harmon_c@h-sc1.UUCP (david harmon) (03/15/85)
FOOD:
Monsters: eating fresh-killed monster corpses is good for saving your
rations. However, some are poisonous, and all rot after a very short time.
Eating some monster corpses will give special abilities or effects (see monster
file), but may simultaneously do poison damage. Eating rotted ('tainted')
corpses is lethal within 20 turns at most, unless you have a handy healing or
extra-healing potion. If you do, drink it fast. Poison resistance will not
protect against rotted corpses.
Food items: Aside from monsters, food seems to keep forever. Most
named items have fairly little food value. Food rations however, are a super-
food which will take you from fainting to healthy in one shot. Some pancakes
also seem to do this. Fortune cookies contain hints from a rumor file.
Ignore 'clues' to next level, they are random. Hints about monsters, methods,
etc. are usually good. Dead lizards are edible, but little food value. They
also seem to be an exeption to the comments about fortune cookies; There
doesn't seem any way to avoid petrification with dead lizards. Tripe
is dog food. If you eat it, it will usually behave as a food ration, (which
it always does for doggie) but you may throw up, and be left only slightly
better (or worse) than you started. Small food items can at least delay
starvation. Carrots will cure blindness, and a clove of garlic can be used to
drive off a vampire by hitting him with it as a weapon. Eat 10 cloves of gar-
lic to keep all humans at a two-square distance... (just kidding!) A few food
items (random) are rotten. There is not much you can do about this or the
fairly minor effects that it may have, but be warned that rotten things have
only 1/4 the food value.
Avoid becoming weak from hunger. Unlike rogue, this has a direct
effect on your strength, which may persist well after you are fed. If you
eat two food rations in a row, or an enormous amount of other stuff, you will
become Satiated ('You're having a hard time getting all that food down').
DO NOT EAT WHILE SATIATED! You may choke and die!
Tins: tins take a while to open. Wielding an axe or a dagger helps,
but if your strength isn't too good you may want to write Elbereth for the
process. I have seen them contain apple juice (useless) peaches (food),
rotten meat (causes you to vomit) unknown substance (disgustingly nutritious)
and the important stuff, spinach. This miracle weed increases your strength
by a random but potentially quite large amount. Two or three of them will
almost certainly turn you into a hulk. Note that once you start opening a tin
you are committed to opening it, no matter what happens, like teleporting off
your Elbereth into a roomful of hostile monsters. Axes, crysknives, and dag-
gers help speed up the process of opening tins. To help you, though, they
have to be wielded, and if you wield a stickeycursed dagger, tough luck.