Barrow wight
W barrow wight  
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 8 |
| Attacks |
Weapon 0d0 drain life, spell-casting 0d0 mage, claw 1d4 physical, Touch 1d4 cold |
| Base level | 3 |
| Base experience | 90 |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | 5 |
| Base MR | 5 |
| Alignment | -3 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1200 |
| Nutritional value | 0 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | Cold resistance, sleep resistance, poison resistance |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A barrow wight:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line1881 |
A barrow wight, W, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The barrow wight are wraith-like undead being that will seek out items such as weapons and armor to pick up, and will follow a hero to other levels if they are adjacent.
Barrow wights have a weapon attack that can drain life, the ability to cast one mage monster spell during each of their turns, and a claw attack that deals physical damage. Like other undead, they possess poison resistance, sleep resistance, cold resistance, drain resistance, and death resistance.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.
Per commit e41c0292, barrow wights also have a 1d4 cold touch attack.Contents
Generation
Randomly-generated barrow wights are always created hostile.
Barrow wights appear among the random W that are part of the second quest monster class for Wizards and make up 6⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Wizard quest.
Barrow wights are always generated with a long sword and a knife.[1]
A barrow wight does not leave a corpse upon death.
Heroes that die at the hands of a barrow wight and leave a bones file will arise as a named wraith instead of a ghost.
Strategy
Barrow wights move at the same base speed as an unburdened hero, and will often throw their knife (and any other projectiles they comes across) upon spotting you. A barrow wight can be more troublesome than expected to deal with: though their melee attacks are not particularly strong, they can drain levels and still cause significant damage using their long sword; their monster spells typically include stun, haste self, cure self, and psi bolt, which can potentially prolong a fight and may become deadly when fighting multiple hostiles. Alert players, especially ones that can stay out of melee range, can handle them fairly quickly and without too much trouble.
Once a barrow wight is destroyed, the long sword may be of interest to a hero looking for a solid melee weapon, including lawful heroes looking to dip for Excalibur. Barrow wights are also a source of knives for heroes planning to use a stack of them as projectiles (e.g. some Healers and Rogues).
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.
Per commit e8212743, there is only a 1⁄30 chance of a non-Knight receiving Excalibur by dipping.History
The barrow wight first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.
Origin
A "barrow" is a burial mound, such as the ones used in Neolithic times, while the word "wight" generally refers to a form of undead; the latter word describes a living human being in its original Old English usage, and has since come to be used within fantasy works such as A Song of Ice and Fire and Vampire: The Masquerade to describe immortal ghost-like beings. The earliest example of the modern wight is in William Morris's 1869 translation of the Grettis saga, a work of Icelandic family prose; here, haugbui (referring to undead monsters Glámr and Kárr) is translated as "barrow-wight".
NetHack derives barrow wights from J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth, which in turn bases them on Nordic folklores such as the ones translated by Morris, and they are typically depicted as wraith-like evil spirits—in The Lord of the Rings, the hobbit Frodo and his company narrowly escape a barrow-wight with the aid of Tom Bombadil, who then arms the group using "barrow-blades" and ancient swords from the wight's treasure-hoard. These blades are the basis for the barrow wight's NetHack starting inventory.
Variants
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, barrow wights have an additional 1d4 cold touch attack.
If a hero is killed by a Nazgul, they will rise as a barrow wight instead of a ghost if a bones file is created.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack, and notnotdNetHack, all 5 points of a barrow wight's AC are in the 'protection' category.
Barrow wights are generated with a stiletto instead of a knife—both the stiletto and their long sword each have a 1⁄5 chance of generating with an object material of silver and a 1⁄5 chance of generating as gold, and they also each have an independent 1⁄20 chance of generating with the "lesser holy" object property.
Barrow wights generated in the future (i.e. the Anachrononaut quest and Android quest) are created with a thoroughly tattered mummy wrapping that has an enchantment ranging from +1 to +7, as well as a mineral stiletto that has an enchantment ranging from +1 to +3—the stiletto has three independent chances of being given the misty property (1⁄5 chance), the faded property (1⁄2 chance), and the unholy property (1⁄2 chance and will cause the weapon to be cursed), and gains 1-3 more points of enchantment for each property that is applied. They will also have an item equipped to their head slot that has a 1⁄10 chance of being a statue of a parasitic mind flayer embedded in their face, and will otherwise be a mask of a mind flayer.
Barrow wights are a tempting source of long swords for lawful heroes to dip and turn into Excalibur, since creating Excalibur this way retains any object properties and object materials: silver weapons naturally deal +1d20 silver damage, while gold weapons raise a blessed weapon's holy bonus damage to +1d20 and raise a cursed weapon's unholy bonus damage to +4d9; the lesser holy property adds +1d8 holy damage for blessed weapons with the property that is separate from the normal +1d4 damage bonus.
Encyclopedia entry
When he came to himself again, for a moment he could recall
nothing except a sense of dread. Then suddenly he knew that
he was imprisoned, caught hopelessly; he was in a barrow. A
Barrow-wight had taken him, and he was probably already under
the dreadful spells of the Barrow-wights about which whispered
tales spoke. He dared not move, but lay as he found himself:
flat on his back upon a cold stone with his hands on his
breast.
