# Talk:Prayer
Contents

1 lost protection
2 Benefits of Prayer
3 The Killer Bee Shrinks Back!
4 Water Prayer
5 SLASH'EM
6 Prayer protection racket
7 Hexer cheating
8 Unsuccessful Prayers

lost protection
I think that I lost my priest-purchased protection plan(tm) because I prayed too soon, but I can't find any mention of protection loss on the priest page or this page. Can we add it, or did I lose my Protection for some other reason?
— Qwip 17:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Praying when you can't is probably the most common way to lose protection. Spazm 23:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Benefits of Prayer
I prayed while at an alter to create 1 potion of holy water, and I got the message "Your 2 elven daggers softly glow with a light blue aura.  Unfortunately, I had not dropped them to test B/U/C before praying, so I don't know if praying simply identified them as blessed, or if they became blessed.
I didn't see either outcome described here or at the "altar" page, so I thought I'd see if anyone can clarify what went on.
Yidda 19:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at entry #2 under Favors and gifts. One of the possible prayer gifts is that your god will bless or uncurse your current weapon as though dipped in holy water. -- Killian 15:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
The Killer Bee Shrinks Back!
I was near a couple of bees, and Weak with hunger. When I prayed, the bees kept trying to attack me, but instead "shrunk back" every time. However, I was standing on a statue of a gas spore at the time. I was using a level 6 human priestess with intrinsic telepathy at the time. Was the prayer what protected me, or something else? --MrGuy 19:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Your prayer protected you.  When you pray and are permitted to do so, you are "surrounded by a shimmering light", which protects you from all monster attacks (and everything else which is dangerous) during the time you spend praying.  If you pray unsuccessfully, you won't be surrounded by the light, and will be helpless for the turns of your prayer.  The article should be edited to reflect this.  -- Marcmagus 19:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
Water Prayer
What does this mean:  "When no water is present, praying at a co-aligned altar has no special effects compared to prayer anywhere else."  I thought praying at a co-aligned altar was the only way to get a favor.  Should this statement be changed to "After blessing the water, prayer at a co-aligned altar will have the normal effects."?  I'm new to nethack, but it seems like that's what the code is doing.  Derekt75 18:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. Thank you for pointing this out. -Tjr 19:25, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
SLASH'EM
Sometimes I get an angelic being or a unicorn when I pray. I don't have the ability to source dive, but I thought people should at least know that much. Not sure where to put it. --4.30.147.166 18:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

It belongs in a separate section named SLASH'EM. See Pet#Variants, Minion#SLASH.27EM for the info. --Tjr (talk) 05:28, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
Prayer protection racket
The advice to break mirrors to avoid crowning applies only to those who choose not to restore backup save files and who already have high luck and alignment record. 
For those who do restore backups and are low level players in Minetown with an identified and blessed magic lamp and perhaps an aligned temple and an icebox, the advice might be different.
Before wishing or sacrificing for wishless artefacts like Frost Brand (or much else in the game) becomes almost reasonable, both Luck and the alignment record need to be high. The luckstone is needed. Credit cloning is highly desirable for buying Priest protection and perhaps for buying improved Luck or alignment records.
Sacrificing and accepting a lesser gift in the early stages, rather than restoring a backup, helps to raise your alignment record and progressively improve your chances of getting a 1 in 8 shot at sacrifice protection or neutral artefacts (spellbooks seem to be favored over these initially).
Making one further sacrifice after getting the conciliation message will sometimes get you a luck increase (four leaf clover) or more rarely a wishless neutral artefact like Frost Brand.
Both killing and sacrificing raises the alignment record provided negative behaviours are avoided.
A low level Barbarian needs the amulet of reflection and a bag of holding but Sokoban provides only one of those. For carrying capacity Barb needs GDSM for less weight and gauntlets of power and that bag again but a magic lamp gives only one wish so we have a problem in the launch sequence Houston.
Confused enchantment scrolls may help raise a beginners strength and or dexterity, both help carrying capacity.
A non spellcaster's lightest helm may be a dented pot, heh.
--Barb.Neu (talk) 12:07, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

please do note this is very scummy cheating, bad advice, and useless on NAO. additionally, several pieces of misinformation here could be considered no better than opinion, e.g. that bar-bars "need" a boh. others, e.g. "lightest helm may be a dented pot" are incomplete or just wrong. an elven leather helm is lighter and has the same AC, not to mention can be enchanted to +5. what's the protocol for deleting something from a talk page? i know it's rare. D4 wryyyy (talk) 05:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
Don't worry about it, it's just an old comment on a talk page.  Talk pages don't present the appearance of being the official voice of the Wiki like the corresponding articles are, since they clearly consist of comments written by random people.  It's not expected that talk pages will contain good information.  Cathartes (talk) 06:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
Hexer cheating
A hexer has the options of hexing cash, cloning magic lamps etc by hexing the stack quantity, raising wand enchantments to 7F (higher values are negative) and hexing weapon and armor enchanments but checksum encryption deters only morphing one item into another item. The game designers may have their own reasons for using selective deterence invoving the wand of wishing.
Summoning enemies with a hexed up wand makes consequences that may not all be wanted.
Hexing the stack size of corpses in an icebox for factory scale sacrifice can reduce those consequences.
--Barb.Neu (talk) 03:37, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
Hexers seem reluctant to publish their methods perhaps for fear that game designers will futher encrypt data in subsequent versions of the game.
--Barb.Neu (talk) 17:42, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Unsuccessful Prayers
The table cell on "Standing on a different god's altar and praying as normal" was dangerously wrong. I fixed it to the best of my knowledge, but it needs to be completed. The entry previously read "You receive an alignment clue (see above), then lose one alignment point.  No other effects.  Your prayer timeout is not incremented."
"No other effects" is DEFINITELY wrong, since I lost my protection immediately when I tried it.
The "alignment clue" you receive is not the same as when e.g. you apply a stethoscope to yourself; when I prayed at a cross-aligned altar (with no water, while safe to pray), I got a message that Huan Ti was displeased with me, but afterwards my stethoscope still revealed that I was piously aligned. I believe this suggests that alignment is indeed decreased by one, but the message relates to your god's anger, NOT your alignment record. I continued praying repeatedly and got punished and eventually killed, which seems to corroborate this idea.
I've been source-diving on this but I'm in the middle of comparing 3.4.3 and 3.6.2 (my current version), I haven't had C since highschool, and I have to be at work in a few hours... good luck! D4 wryyyy (talk) 06:22, 15 December 2021 (UTC)