Appearance is one of the main attributes.
Purposes
- Corruption gain is adjusted by a factor of 100/(90 + Appearance); corruption removal is adjusted by a factor of 1 + (Appearance - 10)/100
- For females, Appearance is the main stat used to determine prices in shops. The attitude of the shopkeeper also heavily depends on his and the character's race.
The manual hints at Appearance drawing positive and negative attention, which may control how many monsters are generated peaceful. Appearance may also have some effect on taming or giving orders to companions, but Charisma is likely to be of far greater relevance in this regard.
Another, very minor benefit of a high Appearance stat is that the PC will not lose Perception from a rooms filled with shattering mirrors; a character with 18+ Appearance will "look great in all of them" and gain a Charisma point instead.
How to train it
Leveling up
Like all attributes, Appearance is slightly trained every time the PC levels up. The Athletics skill increases the amount of Appearance training gained.
How to raise it
Stat potions
Potions of beauty and potions of gain attributes can be used to increase Appearance. There is no soft or hard cap for using these; blessed potions of gain attributes give +1 (to all other stats also), uncursed potions of beauty give +1, blessed potions +2.
Room effects
The PC may be hit in the face and blinded by a glob of mud. This causes a temporary loss of 1 Appearance—however, once the player wipes his/her face with the 'F' command, he will gain 2 Appearance for a net gain of 1.
Eating Corpses
Corpses that ignore potential: Ultimate doppelganger (trolls only)
Starsign
The Unicorn starsign grants a +2 Appearance bonus.
Class powers
- Bards receive +6 Appearance as part of their level 50 class power.
Corruption
There are no corruptions that give bonuses to Appearance.
Talents
The "Good Looks" talent that is only available at the start of the game increases initial Appearance by 3.
How to abuse It
Corruption
Many corruptions negatively affect Appearance:
- Tentacle mouth: -15
- Very light, extra eyes, bulging cranium, babbling mouth, stilt legs corruptions: -6
- Decaying tissue: -5
- Skin turning into scales, antennae, horns, maggot sprouting, bloody sweat corruptions: -4
- Thorns, apish look, gills corruptions: -3
- Single eye: -2
- Cold blooded: -1
Scars from corrupted tissue can be healed by gelee royal. Each lump will remove a single scar, blessed ones possibly more.
Corpses
Eating fomorian giant corpses will decrease Appearance by one, while it may increase Strength by one.
Other
The stat reduces when the PC reaches old age, then again at 'very old' age. Kissing a frog may reduce this stat by one point (available for females only).
Generally speaking, it's not very easy to train or abuse Appearance.
Items
Several items in the game will grant an Appearance bonus if worn (standard bonus in brackets). These include:
- the cloak of adornment (+4), diadem of beauty (+4), pendant of beauty (+4), helm of beauty (+1), clean robe (+2), and fancy clothes (+1), as well as body armor with the prefix "shining" (+1), "beautiful" (+4), and "gorgeous" (+8), while "vile" reduces Appearance to 1
- the artifact Medal of Chaos (+12)
The ancient mummy wrapping (-8), as well as normal mummy wrappings (-6), ugly clothes (-1) and blood-stained robes (-2), will reduce Appearance. Wearing any rusty item will reduce Appearance by 1.
Requirements
Appearance is not a requirement for any talents.