# Talk:Knight
I need to check the source code but it looks like there is no alignment penalty if you attack the monster with spells, wands or missile weapons.  Same thing if you bash the monster with your lance.  (Unsigned)
I have cleaned up this page a bit, and I have a few questions:
"At the beginning use it only for bashing not for close combat" - I'm not clear what this means.  If "bashing" means walking into a monster while wielding your lance and getting "You begin bashing monsters with your lance", I don't think it's terribly useful because it doesn't do much damage or train any skills.
New moons have NO effect on Luck, so I don't think they affect the chance of a lance breaking, and I changed the reference to Friday the 13th which does reduce your base Luck.
A reference for the statement that an apple/carrot will keep your horse fed as long as a full ration will keep you fed would be nice.

Nutrition#Nutrition_and_pets -&gt; reference -Tjr 00:41, April 6, 2010 (UTC)
If you have reflection and are riding your horse, will this protect it from blasts of disintegration or not?
Please be consistent about whether the horse is referred to as "he" or "it" - I changed it to "it" throughout.
Ekaterin 15:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Bashing was used as a contraction from the very cumbersome "apply the lance on an opponent" (the long rande capability of the lance).  I wanted to use the same word than used in the Knight's FAQ but I cannot access it from home (is my ISP banned?) and can't remember the tem used in it.   I will check what term is used, replace "Bashing" with the term from the Knight's FAQ and create a page who will be pointed by both the Knight, the lance and perhaps the pole arm pages in order to avoid redundancy
For carrots feeding horses for a long time, it is from obesrvation.  I will try to skim the source code however.
Reflection will protect only you: if spellcaster or dargon aims low it will strike your horse, at least when source of reflection is dragon armor.  I need to check if amulets or shields protect also the horse or not.
Forgive me for the lack of consistency in he or it.  There is no neutral gender in either of my two mother languages and I feel uncomfortable on using it for sentient beings.
If you agree I would like to rebolden the IF in the sentence about Knight being an easy class if using proper tactics.   Nethack's Knights don't have the destructive power and hit points of barbarians so closing with monsters and trading blows with them will get you killed fast (cf my own experience and some disparaging comments on the web eg "Naturs abhors vacuum and that is why Knights get killed because Knights suck").  It is the jousting, their long range lance attack and their mobility who makes them deadly.  So deadly that in fact if it were not for monsters who create other monsters and for magical traps you could nearly go in Gehennom without any armor because very few monsters will be able to attack you at all.  (Don't get me wrong: I strongly advise against it).  That is why to emphasize the need of proper tactics (My feeling is that they are a much greater multiplier of force than for other classes).
About mobility: a knight on warhorse is 20% faster than a human with boots of speed.  That plus its jumping ability means it will be esier for him than for other characters to reach a better defensive position (eg in a corridor if facing multiple monsters) or to disengagage when combat is going badly.  Also when a non-Knight is surrounded by multiple monsters (eg he stepped in a magical trap) he will not be able  to get an avenue of retreat/reduce the number of blows he is receiving in every round until he has killed one of his opponents.  A knight needs only a joust and at Expert level he will be getting one four times out of five.

I have changed "bashing" to "pounding", which is the term used in the Knight FAQ.  As you say, this term needs to be defined.
Ekaterin 16:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Contents

1 Bulls?
2 Stuff
3 Dragons
4 Identifying
5 Excalibur?
6 Jumping
7 Speed
8 HP lost if unsuccessful mount
9 Quest monster
10 Ki-Rins and conflict
11 Ridden monsters and spells
12 Apple feeding

Bulls?
"Bulls and cows can be tamed by throwing them food and in game terms are just more powerful horses: they can be saddled and ridden but a bull can reach level 15 and 120Hp while a (war)horse will only reach level 10 and 80Hp. Info is required about relative speed of bulls and horses: a knight on a warhorse is faster than a character on foot wearing boots of speed."
I don't think there are bulls in Vanilla.  Maybe they're in SLASH'EM or some other variant, in which case the article should say so.

Apologies about that.
Stuff
Shouldn't all that crap be moved to Riding?

