Loadstone

*
Name	loadstone
Appearance	gray stone
Damage vs. small	1d3
Damage vs. large	1d3
To-hit bonus	+0
Weapon skill	sling
Size	one-handed
Base price	1 zm (+10/positive enchant)
Weight	500
Material	mineral

A loadstone is not a desirable gem to have on your person. It is extremely heavy and normally generated cursed, meaning you cannot drop it or place it into a container. You can get rid of it is by removing its curse somehow - by scroll, spell, holy water, or dipping it in a fountain. Prayer can work under certain circumstances; having a cursed loadstone counts as a minor trouble. You also can have it stolen by a nymph. The spell of stone to flesh will also dispose of it. You can wield a loadstone but you cannot get rid of the cursed status by reading a scroll of enchant weapon.

Loadstones autocurse when they are dropped or leave your main inventory in any other way.

Loadstones also are one of the most easily picked-up items in NetHack. Any setting of the pickup_burden variable will be ignored if the character attempts to pick up a loadstone, and other inventory restrictions may be ignored as well -- in the case that a character's knapsack has already reached the 52-item limit, it is not uncommon for a loadstone to still find its place among the other items, its inventory letter changed to a pound sign (#)!

Strategy

To test to see if a gray stone is a loadstone, kick it before you pick it up. Take off any items that add to your strength or kicking capabilities - remove Gauntlets of Power and kicking boots first, and ensure you are not polymorphed in to a creature that has a bonus to kicking, like a Sasquatch. Loadstones are heavy enough that they cannot be kicked under normal circumstances (unenhanced strength, not on ice, no equipped equipment or polyself to boost strength).

If for any reason you cannot (or do not want to) prevent yourself from having kicking bonuses, you can compare how far you can kick the suspected loadstone to objects with weights similar to other gray stones; a rock is ideal. A loadstone should travel much less far. Be careful though; some bonuses add a small random amount to the distance. Note that you should not kick fragile objects.

Lodestones are normally always cursed when on the ground, therefore using a pet to curse test an unknown gray stone is another possibility, especially if the stone is stuck next to undiggable walls. This is not an option if the stone is inside a container, however a loadstone inside a container will have a significant weight and you can get a pickup_burden warning when attempting to indirectly lift a loadstone.

If you are able to remove the curse without wasting any materials, e.g. you need to read a scroll of remove curse because your weapon became cursed, it is useful to deliberately pick up a known loadstone and #name or formally identify it to ease future identification. Beware Amnesia (attacks), as you may forget the identification for the loadstone and pick one up while having a false sense of security.

Origin

The name loadstone is a pun on the word lodestone, a naturally magnetic mineral.

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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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