Pacifist

The pacifist conduct involves not actively killing any monster directly. This means that the usual practice of killing monsters is out of the question; players must instead attack without killing, use a pet to do the dirty work, or simply run away.

A pacifist player nearly always uses a passive way of killing monsters, such as with a pet, or with a ring of conflict for larger groups. Wands of teleportation are used much more often, to move a difficult monster somewhere else instead of killing it.

Many players use a wish for a "blessed figurine of an Archon", giving them a strong enough pet to attack the Wizard of Yendor, as well as being a great help throughout the rest of the game.

Pacifist strategy
The beginning of a Nethack game is widely considered to be the hardest phase of the game. On top of that, the pacifist conduct is one of the more difficult conducts in Nethack. Hence, pacifist characters are especially sensitive to starting conditions, and any advantages available at the start of the game are of greater importance than usual.

One critical source of initial advantage is your starting choice of race and role. The majority of reported pacifist ascensions have been accomplished with gnomish Healers. This is because gnomish Healers enjoy several key benefits at the start of the game. These include healing potions and spells, infravision, stone to flesh, and the large proportion of peaceful monsters in the Gnomish Mines.

The typical course of a pacifist game is as follows. For much of this section, it is assumed that you are a gnomish Healer, although other scenarios are discussed from time to time.

Starting out
For gnomish Healers, especially aspiring pacifists, the protection racket is the best starting strategy. To avoid an early death, you should raise your maximum hit points as soon as possible. The easiest way, if you are a Healer, is to quaff the potions of healing and extra healing in your starting inventory. Before doing this, however, you may want to pray to your god first, since praying can increase your maximum hit points. Note that praying at experience level 1 will not increase your maximum hit points if you already have more than 15 max HP, which is why it is important to pray before quaffing healing potions.

If you do decide to pray first, wait until 300 turns have elapsed, and then stand next to a weak monster and let them hit you until you are at 5HP or below. Praying under these conditions will maximize the chances of gaining hit points.

It is tempting as a Healer to save the healing potions for emergency use, but this is a mistake. Increasing your hit points is much more useful, and your healing spell is usually adequate in emergencies.

Nutrition may be a problem for players who are not accustomed to relying on their pets. Since you are dependent on your pet for survival, you will need to spend time luring or herding your pet in the direction that you want to go, and this extra time contributes to hunger. The nutrition article contains some hints on how to stay healthy. In particular, if you are having problems with nutrition, try to save your prayers for emergency situations when you are weak or fainting from hunger. Note that healers start with the stone to flesh spell, and should use this spell as a food source as soon as enough experience levels are gained to cast it (see below).

Protection racket
As indicated above, most gnomish Healers should make the protection racket their first priority. Most of the monsters in the Gnomish Mines will be peaceful, and with infravision even the darkened mines levels are survivable. A gnomish Healer with 25-30HP and a medium sized dog or cat should have no trouble getting to Minetown.

Healers start with a large amount of gold, often enough that the protection racket can be accomplished without additional gold. However, additional gold is helpful, because even an XL1 character might need up to 3200 gold pieces to buy 9 points of protection. Also, 600 gold pieces will be needed in order to level up at the Oracle. The best way to get more gold is by credit cloning. Find any shop that will buy spellbooks, and drop all your gold in the shop to establish credit in the shop. Wait for your pet to steal the gold out of the shop. Sell your spellbooks (for gold) and buy them back again (using your credit) repeatedly until the shopkeeper runs out of money. If you run out of credit before the shopkeeper runs out of money, drop your gold again and repeat. Since credit cloning works best when you already have a lot of gold, try to do all your credit cloning before you buy protection.

Leveling up
After the protection racket, the next goal for a pacifist gnomish Healer is to get to the Oracle with sufficient gold. By buying a major consultation and a minor consultation (in that order), a level 1 character can reach experience level 3. This will allow you to cast stone to flesh to turn boulders into huge chunks of meat, which represent a plentiful source of food.

If your starting power level is less than 5, you may wish to gain a level or two at the Oracle even before performing the protection racket, to enable you to cast healing spells. Each additional level means a longer period of time before you can purchase the last few points of protection; balance this against the benefits of level gain in your situation.

