Potion of water

Probably Adom's most surprisingly useful items, the Potion of Water is a valuable item to almost all players. It's one of the items that is always named the same unidentified name- "Watery Potion", so it's easy to spot.

It's also always blue and weighs 4S, and one of the more common potions. They're annoyingly hard to find at times, but still more common than a Berzio Potion or a Potion of Ultra Healing.

The uncursed Potion of Water (Tastes like Plain Water) has three uses, and isn't terribly useful most of the time. However, it is by no means totally useless... it can be used to dip an Iron object in to rust it, which can be useful when you're carrying an iron cursed weapon, helmet, or such. You can have it dip in and break quickly, or even rust it away in water!

The second use of the Uncurse potion is Cleansing scrolls. This has few uses, normally, for blank scrolls are not entirely useful; but there is a use. Blank Scrolls can be used with a magical writing set to create more useful ones (Scroll of Increase Melee Accuracy, EG), and the water can also wipe away dangerous scrolls like Scrolls of Amnesia.

Finally, an uncursed Potion of Water can be put on an altar of a deity you worship to be coverted to Holy Water. And trust me, Holy Water is useful.

Whereas normal water's okay, Holy Water (Tastes like fresh and clean water) is fantastic. Not only does it not wipe scrolls or rust weapons, but it instead *blesses* them. This can be great when you have an auto-cursing item, as instead of using a scroll of uncursing, you just dip it in here. It can be used on other objects that have a better effect when blessed, like Food or Rings of Djinni Summoning.

Secondly, Holy Water can be thrown at undead for nasty, nasty damage to them. The effects can often kill a Zombie quite swiftly, and even harm Liches. If poured on the grave of Griff Bloodaxe (a quest in the game), it will not only destroy him but put his spirit to rest, too (a lawful action). This is very useful, because he and the Necromancer in the graveyard are annoying enemies at best.

While the above two are often useful, the (cursed) Potion of Unholy Water (Tastes like muddy water) is rarely useful; all it does is curse an item dipped in it. While this may seem absoloutly useless, there is, in fact, a good use: one or two items may be preffered when cursed, such as Dark Elf Spider Bread. Normally, this stuff is only reasonably nutritious, but when *cursed*, it is quite, quite excellent food! Likewise, when blessed, it is less nutritious. As far as I know, this is the only use for the Unholy Water.

A potion of water also exists in NetHack, with the following characteristics.

It is a clear potion, and like all potions can be quaffed or thrown. Unlike all other potions, dipping it (into other potions) is ineffective - it is however the prime potion for dipping into, due to its unique diluting properties.

It can be obtained in several ways:

• If you are a priest, you start out with 4 of them, blessed.
• You can dilute any potion (except acid, which will explode) into a potion of uncursed water by *dipping* (Meta-Key + D, or #dip) twice. The first dip will change the potion into a diluted version of itself, the second will change it into uncursed water. Note that everytime you dip, you use up the potion you're dipping INTO, so dipping potions into potions of water in order to obtain potions of water is rather counterproductive (er, you lose 2 to gain 1). However, if you group several potions together and dip the GROUP in a potion of water...now we're talking watery profit.
• You can also dip into fountains (warning - this may produce unexpected results stemming from NetHack's intrinsically magical fountains), moats or other bodies of water. Floating or falling into water may make your potions wet (i.e., as if you've dipped them).
• You can zap a wand (or spell) of cancellation at potions - most will turn to water, except sickness, see invisible, fruit juice (these turn to fruit juice), booze and oil (these remain same).
• Finally, you can change potions of blindness, confusion, or hallucination into potions of water by dipping a unicorn horn into them.

Now that you have water, you probably want to do something with it. The best thing to do with water is to get it blessed because - as that node states succinctly - to make an item blessed, dip it in holy water. To get your water blessed, set it on an altar to your god, and #pray. If your god is pleased, the water will turn to Holy Water. Contrariwise, to create Unholy Water, drop the water on an alter to a god other than yours, and #pray. Warning: this will anger your god. Now you can:

• If an item is cursed, dipping it in Holy Water will uncurse it.
• Dip any uncursed item to bless it. The process of dipping an item in holy water will not rust, paper will not fade, potions will not dilute. As above, nearly all items in NetHack have a better (sometimes LOTS better) effect when blessed, especially rare items such as scrolls of genocide or magic lamps.
• Likewise, dipping a blessed item into Unholy Water will make it uncursed. Repeating this will make it cursed.
• Quaffing it will exercise your constitution and wisdom stats and cure any sicknesses, including lycanthropy. If you are chaotic, demon or undead, you will take a small amount of damage and abuse your constitution.
• Reverse the above for Unholy Water. Heal and exercise if chaotic, demon or undead, suffer if you're lawful, abuse your constitution if neutral.

Random effects of water include rusting metallic objects (including iron golems), multiplying gremlins if they come in contact with it (remember the movie?), and switching were-forms (holy water will make you turn human, unholy will make you turn into your were form).