Helm of brilliance
[  [  [  [  helm of brilliance | |
|---|---|
| Appearance | random |
| Slot | helm |
| AC | 1 |
| Special |
|
| Base price | 50 zm |
| Weight | 50 |
| Material | iron |
The helm of brilliance modifies the wearer's Intelligence and Wisdom by its amount of enchantment (even exceeding racial maximums), in addition to its normal AC bonus.
Even though the helm of brilliance is metal, it does not hinder spellcasting.[1]
The only artifact helm of brilliance is The Mitre of Holiness, the Priest quest artifact.
Identification
It will not auto-identify unless it has an enchantment. One simple way to determine if your +0 helm is a helm of brilliance is to examine your spell failure rates; the helm of brilliance is the only metal helm which will not make them worse.
Strategy
Wearing an enchanted helm of brilliance when leveling up may give you a larger amount of maximum Pw, because it increases your Wisdom.
The helm of brilliance also has a small effect on energy regeneration, since your energy regeneration depends on the sum of the player's Int and Wis.
The helm of brilliance is useful for spellcasters. A higher intelligence and wisdom reduces the failure rate of high-level spells and mitigates the penalties from wearing metallic armor. It is especially beneficial to characters who want to cast high-level spells in spell schools that they are limited in, such as a high level Priest attempting to cast polymorph using the Mitre of Holiness. However, for a character with already low spell failure rates, a helm of brilliance will likely not have a noticeable effect.
It is almost entirely useless for non-casters. You will die of brainlessness if sucked by a mind flayer at 3 base intelligence even if wearing an enchanted helm of brilliance. Pw gain for melee roles such as Valkyrie or Barbarian is still abysmal even with enhanced Wisdom, and only provides extremely marginal benefits.
NetHack 3.4.3 bug
In NetHack 3.4.3, using a cursed scroll of destroy armor on a cursed helm of brilliance or a cursed pair of gauntlets of dexterity reduced the enchantment of the piece of armor without altering the stats; after removing the piece of armor, stats would be permanently increased. You could even surpass your racial maximum that way, at least temporarily.
This became known as the "hobug" because the helm of brilliance is often abbreviated to HoB.
References
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.1. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-361}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
