Hacker News

Ah, I've seen this one. TL;DR: full moon raising luck by one point. There's likely a similar issue when the day is Friday the 13 (luck decreases by 1).

In NetHack, the game in which the DevTeam has thought of everything,

This can't be overstated so I'll exemplify it with my usage of the "rubber chicken".

I typically reserve one wish from my wand of wishing for the endgame. Then as I reach "a certain" floor, I use it to wish for a "blessed partly eaten chickatrice corpse". For eating? Nope - no sane man would eat a [chick|cock]atrice corpse in Nethack, as it'll stone you (Yet Another Stupid Death).

Why then? To wield it as a weapon.

It is not a gimmick, unlike my "Vladsbane"; it's because it's useful to stone the huge horde of enemies in the last floor. It'll last ~250 turns before rotting away, and it's a bit dangerous, but by then I probably ended the game already. You can't touch it with bare hands but meh, by endgame I have full gear, including gloves.

You can't use it against flesh golems either, otherwise they become stone golems. The later has bigger defence, so it's more time-consuming to kill, and time is precious in the endgame.

Why "blessed"? Higher damage against the undead. Why a "chickatrice"? Lighter than a cockatrice, and I'm a hoarder. Why "partially eaten"? Ditto.

Are you getting the picture? My "rubber chicken" already shows that the devs thought that:

• wishes might be used for odd items, such as corpses (worse, one that is edible only once);
• wishes can include blessed/uncursed/cursed status, as well as odd modifiers like "partially eaten";
• just because a game doesn't call an item a "weapon" it doesn't mean that players should be disallowed from wielding it as one;
• B/U/C status applied to weapons - such as higher damage against undead - should also apply to other items wielded as weapons;
• the weight of a corpse should depend on the monster, so smaller monster = lighter corpse;
• a partially eaten corpse should weight less than an intact one;
• the effect you get from touching a monster (touching a cockatrice stones you) should apply also to its body (touching a cockatrice corpse stones you too);
• gloves prevent you from directly touching a corpse, thus touching a corpse with gloves shouldn't trigger its effects;
• most enemies should follow the same rules as you - if it stones you, it should stone them too;
• that a few enemies might be exceptions - like a "stoned flesh golem" being simply a "stone golem".

That's not just for the rubber chicken, by the way. It's for almost all features of the game. And every time that you try to be cheeky and say "the devs didn't think about this", the game contradicts you - it shows that the devs thought about it, and even highlighted it.