Praying

👉 Praying is an essential mechanic in GnollHack that allows you to call upon your god for help, healing, or special favors when you are in trouble. However, praying too often or when your god is angry can have severe consequences.

Introduction

You can pray to your god at any time using the Pray (Alt-p) command. When you pray, the outcome heavily depends on your current situation, your alignment record, your luck, and how recently you last prayed. If done correctly, praying can save you from certain death; if done carelessly, it can anger your god and result in severe penalties.

When is it Safe to Pray?

The primary factor determining if a prayer is safe is your Prayer Timeout. Every time you pray successfully, your prayer timeout is set to approximately 175 turns for Priests or 350 turns for other roles. This timeout acts as a hidden cooldown counter that decreases by 1 every game turn. Your current "Troubles" determine how low this timeout counter needs to drop before it is safe to pray again.

For example, if your timeout is set to 350, you only need to wait 150 turns for it to drop to 200 before you can safely pray to fix a Major Trouble. However, you would have to wait the full 350 turns for the timeout to reach 0 to safely pray when you have No Trouble.

Trouble Level	Condition	Safe Timeout Threshold
Major Trouble	You are facing a life-threatening situation.	Timeout $\le$ 200
Minor Trouble	You are facing a severe but non-lethal issue.	Timeout $\le$ 100
No Trouble	You are not in any immediate danger.	Timeout $\le$ 0

ℹ️ Note: If you have killed the Wizard of Yendor or have been crowned, your prayer timeout is penalized with massive increases (approximately +500 for Priests or +1000 for other roles, per violation), making it much harder to pray safely.

💡 Tip: You can know whether it is currently safe to pray when a blessed holy symbol or a blessed prayerstone is shimmering.

Prayer Timeout Randomization

The timeout numbers mentioned throughout this page (like 175 and 350) are base values. The game applies a highly randomized function called rnz() to these base values to determine the actual timeout.

The rnz() function scales the base value up or down randomly. It has a 50% chance to multiply the base value and a 50% chance to divide it, using a randomly generated multiplier.

Because the maximum possible multiplier increases as your character levels up, the possible range of your prayer timeout becomes much wider at higher levels. This means even a Priest could randomly receive a timeout much larger than 200 after a successful prayer, making their next prayer unsafe despite having a Major Trouble.

Estimated Timeout Ranges by Role and Level:

Role	Base Value	Range (XL 1-14)	Range (XL 30)
Priest	175	~17 to ~1,750 turns	~8 to ~3,500 turns
Other Roles	350	~35 to ~3,500 turns	~17 to ~7,000 turns

95% Chance Safe Thresholds (by Level): Because the extreme multipliers in the rnz() function only trigger rarely (under 5% of the time), the 95th percentile of your resulting prayer timeout is actually unaffected by your character level. In 95% of successful prayers, your timeout will be less than or equal to the following number of turns, regardless of level:

Experience Level	Priest	Other Roles
1	614	1229
2–49	614	1229
50	614	1229

💡 Tip: Because the exact timeout is hidden and highly variable, the only guaranteed way to know if your cooldown has safely elapsed is to check it by applying a blessed holy symbol or a blessed prayerstone.

Unsafe Conditions

Even if your timeout has elapsed, praying under the following conditions is considered unsafe and will result in a negative outcome:

• Too Naughty: If your Luck is negative, your God's anger is greater than 0, or your Alignment Record is negative.
• Gehennom: It is never safe to pray in Gehennom. Your god will not hear you, and doing so might anger them.
• Wrong Altar: Praying on an altar dedicated to a god of a different alignment than your own.
• Vile Creature: If you are transformed into an undead monster and pray on a Lawful altar (or a Neutral altar with a 10% chance), your god will view you as an abomination.

Types of Troubles

The game categorizes your problems into Major and Minor troubles. When your god decides to help you, they prioritize fixing these troubles based on severity.

