Punishment
You can be punished by your god for a variety of reasons, including praying while your deity is angry or by reading a scroll of punishment. A heavy iron ball is attached to you by an iron chain: 0_@. If you are polymorphed into an amorphous, whirly or unsolid creature when reading this scroll, the ball and chain will appear but fall off immediately.
If punished while already being chained to an iron ball, the ball's weight is increased by 160 (320 if the method of punishment was a cursed scroll of punishment).[1]
Dragging an iron ball one square takes at least 2 turns regardless of enhanced speed.[2] This also inhibits efficient travel, including running in a direction and the travel command. If you do not wish to carry the ball, you are forced to move one square at a time using either the letter or number pad keys.
Contents
The heavy iron ball
The chain cannot be picked up, but the iron ball can. It is a unique object which appears in its own section in the inventory.
The ball will follow you everywhere for as long as it is attached.
Falling with an attached iron ball
Falling into a pit, spiked pit, or trap door with an attached ball will cause it to fall in on top of you, dealing 25-31 damage (uniform distribution, average 29), or 3 damage if you are wearing a metallic helm. (Death message "crunched in the head by an iron ball".)[3]
Regardless of your encumbrance, and unless you are flying, you will stumble going down stairs with an iron ball. If you are wielding the ball or carrying the ball and wielding nothing, you will usually take 1-9 damage (not uniform, average 5). Otherwise, you will take 1-26 damage (not uniform, average 10.82) and have a high chance of abusing strength. You will always drop the ball if you had it in your inventory, you may also drop other items, especially ones that are heavy relative to your maximum carrying capacity. (Death messages "dragged downstairs by an iron ball" and "killed by an iron ball collision", the later being more common.)[4]
Strategy
The iron ball makes a surprisingly good weapon, doing d25 base damage, with an additional d(x*4) damage, where x is the number of times the ball has been made heavier. The downside is the extreme weight - only 20 units short of a loadstone and the same weight as 48 daggers. Thus, the ball can be used as a weapon, but you should ditch it as soon as you have something more effective.
The iron ball also gives you a limited ability to jump, while it is chained to you. Throwing it will pull you along in that direction for up to 4 squares, but beware using this method to cross water - the ball will travel 5 squares, and if that lands in water, you will be pulled down into the water with it. Throwing in this manner will also let you escape traps.
Also, throwing an iron ball may exercise your strength.
Removing the heavy iron ball
Removing the iron ball is enough to end your punishment. There are a number of ways to do this:
- Zapping a wand of opening or casting a spell of knock down at the chain
- Reading a scroll of remove curse, of any BUC status, while not confused
- praying: punishment counts as a minor problem
- Have it stolen by a nymph
- Have it eaten by a metallivore, such as a rock mole or rust monster
- Polymorph into a nymph and remove it using the #monster command
- Polymorph into a metallivore and eat the ball away
- Polymorph into an amorphous, whirly or non-solid monster and thus slip out of the chain
- Drop the ball in a pit and fill the pit with a boulder. (To be more specific: pick up the ball, move into the pit, drop the ball, then move out of the pit).
- Ring the blessed Bell of Opening
- Crush the ball or chain in a drawbridge
References
- ↑ read.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 1740
- ↑ hack.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 408
- ↑ ballfall in ball.c (damage) and goto_level in do.c line 1210 (trap doors) and dotrap in trap.c line 933 (pits)
- ↑ drag_down in ball.c (damage and item dropping) and goto_level in do.c lines 1168 (call to drag_down) and 1185 (an extra d3 damage)
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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.
