Silver bullet (SLASH'EM)
) 
| |
|---|---|
| Name | silver bullet |
| Appearance | silver bullet |
| Damage vs. small | 1d20 +1d20 |
| Damage vs. large | 1d30 +1d20 |
| To-hit bonus | +0 |
| Weapon skill | firearms |
| Size | one-handed |
| Base price | 15 zm (+10/positive enchant) |
| Weight | 1 |
| Material | silver |
- For the ammunition in dNetHack and its derivatives, see silver bullet (dNetHack).
A silver bullet is a type of weapon that appears in SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM. The silver bullet is a projectile that uses the firearms skill, and like the standard bullet it is designed as ammunition for pistols, submachine guns, heavy machine guns, standard rifles, assault rifles, and sniper rifles. It is naturally made of silver.
The item is phased out in SpliceHack and Hack'EM, due to the inclusion of an object materials system in each variant: both SpliceHack and Hack'EM allow standard bullets to be made of silver.
Generation
Silver bullets are generated differently depending on the variant.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, silver bullets are not randomly generated, though they can be wished for or found in bones.
Undead Slayers have a 1⁄4 chance of starting with a weapon set that includes a pistol and silver bullets, while lycanthrope Undead Slayers that receive this weapon set will have them replaced with normal bullets instead.[1][2]
Weapons outlets can very rarely stock silver bullets, where they have a 1⁄100 chance of being generated on each square.[3]
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, silver bullets are very rare and make up 1⁄1000 of weapons randomly generated on the ground, in general shops or as death drops, and are created in stacks of up to 20.
Generation details for roles in SlashTHEM are the same as in SLASH'EM.
Weapons outlets, used armor dealerships and gun stores can also stock silver bullets. Weapons outlets have a 1⁄100 chance of generating a stack of silver bullets on each square, while gun stores have a 3⁄25 chance of generating a stack of silver bullets on each square.
Description
Silver bullets function identically to normal bullets, except that they also do silver damage to silver-hating monsters when fired from a firearm weapon—this silver damage is not applied when attacking with a wielded stack of silver bullets in melee or else throwing them without a proper launcher, similar to silver arrows in NetHack 3.4.3 and versions of NetHack that precede it.
Strategy
As silver bullets are incredibly rare, it is very unlikely that any hero will be able to amass enough of them in order to bless and enchant for long-term use until the later stages of the game, and even then doing so may require several wishes.
An Undead Slayer that starts the game with a cache of silver bullets may consider using them against early werecreatures in order to kill them quickly with the high base damage and silver bonuses, particularly including after they revert to their initial form. Rogues and other character builds with high firearms skill that have the spare wishes may opt to amass a cache of silver bullets and reserve it for specific fights, such as the demon lords and princes in Gehennom.
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"Consider detailing per-variant strategy."
Origin
A silver bullet is a folkloric weapon that is often employed as one of the few effective means to hurt or kill a werewolf, vampire, witch, or other supernatural being. The term 'silver bullet' is also employed as a metaphor for a simple seemingly-magical solution to a difficult problem: for example, penicillin circa 1930 was a "silver bullet" or "magic bullet" that allowed doctors to treat and successfully cure many bacterial infections.
Some authors asserted that the idea of the werewolf's supposed vulnerability to bullets cast from silver dates back to the Beast of Gévaudan, a man-eating animal killed by the hunter Jean Chastel in the year 1767; however, the idea that Chastel purportedly using a gun loaded with silver bullets is derived from a distortion of a detail found in Henri Pourrat's work, where the French writer imagines that the beast was shot thanks to medals of the Virgin Mary, worn by Jean Chastel in his hat and then melted down to make bullets. Similarly, Swedish folklore and other similar accounts tend to describe silver bullets as a catch-all weapon against creatures like wizards or the skogsrå that are "hard" against regular ammunition.
These associations from folklore have carried over into popular culture, such as fictional Wild West heroes that used silver bullets to symbolize their purity of heart (e.g. the various incarnations of the Lone Ranger) and monster slayers of the fantasy-horror genre. The 1941 film The Wolf Man and its sequels and spinoffs codified silver in general as the definitive death-dealer material for werewolves, to the point where this weakness is often regarded as exclusive to lycanthropes: notable film examples include the 1985 Silver Bullet and the 2005 Cursed, with the latter being a self-referential spoof of the 1941 film in part.
Of note is that real-life experiments with bullets cast from silver have shown them to be slightly less effective than ordinary lead bullets, as they have a lower density and are less malleable, and the high cost of silver means that they have never been produced in any real volume.
