# Talk:Unicorn horn
Why does this appear as a cyan weapon? In-game, it's a white tool. I don't know how to change it so it's a tool and has the weapon information at the same time. --Someone Else 16:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I fixed the color by adding color=white to the template. I used the weapon template instead of the tool template because the former includes everything the latter has, and more (such as damage information). The only two tool-weapons are the unicorn horn and the pick-axe, so I don't think it's much of a problem, nor is it worth devoting a whole template to these two items. --Eidolos 16:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
But... it's the wrong bracket...
I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, and it's kind of bugging me that it uses ther weapon template for something that isn't really a weapon. Also, I don't see any reason to not make a template that's for tools that are weapons. What's the reason? --Someone Else 16:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Fixed. To get ( instead of ), instead of making a new template, I added an optional parameter to {{weapon}}, since I know the MediaWiki template syntax for that. --Kernigh 18:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about that, Someone Else, I hadn't realized that it was displaying the wrong glyph. --Eidolos 04:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Okay, guys, this article advises to quaff unidentified potions instead of dipping a unicorn horn into it. I have a very hard time seeing how this can possibly be good advice. The article cites as justification the fact that you will lose your unicorn horn if you dip it into a potion of polymorph, but this reason is bogus, because you can test for potions of polymorph by dipping junk objects first. (The article already mentions this in section 2, but curiously fails to grasp the implications of this in section 3.)
Even if you rule out polymorph, quaffing the potion is not usually a good idea, because by quaffing the potion you lose the potion, whereas by dipping a unicorn horn into it, the potion (if bad) will turn into water or fruit juice, both of which are very useful for making holy water (and if it's good you can still quaff it anyway after dipping). In most cases, it is more useful to have an additional potion of water, since people in real games do sometimes tend to run out of holy water, and distinguishing between the various bad potions is not all that useful or difficult. In fact, the most useful of the bad potions (confusion and booze) are easy to identify anyway (by having monsters throw them at you, and using amethyst stones respectively), and the other two are easy to tell apart since one becomes water and the other becomes fruit juice after you dip into it.
So does anyone here want to pipe up in defense of quaffing unidentified potions? If not, I'll go ahead and change the article to reflect what I just said. --Djao 05:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I went ahead and made the changes. --Djao 20:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Contents

1 "Unihorn" listed as an acronym
2 Polypiling unicorn horns
3 How do you apply them?
4 Swirly Potion?
5 Inventory of Pet Dragons
6 BUG? Horn polymorphed into an oil lamp but it shouldn't have...
7 A vs an unicorn horn

"Unihorn" listed as an acronym
Unihorn is listed in Category:Acronyms for some reason... http://nethackwiki.com/index.php?title=Unihorn&amp;redirect=no --88.108.198.28 21:28, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Polypiling unicorn horns
I could start a wizard game and polypile 100 horns to see what they turn into, should I?

It would probably be more accurate and helpful to crunch the numbers mathematically, based on the relative item probabilities and the polymorphing code.  Of course, this requires a certain level of familiarity with the code... -- Killian 07:30, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
How do you apply them?
I know how to do it--that is, pressing "a". I mean, what does the adventurer do to apply a unicorn horn to him/herself? Do you whack yourself on the head with it? Lick it? Caress it? Hold it up before yourself and concentrate?
It's a long, narrow object. I can't help but have uncomfortable ideas about what I'm doing to myself with it whenever I say "apply unihorn."— Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.77.104.145 (talk • contribs) 

You see here a blessed +0 unicorn horn named 4th Annual Leapfrog &amp; Wet T-shirt ContestFeagradze 01:22, June 28, 2010 (UTC)
I like to think of it as touching the unicorn horn to my forehead. A live unicorn can apply its horn without doing anything in particular. It's up to your imagination.--Ray Chason 05:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
According to mythology, which the devteam bases a majority of things on, unicorns were prized for their miraculous healing abilities, which supposedly came from their horn. If by some way, a fortunate being happened to come across one, it could be used, by either 1. drinking a liquid poured into it that would be purified, the main purpose to this was to identify or null poisons (hence #dipping a unicorn horn into certain detrimental Nethack potions), or 2. drinking liquid that was stored or that materialized inside of the "unihorn". So essentially what you're doing by applying the horn, is drinking out of it. DrakeKobra 22:01, December 12, 2009 (UTC)

Swirly Potion?
When I was applying the horn to multiple potions one turned into a swirly potion. I don't see anything in the article about this. Edit: Never mind, looks like that is the appearance of unidentified fruit juice. Maybe the article should point this out? Kadoba01 23:16, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Inventory of Pet Dragons
I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but should a tamed draconic pet take a turn for the worst, occasionally it will have been holding a unicorn horn, I noticed this when one of mine picked up a horn, and didn't drop it like a normal item.  I was curious about this so I experimented in Wizard mode, A dragon (regardless of color) that has been tamed, will pick up and keep unicorn horns in their inventory. I'm not sure if (or how) they apply them. Is it just random code for dragons or is it something deeper. DrakeKobra 22:01, December 12, 2009 (UTC)

Many pets will pick up and use Unicorn horns. Titans, for example, will unblind, unconfuse, etc themselves using one. I don't believe that a dragon is capable of using a horn, but I don't find it at all surprising that they'd pick one up anyways. Hostile dragons can be seen picking up potions and scrolls that they cannot use, among other items. I assume that it's an unintended side effect that they'll pickup a unicorn horn when tame but then can't use it. -- Qazmlpok 00:05, December 13, 2009 (UTC)
thats what I figured, thanks DrakeKobra 16:39, December 13, 2009 (UTC)

BUG? Horn polymorphed into an oil lamp but it shouldn't have...
Moved over from the old wiki --Tjr 22:28, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Here's what happened:

I had an unknown potion (identified by its look only);
dipped my unicorn horn into it&nbsp;: a message said that it cleared the potion;
since I did not identify water yet and I wanted to know which potions were cleared by the horn, I CALLED (not individually named) that potion "Horn cleared";
later on in the game, I dipped my horn again into that "Horn cleared" potion... And "pufff", my unicorn horn got polymorphed into an oil lamp, and the "Horn cleared potion" was left untouched.
I then identified that potion called "horn cleared potion", and it was still a potion of hallucination!...
So it seems that in the first place the horn cleared the potion, but then after calling the potion, it looks that the whole behavior just got bugged&nbsp;: dipping into it again polymorphed my horn even though it was not some "polymorpohing" potion, and the potion wasn't "cleared" anymore (potion of hallucination). BTW the potion and the horn were uncursed the whole time. Weird...
173.206.1.213 17:24, December 10, 2010 (UTC)
You probably made a typo and dipped the horn into a different potion, thus why the one you called was left untouched.
Also, come to the new wiki, I only found your post by chance. http://nethackwiki.com
96.230.120.71 20:55, December 10, 2010 (UTC)

A vs an unicorn horn
TIL.  According to the internets it's "a unicorn horn" https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2015/11/17/a-vs-an/ . ——Winny (talk) 21:25, 18 June 2023 (UTC)