# Talk:Spellbook of drain life
Contents

1 Monster experience?
2 Draining does reduce HP to zero
3 Clarification of life/level draining.
4 Disenchanting items

Monster experience?
If you cast drain life on a monster, are they worth less experience when finally killed? -- Kalon 22:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
-- Yes, unless you kill it in one single casting. Gaining exprerience is based on the monster's current experience (before the spell) Source:Exper.c#experience, and drain life updates a monsters level only after it has determined the monster will survive Zap.c#line330.
Tjr 22:06, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Draining does reduce HP to zero
Usethe4ce removed the other fatal side of level drain, I propose to re-add them.
Steps to reproduce (not wiztested): wound yourself so that you have 17hp left, then cast drain lift on yourself. Drain life does at most 16 points of damage, so the damage won't kill you. However, losing or gaining a level seems to preserve (maxHP-HP), and since it reduces maxHP, it also reduces your current hit points further.
Example of succubus level drain killing an XP3 character: http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/t/tjr2/dumplog/1275338192.nh343.txt
--Tjr 09:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Experience_level also needs to be corrected. --Tjr 11:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I looked at it quite a while to be sure before changing anything, specifically Exper.c, line 146, where the new HP is deliberately kept to a minimum of 1.  Your example with the succubus seems to be from HP loss ("You feel exhausted") rather than level drain ("You feel out of shape"). --Usethe4ce 14:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
You're right, I'm sorry. Source:Mhitu.c#line2313 means a different foocubus effect is the culprit. --Tjr 15:03, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Clarification of life/level draining.
There are _3_ separate types of drain life/level attacks in the game, those of monsters, those of stormy and the staff, and the spell. All do different amounts of damage and are used in different ways, but are very similar. The life/level drain of stormy and the staff doesn't even have a page. I think we should have one page for all 3, so they could be properly compared. We would want to leave this page, because every other spellbook gets its own page, but the specific information about the spell could be duplicated or wholey moved to this new page. Drain resistance would also still need its own page.
Also, what are we calling it, drain life or drain level?
See the "Staff" section on The artifact weapon talk page for a long discussion + citations and damage figures.
Pages related to draining and drain resistance:
http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Drain_life_%28monster_attack%29
http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Spellbook_of_drain_life
http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Drain_resistance
http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Drain_life
and maybe: http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Wand_of_draining
Foocubi and prayer related draining is pretty different, since its not an attack at all. That should stay separate I think.
Thoughts?
Blackcustard 19:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Good plan. I propose level drain. You might want to add a SLASHEM section with Thiefbane and wand of draining, too. --Tjr 17:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
Disenchanting items
The article mentions draining positively-enchanted items for a chance to enchant them further, but it doesn't cover draining items that you wish were very negative.  What are the limits of that?  Do the items explode if you push their enchantment too negative?  This could be of particular interest to pacifists who can significantly benefit from negatively enchanted weapons.  It also might be worth mentioning that you can't disenchant rings with the spell (unless you can, in which case I need to start doing that...) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.229.231.52 (talk • contribs) 

I think the limit is 0: you can't make items' enchantment (more) negative. --Tjr 21:05, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Correct. Drain life will only remove positive enchantment. It has no effect if it is at or below zero. Ref zap.c, line 920. -- Qazmlpok 00:42, 29 April 2012 (UTC)