Black market (UnNetHack)
In UnNetHack, the black market is a special level with one or many shops which offer a wide variety of goods at extremely high prices. Magical items cost 25 times what they would in a normal shop, and non-magical items cost 15 times normal.[1] Conflict has no effect within the black market, and scrolls of earth might not be as helpful as you would expect—50% of the time, they will do nothing.
The magic portal to the black market, aka One-eyed Sam's Market, follows normal portal placement rules[2] (unlike Fort Ludios) and will appear on level 20 to 24 of the main dungeon.[3]
Contents
Monsters
One-eyed Sam
| @ One-eyed Sam (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 28 |
| Attacks |
Weapon 4d10 |
| Base level | 25 |
| Base experience | 891 |
| Speed | 24 |
| Base AC | -8 |
| Base MR | 50 |
| Alignment | -2 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | Unique |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 400 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | death magic, poison, fire, cold, sleep, shock, petrification |
| Resistances conveyed | sleep (100%) |
|
One-eyed Sam:
| |
One-eyed Sam is in charge of the black market and is very difficult to kill, even for ascension-ready characters. She wields the deadly two-handed sword Thiefbane in one hand and is equipped with most of an ascension kit—well-enchanted magic dragon scale mail, a shield of reflection, and speed boots, as well as an amulet of life saving.[4]
Angering One-eyed Sam
If you anger Sam, her assistants, or any black marketeers, all of them will turn hostile. An unfortunate bug exists that treats any named (or even previously named) monster as one of her assistants, so be very careful in using the #call command in the black market.
Once Sam is angered, a group of soldiers will be summoned, and iron bars will drop from the ceiling around the magic portal (unless you are standing on it already). The bars are raised once Sam is dead (pacifying her does not count). If you are unable or unwilling to kill Sam, you can slip past the bars with the help of acid, phasing, or some polymorph forms.
Black marketeers
@ black marketeer 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 23 |
| Attacks |
Weapon 4d10 |
| Base level | 20
|
| Speed | 20 |
| Base AC | -5 |
| Base MR | 40 |
| Alignment | -2 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 400 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | sleep, petrification |
| Resistances conveyed | sleep (100%) |
|
A black marketeer:
| |
Black marketeers are weaker versions of One-eyed Sam. In the second version of the black market, each of the nine shops has a black marketeer in place of a shopkeeper. Each black marketeer wields an enchanted long sword and has a 50% chance of wearing each of the following: magic dragon scale mail, a shield of reflection, speed boots, and an amulet of life saving.[5]
Assistants
One-eyed Sam has nine assistants that are generated with the level. They are initially asleep and peaceful, but they will awaken and become hostile if you anger Sam for any reason. Sam will also become angry if you attack one of her assistants.
The assistants are:
- A pit fiend named Hilvuuloth
- A rock troll named William
- A balrog named Njalnohaar
- A cockatrice named Simon
- A wood nymph named Daphne
- A salamander named Izzy
- A rock troll named Thomas
- A cockatrice named Wilbur
- A frost giant named Goliath
- A giant turtle named Small A'Tuin
Maps
There are two different black market layouts. Both have undiggable and unphasable walls, and teleport is not allowed.
In both layouts, the marked monsters are One-eyed Sam's assistants.
First version
The first version is based on SLASH'EM's black market. Everything besides the narrow passage on the left is one large shop, with One-eyed Sam as the shopkeeper. The entire level is lit.
Not every space in this shop will be stocked with an object. There are 400 objects in the shop on average.[6]
|..^..||...................................................................|
||...|||&..................................................................|
|||.|| |T..................................................................|
||...|||&..................................................................|
|.....||...................................................................|
||...|||...................................................................|
|||.|| |c..................................................................|
||...|||n...............................shop...............................|
|.....||:..................................................................|
||...|||...................................................................|
|||.|| |:..................................................................|
||...|||T..................................................................|
|.....||c..................................................................|
|......+@..................................................................|
|.....||...................................................................|
||...|||H..................................................................|
----- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Second version
In the second version, One-eyed Sam is not a shopkeeper; she is merely a peaceful monster on the level. The black market is made up of nine shops: a general store, and one each of scroll, potion, wand, ring, armor, tool, weapon, and book shops. If you anger any of the black marketeers or One-eyed Sam, all nine black marketeers (and One-eyed Sam!) will also become hostile and leave their shops to attack you.
