From Jonnydigital.com, the only reliable source
In NetHack, shopkeepers ignore objects that your pet carries out of the shop. Some pets can be trained to bring you items by feeding them certain foods when they drop items at your feet. With a well-trained pet you can stand on the door of a shop and clear the entire shop out without angering the shopkeeper.
Stealing from shops is complicated by a few matters.
The most significant is the shopkeeper. He takes many precautions to prevent thievery: won't let you leave with unpaid items (even items you already consumed or threw out of the shop), won't let you enter or leave while invisible, etc. If you manage to steal anyway, he becomes violent and is very difficult to kill early on.
Second is alignment. Lawful characters suffer a -1 alignment penalty when stealing from shops, and lawful and neutral characters who murder a shopkeeper lose intrinsic telepathy and two points of luck.
Third is that shopkeepers are usually more useful alive, as the price they buy items for can be used to help identify them. It's also considered poor form to kill Izchak.
Fortunately, there's a loophole. Shopkeepers only watch you, and ignore pets and other creatures entirely. Any item your pet eats or picks up is ignored. If a pet drops an item outside of the shop, it's yours: the shopkeeper forgets he ever owned it, and you can even sell it back to him (even multiple times).
You can wait until your pet picks up an item, then leave the shop and hope the pet follows you, or summon the pet with a magic whistle or blessed eucalyptus leaf. You can also stand in the doorway and hope the pet drops items on the first square inside the shop, which is considered "outside" for the purposes of stealing. However, it's possible to train many pets further.
Your pet has an attribute called apport which determines the likelihood it will pick up and drop items, and how near to you it will drop them. Apport decreases by 1 each time the pet drops an item, and increases when the pet eats a treat. What food it considers a treat varies by animal:
Dogs, cats and other meat-eating creatures consider tripe rations a treat, along with food with 'meat' in the name (meatball, huge chunk of meat). You can create meatballs by casting stone to flesh on rocks, and can create rocks by hitting boulders or statues with a pickaxe. Eggs are treats, but break if thrown at a pet, the normal delivery method when raising apport. Corpses are not treats.
Horses and other herbivores consider carrots and apples a treat.
Monkeys (any Y) consider a banana a treat.
Metal-eating creatures like rust monsters consider iron objects treats.
Rust monsters consider iron objects treats.
Ghouls and ghasts consider any corpse more than 50 turns old a treat.
Creatures which don't eat, such as demons, treat no food as treats. They make poor shoplifters as you can't raise their apport with food.
According to Keeping And Training Pets In Nethack And Slash'EM, the best way to raise a pet's apport is to throw it a treat immediately after it drops something at your feet. This will raise apport by 100. The further away the pet was when he dropped and the longer you wait before giving the treat, the less apport gain.
If a shop contains treats (usually tripe rations), it's a good idea to run ahead, shut the door and take these before your pet can eat them. You'll have to pay, of course, since you picked it up, but two treats make it easy to rob a shop blind so it's worth it.
The first square from the door is considered "outside" the shop. Any item your pet drops here is yours. A common tactic is to stand in the doorway and hold down 's' or '.' to wait while your pet drops items at your feet. You can feed him more treats when he does this, if you have any. A pet with high apport will make light work of a large shop.
Drop your gold ($) on a square near the door. The shopkeeper will offer you credit, and your pet can steal the gold back. Repeat this indefinitely until you have enough gold to buy any items too heavy for your pet to pick up.
Sell back items you don't want. This gives you access to the shopkeeper's gold, as opposed to just store credit. If you're confident in your pet's shoplifting ability, pawn artifacts for quick gold.
To save time (and food), you can put all lightweight items into a sack, drop it near the door and have your pet steal that.
A useful pet tactic is to displace your pet onto a polymorph trap to make it into a more powerful creature. This has the drawback that certain creatures (such as demons) don't eat, and therefore you cannot raise their apport. Some pets only eat rare foods as treats, and sometimes you just don't have any treats handy.
One solution is to place several items into a bag, then when the pet picks it up, summon him out of the shop with a magic whistle or blessed eucalyptus leaf. You can also zap a wand of teleportation or cast "teleport away" on the pet.
Non-eating pets have the additional difficulty that you cannot raise their tameness by feeding, nor re-tame them by throwing food as with dogs, cats and ponies.
I once managed to polytrap a pony into an incubus, who managed to acquire a fantastic amount of equipment and experience by killing and stealing. By the bottom of of the Gnomish Mines he had an AC of -16 and speed. A mind flayer had recently eaten my dog so I attempted to use the incubus to shoplift.
Instead of stealing, the incubus murdered every shopkeeper in Minetown. I had to lock the aligned priest in for his own safety.
Killing a shopkeeper with a pet, if you can do so safely, gives you quick access to the entire shop inventory, all the shopkeeper's gold, and the shopkeeper's private possessions (including a wand of striking). There is no alignment penalty for allowing your pet to murder.
The only real drawback to killing the shopkeeper is that he can no longer be used to identify items by price. The maximum amount of gold a shopkeeper can give you is what he carries.
When stealing, you'll probably want to buy the last few shop items on credit, rather than waste time and nutrition having your pet take it. Be aware that the shopkeeper will sell unidentified gems as if they are the most expensive type of their colour.
If your pet needs to eat, it can starve while you block the door and force it to shoplift. Pets which do not eat may become un-tame.
Throw tripe rations or meatballs (cast stone to flesh on rocks) at your cat/dog, or carrots or apples at your horse, immediately after they drop an item at your feet, to encourage them to fetch. Stand in the doorway and let your pet drop items on the first square, which counts as outside the shop. Drop gold in the shop for credit and have your pet steal it back. Shopkeepers ignore pet thieves.
Page created: 25th September 2009. Last updated: 27th September 2009