Gemstone
- This article is about the material. For the items, see gems.
- For the material that non-gem "crystal" objects in NetHack are made of, see glass.
Gemstone is a form of material that appears in NetHack.[1]
Description
Gemstone is a non-organic material that cannot normally be eaten or subjected to erosion.
List of mineral items
The following items are made of mineral:
- any ring with the randomized appearance of "tiger eye", "jade", "agate", "topaz", "sapphire", "ruby", "diamond", or "emerald"
- all gems other than worthless pieces of glass
A hero casting the stone to flesh spell on gemstone objects will turn them into flesh objects—gemstone rings will be transformed into meat rings, while valuable gems will be turned into meatballs.
Polypiling enough gemstone objects has a chance of creating a golem, with a roughly equal probability of creating a stone golem or a clay golem.[2]
History
Gemstone items technically first appear in Hack 1.0 with the various valuable gems. The material is formally defined in NetHack 3.1.0.
Variants
Some NetHack variants add new items made of gemstone, while others that implement an object materials system make it possible for certain items–usually metallic ones–to be made of gemstone. Items with a gemstone material may also be referred to as being made of "crystal".
As an object material, gemstone is generally high-quality and produces weapons and armor with higher damage and/or AC, but gemstone items tend to be both very expensive and quite rare.
Variants may also enable some monsters to eat gems and other items made of gemstone.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, rings with the randomized appearance of "wedding rings" or "obsidian rings" are made of gemstone, in addition to all valuable gems and gemstone rings that are retained from NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier contemporary versions.
SLASH'EM also introduces new types of golem that are made of gemstone: the ruby, sapphire, diamond, and crystal golems. The gemstone golems each have a powerful physical attack and a breath weapon whose element is tied partly to their gem type, with the diamond golem's breath weapon using a randomized damage type similar to the Chromatic Dragon. All four varieties of golem drop valuable gems of their respective material upon death, with the crystal golem leaving behind a pile of random valuable gems.
GruntHack
In GruntHack, gemstone is the heaviest and most expensive among object materials, but provides a +2 bonus to AC relative to iron armor and is immune to erosion.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, items that are made of gemstone have a submaterial for a specific type of valuable gem as opposed to always being an unspecified, generic gemstone. Valuable gems themselves can be used as focusing crystals for lightsabers to produce different-colored 'blades' (worthless pieces of glass will always result in a red lightsaber).
dNetHack adds the following valuable gems and gemstone items as well:
- doll's tear
- magicite crystal
- star sapphire
- blue fluorite
- white fluorite
- green fluorite
- antimagic rift
- catapsi vortex
xNetHack
In xNetHack, gemstone provides a +2 AC bonus for armor similar to GruntHack, but is much lighter in comparison to most metals save for mithril.
Wands with the randomized appearance of "hexagonal" are now made of quartz.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, gemstone functions similarly to xNetHack in terms of armor and AC. Gemstone weapons additionally gain a +3 damage bonus if they deal slashing or piercing damage; dwarven-made weapons have a 1⁄20 chance of generating as made of gemstone.
The following items have a base material of gemstone:
SlashTHEM
In addition to SLASH'EM changes, SlashTHEM adds two randomized appearances for amulets, "tetraedical" and "isocaedical", that are composed of gemstone; both appearances are associated with the amulet of second chance and amulet of data storage (respectively) in the code by default.
