Wishing

Wishing is an opportunity in NetHack to be granted an item of the player's choice.

Methods of wishing
There are several ways to obtain a wish in NetHack, including:


 * Zapping a wand of wishing (guaranteed, provided (luck + d5 &ge; 0))

(Zapping a wand of wishing is the only guaranteed method. The others are not guaranteed and may have negative side effects.)


 * Rubbing a magic lamp, preferably blessed
 * Quaffing a smoky potion, preferably blessed
 * Quaffing from (or dipping in) a fountain, a small chance
 * Sitting on a throne, a small chance
 * Pressing ^W in Wizard (debug) mode - This always works, but it's only supposed to be used for debugging
 * In SLASH'EM, when a gypsy draws Infinity while reading your fortune

The castle always has a wand of wishing in a chest in one of the four corner rooms. Unless you are trying for wishless conduct, you should be able to do some wishing before you enter Gehennom.

Restrictions on wishing
You may not wish for a wand of wishing, or a magic lamp. This is to guard against infinite wishes. You also cannot wish for your own quest artifact, although you may wish for those of other roles. Note that wished-for quest artifacts will "evade your grasp" unless your alignment matches the artifact – check Hugo/O'Donnel NetHack Artifacts Spoiler for artifact alignments. You cannot wish for the Amulet of Yendor or for any of the unique items required to obtain it (the Bell of Opening, the Candelabrum of Invocation and the Book of the Dead).

When wishing, you may specify an amount of an item or a specific enchantment - for instance, 2 of an item instead of 1, or +1 rather than +0. However, the more or higher you wish for, the more chance you have of getting only one or +0. Most players wish for 2 items or +2 enchantment, or 3 items or +3 enchantment. (The NetHack Wishing Spoiler includes a table of probabilities.)

Artifact wishing
If you wish for an artifact, your chance of receiving it depends on the number of artifacts already in existence:

Wishing for your own quest artifact, or an artifact which has already been generated in the game, will never succeed.

If you wish for a quest artifact, you might receive it, but find yourself unable to use it. (See intelligent artifacts for more details.)

Note that wishing for an artifact will break the artifact-wishless conduct, regardless of whether you actually receive it.

Wishing for quantities
If wishing for a stackable item, you may wish for more than one. If the amount you wish for is less than the roll of a d6, you get the desired amount, otherwise you get only one. (If you wish for more than one of a non-stackable item, you get only one.)

Exceptions to this rule are candles (up to 7 are guaranteed), projectiles (up to 20, not daggers), and gold pieces (up to 5000).

Most players wish for 2 or 3 items. Wishing for 3 gives more items when averaged over many wishes/games, but wishing for 2 is more likely to increase the effectiveness of the current wish.

Wishing for enchantment
Similarly, if wishing for an item that can be enchanted, you may specify the enchantment. If the enchantment you wish for is less than or equal to the roll of a d5, you get the desired enchantment, otherwise you get ±0.

You can wish for negatively-enchanted equipment, with the same chance of success as the equivalent positive enchantment. It's not clear why anyone would want to do this, however.

Be warned that if your luck is negative, any enchantment higher than +2 will automatically become negative. (This check takes place after the game decides whether it will grant you your specified enchantment.)

As with quantities, most players wish for +2 or +3 equipment. +3 gives the best average enchantment, but +2's slightly lower average is less chancy. +4 and +5 have lower averages than +3 and are more risky as well, so those are usually not used. +1 is certain to work, but its average enchantment is much lower than that of +2 or +3, so it's usually not a good choice either. The other possible enchantments are obviously not ever very useful, unless you actually want nonpositive enchantment for some bizarre reason (e.g. pudding farming, but there are better ways to get a thoroughly rusted -7 orcish dagger)

Wishing for BUC
You can specify whether the item should be blessed, uncursed, or cursed. If your luck is zero or greater, your preference will be respected.

If your luck is negative, explicitly wishing for a "blessed" or "uncursed" item will yield a cursed one instead. (Wishing for a "cursed" item still works.)

