Comestibles and satiation
Comestible items are, as the name says, items that you can eat. They are very important, as almost all species need to eat, or they will grow hungry and eventually die of starvation. Luckily, there are many sources of nutrition in the Dungeon for the resourceful adventurer.
Contents
Overview
Hunger and food in Dungeon Crawl are rarely significant issues but, if ignored, can be fatal. Characters start with a satiated stomach, but grow steadily hungrier over time. Some races require less food than others, but characters also use more food when fighting and/or casting spells. Food is provided in two main forms: temporary chunks of raw flesh that rot over time, and "permafood" (everything else) that does not rot.
Chunks of flesh are fairly plentiful in most areas, but they will quickly rot away from your inventory. Most species (i.e. non-carnivores) can't bring themselves to eat chunks of flesh unless they are hungry enough not to care, so they will not be able to fill their hunger past regular satiation. Plant and fungal monsters do not leave corpses.
In contrast, foods found throughout the dungeon (ranging from bread and meat rations, to fruits and vegetables) do not spoil, and so can be collected and stored for future need. Permafood includes meat, vegetarian, and "neutral" options, making various items more or less useful to characters with the Carnivore or Herbivore traits.
Worshipers of Fedhas Madash can use fruits to power the god's special abilities.
Satiation levels
Your satiation level is determined by the number of nutrition units you have remaining. Most characters will use at least three food points per turn—more if fighting. Using spells can incur spell hunger, which can only be reduced by the player's Intelligence and Spellcasting ability. Some special abilities also use up nutrition.
| Label | Nutrition |
|---|---|
| Starving | <1,000 |
| Near starving | 1,001 – 1,533 |
| Very hungry | 1,534 – 2,066 |
| Hungry | 2,067 – 2,600 |
| Satiated (nothing displayed) | 2,601 – 7,000 |
| Full | 7,001 – 9,000 |
| Very full | 9,001 – 11,000 |
| Engorged | 11,001 – 12,000 (max.) |
Effects of satiation
- If you are at level "Satiated" or more, most characters get no special bonus or penalty, although at level "Engorged", you cannot eat anything, with no other special penalties. You cannot wield a vampiric weapon unless you are at least "Full".
- At level "Hungry" or lower, non-carnivores are allowed to eat chunks.
- At "Very Hungry", you cannot go berserk.
- At level "Starving", you get a −3 penalty to hit when fighting, and the damage you inflict is reduced by (1d5 − 1). You cannot use most spells and abilities. If you are under 500 points of satiation, there is 1/40 chance that you will lose consciousness for 1d8 + 5 turns. If you fall to 0 points, your character will die of starvation.
- Undead characters are handled specially:
- Undead characters, such as Ghouls, Mummies, and players in lich form from the Necromutation spell do not have a hunger clock and are not susceptible to the effects of hunger, nor can they consume food.
- Vampires have a unique hunger system based on the amount of blood that they have consumed, which will have different effects on the player. They cannot starve to death, but they will lose the ability to regenerate health at the "Bloodless" level of hunger, among other effects (see the Vampire page for more details). Their Bat Form ability cannot be used if they are Full or higher (be careful while drinking blood over deep water or lava!).
- Ghouls cannot become Full no matter how much they eat; any food points accumulated above 6,999 are wasted. They cannot starve to death, but when Hungry or worse, they will rot much faster.
- The ability to easily stuff yourself to Very Full or Engorged levels of satiation allows you to ignore the hunger costs of berserking, spell hunger, and god abilities to a greater degree.
Chunks
Corpses of fallen monsters can be butchered (command c) to produce chunks of raw flesh, which can then be eaten. This should be your character's main food source, but keep in mind that most species can only eat chunks when hungry or worse. Under certain circumstances, however, your character can eat chunks at will:
- Wearing an amulet of the gourmand will give you the ability to eat chunks even when not hungry, allowing you to eat until Engorged. The amulet's effect takes some time to work, providing only minimal nutrition before 200 turns after equipping the amulet. After this, chunks provide full nutrition.
- Gaining any level of the Carnivore mutation. This will allow you to increase your satiation level from chunks up to Full, Very Full, and Engorged per rank. It will also increase the satiation value of permafood meat.
Vampires do not butcher corpses like other races, but instead can create potions of blood from them, which can be drank to increase satiation.
