Narya
| = Narya | |
|---|---|
| Base item | ruby or gold ring |
| Affiliation | |
| When carried | none |
| When worn |
|
| When invoked | none |
| Base price | 0 zm |
| Weight | 6 |
Narya is an artifact that appears in dNetHack and notdNetHack. It is unaligned and elf-favoring, and its base item is a ring with the randomized appearance of a "ruby ring". If the ruby ring is a ring of polymorph in the current game, then Narya will appear as a gold ring instead.
Generation
Both Narya and the Ring of Thror have the same fallback appearance, but since they will both only become gold rings if their primary appearance is polymorph, at most one of the two will be a gold ring in a given game.
Description
While worn, Narya has the usual effects conferred by the ring whose appearance it matches, and additionally confers fire resistance. Each attack made in melee or with a thrown/fired weapon while wearing Narya adds +1d10 fire damage. Pets are "emboldened" while wearing Narya, which causes them to exit scared states in 1⁄4 of the time it would take otherwise - this does not stack for monsters that are already naturally bold.
Wearing Narya also massively lowers the failure rate of the fireball and firestorm spells, guaranteeing the ability to cast either spell at 0% fail rate for almost any character: this does not supersede the inability to cast spells for other reasons, e.g. the influence of the Spire, lacking free hands, or any other effects that block all spellcasting.
In addition, wearing Narya also applies a charisma-based modifier of (Cha-11)⁄2 to the wearer's successful saves versus sanity loss, usually significantly reducing the sanity damage taken, and always prevent the secondary effects of temporary madnesses. The modifier is also applied to pet to-hit and damage, and rolls a die of that modifier's size and adds the result to each pet AC.
Strategy
The effectiveness of all of the elf rings depends on their base item type in that game. If you're lucky enough to have a game where ruby rings are free action, then Narya is obviously much better than when it's a ring of hunger. Despite this, if you have a free ring slot and decent charisma it's possibly worth wearing.
For melee or ranged builds, Narya is possibly the least useful out of the elf rings. You benefit from the minor additional fire damage, but if you're not using pets or spells then you're not likely to make good use of the other properties. Guaranteed casting of fireball and firestorm are nice, but if you lack double spell damage then it's most likely not worth using them anyway. The benefit to saves versus sanity loss is nice, but has little to no effect without high charisma, and if you don't have high wisdom already (used for the base save modifier) then it's likely not going to make a huge difference.
For spellcaster builds, Narya can be helpful but is rather one-note - similar to weapon-based builds. You don't get much out of the bonus fire damage, but care more about the fail-less fire spells and the sanity saves. However, since Narya only benefits fire spells rather than all spells, you'd probably already have low fail rates on every spell you'd like to cast anyway, including fireball and firestorm.
For pet-based builds, Narya is possibly the best out of the elf rings. You will most likely have high charisma, since it raises pet capacity, and you make excellent use out of the emboldening along with the bonus damage, accuracy, and AC on pets. The extra fire damage or fire spells is less useful, but potentially decent if you'd like to support your pets by attacking yourself. The sanity save modifier is around as useful as it ever is - but you're much more likely to have a meaningful modifier size than builds without high charisma.
