# Teleportation
Teleportation provides a quick escape to a different (often random) location. Some escape items can teleport you away from monsters. Some monsters can also teleport themselves to flee from you.
Teleportation comes from:

ring of teleportation
scroll of teleportation
spellbook of teleport away
wand of teleportation
teleportitis
teleport trap
quantum mechanic&nbsp;attack
cursed spellbook, especially low-level ones
There are three teleport-related properties: teleportitis, which teleports you horizontally at random; teleport control, which lets you choose where teleports land; and teleport at will, which lets you trigger teleportitis to happen whenever you want at a power cost.
Horizontal teleportation almost always moves you away from your current position, but there is a very small chance of landing on the exact same square.[1]

Contents

1 Valid destinations
2 Messages
3 See also
4 References

Valid destinations
You cannot teleport to a square that is already occupied by a monster[2], or to one that is considered unsafe for you to occupy.[3] If you try to do so deliberately with teleport control, you will receive the message "Sorry..." and be teleported randomly instead.[4]
In particular:

You cannot teleport into water unless you are levitating, flying, water walking, magical breathing, or polymorphed into a swimming or amphibious monster.[5]
You also cannot teleport onto lava, unless you are levitating, flying, are fire resistant and wearing fireproof water walking boots, or are polymorphed into a monster such as a salamander or fire elemental that likes lava. [6]
If you're polymorphed into a sea monster, you only have a 1 in 13 chance of successfully teleporting onto dry land.[7]
You cannot teleport onto a trap, unless there are no other valid locations to teleport to. (The game will try 200 times to pick a safe location for you before considering trapped locations.[8]) In particular, magic portals are considered traps, so you cannot teleport directly onto your quest portal.
Only phasing monsters can teleport into solid rock, into walls, trees, iron bars or a raised drawbridge, or into a secret door or a secret corridor. [9] Teleporting onto a closed door is only possible for phasing or amorphous monsters,[10] and only giants and phasing monsters can teleport onto boulders.[11]
You cannot teleport into the Wizard's Tower from outside it, nor outside it from the inside.[12]
There is also some code that could prevent the player from teleporting in and out of force fields[13], but those do not exist in vanilla NetHack.

Messages
A mysterious force prevents you from teleporting!
You are on a non-teleport level.
You feel disoriented for a moment.
You would have teleported, but it failed because you are carrying the Amulet of Yendor.
Sorry...
You chose an unteleportable destination with teleport control.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

The following two messages are added.
You materialize in a different location!
You teleported to a different space on your level.
You materialize in the same location!
You teleported to your current space.
See also
Level teleport
Teleport control
Non-teleport level
References

↑ http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/msg/fd6ff9fff482a512

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 48-L61

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 262

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 533

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 67: Note: the Amphibious macro covers magical breathing.

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 85

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 77

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 424

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 93

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 95

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 227

↑ src/teleport.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 277

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.