# Potion of restore ability

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Name

potion of restore ability

Appearance

random

Base price

100 zm

Weight

20

Monster use

Will not be used by monsters.

The potion of restore ability restores lost attributes and experience levels, back up to the previous maximums that the character had reached so far.

Contents

1 Effects
2 Messages
3 Strategy
4 Variants

4.1 SLASH'EM

Effects
A blessed potion restores all lost attributes and experience levels. An uncursed potion restores one random lost attribute to its former maximum and one lost experience level. A cursed potion has no effect.
If the potion hits a monster, the monster is restored to maximum hit points.
Breathing its vapors has the same effects as quaffing the potion.

Messages
"Wow!  This makes you feel great!"

The potion was blessed
"Wow!  This makes you feel better!"

The potion was blessed, but there are still other things wrong with you
"Wow!  This makes you feel good!"

The potion was uncursed
"Ulch!  This makes you feel mediocre!"

The potion was cursed
"

<monster> looks sound and hale again."

The potion hit <monster>, whose HP was restored
"Ulch!  That potion smells terrible!"

You inhaled the vapors of the cursed potion
"Your eyes sting."

You would have inhaled the vapors of the cursed potion, but are breathless
Strategy
This potion is completely safe to quaff, even if the BUC status is unknown.
This potion is by far the best method of restoring lost experience levels when multiple levels have been lost. The other options either have better uses than restoring levels, are hard to come by, or require tedious grinding. For this reason, it may be good to keep one or two blessed potions around if you are planning to face off against Vlad or other level-draining monsters without drain resistance.  A blessed potion of restore ability is also useful for instantaneously restoring your levels after you deliberately drain them to donate to aligned priests, re-allocate skill points, or reduce the difficulty of generated monsters.
The attribute-restoring effects of this potion are completely superseded by a unicorn horn or the restore ability spell. However, the potion is 100% reliable, whereas the spell can have a high failure rate, and a unicorn horn may take multiple attempts to work.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Unicorn horns can no longer restore reduced attributes. Alternatives include potions of restore ability, the restore ability spell, prayer, or finding a way to exercise or increase that attribute again.
Surplus potions of restore ability are a prime candidate for dilution.

Variants
In general, this potion does not restore experience levels in variants based on 3.4.3, as that is a 3.6.1 addition.
In UnNetHack, FIQHack, dNetHack, xNetHack, DynaHack, and EvilHack, unicorn horns cannot be used to restore lost attribute points, making potions of restore ability much more important.
In Fourk, unicorn horns do restore lost attribute points but are limited in the number of times they can be used, so this potion may be preferable in order to save the horn for more important things.

SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, the potion of restore ability has an important new use: magical polymorphing is usually temporary, and items and monsters will revert to their original form with time. If you dip a polymorphed item into a potion of restore ability, its new form will be "fixed" and become permanent.

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.1. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-361}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.

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