Ring of conflict

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Name	conflict
Appearance	random
Base price	300 zm
Weight	3
Probability out of rings	3.57%
Probability out of items in:
containers	Rogue level	Gehennom	Elsewhere
0.179%	0.179%	0.286%	0.107%

The ring of conflict is a ring that appears in NetHack. The default randomized appearance associated with it is "a ruby ring".

Generation

The ring of conflict makes up ~3.57% of all randomly generated rings.

Effects

Wearing the ring will generate conflict, causing all monsters within line of sight and a radius of eight squares to attack the nearest monster, including you; monsters may resist this effect dependent on level and monster magic resistance. Every even-numbered turn you wear the ring, your nutrition is decremented by 1.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Per this commit:

The chance to resist conflict now depends on the player's charisma, the monster's level, and the player's level. Conflict is resisted if rnd(20) > min(19, (ACURR(A_CHA) - mtmp->m_lev + u.ulevel)) - thus, there is always at least a 5% chance to resist it. Conflict also now requires that the monster see the player, not that the monster be in the player's line of sight. These changes are imported from SporkHack.

Strategy

Safe identification

See also: Identifying rings with a sink

Informal identification is fairly straightforward in theory: If you put on a ring and your tame pet suddenly begins attacking you, or peaceful monsters begin fighting you or each other, it is a ring of conflict. Dropping a ring of conflict into a sink will produce a message about loud noises.

The main difficulty in identifying the ring, besides making sure it is non-cursed, is doing so safely: Testing a suspected ring of conflict in the presence of a dangerous monster, even if they are peaceful or tame is completely inadvisable. A common YASD is to BUC test a ring as noncursed in a temple and immediately wear it, then quickly dying from the attacks of the aligned priest standing next to you. Finding the ring extremely early in the game can also be similarly dangerous for low-level characters with their starting pets, especially if cursed.

If you have the ring on near a normally-peaceful monster such as a priest, and they attack or wield their weapon with no provocation, it is a sign to take off the ring immediately. Do not use the ring near peacefuls armed with wands, such as shopkeepers, unless you have reflection or another means of handling the magical assault. A somewhat safe method of testing rings for conflict is to make sure you and your pet are alone in a room, and that your pet cannot deal significant damage; having the pet on a leash also helps, as leashed pets will break free under conflict.

Wearing

Rings of conflict are often used for thinning out sizable groups of enemies in areas such as the Castle and Fort Ludios, and you can remove it once you are confident in handling the remaining survivors. Try to maintain distance from the other monsters if possible, especially in smaller rooms, and be ready to take the ring off if necessary to avoid an untimely death. Remember that monsters will only use their breath weapons against you - reflection is advised in some scenarios, both to protect yourself from rays and to aid in taking out other monsters within the group. Make sure you have access to surplus food, and keep pets well away from the area if you are concerned about them dying—or else possibly killing you themselves.

Rings of conflict are also a popular choice for use on the Astral Plane by players confident in their ability to deal with the hostile Angels that will generate, especially during speed ascension. In addition, there is a strategy often employed on the Astral Plane in particular, known as "purple rain" - the player reverse genocides purple worms, then wears a ring of conflict, and finally zaps or breaks a wand of teleportation to send the worms around the level and clear out many of the powerful monsters present.

Yet another use for the ring of conflict is simply to distract tougher monsters you do not wish to fight directly, e.g. shades - even if they are not reliably killed in the ensuing combat, any monster attacking other nearby hostiles is one less monster targeting you.

Farming

Rings of conflict also have uses in gremlin farming, where wearing and removing one while a gremlin is on a level with water can be used to multiply their numbers and generate corpses for sacrifice.

Eating

While the ring of conflict can be eaten for a chance of obtaining conflict as an intrinsic, this has the same nutrition cost as extrinsic conflict, minus the ring hunger - in addition, conflict is one of the few intrinsics that cannot be stolen by gremlins or removed by any other means. Combined with the increased frequency of monster attacks, including peacefuls and pets, and some especially dangerous monsters being immune, this is generally a bad idea.

History

The ring of conflict is one of the many items present in the game since Hack 1.0.

Messages

You hear loud noises coming from the drain.

You dropped a ring of conflict down a sink

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, a ring of conflict can be found in The Spider Caves.