Create ammo

This article is about the artifact invoke effect. For the deferred technique in SlashTHEM, see Deferred and defunct features (SlashTHEM)#Create ammo.

Create ammo is a property that appears in NetHack and only occurs as an item effect of artifact weapons that can be invoked.

Description

Creating ammo is solely associated with the artifact weapon The Longbow of Diana, and is formally defined by the CREATE_AMMO flag in artifact.h. The effect will create a set of projectile weapon items that match the launcher being invoked.

Arrow creation details

The enchantment range of the items created is inclusive and depends on rne(3) and the current beatitude of the artifact when invoked. A blessed Longbow or other artifact with this effect will only produce arrows with enchantment from 0 to 10; a cursed Longbow will only produce arrows with enchantment from -10 to 0; and an uncursed Longbow will produce arrows in the range of -10 to 10.

The probability distribution of the enchantments is not uniform: Items generated from a blessed or cursed Longbow of Diana (or other artifact) are more likely to be +0 than randomly generated blessed or cursed arrows. This is because mksobj - which arti_invoke calls to generate the items - can produce items of any beatitude, regardless of the artifact's beatitude, and the items have their beatitude changed to the intended one that mksobj returns, bringing negative enchantments on blessed items and positive enchantments on cursed items to 0.

Strategy

While in theory it can be quite useful to have a never-ending supply of ammo on demand with lenient cooldown, in practice this relies entirely on the type of ammo produced: the Longbow of Diana is notoriously much less effective as a quest artifact for Rangers that are not human, since each playable race gains multishot bonuses for using particular types of arrows and bows - non-human Rangers lose out on up to a +2 racial multishot bonus by switching to the Longbow. gnomish Rangers are especially out of luck since they gain multishot from using crossbows, which requires an entirely different skill than the Longbow.

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.

Rangers get a +1 multishot bonus when wielding the Longbow of Diana.

Variants

Variants of NetHack may add other artifact weapons with the ability to create ammo and/or alter how it functions.