Dragon scale mail
Dragon scale mail (commonly abbreviated to DSM) is the strongest single piece of armour available. Its base AC reduction is 9, for a weight of 50 and an extremely useful intrinsic. The most coveted varieties are silver dragon scale mail (SDSM), for reflection, and gray dragon scale mail (GDSM) for magic resistance. Dragon scale mail, like dragon scales themselves, does not hinder spellcasting at all.
DSM may be acquired quite simply; kill a dragon, put on any scales it drops, and read a scroll of enchant armor at them. Given that a scroll of enchant armor affects a random piece of worn armor, be certain to wear nothing but the scales when undergoing this process. Dragon scales are priced at 500-700 zorkmids, while DSM is priced 900-1200 zorkmids depending on the color. Also, DSM is considered to be magical armor for the purposes of polypiling; plain scales are not.
Aside from killing a dragon, the other ways to acquire dragon scale mail are:
- wishing for one (e.g. blessed +2 silver dragon scale mail),
- obtaining one from a bones pile,
- killing one of the player character monsters on the Astral plane, which have a chance of wearing dragon scale mail -- this method is almost useless, since you will in all likelihood need to already have dragon scale mail in order to make it to the Astral plane.
If you want to obtain dragon scale mail by killing a dragon, here are some methods for generating dragons:
- polymorph into a dragon of desired variety and hatch some eggs (#sit command), grow those babies (into non-baby dragons), and get them killed (possibly with a passive attack or a trap)
- reverse genocide dragons
- use undead turning on a dragon corpse (but note that a revived dragon has a lower chance of dropping scales)
