Material

NetHack allows each item to be made of one material. Some materials, such as iron, are very common, while others, such as wax, are rare. Different materials are subject to different forms of erosion: they may, for example, rust, corrode, burn or rot.

List of materials

Unde­fined	Liq­uid	Wax	Veggy	Flesh	Paper	Cloth	Leather	Wood	Bone	Dragon hide	Iron	Metal	Cop­per	Sil­ver	Gold	Plat­inum	Mith­ril	Plas­tic	Glass	Gem­stone	Min­eral
0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Flimsy
											Metallic
Organic
											Rust­prone
											Corrod­able		Corrod­able
Flam­mable		Flammable																Flam­mable

Worm teeth are the only object with an undefined material.

There are exceptions to the above categorizations; certain objects such as the spellbook of fireball and the scroll of fire are never flammable. Furthermore, candles are not considered flammable for the purposes of the game; they can be burned, but it makes no sense to fireproof them.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (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.

Worm teeth are now made of bone.

Variants

Many variants use an object materials system to allow the same item to be generated with different materials - see that article for more information on this system and how it is implemented in each variant.