Detailed Features

👉 GnollHack changes NetHack's rules in almost every area of the game, from attributes and skills to monsters, pets, items, and the dungeon.

For a shorter overview, see Features or How GnollHack differs from NetHack. Starting Guide for NetHack Veterans explains what to do differently as a NetHack player.

📖 General

🌟 Difficulty Levels

GnollHack has 7 difficulty levels. The status bar shows the one you chose as a letter, after the letter of any special game mode:

Difficulty Level	Status Bar Letter
Standard	s
Experienced	e
Adept	a
Veteran	v
Expert	x
Master	m
Grand Master	g

On the easier levels, you start with extra scrolls of identify and a wand of probing, which can also tell you a corpse's properties, and your starting stash holds two manuals that explain game mechanics. The Elven bard, who teaches you about Elbereth, is also more likely to appear on them.

When you or a monster polymorphs, including shapeshifters such as chameleons, the new form suits the current difficulty, and polymorph control can fail for forms far above your experience level.

✨ Runewords

Engraving Gilthoniel stops monsters from picking up items or looting containers on that square outside Gehennom. Morgoth does the same inside Gehennom. See Runewords.

⌨️ Controls and Safety

• Swap weapons (x) switches instantly between two weapon sets, such as a one-handed weapon with a shield and a two-handed weapon. See Changing Between Two Sets of Weapon and Shield.
• Two-weapon combat no longer uses the second weapon set. You toggle it with Dual weapon mode (Ctrl+x); see Dual wielding.
• Character details (}) shows your detailed statistics, including your alignment.
• The game asks before you step into water or lava, step onto a known trap, or put a container inside another container.
• Running never takes you into a trap you know about.
• You can still use containers while wielding a cursed two-handed weapon.
• There are many new options, such as tellexp, metric_system, and show_weight_summary. See Options and Additional Options.

👤 Player Character

💪 Attributes

Exercise is gone. You raise attributes by eating certain corpses and fruits instead, so even a vegetarian can raise most of them. See Attribute Scores.

Attribute	Examples of Food Sources
Strength 💪	Giants, spinach
Dexterity 🎯	Snakes, monkeys, bananas
Constitution 🔋	Ogres, pomegranates
Intelligence 🧠	Tentacled ones, lichens
Wisdom 🦉	Owlbears, treants, nagas
Charisma ✨	Nymphs (which no longer give teleportitis), avocados

Attributes give different bonuses than in NetHack; the Attributes entry of the Abilities (Shift+a) menu shows the exact values. A change in Constitution changes your maximum hit points at once, and a change in Intelligence or Wisdom does the same for your maximum mana.

❤️ Health and Armor Class

• Players and monsters regain a fixed fraction of their maximum hit points and mana each turn. Regeneration effects raise the rate. See Hit Point and Mana Regeneration Rates.
• Both players and monsters generally have more hit points and deal more damage than in NetHack. See Hit Point Comparison.
• Dexterity improves Armor Class, so better AC is possible than in NetHack, for monsters as well. See Armor Class (AC) and Magic Cancellation (MC).
• Being slowed cuts your speed to two-thirds of your base speed and cancels all speed bonuses. See Conditions.

📈 Experience and Carrying Capacity

The experience level cap is 50, and the experience curve is much faster than in NetHack: level 30 takes 204,000 experience points instead of 100,000,000. Characters can also carry more. See Encumbrance.

👹 Monsters

🧠 Monster Stats and Behavior

• Monsters have Strength, Dexterity, and the other attributes, just like your character.
• Undead and mindless monsters are immune to fear. Mindless monsters also never flee when badly hurt.
• A monster that can leave a corpse always does. Wraiths, spectres, and king wraiths are the exception: they leave one only 1 time in 5.
• Some monsters have names, which they tell you when you chat with them.
• Dragon hatchlings sometimes leave dragon scales, and the Silver dragon hatchling has reflection.
• The Wizard of Yendor is the only monster that still steals artifacts and retreats to the stairs to heal, and he is less aggressive about it than in NetHack.

🔤 Monster Classes

Gnomes are now in g, lesser undead such as zombies and skeletons in z, greater undead such as mummies in Z, and the zruty in Y. The new class G holds gnolls and flinds. For copyright reasons, tentacled ones, gazers, and umbral hulks replace mind flayers, beholders, and umber hulks. See Monsters.

