Projectile

Projectiles are objects thrown by you or a monster, or shot with a launcher.

Thrown objects

Any item can be thrown (and thus be considered a projectile) if the entity throwing it is strong enough. Use the throw command to provide a list of readily-thrown items. You can expand this list to include your entire inventory by pressing *.

Thrown items may receive a penalty to hit if there is an appropriate launcher (see below) for the item

Launchers and their ammunitions

Launchers and their ammunitions
Launcher	Ammunition allowed
Sling	rocks, gems, flint stones, and other gray stones
Bow	arrows, elven arrows, orcish arrows, silver arrows, and ya.
Crossbow	crossbow bolts

To get the most out of the ammunition projectiles, you need to wield [w] the corresponding launcher and then either throw [t] the ammunition, or quiver [Q] a stack and then fire [f] from that stack. There is no bonus or penalty for using the fire command; it is merely a convenience.

Breakage

Some projectiles are at risk of breakage if they score a hit. The chance of breakage is determined as follows:

1. Calculate chance = 3 + erosion - enchantment, where erosion is 3 if thoroughly eroded, 2 if very eroded, 1 if just eroded, and 0 otherwise. If the projectile has both types of erosion for its material, use the greater erosion only; erosions do not add.
2. If chance is at least 2, the projectile has a (chance-1)/chance chance of breakage. Otherwise, it has a 1/4 chance.
3. If the projectile is blessed, there is a further chance of is being unbroken, modified by the character's luck. Multiply the value from step 2 by the value from the table below. The result is the total chance of the projectile breaking.

Luck Range	Exact Value	Average Value
-13 to -3	$\frac{197 - 4 \cdot Luck}{200 - 4 \cdot Luck}$	0.987
-2 to 2	$\frac{148 - 3 \cdot Luck}{200-4 \cdot Luck}$	0.740
3 to 5	$\frac{99 - 2 \cdot Luck}{200-4 \cdot Luck}$	0.495
6 to 8	$\frac{1}{4}$	0.25
9 to 13	$\frac{1}{200-4 \cdot Luck}$	0.006

Breakable projectiles are:

• all arrows, including elven arrows, orcish arrows, silver arrows, and ya
• crossbow bolts
• darts
• shuriken
• boomerangs
• all gems and stones except the Heart of Ahriman

Daggers do not break, and as such are a favorite projectile for those classes that can gain skill in their use.

References

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 Information on this page may be out of date.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.