Mid-game
Eventually, even at XL1, you will reach a point in the dungeon where the random monsters are too strong for domesticated pets to handle. Standard strategies such as Elbereth can help to protect both you and your pet, but after a while you will still need to upgrade your pet in order to get any further. A little bit of luck is required here, as not every game will provide the resources you need.

If you get a wish early in the game, you should wish for a blessed figurine of an Archon (after making sure you can recharge your wand, if the wish is from a wand of wishing). This will make the rest of the game much easier. One possible metastrategy is to play a large number of characters until one of them gets an early wish.

Barring an early wish, a polymorph trap is a good way to improve your pets. If you hunt for one, the lower mines levels are probably the best (and safest). You need either magic resistance, an amulet of unchanging, a leash, or a magic whistle in order to polymorph your pets effectively. If you can't find a polymorph trap, try to find a spellbook of charm monster or scroll of taming, which will let you produce new pets. If you encounter chameleons, you can have your pets eat the corpses in order to (potentially) turn into something better, though magic marker charges probably have better uses than to reverse genocide chameleons. As a last resort, you can smash a potion of polymorph or zap a wand of polymorph on your pet(s), but this has a chance of killing the pet and breaking pacifist conduct. Note that a wand of polymorph is often best saved for polypiling rather than used on your pets.

A carefully played pacifist character with either a pet Archon and/or the spell of charm monster should find that, aside from the few specific problems which are listed below, the Castle and Gehennom levels are no harder than they would otherwise be with a regular, non-pacifist character. A leash and/or magic whistle are very helpful, and if you make it through the Castle without one, consider wishing for a magic whistle, or polypiling for one.

Ascension run
Pacifist players who have made it to the Wizard's tower usually employ one of the following two strategies to deal with the Wizard of Yendor and the various monsters in the endgame: either have a well-equipped pet Archon on a leash, or a posse of pet purple worms on hand.

The Wizard of Yendor starts out as a level 30 monster, and increases by one level each time he reappears. A pet Archon will reach level 28 without help, but after that you will need to give it potions of gain level to raise its level. The Archon will not attack the Wizard unless the Wizard is no more than one level higher than the Archon, so plan accordingly. If your Archon is not already high level (mid 30s), you may want to save up several wishes so that you can wish for potions of gain level if needed. Another possibility is to use drain life or the Staff of Aesculapius to lower the Wizard's level, but take care not to kill the Wizard in the process (check with a stethoscope).

A pet purple worm can instakill most monsters by eating them, but they will usually never reach high enough level to attack the Wizard of Yendor without conflict. If you rely on purple worms, a ring of conflict is essential. (Conflict also works with pet Archons, but it is risky, because the Archon might start attacking you.)

A high level pet Archon with reflection and good weapons and armor (e.g. +7 Frost Brand, AC:-25) will quickly kill pretty much every monster you encounter, even in the endgame, except for footrices and monsters that have digestion attacks. Using a leash or two is highly recommended, especially in the Elemental Planes, since otherwise you will be in bad shape if you enter one of the portals without your pet(s).

Team gecko
Weak monsters such as geckos can die if you accidentally hit them. This causes you to lose pacifist conduct and represents a major threat to any would-be pacifist. At the start of the game, there is nothing you can do except play very carefully, using movement commands such as m and _ which do not attack. Once you get a cream pie, you should wield it. A character wielding a cream pie does no damage upon hitting a monster, regardless of any damage bonuses you may have. However, if you hit anything, the cream pie will splat, and you'll need to wield another one. Wielding a stack of cream pies is a waste of cream pies, as the entire stack will splat. Use standard naming tricks to separate one pie from the stack.

(Note: Some roles have a chance of starting with a cream pie; alas, Healers do not.)

If you have a pet that can kill Keystone Kops, you should find a suitable shop and steal a gold piece several times to build up a stockpile of cream pies. Dig a pit in front if his door to keep the shopkeeper inside. If he approaches you after you rob the shop, you can [p]ay the shopkeeper to appease him. Rinse, repeat, lather.

