Pick-axe
( 
| |
|---|---|
| Name | pick-axe |
| Appearance | pick-axe |
| Damage vs. small | 1d6 |
| Damage vs. large | 1d3 |
| To-hit bonus | +0 |
| Weapon skill | pick-axe |
| Size | one-handed |
| Base price | 50 zm (+10/positive enchant) |
| Weight | 100 |
| Material | iron |
A pick-axe is a type of tool that appears in NetHack. It is a one-handed weapon-tool that is designed for digging and can be used in melee, and is made of iron.
Generation
Archeologists start each game with an uncursed +0 pick-axe.[1]
Pick-axes make up 1⁄50 (2%) of all tools that are randomly generated on the floor, in general shops or as death drops. Hardware stores can also stock pick-axes. Randomly-generated pick-axes are always uncursed and +0, with the exception of bones files and fake "bones" on early traps.
Elven monarchs have a 2⁄3 chance of being generated with a pick-axe, and the guaranteed Elvenking on the Plane of Earth will always be created with one.[2][3] Dwarven monsters that are not undead have an effective 1⁄4 chance of being generated with a pick-axe.[4]
Description
A pick-axe deals 1d6 damage versus small monsters and 1d3 versus large monsters. Pick-axes have +2 to-hit bonuses against xorns and earth elementals.[5]
A hero eating a non-blessed tin while wielding a pick-axe will use it to open the tin in six turns at most.[6]
In terms of monster weapon preference, monsters that are not currently tunneling with a pick-axe will prefer it to a rubber hose, and will prefer a club or better to the pick-axe.[7]
Digging
A hero can apply a pick-axe to tunnel through solid rock walls, dig downward into the floor to create a pit or turn a pit into a hole, dig through doors to break them open, and smash apart boulders and statues. The hero's digging can be interrupted if a hostile monster approaches, their pick-axe is lost or if they are moved away from the digging area.[8] A hero's digging speed depends on the pick-axe's enchantment and whether or not they are a dwarf, though their skill level in pick-axes unusually has no impact—the articles linked above cover these mechanics in detail, particularly the digging article's section on speed.
The watch will warn a hero that they see trying to dig through doors or walls with a pick, and continuing immediately after being warned will cause them to become hostile.
A tunneling monster that requires a pick to dig through walls will automatically do so if they have a pick-axe and they move into a wall, through a closed door or into a tree, and they will favor using a dwarvish mattock over a pick-axe if they have both items.[9][10][11][12]
Strategy
Pick-axes are generally the long-term digging tool of choice after wands of digging, though they are fairly heavy at 100 aum, which can prove inconvenient especially if you start with a low carrying capacity from weak strength and/or constitution—a non-cursed bag of holding makes pick-axes far more tolerable to carry long-term. The wand of digging and wand of striking are lighter in comparison and may be preferred over a pick-axe in specific instances, such as breaking multiple statues to get at their potential contents or digging through areas outside of mazes; it is still worth keeping and utilizing both, particularly since wands have limited charges.
As a weapon
Pick-axes generally have low damage output and are usually not employed for combat by most character builds: Archeologists start with a pick-axe and Basic skill, and can use their pick-axe effectively against thick-skinned monsters such as mimics that their +2 bullwhip cannot damage until they procure and train a better weapon such as a scimitar or even a dwarvish mattock. For other heroes, the player will have to make sure they unwield their pick-axe and/or re-wield their primary weapon if they are interrupted by a hostile monster during or after a digging session—remember that unlike attacking with a non-weapon tool such as a magic lamp, attacking monsters with a pick-axe does not produce a "You begin bashing monsters with your..." warning message.
Players who are aiming for the weaponless conduct must be very careful when using pick-axes: bumping into a monster while digging or forgetting to unwield the pick-axe before (re-)entering combat will break the conduct. This is so easy to do that some players recommend not using a pick-axe at all when attempting the conduct.
Finding a pick-axe
Pick-axes are fairly common within the dungeon, despite their low base generation rate—as dwarves are tunneling monsters and very common in the Gnomish Mines, you will usually hear them digging before you see them. Dwarven heroes, gnomish heroes and lawful-aligned heroes unwilling to risk early alignment record and alignment abuse penalties can have a pet attack a peaceful dwarf and kill them to obtain one. Other alignments and races instead must contend with fighting off dwarves digging towards their positions, as their digging can disrupt use of chokepoints; pets are still more than useful in this scenario, though dwarves can be somewhat tougher for them to kill.
Shopping with pick-axes
Shopkeepers will attempt to stop a hero entering their shop with a pick-axe in their open inventory, and will catch any picks that the hero tries to throw into the shop. Digging through a shop's door or wall will produce a message and cause the hero to abort the attempt, though if the player constantly resumes the digging action, they will eventually succeed in destroying the door and thus anger the shopkeeper.[13][14]
If you have a pick-axe and want to enter a shop, you can drop it at the entrance to the shop (not counting the doorway), place it into a container, or try to force your way in by moving behind another monster. Once inside, shopkeepers do not mind if you have a pick-axe out, as long as you do not dig through their walls—additionally, if you dig a hole in the floor, objects on that square and adjacent squares can fall through, which counts as shoplifting and will anger the shopkeeper.
If you are intentionally aiming to steal from a shop with a pick-axe, the shop must be big enough that you can gain the required distance from the shopkeeper: the aim is to pick up all of the shop's merchandise and dig out of the shop, then immediately through the floor—you may need to place additional obstructions between you and them (e.g., a scroll of earth), and a wand of digging may be more ideal for this purpose. While you can also dig straight through the shop floor, obstructing the shopkeeper is far more necessary since they will otherwise steal every item in your inventory that is not being worn or wielded as you fall. Stealing will naturally anger the shopkeeper, and Keystone Kops will begin to appear when you return to that dungeon level, so plan accordingly.
