Eating jewelry
In NetHack, eating jewelry is a method to gain the intrinsics conveyed from certain rings and amulets.
Contents
Description
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 for metallivores: 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]
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.
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 | |||
steel | |||
wire | |||
engagement | |||
shiny | |||
bronze | copper | metallivore not restricted to rustprone metals (rock mole, xorn) | |
brass | |||
copper | |||
silver | silver | ||
gold | gold | ||
wooden | wood | gelatinous cube | |
granite | mineral | inedible | |
clay | |||
coral | |||
moonstone | |||
opal | |||
black onyx | |||
jade | gemstone | ||
agate | |||
topaz | |||
sapphire | |||
ruby | |||
diamond | |||
emerald | |||
tiger eye | |||
pearl | bone | ||
ivory |
Effects of eating rings
In 3.6.0 and later, digesting (positively enchanted) rings of protection, increase damage, and increase accuracy gives diminishing returns if you already have high intrinsic bonus of the same type.[2] Specifically, if digesting a +n ring would put you above +9, the +n bonus is reduced to a random number between 1 and n; if you have +19 or more, you have a (n-1) in n chance of getting a single extra point (otherwise you get nothing); at +39 or above digesting rings has no effect. In older versions of NetHack, due to a bug fixed in 3.6.2, eating a ring while wearing another ring of the same type could actually reduce your intrinsic bonus.
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 | |
amulet of magical breathing | gain breathlessness | |
amulet of reflection | no effect | |
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.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.
Amulets of guarding provide +2 intrinsic protection when eaten. Amulets of flying provide no effect when eaten.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 |
2 | 55.5556 |
3 | 70.3704 |
4 | 80.2469 |
5 | 86.8313 |
6 | 91.2209 |
12 | 99.2293 |
18 | 99.9323 |
23 | 99.9911 |
29 | 99.9992 |
Amulets Eaten | Likelihood of Intrinsic (%) |
---|---|
1 | 20.0000 |
2 | 36 |
3 | 48.8 |
4 | 59.04 |
6 | 73.7856 |
8 | 83.2228 |
11 | 91.4101 |
21 | 99.0777 |
31 | 99.901 |
42 | 99.9915 |
52 | 99.9991 |
Chargeable rings
If you're trying to get high intrinsic bonus to-hit/damage/AC, you will obviously want to eat rings as highly charged as you can find. However, charging them manually is usually not worth a thought unless you have the Platinum Yendorian Express Card or several spare magic markers. Even then, you need to balance increased charge with a risk of explosion, and because of this consideration, charging beyond +3 is usually a waste: even the blessed scroll will give you a ring with an average of 5 charges 4/7th of the time and nothing otherwise, so the expected charge is 20/7 which is less than 3 you started with; uncursed charging fares even worse.
Enchanting +2 rings always increases expected charge; however, due to how digesting them works, you will want to avoid that if you only have access to uncursed charging (PYEC as non-Tourist) and already have a +8 or higher intrinsic bonus: at this level, +2 rings only give +1.5 to the bonus on average, +3 rings give +2, and 2*5/7 is less than 1.5. Similarly, at +19 or above, +2 rings give +0.5, +3 rings give +0.67, and uncursed charging is undesirable as well. Blessed-charging +2 rings, however, is always fine.
You will obviously want to give first priority to enchanting +0 rings (and +1 rings if your bonus is already +19) as they don't contribute to your bonus at all when digested. Cancel negatively-charged rings instead of trying to enchant them.
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 and earlier versions, including some variants based on those versions, rings of protection, increase damage and increase accuracy have no limitations on stat gain beyond the 1⁄3 chance of acquiring the bonus in the first place.
Messages
- Magic spreads through your body as you digest the <ring/amulet>.
- You gained an intrinsic from eating jewelry.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, there are five new ring materials and five new ring functions. Ridged rings can be eaten by any metallivore, while 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 |
Gnollhack
In GnollHack, polymorphing into a lithivore allows the player to eat mineral-based jewelry.
References
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.