Bane
The banes are a group of artifact weapons that each deal double damage to a specific group of monsters:
Strategy
They are generally considered to be worthless for most purposes or else underpowered excessively niche, though this is not always the case; for example, Sunsword is useful as a light source and gremlin/undead deterrent, and Dragonbane may see more use than others, due to providing reflection when wielded and aiding in obtaining dragon scales to convert into dragon scale mail.
'False' banes
In some cases, NetHack and its community also uses the phrase "bane" for items that do not necessarily belong in the above group.
- Magicbane has no double damage bonus.
- Wolfsbane is not a weapon at all, but a comestible named after a real-life plant
- These common terms were coined as a reference to or parody of the Banes:
Fire and Frost Brand are not considered banes, as their range of specialty is very large.
Variants
Because the banes are often considered underpowered, it is very common for them to be buffed in variants.
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"Include more information about the buffs to Banes where possible, particularly in the SLASH'EM section."
dNetHack
In dNetHack all vanilla banes except Sunsword also give you warning of targeted monster types.
In addition to buffing the banes from vanilla, dNetHack adds more banes, ranging from moderately useful to highly useless.
In addition, more nameable banes exist:
dNetHack also replaces Dragonbane with Dragonlance.
FIQHack
In FIQHack, all the vanilla banes other than Sting and Orcrist no longer deal double damage to monsters they target. Instead, they deal +1d20 damage to those monsters. This makes the banes more useful at +0 than they would be in vanilla NetHack.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, Giantslayer is replaced by Giantkiller.
Giantkiller and the vanilla banes now have a 15% chance of cancelling the monsters they target. The +1d5 chance to-hit of most banes is increased to a flat +5.
SLASH'EM also adds new weapons specific to particular monster types:
- Deathsword
- Disrupter
- Elfrist
- Holy Spear of Light
- Thiefbane, generated on One-Eyed Sam
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack all vanilla banes except Sunsword also give you warning of targeted monster types.
UnNetHack also adds Thiefbane, which is generated on One-Eyed Sam.
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-364}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.