Wood

Wood is a kind of material for items that appears in NetHack.

Wooden objects are subject to burning and rotting; for wooden weapons, they can be burnt by dropping them in lava or using them to strike a monster with a fire-based passive attack ²⁄₃ of the time. Elven weapons and several pieces of elven armor are made of wood; these may be made of (or at least inspired by) D&D's ironwood.

Gelatinous cubes will engulf and eat any wooden items they come across; polymorphing into a gelatinous cube will also allow you to eat wooden items.

List of wooden items

The following items are made of wood:

• Elven items
  • Elven daggers
    • Sting, an artifact elven dagger
  • Elven short swords
  • Elven broadswords
    • Orcrist, an artifact elven broadsword
  • Elven bows
  • Elven arrows
  • Elven spears
  • Elven shields
• Clubs
• Quarterstaves
  • The Staff of Aesculapius, an artifact quarterstaff
• Orcish bows
• Bows and the artifact Longbow of Diana
• Yumi
• Crossbows
• Boomerangs
• Small shields
• Flutes and harps
• Chests and large boxes
• Wands with the randomized appearance of oak, balsa, ebony, maple, pine, or forked
• Rings with the "wooden" randomized appearance

Strategy

Polyself into a gelatinous cube allows you to eat wooden items, which in practice can be very occasionally useful for eating wooden jewelry to gain otherwise unobtainable intrinsics.