Spellbook of finger of death

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spellbook of
+   finger of death   Light green spellbook.png
Appearance random
Abundance 0.5%
Base price 700 zm
Weight 50
Turns to read 82
Ink to write 35–69
Spell type attack
Level 7
Power cost 35 Pw
Direction ray
Equivalent wand of death

In NetHack, the spellbook of finger of death can be read to learn the spell of finger of death, also known simply as the finger of death. It is a level 7 attack spell, and the spellbook takes 82 actions to read.

Generation

Spellbooks of finger of death make up 1⁄200 (0.5%) of all randomly-generated spellbooks. General stores, second-hand bookstores and rare books stores can stock spellbooks of finger of death.

A Wizard will receive a blessed spellbook of finger of death as their default crowning gift if they are not already carrying the spellbook or else wielding either Vorpal Blade (if neutral) or Stormbringer (if chaotic) when they are crowned.[1]

Writing a spellbook of finger of death with a magic marker uses up 35 to 69 charges.

Description

At all skill levels, the finger of death behaves identically to zapping a wand of death:[2][3] successfully casting the spell prompts the player for a cardinal direction to fire the death ray in, and the ray will instantly kill any hero or monster that it hits unless they have magic resistance or reflection[4]—major demons and nonliving monsters (including shapeshifted vampires) resist death rays and are unaffected, and Death has up to half of their maximum HP restored if hit by the ray.[5][6][7][8][9] The rays from a finger of death will bounce off the walls, ceiling and floor, and destroy any doors they make contact with (which will stop the ray).[10]

A hero that zaps the spell directly at themselves will die instantly regardless of reflection or magic resistance, unless they are polymorphed into a nonliving monster or major demon.[11]

Strategy

The finger of death is the most powerful spell in the game that the hero can learn as well as the most difficult and magic-intensive, costing 35 power to cast and being able to deal with a mass majority of hostiles in the game that lack magic resistance or reflection: this includes several late-game monsters that almost every hero will have to contend with, many of whom are listed further below in this section. The caveat of this is that Wizards highly trained in attack spells make up a mass majority of heroes that will ever attempt casting the spell to begin with, especially since they can be crowned to receive the spellbook—most other heroes will use and potentially recharge wands of death they obtain or wish for, and wands of death are still useful for Wizards looking to conserve power for other purposes.

Wizards looking to utilize the finger of death will aim to be at least Skilled in attack spells and can shoot for Expert skill to minimize failure rates: they will typically have the energy regeneration required to use it fairly often from obtaining their quest artifact, The Eye of the Aethiopica, and can even make short work of their nemesis in the Dark One with the spell (since the artifact must be worn to grant magic resistance)—the spell also serves as a highly-important crowd control tool for them due to its accessibility over the wand, and multiple uses can clear out rooms of non-resistant monsters with relative ease. One particular example includes the treasure zoo within the Wizard's Tower that sits on the floor below the Wizard himself, assuming the hero does not elect to level teleport past it instead.

In any event, be extremely careful about casting the spell without having reflection or magic resistance yourself so you are not killed by rebounding rays. Additionally, be careful not to zap the spell at yourself under any circumstances, including making sure to track prompts for a direction when casting: a common run-ending mistake, especially for extinctionist players that have fallen into routine, is to reflexively cast the spell and then forget about doing so when exiting the prompt—this causes the energy to be released in a random direction, which can include directing the spell at the hero. Polymorphing into a demon or nonliving monster does prevent death from irradiation this way, and an amulet of life saving will behave as normal. Furthermore, take stock of pet locations when firing the ray to avoid killing them from an errant bounce.

Some of the more notorious and nasty late-game encounters that can fall to a finger of death spell are as follows:

  • H minotaurs–A minotaur can easily pulp most heroes with lower HP and/or relatively poor AC, and can also give even melee-focused builds with much better AC serious trouble, but they are incredibly vulnerable to magic of all kinds. Most heroes can make do with a wand of sleep or rebounding rays from other attack wands, and casters can also similarly utilize their spell equivalents; a Wizard that lacks other options, has a minotaur generated adjacent to them via summon nasties, or else simply does not want to take chances can use the finger of death to eliminate them immediately.
  • @ Wizard of Yendor–As with most other heroes and wands of death, high-skill Wizards will use the finger of death to drop Rodney as soon as humanly possible before he can start casting spells or attempt to steal any quest artifacts. The finger of death is similarly utilized to deal with him whenever he resurrects during the ascension run.
  • @ aligned priest–After performing the Invocation, the hero will encounter several priests of Moloch within the Sanctum; they are worth disposing of quickly due to several of their clerical monster spells being annoying at best, and a majority of them will not be generated with the cloak of magic resistance that aligned priests can very rarely receive.
  • @ high priest–Similarly to the priests of Moloch above, the high priest of Moloch can be disposed of near-instantly with the spell if they do not generate with a cloak of magic resistance. An important thing to remember is that they will not become hostile until the hero actually enters the temple itself, and using the spell on them beforehand constitutes murder as a result.
  • E air elementals–Air elementals encountered on the Plane of Air will have especially high HP and can inflict massive damage by engulfing the hero and pummeling them. In some cases, it may be worth using the spell several times to clear them and some other threats out from the Plane, though this may necessitate dropping the Amulet of Yendor first in order to save on power—a wand of death may be generally safer to opt for instead.
  • & Pestilence and & Famine–Both Riders are not immune to death rays, and a Wizard on the Astral Plane will want to avoid getting bogged down in combat with either of them.

