Eating jewelry
Eating jewelry is a method to permanently gain the intrinsics conveyed by wearing some rings and amulets. To eat a ring or amulet, one must first polymorph into a creature that can eat the material of the ring or amulet.
The material of a ring is dependent upon its randomized appearance, not its function. Not all rings are edible, so the set of rings that can be eaten varies from game to game. All amulets are iron, so they are edible by metallivores, specifically rock moles, rust monsters, and xorns.
Eating a ring has a one in three chance of conveying its powers to the eater, while eating an amulet only has a one in five chance of conveying its powers.[1] If the intrinsic is granted, you get the following message: "Magic spreads through your body as you digest the {ring|amulet}" as opposed to the traditional intrinsic gain message.
Eating other objects only confers nutrition.
Artifacts are treated as their base items for eating purposes. This means that you can accidentally eat your great weapon or quest artifact. It will then be lost forever.
Contents
Edible rings
The edible rings, and who can eat them, are given in the following table:
Image | Appearance | Material | Consumable by |
---|---|---|---|
iron | iron | any metallivore | |
twisted | iron | any metallivore | |
steel | iron | any metallivore | |
wire | iron | any metallivore | |
engagement | iron | any metallivore | |
shiny | iron | any metallivore | |
bronze | copper | metallivore not restricted to rustprone metals (rock mole, xorn) | |
brass | copper | metallivore not restricted to rustprone metals | |
copper | copper | metallivore not restricted to rustprone metals | |
silver | silver | metallivore not restricted to rustprone metals | |
gold | gold | metallivore not restricted to rustprone metals | |
wooden | wood | gelatinous cube | |
granite | mineral | inedible | |
clay | mineral | inedible | |
coral | mineral | inedible | |
moonstone | mineral | inedible | |
opal | mineral | inedible | |
black onyx | mineral | inedible | |
jade | gemstone | inedible | |
agate | gemstone | inedible | |
topaz | gemstone | inedible | |
sapphire | gemstone | inedible | |
ruby | gemstone | inedible | |
diamond | gemstone | inedible | |
emerald | gemstone | inedible | |
tiger eye | gemstone | inedible | |
pearl | bone | inedible | |
ivory | bone | inedible |
Effects of eating rings
Ring of protection: +n AC if current protection is less than 10. If current protection is 10-19, you gain one AC. If current protection is between 20-39, you have a 1-in-n chance of getting nothing and otherwise gain one AC.
Most of these intrinsics can come from sources besides rings, although eating them may still be useful. For example, they provide a pacifist way to obtain resistances, or a safe way to obtain teleport control without the risk of teleportitis from a tengu.
Notably, eating rings is the only source of intrinsic conflict, regeneration, hunger, polymorphitis, polymorph control, protection from shape changers, increased damage or increased accuracy. Furthermore, intrinsic searching and warning are only granted to certain roles at certain experience levels, and stealth is hard to get as an intrinsic, whereas rings may confer them to any player.
However, some of these intrinsics come with downsides. Regeneration and conflict permanently increase your hunger rate in addition to their useful properties; hunger, of course, simply does so with no benefit. These effects are cumulative. Hunger from eating rings of regeneration or conflict is part of the regeneration or conflict effect itself, and thus it cannot be separately removed by a gremlin. Polymorphitis is not a desirable property even for characters with polymorph control: each polymorph still has a 20% chance of polymorphing you into your own race, in which case random stat shuffling can occur.
Effects of eating amulets
Amulet | Effect | |
---|---|---|
amulet of change | change gender | |
amulet of ESP | gain telepathy | |
amulet of life saving | no effect[2] | |
amulet of magical breathing | gain magical breathing | |
amulet of reflection | no effect[2] | |
amulet of restful sleep | gain restful sleep | |
amulet of strangulation | immediately choke | |
amulet of unchanging | unpolymorph | |
amulet versus poison |
gain poison resistance | |
cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor | inedible | |
Amulet of Yendor |
inedible |
The only amulet which is generally useful to eat is the amulet of magical breathing. All the others either give no effect, a property which is easily obtainable otherwise, or a property which is downright harmful.
Strategy
You will usually need to eat many rings or amulets to get any given intrinsic. If you are limited in ways to polymorph yourself it's important to have duplicates readily available, so you can eat them all before you revert to your normal form. Short of polypiling it is unlikely you'll have enough to be almost certain to get the intrinsic for amulets:
Rings Eaten | Likelihood of Intrinsic (%) |
---|---|
1 | 33.3333 |
6 | 91.2209 |
12 | 99.2293 |
18 | 99.9323 |
23 | 99.9911 |
29 | 99.9992 |
Amulets Eaten | Likelihood of Intrinsic (%) |
---|---|
1 | 20.0000 |
11 | 91.4101 |
21 | 99.0777 |
31 | 99.901 |
42 | 99.9915 |
52 | 99.9991 |
Limitations
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"There was an rgrn thread some time ago stating protection does not wrap around, i. e. it is stored in a 16-bit integer and clipped to 8 bit after the fact."
The amount of protection or damage and accuracy bonus you can obtain this way is only limited by the number of rings in the game (provided they have an edible appearance). However, these attributes are stored in a signed char, so you do not want your total bonus (including weapon / armor type and enchantment, skill level, worn rings etc) to exceed +127 lest it wrap around and become negative.
History
In NetHack 3.4.3, rings of protection, increase damage and increase accuracy had no limitations beyond the 33% to acquire the bonus in first place.
SLASH'EM
SLASH'EM offers five new ring materials and five new functions. Ridged rings can be eaten by any metallivore. The other four, wedding, obsidian, plain, and glass rings, cannot be eaten by any monster.
Ring | Intrinsic granted |
---|---|
mood ring | no effect |
sleeping | restful sleep |
dexterity | +n dexterity until unpoly |
intelligence | +n intelligence until unpoly |
wisdom | +n wisdom until unpoly |
Amulet | Effect |
---|---|
amulet of flying | no effect |
amulet of drain resistance | no effect |
amulet versus stone | reverses stoning |
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.
References
- ↑ eat.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 1481
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 A comment in the source says "nice try".