If you do not specify a BUC, the item will default to uncursed (regardless of luck), unless its enchantment is negative (including -0).

You should almost always wish for blessed items, unless you have negative luck, or specifically want a cursed potion or scroll. Magic markers should be uncursed, so that cursed paper will produce cursed scrolls. If you desire both cursed and blessed copies of an item (such as scrolls of genocide or potions of gain level), consider wishing for cursed ones, since it is easier to bless items than it is to curse them.

Wishing for erosion-proofing
You can ask for an item to be "rustproof", "erodeproof", "corrodeproof", "fixed", "fireproof", or "rotproof". If your luck is non-negative, and the item is subject to erosion (or is a crysknife), your preference will be respected.

NetHack does not discriminate between the different types of erosion-proofing, so you may wish for "corrosion-proof speed boots" or a "fireproof crysknife", and the game will substitute the appropriate type of protection. Thus, some players recommend adding "fixed" to every wish, to reduce the chance of mistakenly not erosion-proofing something.

You can also explicitly request an eroded item; in this case, erosion-proofing will not be applied.

Wishing for a monster type
When wishing for a tin, corpse, figurine, egg, or statue, you can specify what type of monster it should be.

If you wish for a tin containing a monster that has been genocided, you get an empty tin. Wishing for a tin containing a unique monster, a monster that cannot leave a corpse, or a monster giving zero nutrition (such as a wraith) will instead produce a random tin. Note that you can also wish for tins of spinach.

You may not wish for the corpse of a unique monster, or a monster that cannot leave a corpse; doing so will produce a random corpse. Wishing for the corpse of a quest guardian will instead produce a corpse of the corresponding role monster.

If you wish for a figurine of a unique monster, any kind of human, or a mail daemon, you will instead receive a random figurine.

If you wish for an egg from a monster that cannot lay eggs, you will get a random kind of egg. You can wish for an egg from a genocided species, but the egg will never hatch.

You can wish for a statue of any monster, including unique and genocided ones. Bear in mind, however, that casting stone to flesh on a statue will not always produce that monster—for example, animating a statue of a unique monster or quest guardian will instead produce a doppelganger disguised as that monster.

Wishing for charges
Although you can wish for a specific number of charges (i.e. "wand of death (0:7)"), in a normal game you will always receive the lesser of the number of charges you wish for or the number of charges you would otherwise receive, making this an undesirable option. The capability was designed for wizard mode, where you always receive the number of charges you wish for.

Other options
You can also specify the following options:


 * "holy", "unholy" (sets BUC, even if not potion of water)
 * "lit", "burning", "unlit", "extinguished" (for lamps, candles, and potions of oil)
 * "unlabeled", "unlabelled", "blank" (for scrolls and spellbooks)
 * "poisoned" (for poisonable weapons, containers, and comestibles)
 * "greased" (any item)
 * "partly eaten" (for comestibles)
 * "historic" (for statues)
 * "diluted" (for potions other than water)
 * "empty" (for tins)

Most of these are useless or worse, but "greased" can be a life-saver for body armour and containers, and "poisoned" can increase the effectiveness of weapons.

What to wish for
The best use of a wish depends heavily on your situation in the game. Here we give some general advice for early and late game situations. This advice is only a guideline and does not apply to all situations. In some cases, if you already have everything you need, the best thing to do with a wand of wishing or magic lamp is to save it for later. Experienced players are able to weigh the value of an unused available wish and compare it to the benefit that would be provided by the most valuable item in the game in that situation. For inexperienced players, there is no substitute for experience -- play and learn!

The following general principles apply in almost all situations:


 * If you encounter a wand of wishing, and you can't identify how many charges it has, then your first wish should be either 2 (or 3) "blessed scrolls of charging", or an "uncursed magic marker", so you can write your own scrolls to recharge the wand.
 * Writing your own scrolls will only work reliably if you have already identified scrolls of charging, or you are a wizard.
 * Wands of wishing from bones levels might already have been recharged once.