The magic portal is placed randomly in the round room on the left. The round room and the shops are lit, and the rest of the level is dark. Three muggers are placed in the unlit passages.
----------- |.......|...............|.........|.............|
----n........---- |.......|...............|.........|.............|
---T..............--- |.shop..|...............|.shop....|.....shop....|
--H..................-- |.......|..-----------..|......----+--..........|
--.....................--|.......|..|.........|..|......|.....|..........|
--:......................-|.......|..|.........|..|......+..{..-----------|
|.........................--+------..|..shop...|..--------......|.........|
|....................................+.........|................+.........|
|&...........@.......................|.........|.............{..|..shop...|
|....................................|---------|...--------.....|.........|
|.........................---------..+.........|..--......--....|.........|
--c......................-|.......|..|.........|..+........|..------------|
--.....................--|.......+..|..shop...|..|..shop..|..+...........|
--T..................-- |.shop..|..|.........|..|........|..|...........|
---&..............-----|.......|..-----.....|..--......--..|...shop....|
----c........----|...|.......|......|.....|...--------...|...........|
-S---------###S...|.......|......|.....|..............|...........|
########### -----------------------------------------------------
Strategy
The Black Market has a number of qualities that set its utility to the player apart from other shops, even if one doesn't plan to steal from it.
Identification
The large quantity of different item types available for sale allows the player to price-identify a large chunk of items normally sold in shops, and the fact that the Black Market always comes with a general store gives the player a guaranteed means of price-identifying items by selling them if no general stores generated in the Mazes of Menace. The player has to account for the Black Market’s markups when price-identifying items that are on sale (15x for non-magic items and 25x for magic items), but it’s not a significant hindrance to using the Black Market for price identification. If picking up items off the ground to #name them, remember to bring in ~2,500 gold in case you have to pay for picking up a Cursed Scroll of scare monster.
Additionally, the sheer quantity of items also lends itself to formal identification: The player can bring in blessed scrolls of identify, pick up all the informally identified items they want, and then read the scrolls to formally identify said items. This is especially valuable for items that are dangerous to try or expensive to buy without formally identifying them first, like Amulets, Rings, Spellbooks, or high-tier scrolls.
If the player has a Wand of probing, they can also zap One-Eyed Sam to figure out what the Amulet of Life Saving, Magic Dragon Scales, and Speed Boots look like; Sam will always be equipped with all three.
Magic Equipment
The Black Market regularly comes with magical pieces of armor, tools, and sometimes weapons because of how many items are sold. If the player failed to find reflection or magic resistance before reaching/clearing the Castle, the Black Market has a decent chance of having a Shield/Amulet of reflection or Cloak of magic resistance to acquire those valuable extrinsics. There can also be a Magic lamp available, which the player can bless and rub to potentially wish for a Shield of Reflection (while wishes outside the Wand of wishing are restricted to non-magical items in UnNetHack, UnNetHack also makes the Shield of Reflection a non-magical item).
As a General Store
After buying everything desirable from other shops and buying your first few points of intrinsic protection from an aligned priest, the Black Market becomes one of your best gold sinks. Spending up to 2,600 gold for a Scroll of enchant armor you can bless for up to -3 AC is still better than paying 4,000-6,000 gold to an aligned priest for -1 AC if you have armor you plan to keep for a long time.
While the Black Market has very large price markups, it doesn’t make it impossible to buy large quantities of items from it. Fort Ludios has an average of ~50,000 gold you can spend on the market, a blessed Touchstone can formally identify gems to sell for gold or credit, and the 1st floor of the Ruins of Moria usually not only has a lot of gems and some gray stones (which can include a Touchstone), but also several small pieces of unrefined mithril buried underground that can be dug up and sold for tens of thousands of gold/credit.
Stealing
Getting items from the black market without paying for them is a difficult task but is not impossible. Here are a few options:
Powerful pet
Since pets cannot accompany you through the portal to the black market, many give up on the idea. However, the hardware shop often has figurines, and some of those may be very worth purchasing (even with the huge mark-up). This pet can safely steal for you (see apport). If it is powerful enough, it may even be able to defeat the shopkeepers and One-eyed Sam, too. Standing next to your pet and pumping it with healing spells will not anger anyone.
Credit cloning
One option to at get anything you want from the black market is to use credit cloning. If you wander around the black market long enough, eventually some sort of baby dragon will be generated. If you drop your gold in a shop, it will pick it up and follow you outside, where you can kill it and take back your gold. With a spell or wand of undead turning, this process can be repeated many times, as baby dragons will always leave a corpse to revive. It is possible to build up hundreds of thousands of zorkmids in credit, more than enough to buy even a wand of wishing or a magic lamp.
