# Drain life
Drain life or level drain refers to one of the following:

Attacks
the spellbook of drain life and the spell it confers
the drain life attack of the artifacts Stormbringer and the Staff of Aesculapius and in SLASH'EM the additional artifact Thiefbane
the drain life monster attack
one possible effect of the seduction attack of an incubus or succubus
a possible negative effect of prayer
the SLASH'EM item, a wand of draining
Resistance
drain resistance, which protects against drain life attacks.
Losing a level
the player losing levels

Life draining / level draining in NetHack is relatively complex. The spellbook/wand, the artifact weapons, and monsters all provide apparently-similar life draining, and every source has the same effect if used on the player, but each does a different amount of damage to monsters. In addition both NetHack itself and the NetHack community use inconsistent naming, making any combination of the words "level"/"life" and "drain" interchangeable.
In addition, the level drain monster attack is affected by magic cancellation.

This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title.

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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
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