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 ones prevent the timeout of positive Luck, and uncursed ones prevent both. Luck is one integer value, which means blessing your luckstone is not terribly important (though it's useful so spellcasting enenmies have to curse it in two steps).
Multiple luckitems have no cumulative effect. You get the blessed luckstone effect if you have strictly more blessed than cursed luckitems in your open inventory, the cursed effect if the other way around, and the uncursed effect if equally many blessed as cursed (or all uncursed).
Luckstones are always generated uncursed (except possibly in bones files).
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.
Strategy
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 retain positive luck after facing a cursing monster.)
If your luck is negative (e. g. Sokoban, mirrors, killed a coaligned unicorn), a non-blessed luckitem is harmful. In this case, you should bag or drop it until your luck becomes zero again.
Identifying a gray stone
If you find a 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, rub it on an iron item: a touchstone will sound "scritch, scritch". Archeologists can skip this. Blessed touchstone are useful to identify gems, but that is out of scope.
If both tests are negative, this is either a luckstone or flint stone. You should pick it up and type-#name it until you get two different kinds or have a chance to price-id it: luckstones cost 60, flint doesn't interest shopkeepers.
You got a possible luckstone
As long as you don't know whether it is luckstone or flint stone, treat is as a luckstone. Luckstones are initially uncursed, so it is safe to carry it around (barring bones or bad Luck).
Never drop your luckstone or put it (all of them) into a container, because you need it to prevent the luck timeout. If you have spares, you might as well carry all but one in a container.
Once you have a luckitem to prevent Luck timeout, you want to max out your Luck.
Carry one in your main inventory, not in a container. , 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).
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 level, 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.
