Miscellaneous Items Spoiler

misc-331.html Update version 1 for NetHack 3.3.1
Compiled for 3.2.2 by Kevin Hugo.
Updated for 3.3.1 by Dylan O'Donnell <psmith@spod-central.org>
HTML Conversion by Kate Nepveu <knepveu@steelpips.org>.

Contents

ITEM COST WGT PROB SYM DAMAGE NUTR
gold piece $ 1 0.01 1000 $ 0 0.01
boulder 0 6000 100 ' d20 2000
statue 0 vary 900 ' d20 2500
heavy iron ball 10 480 1000 0 d25* 200
iron chain 0 120 1000 _ d4+1 200
acid venom 0 1 500 . 2d6 0
blinding venom 0 1 500 . 0 0

Items are listed here by inventory category. Venom is generated only by spitting monsters and cannot be picked up. The COST field denotes the base price of each item. WGT specifies the weight. If the item can be randomly generated, then PROB is the relative probability of the item within that category. All of these items are generated uncursed. SYM is the object symbol. Damage to small and large monsters is the DAMAGE field. An additional +d4 of damage is added to iron balls each time the ball is made heavier, up to a total damage of 25. If an object can be eaten, its nutrition value is NUTR.

Finding spellbooks in statues

(Adapted in part from the spoiler "statues" by Bryan Butler <butler@cluster.gps.caltech.edu> and Boudewijn Waijers <kroisos@win.tue.nl>.)

Randomly created statues may contain one random spellbook. The chance of a spellbook in a statue depends upon the dungeon level on which the statue was created:

Level 1-3 4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11 12-13 20-21 30-31 n*2-(n*2)+1
Prob 0 1/12 2/13 3/14 4/15 5/16 9/20 14/25 (n-1)/(n+10)

Statues of tiny monsters never contain spellbooks.

Note that the Oracle is located somewhere between levels 5 and 9, so the average chance on that level that a statue contains a spellbook is about (1/12 + 2*2/13 + 2*3/14) / 5 = (1790/2184) / 5 = 0.164. Since there are always eight centaur statues on that level, the chance of finding no spellbook there is about 0.24. The chance of finding just one is about 0.37. The chance of finding two is about 0.26. Chances of finding more rapidly approach zero.

Note that the player-class statues not of Perseus on the Medusa level will always be empty; the seven or eight monster statues may contain the appropriate monster's starting inventory. Perseus' statue has a 50% chance of containing a blessed +2 scimitar and a 50% chance of containing a sack. If the version of the level is the one with the central island, there is also a 25% chance of +0 levitation boots and 75% chance of a cursed +0 shield of reflection; on the version with a titan, these two chances are reversed.

Statues created by stoning a monster contain only the items in the monster's inventory. You can break a statue with a pick axe, dwarvish mattock, wand of striking, or spell of force bolt. Breaking historic statues (the centaur statues of Delphi, the statue of Perseus, or petrified unique monsters) carries a -1 alignment penalty for Archeologists.

What to do with iron chains

Iron chains are the least useful items in the game since they perform no function as individual objects, have no value to sell to shopkeepers, aren't heavy enough to be a decent weapon, and will always polypile into another chain. Here are several somewhat trivial uses for these objects:

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Bruce Cox <mathetes@tig.com.au> for proofreading the original version of this file.
Damages corrected by Aero <aero@clark.net>.
Slowing metallivores by feeding them iron chains suggested by Pat Rankin <rankin@eql.caltech.edu>.


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