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There are two types of shirt in NetHack: the T-shirt and the Hawaiian shirt. Both are the innermost piece of armor and are mostly identical.

T-shirt[]

[   T-shirt   T-shirt
Appearance T-shirt
Slot shirt
AC 0
Special
Cost 2 zm
Weight 5
Material cloth

A T-shirt is the first of the two shirts. T-shirts can be read. If you go shopping when wearing a T-shirt and the shopkeeper sees it (ie, there is no body armor or cloak over it), he will charge an extra 1/3 markup and buy things for 1/3 of the base price.

Reading T-shirts

Reading a T-shirt will display a message. The message is dependent on the item's object ID, so it should remain consistent for any one T-shirt.[1] If the shirt is eroded, some of the text might be altered, just as an engraving would be.[2]

Reading a T-shirt breaks the illiterate conduct.

The possible messages are:

"I explored the Dungeons of Doom and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!"
"Is that Mjollnir in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
"It's not the size of your sword, it's how #enhance'd you are with it."
"Madame Elvira's House O' Succubi Lifetime Customer"
"Madame Elvira's House O' Succubi Employee of the Month"
"Ludios Vault Guards Do It In Small, Dark Rooms"
"Yendor Military Soldiers Do It In Large Groups"
"I survived Yendor Military Boot Camp"
"Ludios Accounting School Intra-Mural Lacrosse Team"
"Oracle(TM) Fountains 10th Annual Wet T-Shirt Contest"
"Hey, black dragon!  Disintegrate THIS!"
"I'm Confused!"
"I'm With Stupid -->"
"Don't blame me, I voted for Izchak!"
"Don't Panic"
"Furinkan High School Athletic Dept."
"Hel-LOOO, Nurse!"

History[]

The extra T-shirt messages were added in NetHack 3.4.0 from a patch by Scott Bigham. Previously, the only messages were:[3]

"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, and never did any laundry..."
if hallucinating and currently wearing the T-shirt
"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, and couldn't find my way out"
if hallucinating and not currently wearing the T-shirt
"I explored the Dungeons of Doom, but all I got was this lousy T-shirt"
otherwise

Hawaiian shirt[]

[   Hawaiian shirt   Hawaiian shirt
Appearance Hawaiian shirt
Slot shirt
AC 0
Special
Cost 3 zm
Weight 5
Material cloth

All Tourists start with a +0 Hawaiian shirt.

If you go shopping when wearing a Hawaiian shirt and the shopkeeper sees it (ie, there is no body armor or cloak over it), he will charge an extra 1/3 markup and buy things for 1/3 of the base price.

Generation[]

T-shirts comprise 0.2% of all randomly generated armor items, while Hawaiian shirts are 0.8%.

Strategy[]

Confidence Base Chance 25% 50% 75% 95%
Polymorphs 1 in 100 28.62 68.97 137.94 298.07
Armors needed (blessed) 3.59 8.66 17.32 37.41
Armors needed (uncursed) 5.51 13.29 26.58 57.42

Neither shirt confers any AC bonus unless enchanted, but since each can be safely enchanted up to +5, there is no disadvantage to wearing them, and hence they are excellent ascension kit items.

Since they are comparatively rare, a shirt may even be worth wishing for, simply for something to hang the extra +5 AC bonus on. Those not averse to polypiling should also note that a shirt is non-magical and as such are fairly easy to obtain by polymorphing a large pile of armor objects (try The Castle or Fort Ludios). Many players are even known to ascend with a +7 t-shirt through polymorphing elven armor.[1]

The armor store in the Castle level, which has fourteen randomly selected armors, makes for a significant 13.13% chance of having either a Hawaiian or normal t-shirt. The forty general store items in Orcus Town, assuming there are no mimics, also has nontrivial ~8% chance of having a t-shirt spawned.

A Hawaiian shirt in a bones pile is a strong indicator that the deceased was a Tourist.

References[]

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