Potions

A potion (!) is a draught in a glass flask. To drink one, press e to consume, the same command that eats (see Food). The list titled “Consume what?” shows your food and your potions together, grouped by kind: first what lies where you stand (“lying here”), then what you carry. Press a letter, or Enter on the marked row, to drink.

Drinking takes one turn, uses the potion up, and works at once: “You drink the potion of healing. You feel your wounds close.” You can drink a potion lying on the floor without picking it up (in a shop, that means you have bought it). You can drink whether or not you are hungry, and even while raging.

Hit points and mana never go past your maximum.

Potions that last

Some potions work for a while instead of at once:

• A boost raises a stat by 2 for ten minutes. A greater boost raises it by 4, eases to 2 after ten minutes, and is gone ten minutes after that.
• A vision potion lends you other eyes for half an hour. The potion of seeing lasts five minutes.
• The potion of quickness hastes you for a minute, as the Haste spell does.
• A resistance potion makes you resist an element by 50 % for half an hour. It counts the way armour’s resistance does, so together with what you wear it never reaches immunity: 75 % at most.
• A helpful draught lends you a status effect a spell could also give: the potion of barkskin Barkskin and the potion of glamour Glamoured (both harder to hit, two minutes), the potion of renewal Renewing (wounds close faster, four minutes), the potion of the quick Quick-sensed (you feel the living about you, three minutes), the potion of the unseen Invisible (creatures that need eyes do not see you, two minutes; When you are invisible), and the potion of sea legs Water-borne (you walk on water, six minutes). A second one of the same kind starts its time over.

Each of these shows by name on the status bar and the character screen: Fortified, Owl-eyed, Warmed, and so on (see Status effects). If you drink a second boost of the same stat while one lasts, you keep the stronger of the two, and the time does not start over. A second vision or resistance potion of the same kind starts its half hour over.

A potion’s marks are stat training marks that you always get when you drink it (see Stats): the body remembers the draught.

Utility potions

Four potions do one useful thing at once:

• The potion of sustenance feeds you as a food ration does, 1500 nutrition, but never leaves you Bloated: what would go past that is lost, and you never choke or vomit on it.
• The potion of restoration does what the scroll of restoration does: every point of stat damage is mended, every drained point comes back, and Stiffening ends. Unlike the scroll, it is drunk even when there is nothing to restore (“You feel whole.”).
• The potion of blinking moves you at once to a random free cell of the level, as a teleport trap does: anywhere, in sight or not, near danger or far from it. On the overworld it does nothing.
• The potion of clear head ends at once what clouds the mind or numbs the body: Frightened, Drowsy, Sluggish, Stunned, Staggered, and Transfixed.

Gambles

Three potions are a gamble even once you know them: each time you drink one, one outcome is drawn by chance from its own table, as at a healing spring. It may do good, nothing, or harm. The tables below give every outcome and its exact chance per draught; the game only tells you what happens, in words.

• The draught of chance mostly heals you, clears your head, or lends you a stat boost, but it may sicken you or make you drowsy.
• The vial of troll’s blood always does two things at once: your wounds close faster (Renewing) and you are Poisoned.
• The brewer’s blunder is a coin toss: a greater boost of one stat for a while, or a point of one stat drained for good. A potion of restoration gives a drained point back.

Brewer’s blunder

Draught of chance

Vial of troll’s blood

Unknown potions

A potion you have never drunk shows a word and a colour instead of its name: “a fizzy red potion”. Each kind of potion has its own word. The words are made up anew for each character and stay the same for their whole life, so two fizzy red potions are always the same kind.

The colour belongs to the kind and never changes. It follows one rule: each family of effects has a hue, and a potion with several effects mixes their hues.

So a red potion heals and a green one cures something. But two potions of one family may share exactly the same colour: the colour tells you the family, never which potion it is.

You learn what a kind of potion is, for good, in any of these ways:

• by drinking one (“It is a potion of healing.”);
• by reading the scroll of identify on it;
• by an appraisal (see Services);
• because it was in your starting kit.

Drinking an unknown potion is a gamble: the murky draught makes you sick. A shop charges its true price for an unknown potion.