I don't think so.  On one side Knights are for many reasons (horse and lance from the start, skill) the class who will be fighting on horseback and with lance On another side I have had enough from disparaging comments about the Knight("Knights die quickly because Nature avoids vacuum and Knights suck").  Exposing proper tactics to fully exploit Knight's potential should be one of the goals of article isn't it?  Fight on foot with the word and you will get killed fast (Knight are no barbarians).  But Knights are easy to play provided you ride, you remind to jump away whenever possible and you use your lance as primary weapon instead of that toothpick named Excalibur.
Thinking it better.  You are right.  The Part of the article dealing  with keeping the horse alive and fed should be moved to "Horses as pets" or aomething like that.  I will try to do it this week.  However the article will reeflect that without a saddle a horse is just another pet who is going to starve soon (only healers and monks have horse food in their initial equipment) unless you renounce to carnivorous pets.  In other words without a saddle and the riding ability they are just not worth the trouble.  And saddles are rare enough you can ascend without ever finding one.
Dragons
This doesn't belong here.  I will be moving it to its own article whose title will be Dragon Pets.  In the Knight article there will only be a link to the article and a note pointing that Knights are both likelier to get one and benefit more of it.  I will have done it before 2007/10/20

Identifying
The article says that "Knights can identify all weapons and non-magical armor from the beginning." How can I do that?

It's done automatically, so for example if you find an orcish dagger you'll automatically see it as an orcish dagger, rather than a crude dagger.  If you (the player) already know that a crude dagger is an orcish dagger, then this is not an especially helpful ability.
Oh. I hoped that the Knight is able to fully identify pieces of weapon and armour. Like crude dagger would be, for example, a cursed -2 orcish dagger... But that would be an enormous advantage I suppose&nbsp;:) Thanks for the answer!
Excalibur?
I'm not qualified to comment on whether or not a lance really is superior to Excalibur, but let's at least do a proper comparison. Excalibur at Expert skill gives a +2 damage bonus which you have left out of your computations. On the other hand, your damage calculations for Lance did include the damage bonus for skill, so the comparison is inherently unequal. If you add back in the +2 damage bonus for Excalibur at Expert skill, the lance no longer has such a pronounced advantage, at least not in pure damage terms.
Djao 09:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I updated the damage figures (which, it turns out, were wrong for both Excalibur and the lance). I also slightly edited the big paragraph, which I find very hard to read, but it would take major effort to overhaul it so instead I just applied some band-aid fixes. Djao 01:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I just read the article and was certainly confused. Might I suggest a table of some sort? 82.128.188.18 18:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Jumping
When I jump in 3.4.3, it only lets me jump as the chess piece would: one orthogonal and then one diagonal. Otherwise it claims "Illegal move!" Is this notable enough to add to the article? 71.166.51.77 23:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it's in there under Abilities. --Andronikus 02:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Speed
The speed section of the article mentions:

 "...At 7th level you will become fast, but becoming very fast (eg by getting boots of speed) will 
 make your jousting much more effective..."

Hm... this doesn't really makes sense... you can only joust a monster when you're riding, right? But the article suggests that you get speed boots so that you can move faster. But even if you have speed boots on, you move at your steed's speed! But if you're not riding, what good is a lance?
--Gneek 14:34, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

HP lost if unsuccessful mount
I believe the number of HP lost for an unsuccessful mount is 10 to 15, rather than 20.  steed.c line 327 calls losehp with the argument rn1(5,10).  Note that is rn1 with the number one, not rnl with the letter l.  hack.h line 291 defines rn1 as (rn2(x)+(y)). 
Further research reveals the HP lost for falling or being thrown while riding IS 10 to 20; rn1(10,10) from steed.c line 486.  This means if your HPs fall below 20 while riding and you subsequently fall, you will die! 
Skidragon 21:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Quest monster
What exactly is a quest monster? When clicked on, you just go to the Quest page, but i don't see anything about it there... Aeronflux 20:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

fixed -Tjr 00:41, April 6, 2010 (UTC)
Ki-Rins and conflict
I mentioned that Ki-Rins resist conflict and don't buck, but it was changed to say that they only have "a high chance" to. Are you sure? Someone showed me the source code regarding conflict and MR and calculated that Ki-Rins have a high enough MR that it will ALWAYS resist conflict (see link here). Further enforcing this is my own experience: I do not recall, in all my time playing NetHack, EVER having a Ki-Rin buck me while conflict was up. And I've often played through half the game with conflict up due to the Sceptre of Might. Lord Seth 06:22, March 28, 2010 (UTC)

You're right. Thanks, Lord Seth. Details can be found at riding.
Ridden monsters and spells
On the Knight page it mentions that ki-rins can heal themselves.  Will they do this while riding, or do you have to dismount for them to cast spells?  It seems like it'd be worth mentioning if you did have to dismount. -Ion frigate 01:43, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

I've only riden a Ki-rin a few times, but yes, they will cast spells while you are riding them. -- Qazmlpok 01:51, June 25, 2010 (UTC)
Apple feeding
"One good strategy is to feed your horse 9 of your starting apples as soon as you enter the dungeon."
It may be even better to wait till pony will drop item, to increase also apport. Bulwersator (talk) 07:59, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

No "may be" about it. Of course this is a better strategy. Wooble (talk) 15:33, 17 December 2012 (UTC)