On lichen corpses and vegetarism

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

uli2003wien@lycos.at writes:
> I find the following detail of the game somewhat inconsistent:
>
> While a monk who eats lichen corpses gets the message "The lichen
> corpse tastes delicious", any other character says that the lichen
> tastes terrible.
>
> Wouldn't it be more plausible that lichen corpses taste good as long as
> the non-Monk-player is a vegetarian?

That'd be easy enough to tweak:

--- nethack-3.4.3/src/eat.c Wed Mar 30 10:11:17 2005
+++ nethack-3.4.3bis/src/eat.c Tue Jun 28 12:05:07 2005
@@ -1326,7 +1326,8 @@
!uniq ? "This " : !type_is_pname(&mons[mnum]) ? "The " : "",
food_xname(otmp, FALSE),
(vegan(&mons[mnum]) ?
- (!carnivorous(youmonst.data) && herbivorous(youmonst.data)) :
+ (!(carnivorous(youmonst.data) && u.uconduct.unvegetarian)
+ && herbivorous(youmonst.data)) :
(carnivorous(youmonst.data) && !herbivorous(youmonst.data)))
? "is delicious" : "tastes terrible");

However, I'm not convinced that it's any more consistent for two
lichen corpses to have different tastes just because someone's eaten
something meaty in between. If the DevTeam ever go to predetermined
conducts, this'd be one for then.

> Does eating terrible tasting corpses affect the PC ?

No, it's just a different message.

> Is a gourmet-ascension possible (the one who only eats well-tasting
> food or would that be only the vegetarian monk ?)

You can always eschew corpses entirely. (You'd need to avoid cursed
food items as well, and you'd probably want to ignore "bland" cram and
[CK]-rations.)

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