# Talk:Crowning
Contents

1 Unrestricted Skill
2 Multiple crowning
3 Retaining title even if different alignment
4 Avoiding Crowning

Unrestricted Skill
What exactly does it mean when a weapon skill is made unrestricted?  Does this mean you can raise that skill to Expert if you couldn't otherwise?  Thanks.  --Andronikus 15:57, April 5, 2010 (UTC)

Not all classes can use all skills. For example a caveman cannot advance to even basic in long sword. However if you get an artifact long sword, either from crowning or sacrifice gift, you become unrestricted and thus can advance to Basic skill. You cannot advance beyond basic, however. -- Qazmlpok 16:13, April 5, 2010 (UTC)
Cool, thanks.--Andronikus 16:48, April 5, 2010 (UTC)
Multiple crowning
Can you be crowned more than once?  E.g. I get crowned as a neutral charecter and then convert to chaos cold I hold both titles? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ndwolfwood (talk • contribs) 

No, crowning is only once. But you can hold the title of a different religion (the one you were crowned under) if you fiddle with the helm of opposite alignment or conversion. --Tjr 13:06, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Retaining title even if different alignment
From looking at ascension records from Junethack, I noticed that one keeps the same title even if one's alignment changes via a helm of opposite alignment. Is this true if conversion happens via an altar? (And I find it rather odd that one retains the intrinsics even after changing alignment...) -Actual-nh (talk) 16:59, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Avoiding Crowning
IMO Avoiding Crowning needs to be its own section and greatly expanded. I went ahead and split off the section.
That "there are three ways to avoid being crowned" is a heckuvan oversimplification, and the given suggestions require scrutiny of at least 3 articles-- luck, alignment record, stethoscope-- and in practice at least prayer, offer, and monk too. Alarmingly, the article on alignment record does not include other negative effects of the actions in the table. I would like to combine the best methods for controlling luck and alignment specifically with regards to crowning.
I am waiting to put them in the article until someone else has a chance to opine, in case anyone thinks there is a better place for that list to be laid out. Please note that there is a partial list under prayer#favors and Gifts.
I started this edit with the intention of writing up a method for using a non-co-aligned altar to both monitor and manage your alignment record (basically get align below 19 by repeatedly praying on it while checking the alignment message), but in fact-checking for writing it, I found that the information in Prayer#Unsuccessful Prayers claiming the ONLY effect of "standing on a different god's altar and praying as normal" is a message on alignment record, and a -1 to alignment, is WRONG. Your god WILL become angry IMMEDIATELY. So I'm off to fix that inaccuracy instead.
Please do not pray on cross-aligned altars, even with no water, if you enjoy your protection and are not fond of being chained to iron balls.D4 wryyyy (talk) 05:27, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, it doesn't really make sense for the prayer article to have more information about avoiding crowning than the crowning article itself.  Go ahead and expand the section.
Also, when information that has been in an article for a long time is wrong, like what you found about cross-aligned altar prayer (in place since 2007!), it probably means that it was true in an old version, but nobody bothered to update the page for the current version.  The prayer article needs somebody to review it and update its source code references to 3.6.6, but since it's a decently long article and prayer is one of the more complex parts of the game, that would take a while.  If I find time to do so, I guess I could do it since that's the sort of thing I do sometimes, and it seems unlikely that somebody else will in the near future. Cathartes (talk) 06:00, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
If the avoidance of crowning is expanded, it shouldn't be framed as the best or correct way to play. Players do die in Gehennom from the lack of fire or cold resistance, which would be particularly embarrassing if they've been diligently avoiding becoming crowned due to wiki advice. And for Chaotics, the existence of stormbringer makes crowning extremely worthwhile. The real life time cost of tediously acquiring all your intrinsics from corpses is also a factor in favor of crowning. Pulling up nethackscoreboard, I am seeing that Tariru and Luxidream were crowned in about 1/3 of their games, including streak games, so encouraging players to avoid it may be a bit of a noob trap, like the protection racket. Testbutt (talk) 06:21, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
Right, "how to avoid crowning" is still valid advice as long as it's not written as "you *should* avoid crowning".  Crowning is really not a big deal in mid-to-late game since the need for an emergency prayer is rare when you have resistances and most of an ascension kit.  The most plausible reason I can think of to avoid crowning is to do altar prayer farming (for spellbooks, probably) a little bit faster. Cathartes (talk) 06:39, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
I'm thinking firstly of monks b/c of their intrinsics, but also of anyone who has intrinsics from scarfing corpses, and who really loves to pray. On a scale of nub to 10 I'm only about a 3, but oh my Huan Ti I am addicted to prayer, dude. D4 wryyyy (talk) 06:52, 15 December 2021 (UTC)