Indirect theft
Pets cannot follow you through the portal to the black market, nor can they follow you out, and magical taming will not work here. It is still possible to acquire pets in the black market by feeding a domestic animal, waiting for an egg to hatch, or applying a (blessed) figurine. Once you have a pet, you can clear out the shop in the normal way, but this is a rather tedious procedure, given the size of the market.
Fighting One-eyed Sam
One-eyed Sam is a formidable opponent; the main danger is her Thiefbane which drains your life and has a 10% chance of decapitating you with each hit, killing you instantly. It is unlikely you would win against Sam in melee. Most of the strategies for dealing with Sam in SLASH'EM's black market do not work in UnNetHack. Sam has poison resistance], teleport control, flight, and the ability to break boulders - as soon as you anger Sam, iron bars will drop from the ceiling around the magic portal, blocking it. In short, an unprepared character has almost no chance against her.
- You can try to kill her from a distance before she can close in. If you have a powerful ranged attack (for example, expert bow with highly enchanted arrows) and start attacking her from maximum range you may, with luck, kill her before she gets into melee range. Keep in mind her amulet of life saving; you need to be able to kill her twice. Delaying her with boulders, or even better, water from scrolls of flood, can increase your chances here.
- You can use a powerful pet. An Archon, brought in via blessed figurine, leveled enough to attack Sam, and given a powerful weapon, can reliably beat Sam in melee combat since pets are immune to her insta-kill. This can be a painful option, since you won't be able to take your shiny pet Archon with you. You may clear the shops of assistants (or other black marketeers in second variation), then rake in all the loot as compensation.
- You can create a blue jelly or similar sessile monster fort to keep Sam out of melee range. You will still have to deal with wands and have a way to deal damage without losing your fort.
- It is even possible to disarm Sam by snatching Thiefbane with a bullwhip. There is a guaranteed bullwhip in the Ruins of Moria. Keep in mind that Sam "wields" the Thiefbane only after she is angered, so applying bullwhip right away will only provoke her and therefore is a Bad Idea.
- The iron bars that normally keep you trapped in the black market can also keep you safe. The easiest way to do this is to stand right next to the portal, anger Sam, then move onto the portal after the bars drop. You will have to deal with wands and the cadre of soldiers—one of which will be on the portal—and you should remember that the bars will be raised once Sam is dead, potentially exposing you to other nasties in the market. Wands can be dealt with by reflection, and soldiers and assistants can be dispatched by either attack spells or skilled polearms. Also, always beware of potion of acid that might be thrown at you.
- Contrary to what it might seem, Sam herself cannot resist level drain as Thiefbane does not convey any resistance against draining, so continuously casting drain life might be an option when you successfully brace behind the bars. Other monsters might obstruct the spell, and even if it hits there is still the 50% MR roll you have to consider; things will be tedious even if you are a potent spellcaster.
- Combining ranged attacks with scrolls of flood, especially if flying or polymorphed into a flying monster (such as a vampire lord, will allow you to keep Sam away from melee distance. As a bonus, enough scrolls of flood can drown many of her assistants without angering her.
- Grind indefinitely and make yourself more than capable of ascending. Killing Sam this way, though, will be mostly unrewarding if not tedious.
If all else fails, either try to appease her with gold (first level variant only; Sam is not a shopkeeper in the second) or run. Polymorphing into an air elemental will allow you to both outrun Sam and slip through the iron bars. You can also reliably destroy iron bars with a wielded potion of acid. And if you're desperate, a 1⁄13 chance of teleporting her out of the way might be the only gamble worth taking.
History
Before UnNetHack 5.3.2, the layout of the classic Black Market was exactly the same as the Black Market that appeared in SLASH'EM. There were approximately 379 objects in the shop on average.
References
- ↑ src/shk.c in UnNetHack revision 1504, line 2145
- ↑ https://sourceforge.net/p/unnethack/git/ci/master/tree/src/mklev.c
- ↑ https://sourceforge.net/p/unnethack/git/ci/master/tree/dat/dungeon.def#l31
- ↑ src/makemon.c in UnNetHack revision 1504, line 594
- ↑ src/shknam.c in UnNetHack revision 1504, line 566
- ↑ src/shknam.c in UnNetHack revision 5.3.2, line 741