(Note: You do not lose pacifist conduct if you dig pits and monsters fall in, although peaceful monsters will be angered when they fall in. Just don't displace your pet into a pit or apply a drum of earthquake / wand of digging right next to weak monsters.)

Gaining experience
Here is a full list of pacifist methods for gaining experience:
 * Quaffing potions of gain level
 * Eating wraith corpses
 * Lying with foocubi
 * Talking with the Oracle
 * Eating tripe
 * Quaffing from sinks
 * Untrapping squeaky boards

Potions of gain level are usually best saved for a pet Archon. Chatting with the Oracle is useful in the early game, but only works once per game. This leaves eating wraith corpses and consorting with foocubi as the primary level-up methods for a pacifist. Wraiths can be reverse genocided or lured from a graveyard level such as the Valley of the Dead (use level teleport for maximum speed, or charm monster). Tripe rations are a handy way to regain levels lost to level drain.

If you run across any wraith corpses in the dungeon, you should eat them, as it will make it easier to enter the Quest later on. However, unless there is some need to gain levels (for example, to cast charm monster), you should avoid actively gaining experience until you go on the Quest, in order to keep the difficulty of random monsters low.

Most of the time, gaining levels is not a big challenge compared with all of the other difficulties of pacifism, and in general if you are opportunistic with wraith corpses and foocubi summoning via sinks you should have no trouble. However, if your game is lacking in sinks and wraiths, you may have to take matters into your own hands. Perhaps the easiest solution is to polypile or wish for a magic marker and reverse genocide wraiths. Other methods include using conflict on water demons to summon foocubi, farming for potions to polypile and/or alchimize, or wraith farming with the Book of the Dead.

Gaining alignment
In order to fully take advantage of what your god can do for you (fix problems) you'll need to have an alignment greater than zero. When you start the game your alignment is set to zero, so it should be increased before you run into your first major trouble. Also, your alignment must be 20 before you'll be allowed on the quest.

With healers or lawful characters, your alignment can be easily raised by healing your pets - you get one alignment point each time you heal them.

Chaotic characters gain one point of alignment each time they sleep with a foocubus, which is also a good way to gain experience.

With neutral characters, it is a bit more difficult. The easiest technique to get the first couple of points of alignment is to pray after the 300th turn with a minor trouble, since your initial prayer timeout is set to 300. This will only work for the first two points of alignment.

After that, you can get more alignment by giving priests gold. Giving a priest of your alignment (hope for a co-aligned minetown altar) 600 times your level in gold will raise your alignment two points, but only if you don't have more than 2 times that amount of gold in your inventory at the time. So stash away all the gold you're not giving to the priest in a bag, then give to charity!

You can get a slightly better deal once you've bought the first 9 points of protection from that co-aligned priest. After that, if you spend 400 times your level in gold you have a decreasing chance of getting an extra point of protection. If you don't get that protection, the check is done again to see if this amount is more than half your current gold. If it is, then you get two points of alignment instead.

Sacrificing unicorns of other alignments is probably the next easiest way to raise your alignment as a neutral character.

Neutral atheist pacifists have an especially hard time raising their alignment. The only method available to them is to anger a cross-aligned priest. Ben Hiles has ascended an atheist pacifist Gnomish Wizard this way.

Finally, a helm of opposite alignment can open up other dieties' methods of gaining alignment, such as casting healing spells on pets, provided you do not mind losing your protection and can uncurse it.

Engulfing monsters
If a monster engulfs you, [a]pplying a tooled horn will cause the monster to expel you. Pacifists should thus make it a priority to find a tooled horn. Other escape methods such as teleportation, ring of slow digestion, wand of slow monster, wand of opening, wand of digging, and the knock and slow monster spells can also be used in various situations.

Pets cannot be engulfed except by monsters with digestion attacks; however, a pet which is engulfed by a digestion attack suffers instadeath. Fortunately, the only monsters with digestion attacks are trappers, lurkers above, and purple worms. All three of them move slowly if at all, so they are easy to avoid if you have telepathy or (to a lesser extent) warning. Another option, if you don't intend to have any pet purple worms, is to genocide them.