The rest of this discussion assumes that you have a way to recharge your wand, if the wish is from a wand of wishing.

Early wishes
The most common source of early wishes is a magic lamp. As a rule, the best item to wish for early in the game is gray or silver dragon scale mail. Which color to wish for depends on your situation:
 * "blessed greased +2 gray dragon scale mail" (or +3) provides magic resistance
 * "blessed greased +2 silver dragon scale mail" (or +3) provides reflection

Which one you should wish for is somewhat situational. If you already have one extrinsic, you should wish for the DSM which provides the other. For example, a Wizard starts with a cloak of magic resistance, and would prefer SDSM. A character who gets the amulet of reflection from Sokoban, on the other hand, would be better served by GDSM. If you have neither magic resistance nor reflection, the choice is somewhat more difficult:
 * Advantages of SDSM:
 * You are safe from wands of fire, cold, and lightning, none of which GDSM protects against
 * If zapped by a wand of death, the zapping monster may be killed by the rebound, and thus will not waste any more charges
 * Hitting a floating eye and suffering YASD is no longer an issue
 * Advantages of GDSM:
 * Protection from wands of striking, which cannot be reflected. They are much weaker than the elemental wands, though.
 * Protection from teleport, levelport, and polymorph traps. If you hit a polytrap while wearing SDSM instead, you will polymorph into a silver dragon.  Your suit is safe (as long as you don't polymorph again before the current form wears out), but your cloak and shirt will be destroyed.
 * Protection from monster spells. Note however that low-level monsters cast only minor nuisance spells.  The weakest monsters capable of casting the really dangerous spells are the golden naga and the lich, which have difficulty 13 and 14 respectively.  Thus, you are unlikely to run into them until relatively late in the dungeon.  Their spells also only work from melee range, so characters with ranged attacks can dispatch them safely from a distance.  Whereas a difficulty 3 gnome with a wand of fire can roast you, your scrolls, and your equipment before you have a chance to react.

A somewhat rarer source of wishes early in the game is a wand of wishing. With a wand of wishing, you will usually want to wish for some or all of the following items, depending on what you already have: dragon scale mail, some artifact weapon, a bag of holding, an amulet of life saving, and (optionally) gauntlets of power, speed boots, and/or jumping boots. You may also consider wishing for a quest artifact (see below), but proper use of a quest artifact requires a higher level of skill on the part of the player than weapons and armor.

If you encounter a wand of wishing in a shop, it is easy to identify because its base cost is 500, shared only with the wand of death. A common strategy is to zap the wand at a shopkeeper -- if it's a wand of death, you'll kill the shopkeeper, and if it's a wand of wishing you can wish for a wand of death. However, be aware that killing shopkeepers incurs penalties for murder, and that the penalty can lower your luck and cause your wishes to fail. Thus, if you intend to use this strategy, it is best to use your wishes before killing the shopkeeper. Characters who wish to avoid murdering a shopkeeper may be happy to simply pay the "usage fee" each time they zap the wand.

Another option for those of... "flexible" personal morals and a low judged value of wishes can use one wish for a blessed figurine of an Archon, and if said angelic being is tame (80% of the time), they will easily dispatch the shopkeeper. This strategy protects the player from murder, frees the entire contents of the shop, provides an extremely powerful pet, but uses one of the precious wishes, and carries a 10% risk of getting a hostile Archon which will probably kill you.

Late game wishes
In the later stages of the game, wishes typically serve the role of completing an ascension kit.

If you need lots of items in order to complete your ascension kit, consider wishing for a wand of polymorph. This wand is a very powerful item for players who are not averse to polypiling. In most cases, it is far more efficient to polypile for ascension kit items and then wish for the few remaining missing pieces, rather than wishing directly for all the items from the start.

