Food

Food is essential in Brogue. If you eat a Ration of Food whenever you become hungry, no nurtition will be wasted. A mango provides slightly less nutrition, so can be eaten earlier. There is a very limited menu in Brogue:

• A Ration of Food will keep you going another 1800 turns
• A Mango will keep you going 1550 turns

The generation of food items is regulated by the game; you are guaranteed to find nutrition equivalent to one ration every three levels, and this increases as you descend in order to balance the fact that lower levels tend to take longer to complete. This means that relatively few characters will starve to death. However, some situations or tactics can cause you to take much longer to complete levels; watch your food supply in these cases:

• Using Staffs of Poison to kill monsters can take a long time, as poison deals a fixed 1 point of damage per turn.
• Trapping yourself in an obstruction in order to avoid danger may result in levels taking a long time to finish if you do it frequently.
• If you use the rest command to wait until you have fully healed, bear in mind the amount of nutrition that will be consumed. Of course, exploring when low on health is dangerous, so the solution is probably to improve your tactics and take less damage, rather than stop resting. Even a low level Ring of Regeneration will greatly reduce the time it takes you to rest to full health.

Because mangos are less space efficient than rations, consider eating mangos first. If you select a food item in the inventory, the description will tell you whether you can eat it without wasting nutrition.

If you do not eat, you will starve. If you have food in your pack when you start to starve, you will eat it automatically.

Food placement[]

Brogue guarantees that you will find the nth Ration of Food or Mango (in addition to the starting ration and full nutrition bar) no later than a certain dungeon level.

The level depends on the number of mangos seen as follows.

0 mangos: (4,8,11,15,18,20,23,26,28,31,33,36,38,40)
1 mango: (-,7,11,14,17,20,23,25,28,30,33,35,38,40)
2 mangos: (-,-,10,14,17,20,22,25,28,30,33,35,37,40)
3 mangos: (-,-,-,13,16,19,22,25,27,30,32,35,37,39)
4 mangos: (-,-,-,-,16,19,22,24,27,29,32,34,37,39)
5 mangos: (-,-,-,-,-,18,21,24,27,29,32,34,36,39)