Sting

)   Sting   (No tile)
Base item	elven dagger
Damage vs. small	1d5 x2
Damage vs. large	1d3 x2
To-hit bonus	+1d5
Bonus versus	orcs
Weapon skill	dagger
Size	one-handed
Affiliation	chaotic elven
When carried	(none)
When wielded	detect orcs
When invoked	(none)
Base price	800 zm
Weight	10
Material	wood

This article is about the artifact. For the attack type, see sting attack.

Sting is an artifact that appears in NetHack. Its base alignment is chaotic, and its base item is an elven dagger.

Generation

A randomly generated elven on the ground has a base ¹⁄₂₀ chance of being made into an artifact, which will always be Sting if it has not yet been generated.

Chaotic heroes that are not orcish may receive Sting as a potential sacrifice gift.

Sting is one of two artifacts that can be created by the hero naming their base item, with the other being Orcrist—creating Sting this way will break illiterate conduct.

Player monsters on the Astral Plane that generate with an elven dagger have a ¹⁄₂ chance of that elven dagger being turned into an available compatible artifact, which will always be Sting if it has not yet been generated.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Per commit d87cadaf and commit c2c797fa, artifact balance is substantially reworked: artifacts have 2 additional internal stats—the minimum sacrifice value required to obtain them by sacrificing (which is usually just the difficulty rating of the monster sacrificed), and a flat number added to the weapon's enchantment when it is either randomly generated or gifted.

Sting requires a sacrifice of any positive non-zero value, and will always have +3 added to its enchantment when randomly generated or given as a sacrifice gift.

Description

While wielded, Sting has a +d5 to-hit bonus, deals doubled damage to all orcs (including orc mummies and orc zombies, and warns of orcs by glowing blue. A hero wielding Sting while trapped in a web will escape it in at most one move if they were not already capable of doing so.

Like its counterpart Orcrist, Sting will not cause an artifact blast when wielded by a hero that is of a different alignment or else has a poor alignment record—however, it will unconditionally blast any orcish hero or any other hero that is currently polymorphed into an orc, and this also prevents such heroes from wielding the artifact.

Strategy

Sting is available to a hero as soon as they find an elven dagger, which is generally very early in the game (e.g., from a hobbit)—elven Rangers in particular start with an elven dagger, which they can turn into Sting as early as their first turn if they wish. Wizards and other roles that struggle with combat in the early game may consider naming Sting in order to train skill in daggers and fight off early groups of orcs; beyond this point, Sting is not of much use to most heroes.

Naming Sting is often used by non-orcish chaotic heroes to force an early Stormbringer via sacrifice: heroes without a guaranteed first sacrifice gift will always receive a co-aligned artifact, and naming Sting and Orcrist removes them from the pool, leaving Stormbringer and Grimtooth as possible gifts. This is most easily done with elven Priests and Rangers, since elven heroes never receive Grimtooth as a sacrifice gift, and elven Rangers start with an elven dagger as mentioned previously. Chaotic Monks and Priests that plan to unrestrict the dagger skill should avoid naming Sting to keep it eligible as a sacrifice gift.

Heroes seeking artifacts outside of the above cases should not worry about creating Sting, since it reduces the chance of receiving any sacrifice gift after the first regardless of alignment, and doing so also decreases the chances of reliably wishing for an artifact. You may also inadvertently preclude all sacrifice gifts if Stormbringer already exists in a game, though this is only an issue in some corner cases where you are a chaotic elf trying to force Stormbringer as above. In some few cases where players are attempting a protection racket, Sting may be worth creating to sell to a shop.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

The changes to sacrifice mean that the above information no longer applies for versions on or past that commit, and a sacrifice value of at least 9 is needed to potentially obtain Stormbringer.

Average damage calculation

The average damage calculations in the following table do not include bonuses from weapon skills, strength, or from using a blessed weapon against undead or demons.

