Sacrifice Gifts

👉 A sacrifice gift is a reward from your god for offering a fresh, acceptable corpse at an altar.

In GnollHack, gods occasionally reward their followers with special items when they are particularly pleased with a sacrifice. These items are typically powerful artifacts or, in some cases, high-quality utility and power items as replacement rewards.

Requirements for a Gift

Not every sacrifice yields a gift. To have a chance of receiving one, you must meet the following criteria:

  • Level: Your character level must be 3 or higher.
  • Luck: Your luck must be 0 or higher (non-negative).
  • Alignment: You must be sacrificing at an altar of your own alignment (or you are converting a cross-aligned altar, though gifts are usually only given when you are in good standing).

If these conditions are met, the chance of receiving a gift is based on the following formula:

$\cfrac{1}{10 + (2 × \text{Gifts} × \text{Artifacts})}$

where

  • $\text{Gifts}$ is the number of previous gifts.
  • $\text{Artifacts}$ is the total number of artifacts generated in the game.

This means your first gift is relatively easy to obtain (a 1 in 10 chance), but subsequent gifts become progressively rarer, especially as more artifacts are generated in the game.

The Gift's Properties

When your god bestows a gift, they will say:

"Use my gift wisely!"

The object will appear at your feet. A sacrifice gift has several advantageous properties:

  • It is automatically uncursed (and its curse status is known).
  • It is made erosion-proof (rustproof, fireproof, etc.).
  • Its enchantment is maximized or improved (e.g., weapons will typically be highly enchanted).
  • If the item is a launcher (such as a bow, crossbow, or sling), your god will also gift you 50 blessed silver arrows, crossbow bolts, or sling bullets to go with it. These projectiles will also be erosion-proof and enchanted (+0 to +3).
  • Your weapon skill for the gifted weapon type will be automatically unrestricted, allowing you to train it if you couldn't before.

Guaranteed First Gifts

Only certain role and alignment combinations have a guaranteed first sacrifice gift—a specific artifact that their god will always prioritize giving them first, provided it hasn't already been generated elsewhere:

Monk Weapon Restriction

Monks are dedicated to unarmed combat. As a result, their god will never gift them weapon artifacts. Monks only receive non-weapon artifacts, such as rings.

Because there are no randomly generatable neutral non-weapon artifacts in the game, a fallback mechanism triggers for Neutral Monks. Instead of receiving a replacement item, they are guaranteed to receive an unaligned non-weapon artifact as their first gift, bypassing the normal rules.

Here are the possible first sacrifice gifts for a Monk by alignment:

Alignment Possible First Gifts
Lawful The Holy Grail
Neutral The Rod of Disjunction, The Ring of Conflict, The Ring of Three Wishes, The Ruling Ring of Yendor
Chaotic The Serpent Ring of Set

Eligible Sacrifice Gifts by Alignment

If you do not have a guaranteed first gift, or if you have already received your guaranteed first gift, your god will select a random artifact from the pool of eligible artifacts.

On your first gift, only artifacts matching your alignment can be selected. From your second gift onwards, your god can also gift unaligned artifacts.

Also note that your god will never gift you an item belonging to a race hostile to yours (e.g., Elves cannot receive Orcish weapons like Grimtooth, and Orcs cannot receive Elven weapons like Orcrist or Sting).

Here are the eligible artifacts that can be obtained via sacrifice:

Lawful Gifts

Neutral Gifts

Chaotic Gifts

Unaligned Gifts (Eligible from the 2nd Gift onwards)

Replacement Items

If you are chosen to receive a gift, but the game cannot generate a suitable artifact (for example, if all eligible artifacts have already been created, or if you are a Monk and no non-weapon artifacts are available), your god will gift you a high-quality replacement item.

The replacement item is selected dynamically based on beneficial properties your character currently lacks. The game evaluates properties in the following order:

  1. Strength Enhancement: If your strength is below 19 and you are not carrying a giant strength belt, you receive a Belt of storm giant strength (50% chance).
  2. Reflection: If you do not have reflection and do not carry an item providing it, you receive Bracers of reflection (50% chance).
  3. Magic Resistance: If you do not have magic resistance and do not carry a cloak of magic resistance, you receive a Cloak of magic resistance (50% chance).
  4. Speed: If you do not have very fast speed and do not carry gloves of haste or speed boots, you receive Gloves of haste or Speed boots (50% chance).
  5. Life Saving: If you do not have life saving and do not carry an amulet of life saving, you receive an Amulet of life saving (50% chance).
  6. Flying: If you do not have flying and do not carry wings of flying, you receive Wings of flying (50% chance).
  7. Death Resistance: If you do not have death resistance and do not carry protection from undeath, you receive a Ring of protection from undeath (50% chance).

If none of the above rules apply (or the 50% checks fail), you will receive one of the following items at random:

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