Sting

)   Sting
Base item	elven dagger
Damage vs. small	1d5 x2
Damage vs. large	1d3 x2
To-hit bonus	+1d5
Bonus versus	orcs
Weapon skill	dagger
Size	one-handed
Affiliation	chaotic elven
When carried	(none)
When wielded	detect orcs
When invoked	(none)
Base price	800 zm
Weight	10
Material	wood

Sting is an artifact weapon that appears in NetHack. It is chaotic, and its base item is an elven dagger.

Generation

Sting may appear as a sacrifice gift for chaotic, non-orcish players.

Naming any single elven dagger "Sting" will turn it into the artifact if it has not been generated yet - doing so breaks illiterate conduct.

Effects

Sting has +d5 to hit and deals double damage to orcs. While wielding Sting, you can detect the location of any orc on the level, with a blue glow signifying their presence - additionally, if you are wielding it while trapped in a web, you will escape it in at most one move if you could not do so otherwise.

Sting will only blast you if you are currently an orc, and will not do so otherwise regardless of alignment or alignment record.

Strategy

Sting is available as soon as you find an elven dagger, which is generally very early in the game (e.g., from a hobbit) - elven Rangers start with an elven dagger that they can turn into Sting as early as their first turn, if they wish. Wizards and some other roles may also consider creating Sting to train the dagger skill with, while chaotic Monks and Priests that plan to unrestrict the skill should avoid this to keep it eligible as a sacrifice gift. In some few cases where you are attempting a protection racket, Sting may be worth creating to sell to a shop.

Sting is not of much use as a weapon to most players, given that a competent player can easily learn how to handle groups of orcs. Naming Sting is most often pertinent for forcing an early Stormbringer via sacrifice, as characters without a first sacrifice gift will always receive a coaligned artifact - naming Sting and Orcrist removes them from the pool, leaving Stormbringer and Grimtooth as possible gifts. Elven priests and rangers are generally used for this purpose, since elven players never receive Grimtooth as a sacrifice gift.

Players seeking artifacts outside of the above cases should not worry about creating Sting - it reduces the chance of you receiving any sacrifice gift after the first regardless of alignment, and naturally decreases the chances of reliably wishing for an artifact. You may also inadvertently preclude all sacrifice gifts if Stormbringer already exists in a game - though this is only an issue in some corner cases where you are a chaotic elf trying to force Stormbringer as above.

If acquiring Sting in the mid to late-game, this artifact is the easiest available for overenchanting. Stacks of elven daggers can all be enchanted together, making it simple to enchant a stack of 20+ elven daggers together to +7, then enchant them individually until you can reach +9 on one of them without vaporizing it - you can then name a lightweight artifact weapon that still does reasonable damage. Creating Sting in the late-game can easily be done after you've already wished for all your artifacts.

Average damage calculation

The average damage calculations in the following table do not include bonuses from weapon skills, strength, or from using a blessed weapon against undead or demons.

Weapon	Small monster	Large monster
+0 Sting	$\frac{1+5}{2}=\bold{3}$	$\frac{1+3}{2}=\bold{2}$
+7 Sting	$\frac{1+5}{2}+7=\bold{10}$	$\frac{1+3}{2}+7=\bold{9}$
+9 Sting	$\frac{1+5}{2}+9=\bold{12}$	$\frac{1+3}{2}+9=\bold{11}$

While the base damage is quite low, the extra +2 nudges it up to be slightly more damage-competitive, comparable to the 11.5/13.5 average damage of a +7 long sword, but at 1/4 the weight.

History

Sting first appears in NetHack 2.3e.

Origin

"Sting" is the name of an elven dagger from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth novels. It was the usual weapon of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, who found it along with Orcrist and Glamdring in a troll's hoard. In the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Bilbo gave the dagger to his nephew Frodo Baggins. Sting was also famously wielded by hobbit Samwise 'Sam' Gamgee in his fight against the spider-like Shelob - shortly before, Frodo used it to cut through Shelob's web, which was preventing their passage. The blade got its name after the giant spiders of Mirkwood Forest referred to it as Bilbo's "sting".

Elven blades in Middle-Earth radiated a blue glow whenever orcs were near, which inspired Sting and Orcrist's functions in Nethack.

Dudley's dungeon

Sting appears in the Dudley's dungeon strip of 18 June 2004, where Dudley discovers that it needs batteries to glow blue, but batteries have not been invented yet.

Years later, in the strip of 8 March 2009, Dudley builds a battery and uses it to power Sting.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, Sting is lawful and has a full +5 to-hit instead of +1d5.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, Sting retains its usual traits, and additionally grants warning of arachnids (any s) in addition to the standard double damage.

FIQHack

In FIQHack, your god will never gift you a nameable artifact (i.e. Sting or Orcrist).

xNetHack

In xNetHack, Sting now has a base material of copper instead of wood, as with all elven weapons.

NetHack 4

In NetHack 4, Sting was the subject of a severe bug where any attempt to name an item with an artifact was sent down the Sting/Orcrist codepath - if the player gave the name of an artifact to its appropriate base item, it would create the artifact.

Encyclopedia entry

There was the usual dim grey light of the forest-day about
him when he came to his senses. The spider lay dead beside
him, and his sword-blade was stained black. Somehow the
killing of the giant spider, all alone and by himself in the
dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of
anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt
a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of
an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put
it back into its sheath.
"I will give you a name," he said to it, "and I shall call
you Sting."

[ The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.2. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-362}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.