Artifact blast

In NetHack, touching an artifact may cause it to blast you for damage each time - these artifact blasts may pose a threat to unwary players.

Description

Artifact blasts are triggered each time you attempt to do any of the following actions with an artifact:

• Wish for an artifact
• Pick one up or remove it from a container (tipping one out of a container is safe)
• Wield or wear one
• Apply or invoke one
• Steal one
• Polymorph with the artifact equipped or in main inventory (including when you return to normal form or feel like a "new you").

Artifact blasts are magical in nature, so gloves afford no protection, and magic resistance can reduce their damage. The circumstances you are blasted under and the damage dealt depend on whether the blast originated from an intelligent artifact.

Intelligent artifacts

When performing any of the above actions, intelligent artifacts will always blast you for 4d10 damage (reduced to 2d10 damage if you have magic resistance) and abuse your wisdom if you meet any of the following conditions:

• It is a quest artifact and you are not of the associated role
• You are of a different alignment than the artifact
• You have negative alignment record
• You are in the form of something the artifact specially attacks

Additionally, if you are of the wrong role and fail one of the other conditions, the artifact will refuse to cooperate with you. If you tried to take or wish for the artifact, it will "evade your grasp" and remain in its current location, or fall to the floor if wished for. If it was already in your inventory and you tried to equip or use it, it will be "beyond your control", unequip itself, and resist any attempt to equip, apply, or invoke it. Any effects that the artifact grants simply by being carried will still apply. The primary ramification of this is that you can only use another role's quest artifact if you are the same alignment as that object.

Unintelligent artifacts

Unintelligent artifacts have a ¹⁄₄ chance of blasting you for 4d4 damage (2d4 if you have magic resistance) and abusing your wisdom any time you perform one of the above actions if:

• You are of a different alignment than the artifact
• You have negative alignment record
• You are in the form of something the artifact specially attacks

Unaligned artifacts don't care about your alignment or record, and will only blast you if they attack your current form. Similarly, Sting and Orcrist, despite being chaotic, only blast orcs.

While unintelligent artifacts never evade you as intelligent ones do, you cannot equip any artifact if it attacks your current form. Independent of any possible blast, attempting to do so deals d10 damage, unaffected by magic resistance, and abuses constitution.

Attacking forms

The following artifacts are considered to attack specific forms:

Artifact	Form
Demonbane	​& major demons (but not other &)
Dragonbane	​D dragons
Giantslayer	giants (but not other ​H giant humanoids)
Grimtooth	@ elves
The Mitre of Holiness	undead (but not major demons)
Ogresmasher	​O ogres
Orcrist, Sting	​o orcs
Sunsword	undead
Trollsbane	​T trolls
Werebane	characters with lycanthropy

Artifacts attack polymorphed players based on their current form, and so do not account for their base race in the case of polyself. Thus, an elven player could temporarily wield Grimtooth, or an orcish player Sting, by polymorphing into a more acceptable form.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, the blast damage has been increased, making picking up artifacts even more dangerous. Intelligent artifacts do 8d10 damage (6d10 with magic resistance), and unintelligent artifacts do 8d6 damage (6d6 with magic resistance). This also applies to SlashTHEM.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, certain artifacts such as Nighthorn will always blast their user.

References

This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:

Redistribution, copying, and editing of these spoilers, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. The original contributors to any spoiler must continue to be credited.
2. Any modifications to the spoiler must be acknowledged and credited.