Kicking boots
[        kicking boots | |
|---|---|
| Appearance | random |
| Slot | boots |
| AC | 1 |
| Special |
|
| Base price | 8 zm |
| Weight | 50 |
| Material | iron |
Kicking boots are magical boots that enhance the wearer's ability to kick.
Wearing kicking boots will increase the damage done by kick attacks (by 5), increase the distance that kicked objects travel, and will increase the chances of kicking down doors to 100%. Kicking boots have a chance of making an enemy "reel" and be knocked backwards. Kicking boots do no extra damage against thick skinned monsters.[1]
Identification
NetHack 3.6.0 changes weight of kicking boots from 15 to 50. Since there are no other boots with randomized appearance and weight 50, identifying them is trivial.
For NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier, as well as derived variants, there are other means of identifying them. Unlike the other randomized boots, they are made of iron; they can be identified if wearing them increases the failure rate of your spells, or if rubbing them on a touchstone produces "scritch, scritch". This also means that they are prone to rust so they can be identified by the attack of a rust monster or by getting them wet.
Another method to identify kicking boots is simple – test kicking a suitable object (a rock will do) without the boots, then while wearing the boots. It will travel farther with the boots on if they are kicking boots. Keep this fact in mind if kick-testing a gray stone; while wearing kicking boots, you may displace the normally immobile loadstone.
These boots may also be identified via price identification; if they are the same price as elven boots, you do not have another source of stealth, and wearing them does not give the message "You walk very quietly", they are kicking boots.
Lastly, you may identify these boots by kicking open doors. Most of the time, doors will take several kicks to break open. If, however, you are able to kick open several doors in a row, on the first try, then you are probably wearing kicking boots. These boots also let you kick open secret passages and hidden doors with 100% success.
Strategy
Kicking boots may be useful to an early-game adventurer, since they:
- do extra kicking damage, in case your weapon is stolen by a nymph
- can find hidden doors and secret passages quickly without a stethoscope
- are not rotted by brown puddings
However, later on you should be able to deal with stealing monsters from a distance; moreover, you will either have a stethoscope, intrinsic/extrinsic searching, or at least enough Luck to effectively search. Kicking boots will be eroded anyway by black puddings and rust monsters.
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.
