Magical item

A magical item or magical object is an item which when polymorphed, has a tendency to become another magical item of the same type. Junk magical items can therefore be polypiled to produce other magical items.

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Some further info on variants re this would be nice. The most obvious are effects on what can be wished for. Are there any variants other than EvilHack in which wizards - or some other group - can see magical items? Leaving aside new items, are there any other differences?"

Magical armor

Only the following items of armor are considered magical:

Boots

• elven boots
• fumble boots
• jumping boots
• kicking boots
• levitation boots
• speed boots
• water walking boots

Cloaks

• alchemy smock
• cloak of displacement
• cloak of invisibility
• cloak of magic resistance
• cloak of protection
• elven cloak
• robe

Gloves

• gauntlets of dexterity
• gauntlets of fumbling
• gauntlets of power

Helms

• cornuthaum
• dunce cap
• helm of brilliance
• helm of opposite alignment
• helm of telepathy

Shields

• shield of reflection

Suits

• Each type of dragon scale mail (not dragon scales however)

Magical tools

Only the following tools are considered magical:

• bag of holding
• bag of tricks
• crystal ball
• drum of earthquake
• figurine
• fire horn
• frost horn
• horn of plenty
• magic harp
• magic lamp
• magic marker
• magic flute
• magic whistle
• unicorn horn

Unicorn horns are a special case in NetHack 3.6.0: they are magical items by default and most horns you find can be polypiled into other magical tools. However, unicorn horns that are "regrown"—dropped by a unicorn that has been revived at least once—are treated as non-magical items and will only polymorph into non-magical tools.

Magical stones

Only the following stones are considered magical:

• loadstone
• luckstone
• touchstone

Other items

All potions are magical except:

• potion of acid
• potion of booze
• potion of fruit juice
• potion of oil
• potion of sickness
• potion of water

Stacks of magical potions produced by alchemy will tend to be smaller than those of non-magical potions.

All scrolls, spellbooks, wands, rings, and amulets are magical except for the following:

• scroll of blank paper
• scroll of mail
• blank spellbook
• wand of nothing
• meat stick
• meat ring
• cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor

Note that no weapon, food, boulder, statue, or gold is magical. Historic is a different attribute for statues.

The Amulet of Yendor and invocation items are magic, but cannot be polymorphed anyway.

The listed potions, blank items, and the wand of nothing, despite not being magical, have a large chance of polymorphing into magical objects; see polypiling for details.

Variants

EvilHack

In EvilHack, wizards can see whether an item is magical, similarly to how a priest can see an item's BUC status.