The Platinum Yendorian Express Card
( The Platinum Yendorian Express Card 
| |
|---|---|
| Base item | credit card |
| Affiliation | |
| When carried | |
| When applied | (none) |
| When invoked | |
| Base price | 7000 zm |
| Weight | 1 |
The Platinum Yendorian Express Card, informally PYEC, is the Tourist quest artifact. It is the prize for completing the Tourist quest, and is neutral for wishing purposes. Its base item type is a credit card.
The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is the only vanilla quest artifact whose name is not of the form “The X of [the] Y.”
Contents
Generation
For Tourists, The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is always guarded by the Master of Thieves, and is placed on his square in the northwestern-most room of the Tourist quest goal level.
Description
While carried, The Platinum Yendorian Express Card confers magic resistance, telepathy and half spell damage. