# Spellbook of turn undead

spellbook of  +   turn undead   

Appearance

random

Abundance

1.62%

Base price

600 zm

Weight

50

Turns to read

48

Ink to write

30–59

Spell type

clerical

Level

6

Power cost

30 Pw

Direction

beam  

Equivalent

wand of undead turning

Special for

knight

In NetHack, the spellbook of turn undead allows you to learn the spell of turn undead. It is the special spell for Knights.

Effects
The spell has the same effect as the wand of undead turning: casting it creates a beam which deals 1d8 damage to undead monsters it hits (doubled for a knight with the Magic Mirror of Merlin), and scares them into fleeing if they fail a resistance check. It also has the ability to "unturn dead",[1] which revives corpses and rejuvenates eggs.

Strategy
Like the wand, the spell is not very useful offensively, especially due to its high power cost. The spell (and wand) are primarily used to bring a useful pet back to life, or to freshen the rotten corpse of a large monster (e.g. a giant) so that it can be safely eaten for intrinsics or stat gains.
While it can be theoretically used to revive dragons for another chance to drop dragon scales, this is not recommended, since a revived dragon only has a 1/20 chance to leave scales as opposed to the normal 1/3.

References

↑ unturn_dead in zap.c

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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.
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