Dwarvish spear

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) Dwarvish spear.png
Name dwarvish spear
Appearance stout spear
Damage vs. small 1d8
Damage vs. large 1d8
To-hit bonus +0
Weapon skill spear
Size one-handed
Base price 3 zm
(+10/positive
enchant)
Weight 35
Material iron

A dwarvish spear is a type of weapon that appears in NetHack. It is a stackable one-handed weapon that uses the spear skill and is made of iron, and appears as a stout spear when unidentified.

Generation

Dwarven heroes start the game with knowledge of the dwarvish spear. Any dwarven character that would start the game with a spear will start with a dwarvish spear instead - currently, there are no applicable roles where this substitution occurs.[1]

Dwarvish spears make up about 1.2% of randomly generated weapons. General stores, antique weapon outlets and used armor dealerships can sell dwarvish spears.

Non-undead dwarves that are generated with a dwarvish short sword have an effective 14 chance of generating with a dwarvish spear.[2]

Player monsters, including those generated on the Astral Plane, have a 3290 chance (just above 1%) of being generated with a stack of 1-4 dwarvish spears as their initial weapon before role-based replacements.[3][4]

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Valkyries have their starting long sword exchanged for a spear—dwarven Valkyries thus start the game with a +1 dwarvish spear, making use of the existing racial substitution.

Strategy

The dwarvish spear is the strongest among spear weapons, dealing damage on par with a scimitar, elven short sword or a silver saber against non-silver haters - it is also the heaviest, weighing 5 aum more than a regular spear. Cavepeople that happen upon a dwarvish spear can use it as a solid melee weapon, and can collect more to use as a multishot-compatible projectile, though a stack of dwarvish spears can become heavy quickly.

History

The dwarvish spear first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, dwarven Valkyries start the game with a +1 dwarvish spear, making use of the existing substitution code from NetHack 3.4.3.[5][6]

SporkHack

In SporkHack, the base item of Dragonbane is changed from a broadsword to a dwarvish spear. It has +d5 to-hit and +d4 damage, confers all dragon-based resistance properties while wielded, and has a 12 chance of instantly slaying any dragon it hits.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, Dragonbane is a dwarvish spear as in SporkHack and behaves mostly the same, except that its instakill chance is reduced to 15, and wielding it also grants warning of dragons.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, the dwarvish spear deals d10 damage to all monsters, and its weight is lowered to 30 aum.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, a dwarvish spear can be created at a forge by combining a spear and 2 arrows, and a dwarvish spear can be combined with a short sword to create a dwarvish short sword.

Hack'EM

In Hack'EM, successfully untrapping a spear trap has a chance of generating an intact dwarvish spear.

Upgrading a dwarvish spear will produce an orcish spear, and upgrading an elven spear will produce a dwarvish spear.

In addition to EvilHack forging recipes, a dwarvish spear can be combined with a flail to create an aklys.

References

  1. src/u_init.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 224: Race-based substitutions for initial dwarf inventory
  2. src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 378: 12 chance not to generate with a dwarvish mattock, followed by 12 chance at a spear
  3. src/mplayer.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 155: 12 to get a random weapon - the designated range of objects covers weapons from the spear to the bullwhip inclusively in objects.c, and uses normal generation odds
  4. src/u_init.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 275: stackable weapons for player monsters
  5. u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 229
  6. u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 343