Dwarf (starting race)

"The dwarf talks about mining."

Introduction

You can play NetHack or SLASH'EM as a Dwarf h. Dwarves have infravision, good physical attributes, and poor spellcasting attributes. As a dwarf, you will also find the dwarvish inhabitants of the Gnomish Mines to be generally peaceful.

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

List of dwarf monsters

In the vanilla 3.4.3 dungeon, you can encounter:

• dwarf
• dwarf lord
• dwarf king

All of the above are h. You might also find an dwarf mummy, which is M. A "dwarf corpse" is dropped by the dwarf mummy and is also found in graves left by player dwarves in bones.

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 armor will never rust nor corrode, and carries three points of magic cancellation.

The dwarvish mithril armor gives one more point of AC protection than the elven mithril-armor, however the dwarvish cloak gives one less point than the elven counterpart. The dwarvish shield is quite heavy compared to the elven one, even though they have the same AC.