Dwarf (starting race)

Racial benefits and restrictions

You can play NetHack or SLASH'EM as a Dwarf. You will see yourself as @ (unless you have showrace on), but you are considered to be both @ and the letter h. Therefore, using blessed genocide to eliminate mind flayers is a bad idea, as it will result in an instadeath.

Dwarves are always Lawful. They can be Archeologists, Cavemen, or Valkyries. Playing as a random Dwarf is a good way to focus on a small number of roles.

Curiously, the there is really no Dwarf role that seems especially "Dwarvish" - Cavemen are primitive, Archeologists are combat-averse scientists, and Valkyries are all female! The typical fantasy vision of the warrior/craftsman/miner is therefore not really available to the player of NetHack, at least not at present. The Elven Ranger and Orcish Barbarian seem much closer to the typical conception of those races.

As a Dwarf, you will also find the Dwarvish inhabitants of the Gnomish Mines to be generally peaceful.

Dwarves have intrinsic infravision. From an attribute perspective, Dwarves have good physical attributes, able to have the highest Dexterity (surprisingly) and Constitution, but equal lowest mental attributes. The following table outlines their maximum (unaided) attribute levels.

Character Race	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
Dwarf	18/**	20	20	16	16	16

List of Dwarf monsters

In the vanilla 3.4.3 dungeon, you can encounter:

• h dwarf
• h dwarf lord
• h dwarf king
• M dwarf mummy
• Z dwarf zombie

Dwarvish items

In objects.c, vanilla 3.4.3 also defines several Dwarven objects. They are listed below. The weapon damage figures are copied from weap-343.txt, the armor class figures are from armr-343.txt.

Weapons:

• Dwarvish mattock (broad pick) - d12/d8+2d6
• Dwarvish short sword (broad short sword) - d7/d8
• Dwarvish spear (stout spear) - d8/d8

Armor:

• Dwarvish iron helm (hard hat) - AC 2
• Dwarvish mithril-coat - AC 6
• Dwarvish cloak (hooded cloak) - AC 0
• Dwarvish roundshield (large round shield) - AC 2

You can use the above list to identify if any item is Dwarvish. No Dwarvish artifacts currently exist in the game. Note that Dwarvish mattocks have a -1 to-hit penalty.

Dwarvish items are said to be exceptional metalworks. (Those crude Orcish items have the opposite reputation.) The mithril-coat will never rust nor corrode, and carries three points of magic cancellation. The Dwarvish mithril-coat gives one more point of AC protection than the Elven mithril-coat, however it can only be safely enchanted up to +5, whereas the Elven equivalent can be enchanted to +7. The Dwarvish cloak gives one less point of AC than the Elven counterpart and doesn't convey extrinsic Stealth. The Dwarvish shield is heavier compared to the Elven counterpart, even though they have the same AC.

Footnotes

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.