Note that all chunks, regardless of its source, will condense into the following varieties:
| Chunk type | Colour (ASCII) | Monster | Effects |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clean | White | Most monsters | No harmful side effects. Your satiation increases by 1,000, less if you are an Herbivore. Ghouls will be healed (1d5 − 1) + 1d(experience level) damage and restore 1 point of rotted HP. |
| Poisonous | Green | Poisonous creatures | If you are resistant to poison (rPois), you can consume poisonous chunks as if they were clean (they will appear white in game). Otherwise, you cannot eat these chunks at all. Poisonous chunks of flesh on the ground will turn into clouds of flame if the player casts Ignite Poison. |
| Mutagenic | Purple | Aberrations | Does not provide nutrition, but instead causes a random mutation instead of providing nutrition. Ghouls will not mutate and get the effect of a regular chunk instead. |
| Putrefying | Red | Certain undead- or undead-like monsters | Only ghouls can eat these chunks, who consume them as if they were normal chunks. |
Inventory Interaction
Depending on the player's species, the game will sometimes merge these chunks into one lump "chunk of flesh" in the inventory if the player is able to consume them as normal, regardless of its source (i.e. a ghoul who butchers a necrophage corpse, which normally yields putrefying chunks, will yield normal chunks instead). This is probably a mechanic intended to conserve inventory space. Interestingly, the chunks will still retain the properties of the original corpse, even when merged into a stack of chunks. For example, casting the Ignite Poison spell, which normally causes poisonous chunks/corpses to burst into a cloud of flame, will cause all chunks in the stack to ignite as well, as if they were all poisonous. This is probably a bug.
This merging only occurs if the species has an inherent racial ability that allows them to eat a specific chunk. For example, gargoyles and undead, who are inherently immune to poison (not resistant!), will always see poisonous chunks as simply "chunks". Similarly, Ghouls will always see putrefying chunks as normal chunks.
Religious Restrictions
All of the "good gods" (Zin, The Shining One, Elyvilon), plus Beogh, forbid followers to eat the meat of their own species (cannibalism). If this happens, you will lose 10 piety and gain 10 penance points. In addition, Zin forbids followers from eating chunks from "beings with souls", meaning any monsters with intelligence higher than animals. For "normal" intelligence monsters, you lose 5 piety. For "high" intelligence monsters, you lose 10 piety and gain 5 penance points. This is not cumulative with the cannibalism penalty, and applies even to evil monsters. To prevent mistakes, chunks from "restricted" corpses are displayed in red (in ASCII mode).
- "Normal" intelligence monsters are mostly humanoid or half-humanoid monsters: humans, orcs, giants, goblins, kobolds, centaurs, yaktaurs, nagas, ogres, trolls…
- "High" intelligence monsters (which leave corpses) include: Centaur warriors and yaktaur captains, all draconians, all elves, Orc sorcerers and high priests, Guardian and greater nagas, Hell knights, necromancers and wizards, Giant orange brains and great orb of eyes, Killer Klowns, Ogre-mages, Shapeshifters and glowing shapeshifters, Serpents of Hell, Sphinx, Titans, and several unique monsters (Nessos, Polyphemus, Antaeus, Tiamat, and Nergalle).
Worshipers of Fedhas Madash aren't formally limited in their diet, but many of their god's abilities can or must use fruit, so it is unwise to eat them.
Nutritional values of food items
This list is ordered from most to least nutritious for normal eaters. Note that some foods require more time to consume than others. It's worth keeping some quick snacks in your inventory for emergencies, particularly if you are a spellcaster facing high spell hunger costs! You also can view a food item in your inventory to get an idea of the amount of time it takes to consume it.
| Food | Normal Nutrition |
Carnivore Level 1 |
Carnivore Level 2 |
Carnivore Level 3 |
Herbivore Level 1 |
Herbivore Level 2 |
Herbivore Level 3 |
Time (aut) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meat ration | 5,000 | 5,500 | 6,000 | 6,500 | 3,500 | 2,000 | 0 | 30 |
| Royal jelly | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 30 |
| Bread ration | 4,400 | 3,400 | 2,400 | 0 | 4,900 | 5,400 | 5,900 | 30 |
| Fruit | 1,500 | 1,000 | 500 | 0 | 2,000 | 2,500 | 3,000 | 10 |
| Slice of pizza | 1,500 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 10 |
| Beef jerky | 1,500 | 1,700 | 1,900 | 2,100 | 1,300 | 1,100 | 0 | 10 |
| Chunk | 1,000 | 1,100 | 1,200 | 1,300 | 500 | 0 | 0 | 30 |
Potions of blood provide Vampires with 1000. They cannot restore hunger from any other consumables.
Other sources of satiation
- Religion
- Zin's Vitalisation gives a small amount of nutrition, but won't go past full (costs piety).
- Cards
- Drawing the "Feast" card (Deck of oddities) will set your Hunger state to 12,000 (Engorged).
Hunger
Hunger per turn is proportional to time taken during that turn, except if you were walking with a movement delay greater than 10 auts; in that case, you will consume food (and regenerate) as if that delay was 10 auts. This means that fast races gain less hunger, but slow races and followers of Cheibriados do not gain extra hunger.
