Artifact blast

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In NetHack, touching an artifact may cause it to blast you for damage each time - these artifact blasts may pose a threat to unwary players.

Description

Artifact blasts are triggered each time you attempt to do any of the following actions with an artifact:[1]

  • Wish for an artifact
  • Pick one up
  • Wield, apply or wear one
  • Invoke one
  • Steal one
  • Polyself while doing any of the above.

Artifact blasts are magical in nature, so gloves afford no protection, and magic resistance can reduce their damage. The circumstances you are blasted under and the damage dealt depend on whether the blast originated from an intelligent artifact.

Intelligent artifacts

When performing any of the above actions, intelligent artifacts will always blast you for 4d10 damage (reduced to 2d10 damage if you have magic resistance) and abuse your Wisdom if you additionally meet any of the following conditions:

  • You are not of the artifact's special role (if any)
  • You are of a different alignment than the artifact
  • You have negative alignment record
  • You are in the form of something the artifact specially attacks

Additionally, if you are of the wrong role and fail one of the other conditions, the artifact will "evade your grasp", preventing you from using it. The primary effect of this is that you can only use another role's quest artifact if you are the same alignment as that object.

Unintelligent artifacts

Unintelligent artifacts have a 14 chance of blasting you for 4d4 damage (2d4 if you have magic resistance) and abusing your wisdom any time you perform one of the above actions if:

  • The artifact has an alignment and you are of a different alignment from itun
  • You have negative alignment record (if artifact is aligned)
  • You are in the form of something the artifact specially attacks, which deals d10 damage (unaffected by magic resistance) and also abuses constitution

While unintelligent artifacts never evade your grasp, you still cannot equip one if it attacks your current form.

Attacking forms

The following artifacts are considered to attack specific forms:

Artifact Form
Demonbane ​& major demons (but not other &)
Dragonbane ​D dragons
Giantslayer giants (but not other ​H giant humanoids)
Grimtooth @ elves
The Mitre of Holiness undead (but not demons)
Ogresmasher ​O ogres
Orcrist, Sting ​o orcs
Sunsword undead
Trollsbane ​T trolls
Werebane characters with lycanthropy

Artifacts attack polymorphed players based on their current form, and so do not account for their base race in the case of polyself. Thus, an elven player could temporarily wield Grimtooth, or an orcish player Sting, by polymorphing into a more acceptable form.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, the blast damage has been increased, making picking up artifacts even more dangerous. Intelligent artifacts do 8d10 damage (6d10 with magic resistance), and unintelligent artifacts do 8d6 damage (6d6 with magic resistance). This also applies to SlashTHEM.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, artifact armor that blasts you has a chance to do so each time you are struck. Also, certain artifacts such as Nighthorn will always blast their user.

References

This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:

Redistribution, copying, and editing of these spoilers, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. The original contributors to any spoiler must continue to be credited.
  2. Any modifications to the spoiler must be acknowledged and credited.