Digging through the game
One of the more common early uses for a pick-axe is finding and looting vaults for gold to use in shops and/or at temples. You may also unearth gems and gold embedded in the walls—while finding vaults will suffice most times, additionally mining random gold and gems from the walls is a viable option for those attempting a protection racket, particularly Archeologists. This is most easily done with the aid of object detection, usually via the potion.
A pick-axe can be used to break stuck and/or obstructive boulders: it is especially useful to this end in Sokoban, though this causes a -1 luck penalty unless you are on a level you have already solved, and it can also be used to dig up the rolling boulder trap on each level after solving it in order to guide your pet through far more easily. Smashed boulders and statues will also crumble into rocks, which you can throw or sling as projectiles or else turn into meatballs by casting the stone to flesh spell.
In the later stages of the game, a pick-axe is often used to cut a cleaner and/or shorter path between staircases on a dungeon level, as well as smashing boulders blocking your path; this is particularly worthwhile with Gehennom mazes, especially for navigating your way through later on during the ascension run.
Blessing your pick-axe may also be worthwhile for an easier time digging through the Plane of Earth: a non-blessed pick has an independent 1⁄6 chance of causing a 3x3 area around them to cave in and create walls, which is increased to 1⁄4 for a cursed pick, while digging with a blessed pick instead has a 1⁄3 chance of immediately clearing the same area of rock around them.[15] Even with a blessed pick-axe, each digging attempt also has a 1⁄3 chance of creating monsters on each square adjacent to the hero, and those monsters will be either earth elementals or xorns with roughly equal probability, so be ready to fight or scare them off as necessary.[16] Once you have cleared the Plane of Earth, you can typically ditch your pick-axe if so desired.
History
The pick-axe first appears in Hack 1.0.2.
Pick-axes are subject to a few bugs in NetHack 3.4.3, a couple of which are listed here:
- The shopkeeper does not charge the hero for an unsold boulder that is destroyed with a pick-axe. This is bug C343-396, and is fixed as of September 2009.
- A badly formed message may be produced if a monster removes a boulder while a pick-axe is being applied to that boulder. This iss bug C343-397, and is fixed as of September 2009 via commit e450ca62.
Digging for victory
In versions up to NetHack 3.6.7, finding a pick-axe is one of the primary goals in attempts to "dig for victory". Of note is that the mountain centaur is the fastest form that can wield weapons and thus operate a pick-axe, making it a goal for characters that manage to find a source of polymorph and polymorph control along their route. NetHack 5.0.0 changes it so that falling to dungeon levels below inflicts physical damage, and wishes are no longer concentrated solely at the Castle due in part to changes to the wand of wishing, which results in "digging for victory" being highly impractical as a strategy going forward.
Messages
Variants
Some NetHack variants may lower the weight of pick-axes.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, pick-axes have their weight lowered to 75 aum. The Necromancer starts each game with a +0 pick-axe as their alternate weapon.
A pick-axe is always generated in the mine king level in order to prevent the player being trapped if they entered the level from the Gnome King's Wine Cellar variant of Mines' End—this can occur if a character is level teleported or else falls through a hole or trap door and lands in the gem cache. It may also double as a homage to SLASH'EM predecessor variant SLASH 6: the Gnome role's quest artifact was a pick-axe called The Pick of Flandal Steelskin, and the mine king level is based on the Gnome quest home level.
Upgrading a pick-axe successfully will produce a dwarvish mattock, and vice versa.[17][18] This results in a ludicrously game-breaking bug: You can enchant a weapon to +127 by polymorphing it into a dwarvish mattock, upgrading it to a pick-axe, then further polymorphing it into a tinning kit or an expensive camera, charging that tool until it has 127 charges, and finally waiting for it to revert. A +127 long sword can be turned into a super-powerful Excalibur, while a +127 bow or other launcher can fire 40 or more projectiles at once.
dNetHack
dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack lower the pick-axe's weight to 80 aum.
SpliceHack
In SpliceHack, a pick-axe can be combined with an axe at a furnace to create a dwarvish mattock.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, a pick-axe can be combined with a dwarvish short sword at a forge to create a dwarvish mattock.
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, in addition to SLASH'EM details, the Undertaker role starts each game with a +0 pick-axe as their alternate weapon.
Encyclopedia entry
The mine is full of holes;
With the wound of pickaxes.
But look at the goldsmith's store.
There, there is gold everywhere.
References
- ↑ src/u_init.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 48: enchantment and beatitude are not specified, but pick-axes are normally generated +0 and uncursed
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 257-L259
- ↑ dat/earth.lua in NetHack 5.0.0, line 57
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 397-L398: 3⁄4 chance of reaching the pick-axe dagger case, and pick-axe is given 1⁄3 of the time
- ↑ src/weapon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 178-L180
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1762-L1765
- ↑ src/weapon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 698
- ↑ src/dig.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 309-L315
- ↑ src/weapon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 824-L830
- ↑ src/dig.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1420-L1422
- ↑ src/dig.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1424-L1455
- ↑ src/dig.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1486-L1491
- ↑ src/dig.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 507-L516
- ↑ src/dig.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 546-L556: The check occurs after the digging effort has been applied, and if enough effort has been put in, the door will break as usual
- ↑ src/dig.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 467-L476
- ↑ src/dig.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 528-L533
- ↑ potion.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 2220
- ↑ potion.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 2223
