The Longbow of Diana
) The Longbow of Diana 
| |
|---|---|
| Base item | bow |
| Damage vs. small | 1d2 |
| Damage vs. large | 1d2 |
| To-hit bonus | +1d5 |
| Bonus versus | (any) |
| Weapon skill | bow |
| Size | one-handed |
| Affiliation | |
| When carried | |
| When wielded | |
| When invoked |
|
| Base price | 4000 zm |
| Weight | 30 |
| Material | wood |
The Longbow of Diana is the Ranger quest artifact. It is the prize for completing the Ranger quest, and is chaotic for wishing purposes. Its base item type is a bow.
Effects
- See also: RNE
When carried, the Longbow of Diana confers telepathy. When wielded, it confers reflection and +d5 to hit when firing arrows. Invoking the Bow creates arrows with the same beatitude (but not the same enchantment charge) as the Bow. A blessed Bow creates more arrows, up to 21 at once, and a cursed Bow fewer, at most 11 at once. The invocations have timeout like most artifacts, so you cannot create new arrows every turn.
The enchantment range of the arrows is inclusive and depends on rne(3) and the current beatitude of the Longbow.[1][2] A blessed Longbow will only produce arrows with enchantment from 0 to 10; a cursed Longbow will only produce arrows with enchantment from -10 to 0; and an uncursed Longbow will produce arrows in the range of -10 to 10. The probability distribution of the enchantments is not uniform. The Long also has a small chance of producing poisoned arrows.
Arrows generated from the blessed or cursed Longbow of Diana are more likely to be +0 than randomly generated blessed or cursed arrows. This is because mksobj, which arti_invoke calls to generate the arrows, can produce arrows of any BUC, regardless of the BUC of the longbow; arti_invoke changes the BUC status of the arrows after mksobj returns, bringing negative enchantments on blessed arrows and positive enchantments on cursed arrows to 0.
Strategy
- See also: Invoke § Optimum invocation schedule
The Longbow of Diana is not particularly valuable as a source of reflection, due to the fact that the home level of the Quest will generate a lot of wand-using centaurs with high frequency, all but necessitating reflection to progress through it and the rest of the Quest without endangering your inventory. In addition, if the Ranger has a solid supply of enchanted arrows already, the ones produced by the Longbow will likely need re-enchanting; most rangers are not likely to be hurting for a source of arrows (e.g. traps and arrows pilfered from enemy monsters), and non-human monsters will not receive their usual racial bonus.
However, the Longbow does confer a useful source of telepathy. It also guarantees a source of blessed arrows, which can save you some resources in the long run.
UnNetHack
As of UnNetHack version 5.1.0, the Longbow of Diana gives +1 multishot and +1 damage bonus when firing any type of arrow.[3]
History
The Longbow of Diana first appeared, along with the Ranger class, in NetHack 3.3.0 under the name of The Longbow of Artemis. It was renamed in NetHack 3.4.0.
Encyclopedia entry
This legendary bow grants ESP when carried and can reflect magical
attacks when wielded. When invoked it provides a supply of arrows.
References
- ↑ artifact.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 1333: arti_invoke calls mksobj to create arrows
- ↑ mkobj.c in NetHack 3.4.3, line 391: relevant section of mksobj
- ↑ https://github.com/UnNetHack/UnNetHack/blob/master/ChangeLog
This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-364}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.
