# Talk:Purple worm
I was playing around with being a purple worm, and as I killed a creature, I picked up the items it dropped. As a long worm though, i could not pick up anything. WTF? Can someone explain this and post it on here so more people don't freak out? Elven2006 21:40, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

Some monsters, mostly snakelike ones such as snakes and nagas, have the M1_NOTAKE flag which means that they cannot pick up items, and thus, you cannot pick up items if you are polymorphed into one.  Somewhat counter-intuitively, long worms have that flag but purple worms don't; sometimes, the devs work in mysterious ways.  But, the behavior is consistent with the source code.  As soon as you revert to your normal form, or change into something else that doesn't have that flag, you will be able to pick up items again. -Ion frigate 22:42, March 9, 2010 (UTC)
Engulfing wraiths
After some wizard mode testing, it seems that if you polyself to a purple worm, engulfing a wraith raises your level if and only if you've previously been at a higher level.  Is that right? Derekt75 19:39, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

No, engulfing wraiths does not give experience levels, regardless of what level you've been at before. I think you were confused by the fact that you gain experience points from killing a wraith, same as any other monster. If you drain one level, your experience is set to one point below the level you lost. This means that if you immediately kill a monster (for example, by engulfing a wraith), you'll gain that level back. To illustrate, drain two levels and then engulf two wraiths. You'll end up one level below where you started, same as if you kill two zombies, or any other monster. --Aaxelb 19:59, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, that makes sense, thanks.  The first time I tried it, I didn't have any Elbereth or MC, so the wraiths quickly drained me to level 5, where killing a single wraith was levelling me up, I guess.  It was an awkward test, since the wraiths were draning me as quickly as I was killing them.  I tried again with an Elbereth, but levelled back up to lvl 12 before trying.  At that lvl, you need to kill a bunch of wraiths to level up.  Thanks.  Derekt75 21:52, 27 January 2012 (UTC)