Bane
The banes are a group of artifact weapons that each deal double damage to a specific group of monsters:
They are generally considered to be worthless for most purposes, since they reduce the probability of receiving a more useful artifact. Sunsword is useful as a light source.
Contents
False banes
In some cases, NetHack uses the phrase "bane" for items that aren't in the above group.
- Magicbane has no double damage bonus.
- Wolfsbane is not a weapon at all but a comestible, named after a real-life plant
There are also terms common in the community that are mockeries of the banes.
Fire and Frost Brand are not considered banes, as their range of specialty is very large.
Variants
Because the banes are often considered underpowered, it is very common for them to be buffed in variants.
dNetHack
In addition to buffing the above weapons, dNetHack adds more banes, ranging from moderately useful to highly useless.
In addition, more nameable banes exist:
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, Giantslayer is replaced by Giantkiller.
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