Major Troubles

Trouble	Description
Stoned	You are turning into stone.
Slimed	You are turning into green slime.
Strangled	You are wearing an amulet of strangulation.
Lava	You are trapped in lava.
Sick	You have a terminal illness or food poisoning.
Food Poisoned	You are suffering from severe food poisoning.
Mummy Rot	You are afflicted with mummy rot.
Starving	Your hunger level is at Starving or worse.
Region	You are trapped in a stinking cloud.
Hit	Your HP is critically low.
Lycanthrope	You have contracted lycanthropy.
Collapsing	You are severely overencumbered and losing strength.
Stuck in Wall	You are phased or stuck inside a solid wall.
Cursed Eyeglasses	You are wearing cursed eyeglasses of hallucination.
Cursed Levitation	You are wearing cursed levitation boots or a cursed ring of levitation.
Unusable Hands	Your hands are stuck.
Cursed Blindfold	You are wearing a cursed blindfold.

Minor Troubles

Trouble	Description
Punished	You have a heavy iron ball chained to you.
Teleportitis	You suffer from uncontrollable teleportation.
Fumbling	You are wearing fumbling gear.
Laughing	You are wearing a shirt of uncontrollable laughter.
Cursed Items	You are wearing or wielding cursed items.
Saddle	You are stuck on a cursed saddle.
Blind	You are blinded or deafened.
Poisoned	Your attributes have been drained by poison.
Wounded Legs	Your legs are wounded.
Hungry	Your hunger level is at Hungry.
Stunned	You are stunned.
Confused	You are confused.
Hallucination	You are hallucinating.

Prayer Outcomes

Negative Outcomes

If you pray when it is unsafe, you will suffer the following consequences:

• Vile Creature: You are forcefully rehumanized and take 1d20 damage.
• Gehennom: Your god states they cannot help you. If your Alignment Record is 0 or less, your god will become angry.
• Too Soon / Too Naughty: Your prayer fails. Your prayer timeout is increased by approximately 125 for Priests or 250 for others, your god becomes upset, and your Luck decreases by 3. If you pray on a wrong altar, the altar may curse any water or holy symbols on it.
• Wrong Altar: The altar may curse water and holy symbols placed upon it. If so, you incur the same penalties as praying "Too Soon".

Good Prayer Outcomes

If you pray safely, your god will be pleased. If you pray while standing on your own altar, your god will bless any holy symbols or prayerstones you are carrying, as well as any water or holy symbols placed on the altar.

Your god will then decide how many troubles to fix based on a random roll tied to your Luck and whether you are standing on an altar.

Trouble Fixing Actions:

Action Level	Result
1	Fixes your worst trouble once.
2	Fixes your worst trouble up to 10 times.
3	Fixes your worst trouble once, then does Action Level 2.
4	Fixes your worst trouble until all troubles are completely gone.
5	Fixes all troubles entirely and grants a Special Favor.

💡 Tip: If you are not on an altar, the maximum Action Level you can achieve is 3. If your Alignment Record is below 4 (Strident), the maximum Action Level is 1.

Special Favors

A "special favor" is granted by your god. It occurs when you achieve an Action Level of 5, or if you pray with absolutely no troubles while maintaining an Alignment Record of at least 14 (Devout).

The favor granted is determined by rolling a random number between 0 and (Luck + 6) / 2. The possible outcomes are:

Roll	Effect
1	Repairs and uncurses or blesses your wielded weapon.
2	Increases your max HP by 5 (or restores a drained level), heals you to full HP, cures blindness and hunger, and resets negative Luck to 0.
3	Provides a hint for the Castle tune (if applicable), then grants the effects of Roll #2.
4	Uncurses all cursed items in your inventory.
5	Grants intrinsic Telepathy, Speed, Stealth, or Protection.
6	Grants a spellbook (preferring unknown spells).
7 or 8	Crowns you. This requires an Alignment Record of at least 20 (Pious). See the Crowning wiki page for detailed information on the mechanics and artifacts granted.