Each turn, the player uses a certain amount of food. This is calculated as follows:
Base hunger: 3
This is modified as follows:
Species/mutations:
- Slow Metabolism −1 for level 1, −2 for level 2
- Fast Metabolism +1 per level
- Troll +3 (on top of their Fast Metabolism 3)
If you are currently:
- Under the effects of the Regeneration spell +4
- Invisible +5
- Hasted (but not berserk) +5
- Worshiping Cheibriados with at least 30 points of piety -1
Equipment worn:
| Equipment | Effect |
|---|---|
| Troll leather armour | +1 or +2 (equal chance; only when injured, if you are not a Troll) |
| Amulet of regeneration | +2 (only when injured) |
After all things are considered, minimum hunger is still 1.
Base hunger rates by race
The "basic" hunger rate (taking account of racial factors and in-built mutations) that one can expect when playing a given race is listed below:
| Race | Hunger rate |
|---|---|
| Spriggans | 1 |
| Felids | 2 |
| Trolls | 9 |
| Everyone else | 3 |
The hunger rate of Vampires depends on their hunger status:
| Status | Hunger rate |
|---|---|
| Bloodless, Near bloodless, Very Thirsty | 1 |
| Thirsty | 2 |
| Not thirsty | 3 |
| Full | 4 |
| Very Full | 5 |
| Alive | 6 |
Other sources of hunger
Normal food consumption isn't the only way to decrease satiation: fighting, abilities, and spells eat up sustenance, as well.
- Fighting
- Making a regular melee attack makes you consume an additional 3 points of satiation.
- Ending a berserk phase decreases your satiation level by 700 (be careful!).
- Vampires who are unable to berserk (because they're at Satiated or less), but drink a potion of berserk rage, will lose 100 satiation right away.
- Wielding a vampiric weapon takes a huge amount of satiation, perhaps 5,000 points. It is only possible to a equip when Full or higher.
- Taking damage from a hungry ghost has a 50% chance of decreasing your satiation by 1/4; if it hits you but does no damage, it still has a 5% chance of decreasing your satiation by 1/4.
- Casting a spell reduces your satiation level by an amount depending on the spell level, your Intelligence, and your Spellcasting skill. This can be eliminated by wielding a staff of energy or by being in lichform. See Spell Hunger for more details.
- The base cost is given by the spell level:
Level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Base cost 50 95 160 250 350 550 700 850 1,000
- This amount is then reduced by your intelligence multiplied by your Spellcasting skill. (Vampires then halve this amount if they are hungry or very hungry, or reduce it to 0 if they are starving or near starving.)
- The second page of the spell screen (command I, then I again) hints at the amount of satiation that each memorized spell will cost. It gives a number of hash marks: for N hash marks, that means the spell costs more than 10*(N)*(N-1) nutrition to cast. The values are thus:
- #: 1-20 nutrition
- ##: 21-60 nutrition
- ###: 61-120 nutrition
- ####: 121-200 nutrition
- #####: 201-300 nutrition
- ######: 301-420 nutrition
- #######: 421-560 nutrition
- ########: 561-720 nutrition
- #########: 721-900 nutrition
- ##########: 901+ nutrition
- Abilities
- Several intrinsic abilities have a food cost. This cost is random in the following range, with a bias toward average value:
Ability Cost Blink 51 – 100 Bolt of Draining 101 – 200 Breathe Fire 126 – 250 Breathe Frost 126 – 250 Breathe Poison Gas 126 – 250 Breathe Lightning 126 – 250 Breathe Power 126 – 250 Breathe Sticky Flame 126 – 250 Breathe Steam 126 – 250 Channeling 31 – 60 Fly (Tengu) 101 – 200 Fly (Gargoyle) 101 – 200 Fly (Draconian) 26 – 50 Hellfire 201 – 400 Invisibility 251 – 500 Levitate 101 – 200 Spit Acid 126 – 250 Spit Poison 41 – 80 Teleportation 201 – 400 Throw Flame 51 – 100 Throw Frost 51 – 100
- Evoking an ability from an item has the same satiation cost as if it was your own ability.
- Cards
- Drawing the 'Famine' card (Deck of oddities or Punishment) sets your satiation level to 500 (Starving).
History
In 0.16, rotten chunks and potions of coagulated blood were removed.
In 0.15, all fruits and vegetables were condensed into the universal "fruit" item, and several other food items were removed (ambrosia, honeycomb, cheese, sausage, and sultanas). Royal jellies also no longer had the potion of restore abilities effect. Kobolds, Ogres and Hill Orcs lost saprovore in 0.15 and contaminated chunks were removed.
Prior to 0.6 turn hunger was not proportional to you.time_taken.
