Amulet theft

Amulet theft, also known as "steal amulet", is a damage type that occurs in NetHack, and uses the AD_SAMU damage type flag.

Amulet theft is associated with the quest nemesis monsters and the Wizard of Yendor: all these monsters each have a single claw attack with the damage type, and are covetous and capable of warping to the hero's position.

Description

As indicated by the flag and name, attacks with the amulet theft damage type deal damage and have a ¹⁄₂₀ chance of stealing the Amulet of Yendor or other valuable items from the target's open inventory—the attack deals no damage against other monsters, though it can still steal items from them. The attack can also steal quest artifacts and the invocation items: when the attacker lands a hit from an amulet theft attack and the ¹⁄₂₀ chance of theft succeeds, the game first checks the target's open inventory for any quest artifacts and enumerates them, then if at least one is present, it then selects one of the quest artifacts to be stolen at random—if none are present at all, the game then moves on to checking for the Amulet of Yendor and invocation items; this routine explicitly includes the cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor and bell as "fake" items that they may mistake for the real ones, aborting the routine if no items of interest are found at all. Otherwise, if the Amulet, any invocation items or one of their "fake" substitutes are found, the game enumerates them and selects one to be stolen at random.

When stealing an item using the above attack, the attacker will remove any of the target's worn armor or other items covering the targeted item if necessary, though there are currently no quest artifacts that can be covered by worn items. Once the item is stolen, the attacker attempts to teleport away.

Variants

Variants of NetHack often introduce additional monsters with attacks that can steal the Amulet of Yendor, and some may split the attack's properties between quest artifacts, invocation items and/or the Amulet itself.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, the damage type is split between the vanilla amulet theft damage type and a quest artifact theft damage type that is new to those variants. Quest artifact theft is associated with most quest nemeses and their related monsters, and behaves as the Amulet theft damage type does in NetHack; the Amulet theft damage type is associated with the Wizard of Yendor, the elder priest and a small handful of other monsters, and steals all of the same items as in NetHack except for quest artifacts.

References

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