☠️ Instadeaths and Special Attacks

• Couatls, mariliths, and large constrictor snakes can strangle you. You die after 6 turns unless you break free.
• A monster that pulls you under water no longer drowns you at once; you have a few turns to escape.
• Purple worms no longer kill swallowed pets and monsters instantly.
• A Cockatrice's hit petrifies you only if it gets past your magic cancellation. The same check protects a monster you hit with a cockatrice corpse.
• The Summon Nasties spell calls fewer and weaker monsters, and demons summon other demons less often.
• Only high priests and the demon lords and princes can cast the touch of death spell; mage spellcasters, including the Wizard of Yendor, cannot. Death resistance or a nonliving or demon form makes you immune. Otherwise a magic cancellation check decides, and magic resistance does not help.
• The touch of Death the Rider is a different attack. Only death resistance protects you from it completely; a nonliving or demon form saves you from the instant death but not from the permanent hit point drain, and magic cancellation does not help.
• Jubilex's engulfing attack gives other monsters a terminal illness that kills them about 20 turns later.

📊 Difficulty and Experience

Every monster type has a fixed difficulty level from 0 to 100, which Far look (/) shows. A kill is worth about 1 plus the monster's difficulty squared in experience points, and monsters that come as an encounter give extra experience depending on how hard the encounter is. See Experience Level.

🐾 Pets

🧭 Pet Behavior

• Pets find their way to you with the same pathfinding as the travel command, so they no longer get stuck on the other side of the map.
• You can tell a pet to stay put, which also keeps it from eating corpses.
• Pets attack much stronger monsters than in NetHack and can die doing so, but they leave peaceful monsters alone.
• More food is generated for pets, such as fruit, and carrots buried in gardens.

🤝 Pet Interaction and Hirelings

You can give items to a pet and ask it to wear, take off, or drop them. Some peaceful monsters join your party if you chat with them and pay them gold. Riding is easier for every role, and your steed loses tameness less often as your Riding skill grows. See Understanding Pets and Hirelings.

📊 Pet Status

If you use four or more status lines (up to eight), the fourth and later lines show your pets' hit points and other statistics; see Status Bar. Far look (/) on a pet also shows its hit points, and the game tells you clearly when a pet is hungry or weak.

🏪 Shopkeepers, Priests, and the Oracle

Shopkeepers identify items of the kind they sell for a gold fee, and they notice and scare off pets that try to steal from their shops. Temple priests heal you, cure sickness, and bless or curse items for a fee. Besides consultations, the Oracle can identify items, give enlightenment, and teach spells.

📈 Skills

⚔️ Weapon and Spell Skills

• Weapon skills are combined into 12 skill groups instead of NetHack's 28, and they give larger bonuses. See Skills.
• Higher weapon skill raises your chance of a critical hit, which deals double damage.
• Spells are divided into 12 revised schools, each with its own skill.
• The status bar shows when you can advance a skill.

🥋 Unarmed Combat and Disarm Trap

Bare-handed combat gives to-hit and damage bonuses at every skill level up to Grand Master.

Martial arts is a prestige skill that you can improve whatever your Bare-handed combat level. Kicks train it at any time. Unarmed hits train it only once your effective Bare-handed combat level is Grand Master, counting the two levels a worn headband of martial prowess adds.

The trainable Disarm trap skill decides your chance to disarm a trap with Untrap (Alt+u). Disarmed traps can yield items; magical traps usually give wands.

🎖️ Roles

• Most roles have revised intrinsics per level. See Character Classes.
• The Monk kicks with martial arts when using Kick (k).
• The Caveman starts with a random beneficial amulet, plenty of food, and enchanted weapons.
• The Knight can no longer jump without jumping boots, and dwarves can now be Knights.
• The Tourist starts with a +3 golf club, since darts thrown at an adjacent target take a heavy to-hit penalty.
• The Wizard starts with either a quarterstaff and a cloak of magic resistance, or a staff of fire and a leather cloak.
• Every role starts with a container. Rogues get a bag of treasure hauling and wizards a bag of wizardry.

🎒 Items

💎 Item Quality and Affixes

Ordinary equipment can come with mythic or legendary properties, such as demon slaying; see Mythic and Legendary Items. Weapons can also come in exceptional, elite, celestial, primordial, and infernal quality tiers, which multiply their base damage; see Exceptional, Elite, Celestial, Primordial, and Infernal Items. Items lists every item class, and Artifacts the artifacts.

👕 Equipment Slots and Armor

• Robes are worn over body armor and under cloaks. Only the better AC and MC of the two counts.
• Miscellaneous Items, such as belts and ioun stones, are a new item class (8) with 5 new slots.
• Gauntlets of power are now gauntlets of ogre power, and they set your Strength to 18/**.
• Dragon scale mail is much heavier and hinders spellcasting. See Body Armor.
• Crystal plate mail grants reflection.
• Bronze plate mail has much higher magic cancellation than ordinary plate mail.