Elixirs

An elixir is the rarest of potions. It raises one stat by 1 for good, just as training a stat up does. It also raises that stat’s potential, the ceiling training works toward (see Stats), by 1 or 2 more, with an even chance of each. If your score was already at its potential, the potential first rises with the score. So after an elixir there is always room for at least one more point of training, and half the time two.

The change takes effect at once. Your hit points follow a Toughness elixir, your mana an Intelligence or Willpower one, and your carrying limits a Strength one. “You feel stronger.” means the score rose. “You feel stronger, and that you could be stronger yet.” means the potential rose by 2. Each elixir also gives 60 training marks of its stat.

There are six elixirs, one for each stat, and all are gold:

They are found only deep (item level 8 and below), and seldom. A forgotten altar’s great boon may leave one, and an alchemist very rarely has one for 2000 gold. A general store or a provisioner never does.

Flasks

Any potion can be thrown: T lists your potions beside your throwing weapons. A thrown potion never lands whole. It shatters where it comes down.

A flask is a potion made for throwing, such as the sleeping draught. Where it shatters, it works as a spell does: the sleeping draught breathes the Sleep spell over everyone around the cell. The table’s Thrown column gives each flask’s spell, its numbers, and its range in cells.

• Where it breaks: a flask breaks on the first creature in the line from you to the cell you aim at, or before a wall, or on that cell. There is no roll to hit and no miss: what matters is who stands where.
• How far: a flask flies its own range (6 cells for most), plus what talents and magic items add to your throws. Any other potion flies only 3 cells.
• What it does: the spell works as if you had cast it, but your stats and talents do not change it: a flask is always as strong as the table says. Its harm and its kills are yours, experience too. A burst that harms can catch you if you throw it too close, and the game asks first. A flask that lays a Drowsy cloud or another status spares you. Throwing a flask takes a throw’s time and trains no weapon skill.
• Learning it: if you see the cell where an unknown flask breaks, you learn what it was (“It was a sleeping draught.”). Thrown into the dark or round a corner, it is only heard, as “a crash of glass” (Hearing), and you learn nothing.
• A potion that is no flask spills uselessly: “The potion shatters; the draught soaks away.” You learn nothing from it either. It is a way to be rid of a potion you know is bad.
• Thrown at you: some creatures throw flasks (the bombers on Creature powers). Seeing where one breaks teaches you what it was, as when you throw it, and a bomber carries a flask or two of its kind that fall where it dies.
• Smoke: a flask of smoke leaves a cloud of smoke no eye sees into or through, yours and every creature’s: a way past archers, or out of a fight.
• Acid: a vial of acid burns, keeps eating, and eats at the armour of anyone it harms, yours too if you stand in it (Acid).
• Drinking a flask is a poor idea: the sleeping draught makes you drowsy, as the table says.
• A flask of holy water is a kind one: thrown, it casts Rebuke, which sears and frightens only the undead and harms nothing living; drunk, it washes a hex off (Hexed and Branded end at once).
• Thunder and blasting: a flask of thunder goes off as Thunderclap, heard over the whole level (Hearing); a blasting flask as Shatter, which breaks shut doors and chests. A general store or a provisioner never sells either: only an alchemist does.
• A flask of brilliance is the kind one among the drinkable: drunk, it makes you shed light about you a while (Lit).

Where to find them

Potions lie about as loot. The common ones (healing, antidote) turn up more often and from the first depths, the better ones deeper down. General stores and provisioners sell a few among their wares, but never the flasks of fire and frost or pitch fire. An alchemist sells only potions, always potions of healing first, and buys them too (see Shops). Some quests pay in potions.

If you know Alchemy, you can brew many of them yourself from herbs, and the battle flasks from an elemental’s essence (see Brewing potions). A potion you brew is known to you from then on, even if you had never seen one.

Talents

• Thrifty drinker (Delver): one potion in four is not used up, elixirs included. Items that keep potions add their percent to the talent’s chance, up to 50 % in all.
• Lasting draughts (Vigour, needs Toughness 13): boost and vision potions last half again as long: 15 minutes a degree for a boost, 45 minutes for cat’s, owl’s, or moth’s eyes.

See also: Brewing potions, Every status effect, and Scrolls.