Food and corpses

This page has what you eat: eating, food that spoils, and the corpse tables. How hunger works and what it does to you is on Hunger.

Food (%) keeps hunger away. Press e (the Eat command) to consume something. A list titled “Consume what?” shows what you can eat: first what lies where you stand (“lying here”), then the food you carry (see Lists of objects). Press a letter, or Enter on the marked row, to eat it. Your potions are in the same list and are drunk the same way (see Potions), and so are your magic crystals.

Eating

A meal takes a few turns, each a normal action (6 seconds at a normal pace; see Turns and movement). Like a rest, it stops early when a hostile creature comes close in view or something happens that you are told about: “A kobold comes into view; you stop eating.” Then nothing is eaten and the food is left as it was. The food is eaten, and feeds you, only when the last turn is done: “You eat the food ration. You feel satiated.”

Eating when you are already full is risky. A meal that would fill you past what your stomach can hold may come back up (“You vomit!”), leaving you hungry and fed nothing. If it stays down, whatever does not fit is lost. See Hunger.

Ælfric’s General Store in Cēaptūn (The Ascmearc) sells food for the road. Your starting kit may include some food too.

Food spoils

All food rots, whether it lies on the floor or in your pack. It keeps for a while (the table above says how long), and it is old once half of that time has passed. Some time after it goes rotten, it rots away altogether. Food in your pack that rots away is gone, and you are told: “Your loaf of bread has rotted away.” Food on the floor is simply gone when you next look.

Food does not show how old it is, unless you are trained in Appraise or Survival. Then, now and then, the eat list and a look say fresh, old, or rotten. Food of one kind always keeps together in one stack, whether you pick it up or put it down, and the stack is as old as its oldest part. So remember where your food came from and when.

Food a little past its best is fine to eat. Food past its keeping is rotten, and eating it is a bad idea: “Ugh! The loaf of bread was rotten.” You may vomit. If it stays down, it makes you sick (“You feel sick.”). That is food poisoning, which costs hit points for a while until it wears off (see Status effects), though the food still feeds you. Rotten food may also give you grave rot (see Diseases).

Ratfolk eat rotten food without harm: “The loaf of bread was rotten, but your stomach does not mind.” It feeds them as fresh food would, and no more: a rotten corpse has lost whatever else its flesh did. Shopkeepers know rotten food when they smell it. They will not buy it, and they do not sell it either (see Shops).

Corpses

A creature that dies leaves its corpse where it fell, on top of whatever it dropped: a “kobold corpse” (“Gnægan the Rat King’s corpse” for a unique), shown as % in the creature’s color. A corpse weighs what the creature did, so a deer’s is far too heavy to carry (see Burden). It feeds you according to the creature’s size and takes a while to eat.

Corpses rot like all food, only faster. A fresh corpse turns rotten some hours after the death and rots away altogether in a day or two, on the floor and in your pack alike (“Your giant rat corpse has rotted away.”). A corpse does not show how old it is, so remember when it fell. Eating a rotten one is as bad an idea as eating any rotten food: “Ugh! The kobold corpse was rotten.”

The corpses of the keepers of Grundlēas never rot. Each keeper always leaves its corpse where it fell: Soulglass does not turn it to glass, and turned to stone it still leaves its corpse, not a statue. Most are far too heavy to carry, but the corpse waits in the lair for as long as you stay on that floor. Eating one is the biggest gamble in the game: see Profane gifts.

A corpse is good for more than a meal. Necromancy has three uses for a corpse of any age, and each one uses it up. Charnel burst blows it apart, Grave feast draws out what life is left, and Rouse the dead stands it up again.

What a corpse gives you

Eating a fresh corpse may do more than feed you. Some taste terrible and may come back up. Some make you sick. Some do you good, and many feed your body’s training: a corpse gives marks toward a stat, just as using the stat does. A few corpses (giants’, trolls’, hags’, ogres’, and the fey’s) have a small chance to widen how far that stat can grow, its potential.

A corpse never raises a stat at once. The marks wait for the next check. Many marks make themselves felt (“Something of its strength passes into you.”), and a few are quiet. A widened potential says “You feel you could grow stronger yet.” What a corpse gives depends on what the creature is (a giant, a troll, a caster, and so on), and some creatures give something of their own.

The corpses of literate casters (the tribes’ mages, shamans, priests, and hags) teach Decipher script. The first one teaches the skill if you lack it (“Strange letters swim before your eyes, and settle into sense.”). Each one after that adds to it (“The letters come clearer.”), but never past a value set by the creature, and deeper casters set it higher. Past that value, the corpse teaches nothing.

In the game you find all this out by eating. Here it is in the order it happens, each chance rolled on its own. A rotten corpse has lost all of it.

See also: Hunger, Diseases, and What creatures leave.