# Talk:Potion of holy water
Contents

1 Polypiling
2 Water prayer
3 Best Items?
4 Scumming
5 Finding and shops

Polypiling
There's no way to reasonably polypile for holy water without also breaking either atheist or illiterate, because to distinguish blessed potions from uncursed ones, you need to use an altar or an identify spell/scroll. Sure, you could just polypile loads of potions of unknown BU status, but that would be a big waste of polymorph charges (and if you're usibng the spell of polymorph, you'd have to break illiterate, of course). So the polypile section in "conduct considerations" seems to be wrong, but I'm not changing it outright because maybe I'm missing something. Xoxb (talk) 19:52, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Water is stacking, so you may identify entire stack by dipping at cost of no more than single potion (with known cursed/uncursed/blessed objects - at cost of 1/2 potion per stack) Bulwersator (talk) 21:05, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
I was talking about BUC-identifying the polyfodder potions, not water. You need to identify blessed polyfodder to reasonably polypile for HW.  Xoxb (talk) 06:08, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Strategy advice for the sake of argument. This is how it's possible without breaking atheist nor illiterate nor wishing nor pacifist. It is based upon a potions-driven all-conducts attempt.
1) Firstly, it's a bad idea to polypile irreplacable potions. So you're essentially down to monster starting inventory. Learn to kill monsters quickly!
2) Next is BUC identification. This is mostly about resource conservation, since holy water is trivial to tell apart (see below). Once you're reasonably near the point where you can polypile, you'll have three stacks of each type of potion. Pets will rule out the cursed stack. Uncursed is six times more likely than blessed. So when you have a two stacks, one of 3 extra healing and another 18 extra healing, it's not hard to guess which is blessed. If you do insist on BUC testing, you could turn the larger stack into "diluted potions named extra healing" at a pool/moat and try to stack it with alchemy products. (Alchemy never makes blessed potions.) You're going to make (blessed) full healing, anyway, so this doesn't cost you much. Or just drink one from the larger stack.
3) Optionally rule out potions of polymorph by dipping a wand of polymorph into each type.
4) Actual polypiling is done with a wand. Of course, you wait until you have enough other items to polypile along. Of course you max out your Luck. Of course, you collect lots of individually named rocks and put them at the bottom (top?), so that you get a clay golem instead of a golem made of potions. Of course you name your potions individually.
5) Water is trivial to BUC-identify. Pet-test to rule out unholy water. Or curse another freshly watered potion at a fountain, and then try to stack it to rule out unholy water. Next, you dip a known-blessed, non-erodable item into the blessed-or-uncursed water. I suggest your wizard's starting quarterstaff. You will not use up a potion, and only uncursed water will "wet" it. Or just dip the larger stack of water into the smaller one, in case you have the luxury.
Back to wiki editing. Most games will break several conducts, and thus have several options. It's good to know which you have, in case you need to be creative. This is a facts section. We should not patronize players by suppressing facts based on our own, different play-style. Especially in an exhaustive list. --Tjr (talk) 08:01, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Okay, the stack counting method is a good one and I didn't think of it. So I did miss something. Added it the article in case I'm not the only one. Xoxb (talk) 12:36, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
You're welcome.&nbsp;:-) I'm glad you clarified things. --Tjr (talk) 19:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Water prayer
Water prayers are not affected by the BUC status of the potions that are on the altar. You can put any number of potions of unholy water on a coaligned altar and pray to convert them to holy water. So I don't see why the article suggests avoiding cursed potions of water in water prayers. Comments? Djao 05:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

It is possible that the person that wrote that got it confused with praying for holy water on an unaligned alter and thus making unholy water. *shrug*  --MadDawg2552 05:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
It might be that unholy water is difficult to create, and does have a few nifty uses, so using it in a water prayer would be rather wasteful. -- Killian 07:17, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
The thing is, early in the game, holy water is way more useful than unholy water, and later in the game, when you might actually want unholy water, a single blessed scroll of remove curse if properly exploited (i.e. read while confused) can create unholy water at any time. In my opinion a blanket prohibition on "wasting" unholy water is bad advice. At best the article might want to advise that in certain situations it is better to save unholy water than convert it to holy water. Djao 07:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Best Items?
What are generally the best items to bless?  I'm thinking the following:

Bag of Holding
Magic Lamp
Tinning Kit (if you really have a lot of holy water)
Wand of Genocide/Scroll of Genocide
Scroll of Charging
Gain Ability
Am I missing any (I didn't look at artifacts)?  Are any of these false? --Havvy 06:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
I usually set my priorities this way:

bag of holding (one only)
cursed magic whistle, leash, stethoscope
unicorn horn
spare water: carry to make more or to cure lycantropy, drop on stash in case you wield cursed two-hander etc.
scroll of scare monster
alchemized large stacks of gain ability and full healing
cursed magic lamp (wishless)
touchstone (unicorns and luck)
luckstone
Note this is geared toward heavy conduct play. In normal games, a blessed scroll of remove curse and extra blessed genocide (after making dragon scales) are quite useful. You don't normally need to bless a scroll of charging, just blank blessed scrolls and write your first one. --Tjr 14:41, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Scumming
I get the idea that a wizard and a priest's starting potions are similar (same way to get it, just different probabilities), but I think the separate mention should be left - it isn't "scumming" to start as a priest, and I think it's notable as the only way to get holy water without any extraordinary or conduct-breaking actions.  -Ion frigate 02:54, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it's the term "scumming" that should be changed? In any case, all I care about is avoiding clutter. --Tjr 02:56, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Well perhaps it could be called "starting inventory" - the problem is that repeatedly starting the first level hoping to find it on the floor doesn't fall under that.  My thought is actually to have the whole category called "None", with the ways given as: "Starting inventory (certain for priests, chance for wizards), find randomly generated potions" - maybe the scumming bit can be left to the imagination. -Ion frigate 12:15, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
The chance of finding holy water on dungeon level one is 2.4%. Mainly due to shops, the maximum chance is on level two  - 3.2%, decreasing to 2.5% on level 20. The big room is 2.8% if it exists, Medusa's 1.4%, the mines fillers 0.6%, mine town 3.9%, mine's end 1.4%. Total chance on levels 1-9 and the mines down to town: 26.0%. For comparison, wizard starting inventory: 3.6%
From these numbers you can tell you're going to waste a lot of time with doomed games if you count on finding it on the floor. Rational people will (re)start wizards or perhaps priests if they cannot make holy water for conduct reasons. --Tjr 15:08, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Finding and shops
Should the probability of finding it on the floor be merged with the shops section? On the one hand, shops are the most prominent and easy-to-understand example. OTOH, Shops (14.4%) and containers (11%) are responsible only for a very small share of all game (54%) that have randomly generated holy water. --Tjr 02:49, 31 August 2011 (UTC)