⚔️ Weapons and Ammunition

• Launchers and thrown weapons used against an adjacent target get a -40 to-hit penalty (-32 for crossbows). See Ranged Weapons.
• Applied polearms hit monsters two squares away at every skill level, but they are poor weapons against adjacent monsters unless you are riding.
• A spear can be applied to hit monsters two squares away once you have Basic skill. Its reach grows at higher skill levels, and it still works at melee range.
• Fired ammunition breaks only 1 time in 20, and blessed ammunition normally never breaks.
• Cleaver's arc attack no longer hits peaceful or tame creatures, and Stormbringer no longer makes you attack them.

🪄 Magic Items and Tools

• Reagents are a new item class (9), used for preparing spells.
• A unicorn horn always works, but it uses a charge each time you apply it and cannot restore lost attribute points.
• Conflict is no longer permanent. The Ring of Conflict is an artifact with charges, a scroll of conflict works once, and a horn of chaos drives monsters mad only for a short time.
• A wand of polymorph changes up to 7 items if blessed, 4 if uncursed, and 1 if cursed.
• You can apply a wand to an item instead of breaking it, for example to give a weapon an elemental enchantment or to cancel an item.
• Magic resistance does not protect against death attacks, magic missiles, or striking, and it does not halve elemental damage.
• A ring of sustain ability protects your brain from the amnesia caused by tentacled ones.
• Gold weighs ten times more than in NetHack. A bag of treasure hauling cuts its weight to 1/32.

💎 Gems, Scrolls, and Food

• A touchstone identifies gems without being blessed. The jinxstone is a new cursed gray stone.
• Expensive gems cost less than in NetHack. See Gems and Stones.
• The scroll of protect weapon and scroll of protect armor do what a scroll of enchant weapon or enchant armor does when read while confused.
• Eating a cloudberry restores lost attributes, a fig cures sickness, and a panther cap gives telepathy while blind.

🗺️ Dungeon

🚪 Special Rooms

• Your starting room has an altar of your own god and a magic chest stash holding 2 or 3 random items.
• Gardens are full of trees and fruit. Dig (Ctrl+g) for buried roots, and chop trees for wood.
• Libraries hold scrolls and spellbooks guarded by spellcasting monsters.
• A dragon lair holds a treasure hoard guarded either by one ancient dragon or by a family of adult dragons and hatchlings of one color.
• Two humorous closets, the Orc and the Pie and the Orc Captain and the Pies, are named after the tiny tabletop adventure The Orc and the Pie.
• Deserted shops are full of mimics, including a gargantuan mimic that carries a wand of identify.

🗺️ Dungeon Layout and Features

• Drinking from fountains is safer, because the most dangerous results happen only deeper in the dungeon. Fountains of healing, mana, power, poison, and spring water are new; the original fountain is now the magic fountain.
• The Dungeons of Doom are slightly shorter. Gehennom is shorter too, and it has no mazes except on special levels.
• There are several new dungeon branches. See Dungeon Layout.
• You can find secret doors even with very bad Luck, though less often.

🔮 Spells

🧪 Preparing and Casting Spells

There are 14 spell levels: minor cantrips, major cantrips, and levels 1 to 12. Most spells must be prepared with Mix (Shift+x) from reagents, and each preparation gives a set number of castings, from 1 to 150 depending on the spell. Some spells also have a cooldown before you can cast them again.

Each spell uses Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, or a combination of them. Higher skill in a spell's school lowers its mana cost. Your chance to cast a spell depends mainly on that skill, the spell's level, your casting attribute, and the armor penalty for somatic spells. See Spell Casting.

📕 Spellbooks and Spell Management

• Spells are never forgotten.
• A spellbook crumbles to dust once you learn its spell.
• Failing to read a spellbook never paralyzes you.
• In the Spell menu (+), you can assign hotkeys to spells or remove them from your spell list.

For every spell and spellbook, see Spells.

🏆 Scoring

GnollHack has its own scoring model. Your current score is calculated as you play and shown on the status bar.

Score Contributor	Included in GnollHack?	Included in NetHack?
Delving Depth	✅	✅
Achievements	✅	❌
Difficulty Level	✅	❌
Turn Count	✅ (Ascension only)	❌
Conducts	✅ (Ascension only)	❌
Gold	❌ (except for Rogues)	✅
Gems	❌ (except for Rogues)	✅
Artifacts & Amulets	❌ (artifacts count for Archaeologists, amulets for Cavemen)	✅