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. The only way to get rid of it is to remove its curse somehow - by scroll, spell, holy water, or possibly to have it stolen by a nymph. Loadstones autocurse when they are dropped.

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 (#)!

To test to see if a gray stone is a loadstone, kick it before you pick it up. Loadstones cannot be kicked under normal circumstances (unenhanced strength, not on ice, not with kicking boots).

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