Threatening monsters that the finger of death will not work against include the following:

  • A Archons–Though extremely rare to encounter at all, Archons become a possibility to deal with on the ascension run, especially on the Elemental Planes. While they do not directly resist the spell, they are always generated with a shield of reflection that will deflect rays fired at them unless the shield is stolen or removed.
  • A Angels–Angels are primarily encountered en masse on the Astral Plane, and have intrinsic magic resistance due to their magic missile monster spell.
  • ​L liches–While all undead are immune to the finger of death, master liches and arch-liches are easily among the most deadly of the group, though they can be felled with some well-placed magic missiles.
  • & Death–As mentioned earlier, and unlike their fellow Riders, Death is not only immune to the spell, but will be fully healed if they are hit by the ray. Magic missile spells are the best method by far for a Wizard to deal with them, since the Riders possess all elemental resistances.

In general, there will be situations including those touched on above where, even for a Wizard wearing their quest artifact, it may be more energy-efficient to cast a few magic missiles than a single finger of death, or even zap the wand of death in lieu of the spell (also mentioned prior). This is especially true when carrying the Amulet of Yendor during the ascension run, since it will drain additional energy from you when casting spells.

History

The spellbook of finger of death and its spell are introduced in NetHack 1.3d.

From NetHack 3.0.0 to NetHack 3.4.3, including some variants based on these versions, the finger of death spell is subject to the following strategic considerations:

  • Both Master Kaen (the Monk quest nemesis) and the Dark One can gain immunity to the spell or a wand of death from picking up the quest artifact they have stolen–The Eyes of the Overworld for Kaen, and The Eye of the Aethiopica for the Dark One–and force a hero to either resort to alternative strategies or else take their shot while the nemesis is still meditating. NetHack 3.6.0 makes it so that each artifact must be worn to grant magic resistance, and neither Kaen nor the Dark One will wear the artifacts or their base items, rendering it a valid strategy again.
  • Kraken can be killed trivially while on dry land, and their corpses can be revived using a wand of undead turning or the turn undead spell—this enables a hero to engage in kraken farming by continuously reviving and killing krakens on dry land, which is most efficiently done by trapping the kraken in diagonal areas that they cannot move through, then repeatedly casting the turn undead and finger of death spells along those diagonals with copy-and-paste. This is changed in NetHack 3.6.0 via commit 772fea03 so that this strategy is vastly more dangerous: kraken (and sea monsters in general) will no longer revive while on land, and leaving them in water puts the hero at risk of instadeath by drowning attack.

Origin

The finger of death appears as the ultimate spell in the old game Spellcast, also known as Spellbinder or Waving Hands.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, the finger of death spell is the only spell unaffected by the sigil of discharge and sigil of tempest techniques.

Several new and returning monsters have formal or informal death resistance, including minotaurs, Cthulhu and most angelic beings, removing the finger of death spell as an option against them—some other returning monsters, as well as new major threats like the giant shoggoth, lack this resistance.

GruntHack

In GruntHack, some monsters can use the same set of spells as the hero, including the finger of death.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, a hero that has the spirit Buer bound cannot use the finger of death spell or any other death magic.

The eldritch style knightly stance can be used to add bonus damage against living monsters to wielded weapons via the finger of death spell, at the cost of some power.

FIQHack

In FIQHack, monsters can use the same set of spells as the hero, with skill levels to match, and can learn and utilize the finger of death spell.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, the finger of death spell is made into a level 7 evocation spell, and is otherwise unchanged in function. The Wizard's default crowning gift is also changed to a blessed spellbook of power word kill, and the Druid role receives a blessed spellbook of finger of death as their default crowning gift.

References

  1. ↑ src/pray.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 783
  2. ↑ src/spell.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1098
  3. ↑ src/spell.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1137: all directional spells and wand equivalents fall through to this line
  4. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3662
  5. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3663
  6. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3671
  7. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3841
  8. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 3845
  9. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 4156
  10. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 4639
  11. ↑ src/zap.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2448
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