NOTE - This spoiler is pretty old. There is some information here that is no longer accurate as things have been nerfed/buffed. Also it is quite incomplete. Refer to guide.txt for better information. -- Weapons -- Weapons affect the amount of damage you do in combat. Specifically, the base damage is a random number up to your ST plus the weapon's damage rating. Weapon Name Damage Stick 1 Sports Ball 1 Scalpel 4* Pencil 1 Plastic Spork 1* Pocket Knife 5* Meter Stick 4 Networking Cable 2 Screwdriver 3 Baseball Bat 9 Knife 10* Novel 3 Textbook 5# Glowing Sword 20 Rock 5 Slab of Metal 9 Chromatic Cookie 1# * These items can be 'u'sed on food to tell if it is tainted or not. (They are thus worth having even if a better weapon is found.) # These items have special effects. Textbooks may stun opponents with low intelligence; the chromatic cookie can impart any of its 'u'se effects to the target (bad and good!). The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (a textbook), does an extra d8 damage on account of its size. -- Food Items -- Food items recover lost hit points. It is canibalism to eat a corpse that is the same as the one you would leave, by default a human corpse. There are no in-game penalties for canibalism (yet) but it will be noted in the high scores and when you finished the game. Some sorts of food can be tainted. Eating them will reduce your HP rather than increase it. (There is a 6% chance of tainted food killing you outright, and a 17% chance of being reduced to a few HP.) A blade can be used to dissect food and check to see if it is rotted or not. Name Healing Tainted chance Soda 5 0% Peanut 2 0% Carrot 3 3% Cookie 8 0% Hamster Corpse 2 5% Gnome Corpse 6 10% Human Corpse 10 10% Magic Cookie 1000* 8% *Heals completely if not tainted, and also may increase stats. 'u'sing a magic cookie can also increase HP, but then it can also decrease HP. Note that tainted corpses can instalkill, although it is unlikely. -- Armor -- Armor reduces (potentially down to 0) the damage the wearer takes from attacks by a fixed number of points. Multiple pieces of armor can be worn. Name Protection Conical Hat 2* Tattered Clothing 1 Cloak 3 Fasionable Jacket 2 T-Shirt 2 Slab of Metal 4 Lab Coat 4+ *The gnome hat also allows you to teleport with good IN. Beware of excessive use with lower IN levels, it can kill you, polymorph you, summon nasties, or destroy items. +Affords protection against chemical attacks (including the spitting attack of pyrex elves.) -- Books -- Books can be read by 'u'sing them. Textbooks can increase your intelligence. The textbooks are not all the same, there are several of them, with different difficulty values. Reading a text book that is too hard for you (based on your in, plus a little random factor) will not bring any benefit, and the textbook may wear out each time it is used. Also, if its difficulty level is too far below your intelligence, you won't get any benefit. Reading a textbook that is far beyond your abilites will cause death. ("stupified by elementary calculus" is a lousy death.) The other common book is the Novel, which can give a rough estimate of your intelligence. Read it and pay attention to the message. If it says that the big words confuse you, then your intelligence is quite low and you should probably avoid reading textbooks until that changes. (At least 30% of textbooks will kill you outright if you get that message.) If it says "you read a little of the turgid prose", or if the character complains about the quality of the material, then most textbooks are safe for you to read. (One is hardly ever safe to read.) Books have special effects when wielded as weapons. The book titled CRC Handbook is hard to read, but makes a superior weapon because it does an extra d8 damage when you hit with it and at the same time is likely to render sentient creatures "helpless and stupified" if they don't have a very high IN score. (Most non-sentient creatures will still "recoil in horror" and lose their chance to attack.) Books will never insta-kill in this way. "Java in a Nutshell" and "The Art of Computer programming" are powerfully nerd-aligned and will burn the flesh of jock-aligned creatures on contact. They also hurt jocks reading them. (Liberal arts and higher alignments are safe from these particular negative effects.) -- Other Items -- Chromatic Cookies are items that have a variety of effects, most of them good, when used (if you have good intelligence). Chromatic cookies can be tainted, and should not be eaten unless it has been confirmed that they aren't tainted. Untainted cookies give stat boosts and fully heal the eater. A tainted cookie is also dangerous for 'u' since it has a small chance of killing the user by turning him, her or it into chocolate. Kinds of non-unique room: Lab : Contains mad scientists and nerds, or pyrex elves. lab coats, beakers, textbooks. Locker Room: Contains jocks, coach. baseball bat, sports ball, soda, steroids. Coffee shop: Contains artsies, hobos. sodas, novels, magic cookie, chocolate. Internet cafe: Contains nerds, code monkeys. networking cable, screwdriver, textbook. Giant Hamster Nest: Contains hamsters and giant hamsters. hamster corpse, peanut, carrot. Gnome hive: Contains gnomes, magic cookie, conical hat, cloak.