Weapon	Small monster	Large monster
+0 Sting	$\frac{1+5}{2}=\bold{3}$	$\frac{1+3}{2}=\bold{2}$
+7 Sting	$\frac{1+5}{2}+7=\bold{10}$	$\frac{1+3}{2}+7=\bold{9}$
+9 Sting	$\frac{1+5}{2}+9=\bold{12}$	$\frac{1+3}{2}+9=\bold{11}$

While the base damage is quite low, the extra +2 (which is possible from overenchanting an elven dagger) nudges it up to be slightly more damage-competitive, making it comparable to the 11.5/13.5 average damage of a +7 long sword at ¹⁄₄ of the weight.

History

Sting first appears in NetHack 2.3e, where any short sword or dagger can be named Sting, granting it +d5 bonus damage against all monsters without transforming the weapon. Sting is made into an elven dagger in NetHack 3.0.0, though it can still generate as a regular dagger if the TOLKEIN compile-time option is turned off.

Origin

"Sting" is the name of an elven dagger from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth novels; like most elven blades, it radiated a blue glow whenever orcs were near. It was the usual weapon of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, who found it along with Orcrist and Glamdring in a troll's hoard. In the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Bilbo gave the dagger to his nephew Frodo Baggins. Sting was also famously wielded by hobbit Samwise 'Sam' Gamgee in his fight against the spider-like Shelob—shortly before, Frodo used it to cut through Shelob's web, which was preventing their passage. The blade is given its name after the giant spiders of Mirkwood Forest referred to it as Bilbo's "sting".

While Sting was merely a dagger or knife for humans and elves, and trolls consider it pocket-knife sized, Bilbo and Frodo were small enough as hobbits that it made an excellent short sword. Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film adaptations seem to take their cues from this description: Sting is depicted in the films as a leaf-shaped short sword, with gentle curving edges, and engraved on the blade and cross-guard are Sindarin letters: Maegnas aen estar nin dagnir in yngyl im, or "Maegnas is my name, I am the spider's bane". According to the Appendix of The Silmarillion, the element maeg in Sindarin means "sharp" or "piercing". The film version of Sting is 23 inches (580 mm) long, or 24 while in its scabbard, and 3 inches (76 mm) wide at the hilt—its scabbard is made of brown leather and reinforced with metal.

The portrayal of Sting as a short sword in both the novels and films is likely the reason behind its functions in NetHack 2.3e, where any dagger or short sword can be named Sting.

Dudley's dungeon

Sting appears in the Dudley's dungeon strip of 18 June 2004, where Dudley discovers that it needs batteries to glow blue, but batteries have not been invented yet.

Years later, in the alt.org run's strip of 8 March 2009, Dudley builds a battery and uses it to power Sting.

Variants

SLASH'EM

SLASH'EM changes Sting's alignment from chaotic to lawful, as all elves are changed from chaotic to lawful. Additionally, its to-hit bonus is flat like all artifact weapons in SLASH'EM, granting Sting a full +5 to-hit against orcs.

NetHack 4

In NetHack 4, Sting was the subject of a severe bug where any attempt to name an item with a corresponding artifact was sent down the Sting/Orcrist codepath—if the player gave the name of an artifact to its appropriate base item, it would create the artifact.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, Sting retains its usual traits and additionally grants warning of arachnids (any s) in addition to the standard double-damage against them.

FIQHack

In FIQHack, the hero's god will never gift them a nameable artifact such as Sting.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, Sting has a base material of copper as with all elven weapons, and naming an elven dagger Sting will convert it to copper if it is not already made of that material.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, Sting is made of mithril, which deals an additional +1d8 damage to orcish monsters, including orcish heroes, and Sting also has a small chance of instantly killing any orc it hits, making it very dangerous if an orcish hero encounters a hostile monster wielding it. Orcs that see a hero wielding Sting will become hostile, and orcish shopkeepers will bar that hero from their shop.

Creating Sting by naming an elven dagger will convert the named weapon's material to mithril if it is not already mithril.

Using a forge to combine Orcrist and Sting will create the artifact weapon Glamdring, a mithril elven long sword that shares the orc-warning and orc-slaying abilities of its component artifacts.

Encyclopedia entry

There was the usual dim grey light of the forest-day about him when he came to his senses. The spider lay dead beside him, and his sword-blade was stained black. Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone and by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.
"I will give you a name," he said to it, "and I shall call you Sting."

[ The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]