Draft:Potion of alertness

Omega 0.90.4

Potion of alertness!TypePotionBase value (Au)100Item level0Weight20Unidentified appearanceRandom containerCursed namePotion of sleep

A potion of alertness improves searching and protects against the lost action from certain surprise attacks. It has the same active effect as a scroll of alertness, but can be drunk when reading is blocked.

Generation

The potion belongs to the item-level-0 random pool and can appear at the pawn shop or through acquirement. Ambrosias transforms a dead tse-tse fly or a torpor beast's valium gland into a blessed bottle, normally costing 10 or 100 Au respectively. Eating those remains invokes sleep instead, so the transformation should not be confused with direct consumption.

Description

A noncursed bottle adds 4 + 5B alertness units, with B denoting blessing strength. Units normally decrease at ten-minute status updates. It bypasses the usual random failure gate when searching a square and prevents the specific invisible-surprise attack from costing the player an action.

A cursed bottle does nothing. Despite its name potion of sleep, the shared item effect only invokes alertness for noncursed items and never reaches the negative sleep branch. It neither grants alertness nor puts the drinker to sleep. Noncursed use identifies the type; cursed use does not.

Strategy

Drink it before a focused search for traps or secret passages, or before encountering an attacker that relies on surprise. Blessing buys a longer useful interval; enchantment does not. Alertness is not universal fear or sleep immunity and does not itself map the surroundings.

The scroll is lighter, while the potion takes ten ticks to use instead of twenty and remains usable while afraid or blind. True sight is a distinct preparation against invisible attackers, and monster detection can locate creatures beyond normal line of sight within its display limits. A known cursed bottle has no sleep tactic to offer in this version.