Disenchantment

Disenchantment is a damage type that appears in NetHack and can reduce the enchantment of weapons, armor and other items.

Description

A hero that is hit with an active disenchanting attack may have the enchantment for a worn chargeable ring or outermost piece of armor reduced by 1, while a monster takes ordinary physical damage. Passive disenchantment attacks can decrease the enchantment of the attacker's weapon, gloves (if using bare hands or martial arts) or boots (if kicking) by 1. Active disenchanting attacks can be blocked by magic cancellation, and are nullified if the attacker is cancelled - neither of these are true for passive disenchantment. Artifacts have a ⁹⁄₁₀ chance of resisting disenchantment in both cases.

The only monster with a disenchanting attack of either type is the disenchanter.

Strategy

Though disenchantment is only a risk when dealing with one specific monster in the game, that risk is significant enough that many heroes resort to preemptive genocide of disenchanters, or at least consider precautions such as a non-enchanted side weapon, unenchanted projectiles and/or extensive use of magic ranged attacks.

History

The disenchantment damage type is introduced along with the disenchanter in NetHack 3.3.0.

Variants

Variants of NetHack give disenchanting attacks to monsters other than the enchanter.

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, the steel golem has a passive disenchanting attack.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, a few monsters have disenchantment attacks:

• Dokkalfar eternal matriarchs have a pair of disenchanting weapon attacks.
• An ancient of blessings has a passive disenchanting attack and many disenchanting weapon attacks.
• The Adamach has a passive disenchanting attack.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, Mephistopheles has a disenchanting claw attack.

Hack'EM

Hack'EM retains the steel golem's passive disenchanting attack and the disenchanting claw attack of Mephistopheles.