Unicorn horn

A unicorn horn (or unihorn) is an important tool for curing your adventurer. You can also wield a unicorn horn as a two-handed melee weapon doing d12 damage; it makes a great non-artifact weapon for roles who are not restricted in the "unicorn horn" skill. You can also use a unicorn horn to help identify potions.

Thus, a unicorn horn is an important part of almost any ascension kit.

What it can cure
An uncursed or blessed unicorn horn can cure:


 * blindness
 * confusion
 * hallucination
 * stun
 * sickness
 * lost attribute points.

Sickness is normally fatal, and the unicorn horn is the easiest way to cure sickness (you might not have the right potion or spell, and you might not be able to safely pray). The other ailments, such as blindness and confusion, normally time out, but a unicorn horn removes them faster. Repeatedly apply the horn until you are completely cured.

What it can't do
A unicorn horn cannot cure:


 * stoning
 * sliming
 * lycanthropy
 * wounded legs

It also cannot:
 * restore health
 * restore magic power
 * undo amnesia.

Obtaining a unicorn horn
There are few different ways to obtain a unicorn horn; for example, you can find one in a bones level. However, by far the most common method is to kill a unicorn and take its horn.

When you encounter a unicorn, you might encounter any of the three varieties: black unicorn, gray unicorn, and white unicorn (representing chaotic, neutral, and lawful alignment). A unicorn that matches your alignment will be peaceful; do not kill them or you will incur a severe (-5) Luck penalty. Any other unicorn is hostile; if you can kill it, it will drop its horn.

(On a bones level, the hostile/peaceful status of unicorns may not follow the usual rule. The Luck penalty applies whenever you kill a unicorn of your own alignment, even if it was hostile. However, throwing gems, even worthless glasses, will calm it down.)

During your first encounter with a hostile unicorn, you will probably not be strong enough to fight it in melee; a unicorn is fast and can hit you multiple times per turn. Let your pet attack it, and hit with ranged attacks. If you lack speed, unicorns will usually avoid being in line with your character, but using ray-based attack wands you can hit the unicorn by reflecting rays off of walls. When it dies, it is guaranteed to leave a corpse and a horn. If you can get to the corpse before your pet does, there is a chance that eating it will grant poison resistance.

Even if the unicorn is of the same alignment as you, there is no penalty to your character if your pet succeeds in killing the unicorn. If you have no pet and no unicorn horn, you may wish to kill a coaligned unicorn yourself: if so, it's a good idea to throw it some valuable gems beforehand to offset the Luck penalty for killing it. Even better, after killing the coaligned unicorn, zap it with a wand of undead turning and throw some more gems at it, completely offsetting the luck penalty. Note that a resurrected unicorn will not drop a second horn, instead its horn will crumble to dust if the revived unicorn is slain.

Is it cursed?
A unicorn horn which you have obtained yourself by killing a unicorn will always be uncursed and +0, but if you found it on a bones pile, it is important to check if the horn is cursed. Test it with your pet, or drop it on an altar, or use some other method. (If you do the pet test, you should later drop it on an altar or identify it so you know the actual BUC status and can notice if it later becomes cursed.) A cursed unicorn horn will never cure anything, and can even cause harm. If your only unicorn horn is cursed, and you cannot fix it, you will want to kill another unicorn.

Bless your unicorn horn as soon as possible, both because a blessed unicorn horn is more reliable and because it provides extra protection against it becoming cursed later on. In SLASH'EM enchanting a unicorn horn also increases its effectiveness.

Save extra horns
As you kill more unicorns, you will obtain more of their horns. Save them in your stash or remember their locations so you can retrieve a spare. You might lose your horn, or something might polymorph your unicorn horn or make it cursed.

If you have several spares, you might consider trying to polymorph some of them; unicorn horns count as magical tools, which means they have a good chance of become a useful magic marker. However, polypiling many horns may generate a skeleton.

Using a unicorn horn to identify potions
Once you possess a (non-cursed) unicorn horn, you can use it to help identify potions. The basic strategy is simple:
 * 1) BUC test the potion. Quaffing a cursed potion is unwise - although you will still be able to identify it, you will miss out on the benefit of useful potions and suffer increased damage from harmful ones.  Dipping a unicorn horn into a cursed potion of water will curse the horn.  Fortunately, potions of water always appear as clear potions when unidentified.
 * 2) If you do not have a spare unicorn horn, you may wish to dip a junk object into the potion at this point, in case it is a potion of polymorph which will turn your unicorn horn into some other (almost certainly less useful) object if you dip your unicorn horn into it. However, if you have spare unicorn horns available, you may wish to intentionally allow some of your unicorn horns to become polymorphed, since polymorphing unicorn horns is a common way to get magic markers.  Dipping a weapon (such as arrows) is another common choice:  if the potion is sickness, the weapon will become poisoned.
 * 3) Dip the unicorn horn into the potion. This will turn potions of sickness into uncursed potions of fruit juice, and potions of hallucination, confusion, and blindness into uncursed potions of water.  If the potion changes color or clears, you will be given the opportunity to name the original potion.
 * 4) If the dipping produced no effect, then the potion is probably safe to drink, although some potions (notably paralysis and sleeping) still harm you even though a unicorn horn does not neutralize them.

You should wait for your health and magic power to completely heal before quaffing. That way, should you quaff a potion of healing, extra healing, full healing, or gain energy, your maximum health or power stat will increase. In addition, should you quaff a potion of acid or sickness it will be much less likely to kill you outright.

Potions of paralysis and sleeping will render you immobile or asleep for some turns and unable to apply the unicorn horn, but the effect will wear off in under 50 turns. The main problem is that a monster may kill you while you are unable to move. The safest way to avert this danger is to wear a ring of free action, which protects against paralysis and sleeping. Other mitigation techniques include being on a shallower dungeon level, killing all monsters around you, and having your pet(s) nearby. If you are paranoid enough, lock yourself in a closet.

Potions of oil will be identified, but wasted. One way to protect against this is to attempt to apply new potions that you find.

Unicorn horns and scrolls
Unlike with potions, unicorn horns are not so useful for identifying scrolls. If you read a scroll of amnesia or a scroll of punishment, a unicorn horn is no help.

Unicorn horn skill
Only unicorn horns use the unicorn horn skill, and there are no artifact unihorns.