Elven mithril-coat
[ elven mithril-coat 
| |
|---|---|
| Appearance | elven mithril-coat |
| Slot | body armor |
| AC | 5 |
| Special | |
| Base price | 240 zm |
| Weight | 150 |
| Material | mithril |
An elven mithril-coat is a type of body armor that appears in NetHack. It is made of mithril.
Contents
Generation
Elven heroes start the game with knowledge of the elven mithril-coat, despite it lacking a randomized appearance.[1]
Elven-mithril coats make up 3⁄200 (1.5%) of all randomly-generated armor created on the floor, as death drops or in shops. General stores, used armor dealerships and antique weapon outlets can stock elven mithril-coats.
Live elves have an effective 1⁄4 chance of being generated with an elven mithril-coat.[2] Hobbits have a 1⁄10 chance of generating with an elven mithril-coat.[3]
Player monster barbarians, knights, priests, and valkyries have an effective 3⁄124 chance (roughly ~2.42%) of starting with an elven mithril-coat in place of their initial body armor.[4][5][6][7]
Description
While worn, an elven mithril-coat confers 5 base AC and MC2. Wearing or taking off an elven mithril-coat takes only 1 turn.[8]
Elven mithril-coats can safely be enchanted with a scroll of enchant armor from an enchantment of +5 like other elven armor.
Strategy
Elven-mithril coats are among the best available body armor after dragon scale mail, and obtaining one is often a major goal for early heroes due to its high AC. They also weigh much less than the various types of plate mail (including bronze plate mail and crystal plate mail) in return for slightly less base AC, which is especially ideal for heroes with low strength and/or no bag of holding. Characters in spellcasting roles can occasionally make use of a mithril-coat to boost AC, only removing it to cast as needed: the 1 turn to put on or remove mithril-coats is also more convenient for them, versus 5 turns for most other body armor.
Though the dwarvish mithril-coat has one more point of base AC, an elven mithril-coat can be safely boosted to a higher enchantment, and is somewhat easier to obtain earlier in the game if a hero can grab one off a hobbit. Barring a wish, an elven mithril-coat can easily last as a character's primary armor throughout the mid-game or until their desired set of dragon scales becomes available, whichever occurs first. The coat's material protects it from erosion of any kind, though it still breaks if a polymorph trap turns the hero into a large enough monster.
History
Hack 1.21, which is based on Jay Fenlason's Hack, features an ancestor to the elven mithril-coat in the form of elfin chain mail, which also appears in NetHack 1.3d. Elfin chain mail has most of the same qualities: it is a light form of body armor that is fairly rare, provides 5 AC and MC3 when worn, and takes a near-minimum amount of time to put on or remove. In NetHack 3.0.0, elfin chain mail is replaced by the elven mithril-coat in its current form—from this version to NetHack 3.4.3, including variants based on those versions, it still grants MC3 when worn.
The Elf role will always start the game with elfin chain mail if the TOLKIEN compile-time option is enabled, which is replaced by the elven mithril-coat from NetHack 3.0.0 to NetHack 3.2.3 as above.
Variants
Variants of NetHack based on NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions may retain the MC3 granted by wearing an elven mithril-coat, while variants that implement object materials may replace the elven mithril-coat with a similar item that can be made of mithril.
Some variants give elves an AC bonus for wearing an elven mithril-coat or equivalent armor, including elven heroes.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, the elven mithril-coat grants MC3 while worn.
Upgrading an elven mithril-coat produces a dark elven mithril-coat, and vice versa.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, elven mithril-coats grant +1 AC to elven monsters that wear them, including elven heroes.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, the elven mithril-coat grants 3 base AC, 2 base DR and MC3 while worn, and its weight is lowered to 20 aum.
An elven mithril-coat can be used to repair the mithril articulation of imperial elven body armor, which grants it +1 AC and +1 DR while worn and changes it from heavy armor to medium armor, granting it the standard medium armor bonus to AC/DR equal to 1⁄2 of the hero's dexterity.
xNetHack
In xNetHack, the elven mithril-coat is replaced with elven ring mail, which has a base material of copper and grants 2 base AC—a mithril set of elven ring mail behaves identically to an elven mithril-coat, since mithril body armor will always grant at least MC2.
Hobbits have a 1⁄10 chance of generating with elven ring mail, which will always be mithril for them.
SpliceHack
In SpliceHack, elven mithril-coats are replaced with elven ring mail, similar to xNetHack.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, the elven mithril-coat is replaced with elven chain mail. Elven chain mail grants 5 base AC while worn, has a base material of copper, and grants +1 AC to elven monsters that wear them, including elven heroes—when made of mithril, it behaves similarly to an improved elven mithril-coat, granting two more points of base AC and MC2 (or MC3 for elves).
Hack'EM
In Hack'EM, elven mithril-coats are replaced with elven chain mail, which behaves as in EvilHack.
Encyclopedia entry
_Mithril_! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like
copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make
of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel.
Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty
of _mithril_ did not tarnish or grow dim.
References
- ↑ src/u_init.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 828
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 225: Default equipment for elves
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 364
- ↑ src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 174: 1⁄2 for barbarians and other mentioned roles to get random body armor within the range of objects from plate mail to chain mail in objects.c, using normal generation odds
- ↑ src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 201: body armor for knights
- ↑ src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 215: body armor for priests
- ↑ src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 242: body armor for valkyries
- ↑ src/objects.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 417
