The potion of sickness is biologically contaminated fruit juice.
Quaffing effects[]
If you are a Healer then you are not subject to the following effects:
| Case | Effect |
|---|---|
| blessed | You lose one hit point. |
| uncursed | You lose up to ten hit points, and one of your statistics is randomly reduced. |
| cursed | You lose up to fifteen hit points, and one of your statistics is randomly reduced. |
Additionally if you are hallucinating then you are shocked to your senses.
Messages[]
| Message | Reason |
|---|---|
| "Yecch! This stuff tastes like poison." | You always receive this message. |
| "But in fact it was mildly stale [fruit; default is slime mold] juice.)" | The potion was blessed. |
| "(But in fact it was biologically contaminated [fruit; default is slime mold] juice.)" | The potion was not blessed, but you have poison resistance, so you only lost one point from one of your statistics. |
| "Fortunately, you have been immunized." | You are a Healer, so you suffer no ill-effects (hallucination is still cured). |
| "You are shocked back to your senses!" | You were hallucinating, and were cured by the potion. |
| "You feel weaker." | Your strength was lowered. |
| "Your muscles won't obey you." | Your dexterity was lowered. |
| "You feel very sick." | Your constitution was lowered. |
| "Your brain is on fire." | Your intelligence was lowered. |
| "Your judgement is impaired." | Your wisdom was lowered. |
| "You break out in hives." | Your charisma was lowered. |
Identification[]
Potions of sickness can be identified by #dipping a unicorn horn into them, which turns them into fruit juice. Zapping with a wand/spell of cancellation also converts to fruit juice.
However, if neither of those are available, dipping a missile weapon into a potion of sickness should form a coating on it.
Strategy[]
You can #dip darts, arrows, shurikens and crossbow bolts into potion of sickness to coat the projectile weapon in poison. Poisoned weapons do d6 extra damage and have a 10% chance of instant kill for non-resistant monsters. However, the poison wears off 1/10 of the time. Unfortunately, in vanilla NetHack, this does not work on daggers, although it does in SLASH'EM.