Worm tooth

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Revision as of 03:13, 9 April 2020 by Andrio Celos (talk | contribs) (NetHack 3.7: worm teeth are now made of bone.)
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) Worm tooth.png
Name worm tooth
Appearance worm tooth
Damage vs. small 1d2
Damage vs. large 1d2
To-hit bonus 0
Weapon skill knife
Size one-handed
Base price 2 zm
(+10/positive
enchant)
Weight 20
Material undefined

A worm tooth may be left behind when a long worm dies. It is considered a weapon that uses the knife skill.

In its natural state, a worm tooth does little damage, but it can be turned into a powerful crysknife by enchanting it. Be careful to keep the crysknife in your possession; if dropped, it will revert to a +0 worm tooth (with a chance of resisting if fixed).

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Worm teeth are now made of bone.

Generation

Worm teeth are not generated separately from long worms.

Strategy

A crysknife is inferior to many artifact weapons, so not normally of use except as a secondary weapon when two-weaponing or because of a conduct.

Over the course of the game the player is likely to encounter several long worms. Reverse genocide will yield an average of 5 worm teeth per scroll.

Using a means of creating monsters (or waiting for them to spawn) could work as well, but long worms are quite rare, so this may take considerable time. They will not spawn if the average of the player's level and the dungeon level is less than 9.

Even if you are willing to wish for a crysknife, if you have a worm tooth, it is better to wish for 2-3 scrolls of enchant weapon, perhaps generating some extra scrolls.

History

In NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions, worm teeth did not stack.[1] As of NetHack 3.6.0, worm teeth stack and can even be thrown multishot, given a high enough knife skill.[2] Even when several are thrown at once, however, worm teeth deal too little damage to make them good ranged weapons.

SLASH'EM

The Wyrm Caves branch in SLASH'EM contains four random w, any one of which may be a long worm.

Mythology

The worm tooth represents the tooth of a dead sandworm from Frank Herbert's Dune series of novels.

Encyclopedia entry

[The crysknife] is manufactured in two forms from teeth taken
from dead sandworms. The two forms are "fixed" and "unfixed".
An unfixed knife requires proximity to a human body's
electrical field to prevent disintegration. Fixed knives
are treated for storage. All are about 20 centimeters long.

[ Dune, by Frank Herbert ]

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-360}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.