Ring of conflict
The ring of conflict is a ring that appears in NetHack.
Effects
Wearing the ring will generate conflict, causing all monsters within line of sight and a radius of eight squares to attack the nearest monster, including you; monsters may resist this effect dependent on level and monster magic resistance. Every even-numbered turn you wear the ring, your nutrition is decremented by 1.
Identification
Informal identification is fairly straightforward in theory: If you put on a ring and your tame pet suddenly begins attacking you, or peaceful monsters begin fighting you or each other, it is a ring of conflict. Dropping a ring of conflict into a sink will produce the message "You hear loud noises coming from the drain."
Strategy
Safe identification
The main difficulty in identifying the ring, besides making sure it is non-cursed, is doing so safely: Testing a suspected ring of conflict in the presence of a dangerous monster, even if they are peaceful or tame is completely inadvisable. A common YASD is to BUC test a ring as noncursed in a temple and immediately wear it, then quickly dying from the attacks of the aligned priest standing next to you. Finding the ring extremely early in the game can also be similarly dangerous for low-level characters with their starting pets, especially if cursed.
If you have the ring on near a normally-peaceful monster such as a priest, and they attack or wield their weapon with no provocation, it is a sign to take off the ring immediately. Do not use the ring near wand-using peacefuls such as shopkeepers unless you have reflection or another means of handling the magical assault. A somewhat safe method of testing rings for conflict is to make sure you and your pet are alone in a room, and that your pet cannot deal significant damage; having the pet on a leash also helps, as leashed pets will break free under conflict.
Wearing
The main use of a ring of conflict is thinning out sizable groups of enemies, and you can remove it once you are confident in handling the remaining survivors. Try to maintain distance from the other monsters if possible, especially in smaller rooms, and be ready to take the ring off if necessary to avoid an untimely death. Remember that monsters will only use their breath weapons against you; reflection is advised, primarily to protect yourself from both these and attack wands, and can also aid in taking out other monsters within the group. Make sure you have access to surplus food, and keep pets well away from the area if you are concerned about them dying—or else possibly killing you themselves.
Eating
While the ring of conflict can be eaten for a chance of obtaining conflict as an intrinsic, this has the same nutrition cost as extrinsic conflict, minus the ring hunger; in addition, conflict is one of the few intrinsics that cannot be stolen by gremlins or removed by any other means. Combined with the increased frequency of monster attacks, including peacefuls and pets, and some especially dangerous monsters being immune, this is generally a bad idea.
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.
