Ring of warning
A ring of warning is a type of ring that appears in NetHack.
Contents
Generation
Wizards may be given a ring of warning as one of the two random rings in their starting inventory.[1]
General stores and jewelers shops can sell rings of warning.
Description
Putting on the ring grants the warning property, which allows the hero to detect the presence of most hostile monsters beyond their sight. Monsters will not wear this ring.
A hero eating the ring has a 1⁄3 chance of successfully absorbing its magic and gaining intrinsic warning.[2]
Strategy
The ring of warning is a valuable early find for many roles in order to detect stronger hostile monsters as they work towards progressing out of the early game, and is a valuable supplement to telepathy since it can detect mindless monster that would be missed otherwise. Several roles gain warning through experience levels, which renders this ring useless for them beyond polyfodder, and a few other roles can gain the property from their quest artifact—dedicated vegans, zen heroes and various multiple-conduct character builds among others may consider keeping a few to wear or even eat as a means of detecting hostile monsters if telepathy sources would either break those conducts, or else they prove especially scarce.
Identification
While wearing the ring of warning will not auto-identify it and its base cost of 100zm is fairly common, an attentive hero can informally identify it by wear-testing rings in areas where known hostiles are outside the hero's sight, e.g. mimics within shops—the immediate presence of number glyphs (or colored question marks, if playing with the default tileset) after putting on an unknown ring of warning is usually enough to tip off the player. Dropping the ring down a sink also produces a distinct message.[3]
History
The ring of warning first appears in Hack 1.0. From this version to NetHack 3.3.0, including some variants based on those versions, a ring of warning displays messages indicating a colored flash when a hostile monster is nearby, with the color corresponding to the warning numbers in later versions:[4] pink corresponds to "1", red to "2", ruby to "3", purple to "4", and black to "5". Messages higher in the list take precedence over lower ones; while blinded, no warning messages are displayed, and while hallucinating rings of warning are referred to as "mood rings" and their colors are replaced with hallucinatory ones. No warning messages are displayed from the ring if one has been displayed within the hero's last ten actions, unless the new message reflects a higher level of warning than the previous one.
The current warning system is first implemented in NetHack 3.3.1.
Older messages
- Your left/right ring glows <color>!"
- You are wearing a ring of warning.
- Your rings both glow <color>!
- You are wearing two rings of warning.
Messages
- The sink glows white for a moment.
- You dropped a ring of warning down a sink.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, Flame Mages, Ice Mages and Necromancers may be given a ring of warning as the random ring in their starting inventory.[5][6][7]
