The Longbow of Diana

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)   The Longbow of Diana   Bow.png
Base item bow
Damage vs. small 1d2
Damage vs. large 1d2
To-hit bonus +1d5
Bonus versus (any)
Weapon skill bow
Size one-handed
Affiliation
When carried
When wielded
When invoked
Base price 4000 zm
Weight 30
Material wood

The Longbow of Diana is the Ranger quest artifact. It is the prize for completing the Ranger quest, and is chaotic for wishing purposes. Its base item type is a bow.

When carried, the Longbow of Diana confers telepathy; when wielded, it confers reflection and grants a +d5 to-hit bonus when firing arrows. Invoking the Bow creates arrows with the same beatitude as the bow, with a small chance of producing poisoned arrows. Beatitude also influences the amount of arrows created each time: a blessed Bow creates more arrows, up to 21 per invoke, while a cursed Bow will create fewer, at most 11 per invoke.

Strategy

See also: Invoke § Optimum invocation schedule

The Longbow of Diana is considered one of the more unimpressive chaotic artifacts, and is generally regarded as one of the weakest artifacts in the game. Since the base type of the Longbow is an ordinary bow, it will not provide racial multishot bonuses, making it a somewhat poorer weapon than the starting bow for non-human Rangers; gnomish Rangers in particular have an entirely different launcher with its own skill to boot.

Furthermore, arrows are often plentiful in the dungeon, either from arrow traps or enemy archers, and blessed arrows are very unlikely to break with high Luck; this makes it unlikely that invoking the artifact will occur very often, if at all. That said, the Longbow does provide two useful intrinsics in its reflection and telepathy; however, it must be wielded to convey reflection, and the presence of centaurs throughout the Ranger quest is likely to warrant having a source of reflection before entering it.

Arrow creation details

Main article: RNE

The enchantment range of the arrows is inclusive and depends on rne(3) and the current beatitude of the Longbow.[1][2] A blessed Longbow will only produce arrows with enchantment from 0 to 10; a cursed Longbow will only produce arrows with enchantment from -10 to 0; and an uncursed Longbow will produce arrows in the range of -10 to 10. The probability distribution of the enchantments is not uniform.

Arrows generated from the blessed or cursed Longbow of Diana are more likely to be +0 than randomly generated blessed or cursed arrows. This is because mksobj, which arti_invoke calls to generate the arrows, can produce arrows of any BUC, regardless of the BUC of the longbow; arti_invoke changes the BUC status of the arrows after mksobj returns, bringing negative enchantments on blessed arrows and positive enchantments on cursed arrows to 0.

History

The Longbow of Diana first appears in NetHack 3.3.0 alongside the Ranger role, under the name of The Longbow of Artemis. It was renamed in NetHack 3.3.1.

Variants

Many variants attempt to improve on the Longbow in some manner.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, as of version 5.1.0 the Longbow of Diana gives +1 to multishot and a +1 damage bonus when firing any type of arrow.[3]

EvilHack

In EvilHack, The Longbow of Diana also adds a +d6 damage bonus to arrows fired with it. EvilHack adds The Crossbow of Carl as an 'alternate' quest artifact for gnomish Rangers - its base item is a crossbow, ensuring that they retain their racial multishot bonus, and it otherwise possess all the same properties as the Longbow of Diana in that game.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, the Longbow of Diana is a silvered bow that grants +1d5 to-hit and +1d6 damage bonuses, with +8 damage per fired arrow; it additionally grants an inherent +1 multishot bonus (+2 for Rangers), and arrows fired from it have no maximum range - this means they will continue flying until they hit a wall or another monster. The invoke effect remains unchanged.

Gnomish Rangers are instead given their own quest and artifact: they fight the Great High Shaman of Kurtulmak for The Rogue Gear-spirits, an artifact crossbow.

Encyclopedia entry

This legendary bow grants ESP when carried and can reflect magical
attacks when wielded. When invoked it provides a supply of arrows.

References