# Talk:Vampire (starting race in SLASH'EM)
Contents

1 Hungry Regeneration?
2 (Starting) Luck?
3 Cannibalism
4 Cockatrice actually stoned me . . .&nbsp;?

4.1 Is this a bug?

Hungry Regeneration?
Perhaps somebody else should test this, but experience strongly suggests that the vampire's regeneration *is* hungerless; playing as a vampire, I got hungry at turn 755, having "fed on the lifeblood" of a rabbit once.  This would be about right for starting at 900 nutrition, and getting down to 150, which is hungry.  Also, a ring of slow digestion would be much, much less useful for vampires than the article suggests if vampiric regeneration caused hunger, as vampires would then still hunger at half the normal rate. -Ion frigate 10:42, February 14, 2010 (UTC)

According to http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~eva/slashem/races.html it is hungered regeneration. Plus I'm satiated much more rarely and for shorter duration as a vamp than, for example, a human.
-AileTheAlien 05:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know what the spoiler says, but it's almost certainly wrong (or possibly referring to an earlier version of the game).  I just tried it in wizard mode with a vampire wizard: started to hunger at turn 750, and after drinking a potion of vampire blood and wishing for a ring of slow digestion, still no hunger after 10000 turns.  Vampires are difficult food-wise because they can eat very little; their regeneration does not add to this.  Lycanthropes do have hungered regeneration, but they of course can eat anything a normal human can. -Ion frigate 10:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
attrib.c is showing that lycanthropes get intrinsic regeneration at level 1, while nothing of the sort is set for vampires. The code for hunger in eat.c explicitly checks HRegeneration and ERegeneration (line 2644), while the code in allmain.c checks Regeneration (line ~206). Regeneration is HRegeration or ERegeneration or your monster form provides regeration. I don't know for certain that the player vampire monster form provides regeneration, but I'm not seeing any other source. If so, then any polymorph to a regenerating form would also be hungerless, and I'm not positive that's true either. -- Qazmlpok 13:17, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
(Starting) Luck?
Seems like when I (rarely) get an early wish as a vampiric wizard, I always fail to get my fooproofedness and blessedness. Tried a few times making a new vampy and quitting on turn one -- always "unlucky" on my attributes. Confirmed no moon phases or Friday the 13th. Anyone know what's up? Also my alignment record on the tests (quit on turn 1) show "you have sinned" for the -8 to -4 range. -AileTheAlien 05:42, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Turns out they do.  From SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2/u_init.c#line1390, "vampires start off with gods not as pleased, luck penalty" - 5 less alignment than usual, and -1 to luck.  So vampiric barbarians and rogues will start out with 5 alignment instead of 10, and wizards and other roles with -5 instead of 0, and both will initially have -1 luck (unless this is counterbalanced by the full moon).  The luck penalty means you shouldn't wish or pray within the first 600 turns; the alignment penalty means you just need to kill a few monsters. -Ion frigate 20:13, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
Cannibalism
Does drinking human blood count as cannibalism, or are vampire players exempt from this, like how they are exempt from the penalties of drinking dog/cat meat? -AileTheAlien 14:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

It would count as cannibalism, but vampires are entirely exempt from cannibalism, much like Cavemen. If you polymorph into another form you can still eat cat/human meat without penalty. On that note, non-vampires polymorphed into a vampire should not drink cat/dog/human blood, because that's still cannibalism. -- Qazmlpok 15:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Actually, for a born vampire draining a human wouldn't be cannibalism either way because vampire is a separate race (MH_VAMPIRE vs MH_HUMAN).  It may seem like nitpicking, but the actual importance of the fact is that sacrificing a human won't automatically convert an altar to chaotic if you're a vampire.  You'll need a vampire bat corpse for that (all other vampires are corpseless), or a potion of blood. Tomsod (talk) 18:28, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Cockatrice actually stoned me . . .&nbsp;?
--User 21:45, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
While Satiated in Sokoban, and wearing gloves, a cockatrice stoned me.  My (very promising) character attacked with his hands and then tried to attempt a (successful(?)) bite attack! I was not wielding a weapon.
The death message indicates "...while helpless," but I was not helpless in any fashion.  Does "You're having a hard time getting all of it down." have anything to do with that?
Is this a bug?  Or, are there special circumstances where a vampire can get stoned via a bite?  Maybe Sokoban (which is filled with a lot of food) hungers one so much that a vampire finds it irresistible to bite anything and everything?

This is a combination of two things. First, drinking blood while too satiated will cause the message "You're having a hard time getting all of it down." and eventually lead to choking. Vampires have magical breathing so they never choke to death, but they do lose nutrition. I believe that just seeing the "hard time" message means you are made helpless for a few turns, but I'm not positive on that. Second, vampires will not bite a cockatrice unless they are not wielding a weapon. So what happened was you attacked the cockatrice without wielding a weapon, bit it, and choked on the blood causing helplessness as you turned to stone. The helplessness didn't actually affect anything though; biting a cockatrice is instadeath, not delayed instadeath.
Also, Sokoban had nothing to do with it. This situation would have happened anywhere. -- Qazmlpok 22:52, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Can't speak for SLASHEM, but in vanilla the "hard time getting it down" does not cause paralysis of any kind. Just the vomiting, which comes much later and gives another message. --Tjr 09:12, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Is this a bug?
Vampires biting unsafe monsters if not wielding a weapon seems to be intention. I have no idea why, but it does. There's an explicit check in the source code for disabling the bite attack; only disable it if wielding a weapon (uhitm.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 2822). There's also this item in the bug tracker involving biting a cockatrice where j_ali explicitly mentions that you will bite a cockatrice if you are not wielding a weapon (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&amp;aid=1210420&amp;group_id=9746&amp;atid=109746). -- Qazmlpok 13:56, 10 September 2011 (UTC)