Luckstone

*
Name	luckstone
Appearance	gray stone
Damage vs. small	1d3
Damage vs. large	1d3
To-hit bonus	+0
Weapon skill	sling
Size	one-handed
Base price	60 zm (+10/positive enchant)
Weight	10
Material	mineral

A luckstone is a gray stone that modifies a player's Luck and Luck timeout. A noncursed luckstone adds 3 Luck (which may exceed the ordinary maximum of 10) and a cursed luckstone subtracts 3 Luck. Luckstones carried in containers (e.g. bags) have no effect on Luck.

A cursed luckstone prevents the timeout of negative Luck, blessed prevents the timeout of positive Luck, and uncursed prevents the timeout of any Luck. Luck is a scalar (i.e. single) value, which means blessing your luckstone is not terribly necessary unless your total Luck is negative (though it's useful in that it's harder to curse a blessed luckstone than an uncursed one).

Multiple luckstones have no cumulative effect, except that having more cursed luckstones than blessed will give you the effects of holding just one luckstone, which is cursed, and so on. A backup luckstone (carried in a container or left in a stash) may be useful in case your primary luckstone becomes cursed (and uncursing equipment is limited).

However, naming differently blessed luckstone in one's inventory will allow the player to still have positive luck when he is facing a cursing monster.

There is a guaranteed luckstone in each of the three variants of Mines' End.

The Heart of Ahriman is a luckstone, which allows you to determine whether any gray stone is a luckstone through abuse of the naming artifacts trick.

The Tsurugi of Muramasa and the Orb of Fate both act as luckstones.

Note that if your luck is negative (i. e. you killed a coaligned unicorn), uncursed luckstone is harmful because it prevents the luck timeout. In this case, you should put it into a bag or drop it until you luck becomes zero again.

Strategy

You see unidentified gray stone

First, ensure this is not a loadstone by kicking it (see identification of gray stones for more details). If it is, leave it alone.

Second, check whether it is a touchstone. If you are an Archeologist, you already have one in your inventory. Otherwise, pick it and rub an iron item with it. Touchstone produces "scritch, scritch" noise. If you found a touchstone, bless it at first opportunity, since blessed touchstone can identify gems. (Unless you are Archeologist or Gnome, since these can identify gems with uncursed touchstones as well.)

If both tests are negative, this is either luckstone or flint stone. Carry it in your main inventory (not in a bag). You can determine which by trying to sell in a general shop. For flint stone, you get 1 zorkmid or nothing, because its base price is 1. For a luckstone, you get much more, usually between 30 and 60 zorkmids, because its base price is 60.

As long as you don't know whether it is luckstone or flint stone, treat is as a luckstone.

You got a luckstone, or a possible luckstone

Carry one in your main inventory, not in a container. Luckstones are initially uncursed, which means they prevent the timeout of any Luck. Increase your base luck by throwing identified precious gems to aligned unicorns (each one earns you 5 points of base luck, until it is 10), or by sacrificing on a coaligned altar (each time you see a four-leaf clover, you get 1 point of base luck, until it is 10).

Never drop your luckstone or put it into a container, because you need it to prevent the luck timeout.

If you have several luckstones, carry all but one in a container.

Before going to the Gehennom, bless your luckstones and then keep them blessed, to avoid them being cursed in one step. To be on the safe side, you may bless them even earlier.

However, there are notable exceptions from this strategy:

• If your luckstone is cursed, don't carry it in your main inventory.
• If you got your luckstone from the bones file, treat it as cursed, because most probably it is.
• If you got a negative luck, don't carry non-blessed luckstone in your main inventory. Bless it, or put it into a container, or just drop it (remember where you dropped it), and then wait for your negative luck to time out. Negative luck can be obtained by cheating at the sokoban level (1 from luck), breaking a mirror (3 from luck), killing co-aligned unicorn (5 from luck) etc. See Luck#Ways to change your Luck for more info.