# Talk:Pudding farming
Contents

1 PuddingBot
2 In SLASH'EM
3 Screenshot
4 Needs expert attention

PuddingBot
Has anyone ever heard of something called PuddingBot?  I have heard mention of it a few times, but cannot find any hint of it online.  KiTA 02:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Also heard of it a couple times, but don't have time to look into it more deeply. I also heard it was written separately from TAEB. 98.227.74.29 05:06, December 17, 2009 (UTC)Shadowpho98.227.74.29 05:06, December 17, 2009 (UTC)
It was called farmbot.
Info: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/2006-08/msg02522.html
And original post: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/65948-13-putting-pudding-farmers-business
Github: https://github.com/blind-coder/nethack-farmbot

In SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, can't you get death drops out of the puddings using a polytrap? (Or the polymorph spell, for that matter.) --220.255.2.117 11:11, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

No, because the new monster would revert to a black pudding instead of dying. -- Qazmlpok 11:40, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
In that case, how about polymorphing the pudding corpses?
Can you get other corpses that you can use undead turning on, and get death drops from the resulting monsters? Or can you get eggs that will hatch? Other useful things may be produced too.
What about stoning the puddings and polymorphing the statues, then casting stone to flesh on them? Can you get death drops that way?
What about polymorphing the puddings and giving an appropriate resulting monster an amulet of unchanging, then killing it and taking back the amulet?

Poly'ing corpses won't produce more corpses - corpses aren't randomly generated, so it'll just produce more permafood.  Among those might be hatchable eggs, but I imagine that the ratio of eggs produced to puddings required would be so small, it would not be worth it.  As for the amulet, monsters won't wear it - they only wear reflection and life saving.  Stoning and unstoning the poly'd monsters would work, but it requires a constant source of stoning - not easy when you consider that each cockatrice, on average, would give you much less than 1 wish.  You could poly into a female stoning monster and lay eggs, but that consumes nutrition and lowers your luck.
Basically, pudding farming doesn't work in SLASH'EM.  Gremlin farming will net you death drops, but the problem is that it's somewhat finite: whereas split puddings retain their original max hp, meaning they will eventually recover back to full hp and let you make more puddings, split gremlins halve their max hp along with their current hp.  A wand of healing or extra healing (not the spells) will raise their hp by one for each zap, but again, this is a finite resource.
Essentially, these nice sources of infinite items are broken in SLASH'EM.  On the other hand, gypsies are basically a source of 120 more or less free wishes; even those not wanting to scum can get a few off of them.  And SLASH'EM is broken in lots of other ways... -Ion frigate 04:33, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
You can use conflict with gremlin farming once they're at 1 max hp. They will kill each other and gain at least 1 hp, so the net result is more gremlins. There's also throne farming, which creates an endless number of monsters, particularly those that begin with offensive/defensive/miscellaneous items.
Also, you could polymorph a black pudding, stone it, unstone it, and kill the resulting monster - this should make the polymorph permanent. But honestly, if you're going through that much work just for a single pudding, is it really worth doing it at that point? Plus you'll be fighting random polymorphable monsters - this includes shoggoths and Catoblepas. -- Qazmlpok 11:51, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
If you want to avoid the tough monsters, you can instead kill the puddings, let the corpses get grown onto by molds, stone the molds and polymorph the statues (NOT live monsters): that way, you can choose which monsters to unstone and which not to.
Poly'ing the statues will cause them to shudder 1/8 of the time, and the corpses aren't even certain to generate molds.  Also, you can't stone green molds, which are reasonably commonly generated on corpses.  It's a lot of work for an incredibly diminished return, especially when throne farming on a scroll of scare monster is a much better option. -Ion frigate 14:13, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
Screenshot
I agree with the removal of the second screenshot - it wasn't that necessary, and looked very cluttered.  I'm not vastly fond of the first one either, though: it shows a brown pudding farm (not what one usually is thinking of when referring to pudding farming), and unless I'm mistaken it shows a lot fewer puddings than the average farm.  Could anyone make a screenshot of similar size that shows a more typical example? -Ion frigate 06:16, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Needs expert attention
The article needs expert attention. Some quotes from Berry:

Farming on the upstairs also gives you a place to test wands. And heal up (manually).
Layout that protects against monsters with wands of striking (don't be invisible or diplacing!):
000.
0@P0
0000

Also, protection from pyrolisks.

Some pros use bots, some use 1000-turn pastes. Operator error shows up as really stupid deaths.
Or hold down a key that sends no more than "\eFl", where \e is the byte 0x1b (escape), and let go if something important happens.
If pasting Fl without the escape, try MSGTYPE to kill all expected output, and Msgtype=STOP "*" to make your paste halt on anything unexpected.
Msgtype example, put this in your options file:
#msgtype for pudding farming
MSGTYPE=hide "The black pudding divides as you hit it!"
MSGTYPE=hide "Your * looks completely corroded."
MSGTYPE=hide "You kill the *!"
MSGTYPE=hide "The * turns to flee!"
MSGTYPE=hide "You attack thin air."
MSGTYPE=hide "You hear a slow drip."
MSGTYPE=hide "You miss the *"
MSGTYPE=stop "*hungry*"

If you paste, then don't be fast/very fast. speed introduces too much randomness.
Don't deplete enough of the pudding population to let the random-gen monsters in.
Autopickup exceptions to sort the loot. Clear it up regularily to avoid scrolls of scare monster, or items that could kill you.
Watch out for mobile monsters with passive attacks in the early stages of farming. Also, non-E-respecting ones. That's why you generally wield a killer weapon in your off hand.
Writers, please help yourself and make an article. --Tjr (talk) 22:02, 3 August 2012 (UTC