Talk:Altar

Re the Nethack Brass section: I believe that converting altars can summon a minion in vanilla Nethack too, and I'm certain that it can in Slash'EM. I haven't time to research the details right now, and I've never played Nethack Brass, but in Nethack/Slash'EM you may be able to kill the minion rather than fleeing from it, or if you do flee you could come back and kill it later. Ekaterin 10:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I never saw a minion before my first game of NetHack brass, in which at experience level 1, I converted an altar and the lawful god summoned a couatl against me, at which point I chose to run away! I tend to keep my luck up, which might help explain why I never encountered minions while converting altars in vanilla or SLASH'EM. --Kernigh 19:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

A message not here
I got "You think something brushed your foot" while sacrificing, and that's not listed here. I was blind at the time, so it could be the four-leaf clover message for when you're blind, but I'm not sure. Could I get confirmation? --Someone Else 10:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That's correct. I added some more messages to the article. --Jayt 13:10, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe the following is also missing: "Your sacrifice is consumed in a flash of light!" It was unclear to me if this is intended to be a derivative of "Your sacrifice is consumed..." or not Yidda 02:10, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

converting to the altar
Can someone talk about how to convert to an opposing altar? I was playing as a samurai (I think I wasn't doing well [dog died, nymph stole from me, it was like a damn blues song] so I said "eff 'dis and killed some watchmen in gnome town, then sacrificed at the chaotic altar) and I converted [I SAW THE LIGHT!] and sacrificed some more humans and got some great demon pets.

It was my best game ever.


 * The article does discuss this. Under Danger in sacrificing it says:
 * Sacrificing at an altar not of your alignment type (ie. Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic) when your alignment is negative.
 * This may convert you to the altar's alignment, you lose 3 luck, and your prayer timeout increases by 300.
 * Also read the Sacrificing unicorns section. By the way, the demons that are sent in when you sacrifice your own race when chaotic do not become your pets, just peaceful monsters that hang around and, in my opinion, just cause trouble by blocking your way. --ZeroOne 09:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Identifying High Altars
It would be nice to mention that the altars on the astral plane cannot be IDed from afar (except maybe fear I don't know). The command someone told me for this that I didn't know was look : This is much better than trying to engrave on the altar or celestial disgrace.


 * I added some info about IDing the high altar with the :look command

Another note on high altars is if you try to sacrifice your own race to convert the altar it will be covered in blood and disappear along with the other noted effects.

Other stuff
Things like kicking and siting on altars should be noted here.

[need help]What's the real case when you sacrifice zombies?
It writes here in the article "For lawful or neutral characters, zombies have an extra point of value."[1]

But it writes in article zombie "Zombies leave corpses that are already old, so they are unfit for sacrificing,..."[2]

So which one is correct?

From my own experience, I got rejected quite a few times when I try to sacrifice zombies. And through logic one may infer that since there is no 'zombie corpses', the system would only treat corpses zombies left like they are named, old human or dwarven or whatever corpses. So does [1] actually mean that sacrificing 'alive' and kicking zombies are different from sacrificing the corpses that zombies left?

Plus, what if the zombie in question is of the same race as you are? Does 'same race rule' rule over other rules?

Thanks.

Accuracy of Sacrificing Unicorn table?
As a neutral barbarian, I have recently sacrificed a White Unicorn on a Chaotic altar and "something bad happened". But according to the table, the altar should have been converted. Is there only a chance to convert the altar, or is the table wrong? Or was there some other factor that made my altar conversion fail? Luck? Alignment? &mdash; Qwip 15:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, that's twice now it's failed, but with different characters. I don't have a co-aligned altar and my neutral valkyrie tried to convert a chaotic Minetown altar using a white unicorn corpse.
 * "Unluckily, you feel the power of Odin decrease."
 * What did I do wrong? &mdash; Qwip 02:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)