Ring of sustain ability

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Name	sustain ability
Appearance	random
Base price	100 zm
Weight	3

A ring of sustain ability is a type of ring that appears in NetHack.

Generation

Wizards may be given a ring of sustain ability as one of the two random rings in their starting inventory.

General stores and jewelers shops can sell rings of sustain ability.

Description

A hero putting on the ring of sustain ability gains the sustain ability extrinsic, which prevents their base attributes from being changed by exercise, abuse or any other method with the exception of two: strength gain or loss from nutrition levels, and polymorphing into their own race. A cursed ring of sustain ability also masks the hero's base attributes. Monsters will not wear this ring.

A hero eating the ring gains no effect from it.

Strategy

The ring of sustain ability is generally used to prevent stat loss from sustained stat abuse, usually resulting from deliberate actions (e.g. being constantly 'satiated' combined with a ring of slow digestion to save food). It can also be quite beneficial in short-term scenarios: heroes that lack poison resistance but have the ring identified can wear it to eat poisonous corpses and avoid strength loss, and can safely remove the ring once they have the property. The ring can also prevent the intelligence drain from a mind flayer's attacks, but it does not prevent amnesia, and a hero can still become brainless if they are hit by one at 3 intelligence regardless.

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.

Mind flayers can no longer inflict amnesia, making the ring an effective mitigation against brain-sucking.

Identification

The ring of sustain ability shares its base price of 100zm with six other rings, many of which auto-identify when put on or removed, and both this ring the others that do not auto-identify are somewhat trivial to informally identify: Heroes wear-testing rings can put a suspected ring on and do something that would alter their attributes, e.g. sitting on a coaligned altar. Like most rings, the ring of sustain ability also gives a unique message when dropped down a sink, and its property is trivial to identify via enlightenment.

History

The ring of sustain ability first appears in NetHack 3.3.0. From this version to NetHack 3.6.0, including some variants based on these versions, a bug allows the hero to increase strength using the ring: putting on the ring prevents the strength loss associated with becoming weak from hunger, and removing the ring and raising their nutrition status to Hungry or better increases strength; this can be farmed or abused to raise the hero's strength to their racial maximum, and is especially productive for low-strength characters such as Healers, who start with the stone to flesh spell and frequently have low strength—the farming is done by putting on the ring before their hunger status becomes 'weak', removing the ring upon reaching that status, eating enough meatballs to become 'hungry', and then wearing the ring again, repeating the process as necessary. A ring of hunger, conflict or regeneration will speed up the process due to how they acceleration nutrition burn, though non-cursed rings should be used if at all possible.

This bug is fixed in NetHack 3.6.1 via commit 024e9e12, which makes it so that nutrition levels and their effect on strength ignore the sustain ability property.

Messages

The water flow seems fixed.

You dropped a ring of sustain ability into a sink - this will prompt you to type-name the ring.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, Flame Mages, Ice Mages and Necromancers may be given a ring of sustain ability as the random ring in their starting inventory.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, a ring of sustain ability can be used with an upgrade kit to repair the stasis subsystem of imperial elven body armor, granting the sustain ability property while the armor is worn.

SlashTHEM

In SlashTHEM, in addition to SLASH'EM details, Acid Mages, Corsairs, Electric Mages, Nobles, and Pirates may be given a ring of sustain ability as the random ring in their starting inventory.