Grimtooth

)   Grimtooth
Base item	orcish dagger
Damage vs. small	1d3 +1d6
Damage vs. large	1d3 +1d6
To-hit bonus	+1d2
Bonus versus	(any)
Weapon skill	dagger
Size	one-handed
Affiliation	chaotic orcish
When carried	(none)
When wielded	detect elves
When invoked	(none)
Base price	300 zm
Weight	10
Material	iron

Grimtooth is a chaotic artifact orcish dagger that has +d2 to hit and adds +d6 damage against all monsters. It glows red when there are elves on the level. Elven players cannot wield Grimtooth, and attempting to do so deals damage ("You can't handle your crude dagger named Grimtooth!") in addition to the usual chance for blasting. Elven players will never receive Grimtooth as a gift.

As of NetHack 3.6.0, rogues on the Astral Plane have a 25% chance of starting with an orcish dagger. Any player monster's starting weapon has a 50% chance of being an artifact, if there is an artifact with that base item that has not been created yet, so a rogue's starting weapon may be Grimtooth.

Strategy

Grimtooth is one of the artifacts that get in the way of receiving Stormbringer through sacrifice. While a damage bonus versus all monsters are nice, this weapon is only about as effective as a normal long sword, and therefore is mostly useless. It does, however, average the same damage as a crysknife but without all the attendant bother. It might be useful to Wizards who don't want to over-enchant Magicbane, as a +7 Grimtooth will do more damage than a +2 Magicbane, but they would probably be better off using a gifted and unrestricted artifact weapon.

Average damage calculation

The average damage calculations in the following table do not include bonuses from weapon skills, strength, or from using a blessed weapon against undead or demons.

Weapon	Damage
+0 Grimtooth	$\frac{1+3}{2}+\frac{1+6}{2}=\bold{5.5}$
+7 Grimtooth	$\frac{1+3}{2}+\frac{1+6}{2}+7=\bold{12.5}$

Variants

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, Grimtooth is quite a bit more useful. It is permanently poisoned, so against monsters which are not poison resistant it deals an additional 1d6 damage and has a 10% chance of killing them instantly. Grimtooth is the first gift Rogues receive from sacrifice.

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, Grimtooth gives a flat +6 damage bonus as opposed to 1d6. Still, there are many better artifacts out there, particularly for chaotic players. It might be a decent choice for twoweaponing, which is allowed for artifacts in SLASH'EM.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, Grimtooth is permanently poisoned; however, the removal of poison instadeath makes it less powerful than in UnNetHack. Its base price is raised from 300 to 1000.

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-360}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.