since they all belong to Moloch, the renegade god. On the Astral Plane there is one altar for every alignment. They are called "High altars" and the Amulet of Yendor should be sacrificed here to complete the game. Praying ~~~~~~~ Praying on an altar is in two ways different from praying somewhere else. First, if any potions of water are on the altar, the prayer is also a water prayer. A water prayer on an altar of your own alignment converts any number of potions of water or unholy water into holy water. A water prayer on another god's altar makes all water unholy. Note that a prayer on another god's altar is addressed to that god: your god is not going to like that, so your luck is decreased by 3, and your god will become angry and might punish you in several ways. The second difference with normal prayers is that if you pray on your own altar, the chance that something nice will happen is significantly higher. Your god may fix your troubles, uncurse items, give you more hit points, intrinsics or a spellbook. Also, there is a chance you will get a hint about the tune you have to play to open the drawbridge of the Castle. Eventually you can be crowned Hand of Elbereth, Envoy of Balance or Glory of Arioch (explained further in "crowning"). More than one of these events can happen as the outcome of one prayer. Sacrificing corpses (except humans, elves and unicorns) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When you sacrifice corpses on an altar of your own alignment, various nice things can happen. The corpse shouldn't be too old, though: if your sacrifice is older than 50 moves, nothing will happen. One exception to this are acid blob corpses, which are never too old. How much the sacrifice means to your god is based on its value, which in turn depends on the toughness of the monster. An exception is made for human bodies if you are human, elven corpses if you are an elf, and unicorn corpses. These are explained in detail below. If your god is angry with you, his anger becomes less if you sacrifice on one of his altars, depending on the corpse's value. Your luck increases, the amount depending on the sacrifice's value, and you get a hint about your prayer timeout: if you should not pray yet, you "have a hopeful feeling", if it is exactly time, you "have a feeling of reconciliation." If you get no such message, you were already eligible to pray (and see below). If you are already in good standing with your god, you might gain an artifact, depending on your experience level. If you don't gain an artifact, your luck will increase some more if possible, the increase depending on the corpse's value. If you sacrifice corpses on an altar of a different alignment, there is a chance that you will convert the altar to your alignment. This does not work for the High altars on the astral level; these can never be converted. If you try anyway, the god owning the altar throws everything he has at you. If your god is angry with you when you try to convert an altar, _you_ will be converted to the altar's god instead. The altar's god accepts your allegiance, and you have a sudden sense of a new direction. Conversion is costly, however: your luck is decreased by 3 and your prayer timeout increased by 300. You cannot convert to Moloch. He rejects your sacrifice, decreases your alignment and your luck by 5, decreases your wisdom by 2 and apart from that, your own god will become angry. If your god is pleased, the altar might be converted to your god, depending on your experience level. Your wisdom is exercised, and your luck is increased by one. If there was a priest(ess) around with the same alignment as the altar, he or she will become angry. Exactly the reverse happens if you don't succeed in converting the altar: your wisdom is abused and your luck is decreased by one. You god won't become angry as a result of this, though. Sacrificing humans or elves ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you, as a human, sacrifice a human corpse, or, as an elf, sacrifice an elven corpse, on an altar of your own alignment, your god will become very angry if you're not chaotic. Your wisdom will be abused, your wisdom will go down by one point immediately as well, and your luck and alignment will be decreased by 5. If you are chaotic, though, your luck goes up by 2, your alignment by 5 and a demon lord is summoned. This demon lord will be peaceful, but in no way useful, since it cannot be tamed. If a lawful or neutral character sacrifices a human on a chaotic altar, the altar will disappear and a hostile demon lord will be summoned. Again, your god will not like this and punish you as above. If a chaotic character sacrifices a human at a non-chaotic altar, this altar will be turned chaotic immediately (such altars are called "cursed"). Human (or elven) sacrifices on an unaligned altar are, strangely enough, handled exactly the same as on a chaotic altar. An altar cannot be converted by human or elven sacrifices. If you are polymorphed into a demon, you find the idea of sacrificing a human or elf very satisfying. Your wisdom will be exercised, regardless of your or the altar's alignment, and regardless of what happens next. After the human or elven effects are accounted for, nothing else happens. This means you can never please a god by sacrificing humans or elves. Sacrificing unicorns ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you sacrifice a unicorn corpse on an altar of the unicorn's alignment, your wisdom goes down by one point, regardless of which god the altar belongs to. If you sacrifice a unicorn of a different alignment on an altar of your god, it's a very good action. Your alignment goes up by 5. If you sacrifice a unicorn of your alignment on another god's altar, you are converted immediately. Again, this will not work on Moloch's altars, since you can never become unaligned yourself. If you try nevertheless, your god will become angry again. After the added effects of the unicorn, the sacrifice is handled as any other sacrifice. However, the unicorn corpse' value as a sacrifice will be increased by 3 if your action was good, but set to one if you converted yourself. If you sacrificed a unicorn corpse on an altar of the same alignment, its value is decreased by 5.