Silver
Silver is a material composing a few items in the Dungeons of Doom. Silver cannot corrode or rust and hinders spellcasting when worn as armor. Striking with a silver object will deal silver damage against certain monster types. Any item made of silver is eligible for dealing damage to shades.
Silver haters will not pick up silver weapons or armor. However, they will pick up other silver items, like silver wands of speed monster. This goes for silver hating pets as well.
List of silver items
The following items are made of silver:
- silver sabers (including Grayswandir and Werebane)
- silver arrows
- silver daggers
- silver spears
- wands with the randomized appearance “silver wand”
- rings with the randomized appearance “silver ring”
- shields of reflection
- The Bell of Opening (a silver bell)
Press \ to check which of your wands and rings are made of silver.
in SLASH'EM they are additional silver weapons:
Notable non-silver items
Some items have silver in their name but this refers to their color, not their composition. These items (which do not deal silver damage) include:
- silver dragon scales and silver dragon scale mail (both are made of dragon hide)
- spellbooks with the randomized appearance “silver spellbook” (all spellbooks are made of paper)
Silver damage
Creatures vulnerable to silver are called silver-hating creatures. The following creatures are silver-hating:[1]
- all V vampires
- shades
- all proper & major demons (i.e. excluding riders, mail daemons, djinn and sandestins)
- all i minor demons, except tengu
- all lycanthropes
When one of these creatures is struck by a silver item, it will suffer an extra d20 damage.[2][3] This includes wielded non-weapons, or a silver ring worn while using hand to hand combat or martial arts without gloves (be careful!). The enormous damage bonus makes it a good idea to fight silver-haters even with a silver non-weapon, see the list above (though then you cannot twoweapon). (Don't forget to unwield your silver wand before hitting a disenchanter.)
Silver arrows deal silver damage only if shot from a bow. Wielding them, twoweaponing two stacks, or throwing them without a bow does not deal silver damage.
Silver weapons are one of the few things that can harm Shades. In some circumstances a make-shift silver weapon can be very valuable in Orcus Town. Mirrors do one point of damage to shades but are not truly classified as silver.
Unlike other damage bonuses, this extra silver damage will not be doubled by Grayswandir or Werebane.
References
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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
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