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 among the weakest of artifacts. If you touch it, even if you are of the wrong alignment, it will not blast you unless you are an orc. For all purposes, Sting is only a normal elven dagger, except that it happens to do more damage to orcs and that it cuts through all webs.

Also, if you wield Sting, you can detect the location of any orc on the level, and you will notice when NetHack sends in large teams of orcs.

Sting's 'big brother' in NetHack is Orcrist.

Name it to make it

Unlike most artifacts, you can create Sting by changing the name of any random elven dagger to "Sting". This can only fail if Sting already exists.

Strategy

Because you can make Sting easily, it becomes available very early in the game. An Elf Ranger can always immediately create Sting at the start of the game, if he or she wants to. Other characters can create Sting as soon as they can locate an elven dagger, such as one dropped by a hobbit in the early game.

Advantages of creating Sting early are:

• You will not receive it from your god as a sacrifice gift, possibly receiving something more useful instead (only useful for chaotic characters as others will not receive Sting anyway)
• You can use it to #force open locks on chests and large boxes; artifacts only break 1% as often as non-artifacts and Sting is an artifact that you can afford to break

Disadvantages stem mainly from the fact that the number of artifacts that have already been generated in the game affects your chances of acquiring more artifacts:

• Sting is only useful against orcs; many players can already kill orcs
• The existence of Sting decreases the probability of the dungeon randomly containing another artifact
• The existence of Sting reduces the chance of receiving any sacrifice gift after the first (all alignments)
• If two or more artifacts exist in the game, you cannot reliably wish for an artifact
• You cannot unrestrict the dagger skill by receiving Sting as a gift; applies only to Monks and Priests

You should only create Sting therefore if you are chaotic and you do not want to wish for any (further) artifacts

Mythology

From Tolkien

"Sting" is actually the name of an Elven dagger from J.R.R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit and novel trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Sting was the usual weapon of the hobbit Bilbo, when he found it in a Troll Hoard along with Orcrist and Glamdring. When wielded by Bilbo Baggins it was more of a short sword, then a dagger due to his diminutive size. Later in The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo gave the dagger to his nephew Frodo Baggins. It was most also valiently by hobbit Samwise 'Sam' Gamgee in his fight against the giant spider Shelob.

The blade was first dubbed with the name "Sting" while Bilbo was fighting alone in Mirkwood Forest, and the Giant spiders of Mirkwood reffered to it as Bilbo's "sting".

Sting glowed blue to detect the approaching of orcs which was a prominent feature of elven blades made at that time. Thus, Sting in NetHack is a weapon for use against orcs.

For more information: [1]'s entry at Wikipedia.

From Dudley's dungeon

In the Dudley's dungeon strip of 18 June 2004, Sting will glow blue when Dudley inserts batteries, but batteries have not been invented yet.

Source code references

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