An uncursed magic marker can be used to write cursed scrolls of genocide, which when read will summon a monster of your choice. This technique is often more efficient than wishing directly for monster-derived items, since a single uncursed magic marker (which takes one wish) can usually write at least four scrolls of genocide with recharging. For example, if your character is reasonably strong, you can obtain dragon scale mail by reverse genociding dragons instead of wishing directly for dragon scale mail. As another example, if you need a cockatrice corpse, it may be more efficient to reverse genocide cockatrices than to wish for a corpse directly. For maximum effect, use a burned Elbereth to protect yourself from the monsters while you kill them.

Wishing for quest artifacts

 * See Artifact wishing above for general information about artifact wishing.

Generally speaking you should not wish for cross-aligned quest artifacts. They will “evade your grasp” and fall to the floor, and you will be unable to pick them up. It is technically possible to carry multiple artifacts of different alignments through careful use of alignment conversion or the helm of opposite alignment, but this is considered an advanced tactic and is rarely employed. Also note that a helm of opposite alignment cannot cause Chaotic or Lawful characters to become Neutral, so the only way for such characters to use wished-for neutral artifacts is to permanently convert one's self at an altar.

Neutral
If you are a Neutral character and want a quest artifact, there are at least two good choices:
 * "blessed rustproof Eye of the Aethiopica" (if you are not a Wizard) to regenerate power for spells
 * "blessed Platinum Yendorian Express Card" (if you are not a Tourist) to obtain magic resistance, telepathy, and to #invoke for non-blessed charging)

For Neutral Monks in particular, the Eye of the Aethiopica is almost certainly the most valuable item in the game. The energy regeneration ability is extremely useful, since Monks are decent spellcasters and their starting spell (whatever it is) becomes vastly more powerful with energy regeneration. Moreover, the other capabilities of the Eye (namely, telepathy, magic resistance, and branchport) are not only very useful in their own right but also difficult or impossible for Monks to get in any other way.

If you play Lawful or Chaotic, do not wish for the Eye or PYEC; it will "evade your grasp" because it is the wrong alignment and the wrong class. (A helm of opposite alignment also will not help, because these artifacts are neutral and a helm of opposite alignment cannot make you neutral.) The only way to use the Eye or PYEC when you are Lawful or Chaotic is if it is your quest artifact, but in this case you will not be able to wish for the artifact anyway since it is your own quest artifact.

Lawful
For Lawful characters, the main contenders are the Sceptre of Might, the Orb of Detection and the Magic Mirror of Merlin, which all offer magic resistance. The Sceptre offers ring-less conflict and deals double damage against cross-aligned (non-Lawful) monsters. The Mirror and the Orb both offer extrinsic telepathy; the Orb also offers half spell damage and functions as a crystal ball, but is much heavier than the Sceptre or Mirror.

Chaotic
For Chaotics, the Master Key of Thievery is usually considered better than the Longbow of Diana. Neither Chaotic artifact grants magic resistance, making them somewhat less desirable than artifacts of other alignments. However, the Key still grants the very useful half physical damage and teleport control properties, in addition to warning and its invoke effect.

Asking on IRC
If you want, you can just join #nethack on Freenode and ask them to suggest what to wish for.

What not to wish for
The NetHack Wishing Spoiler has a list of good items to obtain "Without Wishing". Here are a few more:


 * unicorn horn – This is a very common item after you find unicorns. Early in the game, if you have no unicorn horn but find a wish, you probably want dragon scale mail.
 * food ration – You are fainting, cannot #pray, and there is no food around? Prefer wishing for a horn of plenty. If you're not fainting yet but out of food regardless, wishing for a ring of slow digestion may be better - NetHack is usually plentiful enough on food that you can find a monster or food item soon enough with the decreased hunger.
 * potion of holy water – If playing an atheist, wish for two blessed scrolls of remove curse. Obtain lots of uncursed water, name each one differently so they don't stack, and have nothing but the water and one of the scrolls in your inventory.  Read the scroll while confused, un-name all the water, and drop it and pick it back up so you have only three stacks.  Dip a known-uncursed useless object (such as a rock) into each stack, and from the glow or lack thereof, you know whether the stack is holy, unholy, or uncursed.  If you only have two stacks, find the uncursed one and repeat with the other scroll.