Traps
Polymorph traps, level teleporters, and trap doors are dangerous for pacifists. A polymorph trap can turn a strong pet into a weak pet. Level teleporters and trap doors can separate you from your pet. If you have a trap detection method, it might be a good idea to search each level for dangerous traps and disable them. In most cases, traps can be disabled by digging a pit on the same square. Trap doors can only be disabled by filling the square with a boulder, but this is less necessary, since flying pets will not fall into trap doors.

Water and lava
Most pets, except for flying pets and a few that can survive under water, will die if you displace them into water or lava. If they die in this way, you will lose pacifist conduct. Be especially careful with pets on levels with water or lava. If you are not able to play with the necessary amount of caution, one alternative is to make sure all your pets can fly (and abandon the ones that can't).

Monsters with special abilities
Many special abilities, such as mind flayers' brain-sucking attack and touch of death, won't work on your pet. Major exceptions include a cockatrice's stoning attack or a black dragon's breath attack, which can kill your pet instantly. Pets will not attack a footrice unless they are stoning resistant or you are causing conflict. The way to deal with cockatrices is to have a stoning resistant pet, teleport them, tame them, cancel them, or use genocide. Stoned pets may be recovered by the stone to flesh spell.

Black dragons are best handled by giving your pets reflection, or using cancellation or genocide.

A floating eye's gaze attack will affect pets. Keep your pets away from floating eyes until you obtain an expensive camera, wand of make invisible, or some other means of neutralizing their gaze attack. You can wake pets up with a leather drum, a tooled horn, or depleted drum of earthquake or magical horn.

Medusa is another special case. If you reflect Medusa's gaze, you will lose pacifist conduct, so don't do that. Standard techniques for dispatching Medusa include using a pet with reflection, cancelling or blinding Medusa, or blindfolding yourself and dropping a wand of death in her path for her to use.

Wishing
Before wishing for an artifact, make sure that you can survive its magical blast. Good artifact wishes for a pacifist include the following:


 * Eye of the Aethiopica
 * Allows you to cast healing spells more frequently, if you are a Healer.
 * Telepathy helps you avoid hitting monsters.
 * Magic resistance is very helpful when polymorphing pets in polymorph traps.
 * Branchporting is useful for wraith luring.
 * Orb of Fate
 * Confers half damage, which helps you survive.
 * The crystal ball function lets you look for dangerous traps. Recharge using the Platinum Yendorian Express Card for even greater effect.
 * Level teleport is handy for wraith luring.
 * Platinum Yendorian Express Card
 * Pacifists rely on wands more than usual, especially wands of fire and lightning, which can engrave Elbereth, and wands of teleportation, which can move monsters out of the way. Being able to recharge wands is good.
 * Also confers telepathy and magic resistance.
 * Allows unlimited use of the Orb of Fate to search for traps. (A regular crystal ball will also work, but unless your intelligence is at least 20, a regular crystal ball has a chance of exploding when used.)
 * If you're not a Healer, a level draining artifact may be worth a wish.

Useful non-artifact wishes include the usual ascension kit equipment, plus any of the following depending on your situation:


 * blessed figurine of an Archon
 * blessed spellbook of charm monster
 * blessed magic whistle
 * blessed ring of conflict

Weapon choice
Pacifists can fight without breaking pacifist conduct, they just cannot kill. To avoid accidental kills, a cream pie is best as it does 0 damage. Until you acquire one, wielding a non-weapon object or a Puddingbane will make sure the damage is limited to 1 (unless you have a damage bonus from rings or strength). However, even a single point of accidental damage can still kill weak monsters.

If you have a stethoscope, you can selectively reduce monsters to very few hit points or even one hit point using such a mock weapon. This helps your pet kill floating eyes if you have a blindfold. Later, once you get a level draining artifact, you can use it to drain high level monsters to the point where your pet will attack it.

Pacifist ascensions
Pacifist Healers and Wizards are common, but a few other classes have been ascended as pacifists:


 * A pacifist Archeologist by Marvin
 * A pacifist Rogue by Marvin
 * A pacifist Monk (and 8 other conducts too) by Brad Sagarin

No YAPAPs have been posted to RGRN for a Barbarian, Cave(wo)man, Knight, Ranger, Priest, Samurai, Tourist, or Valkyrie.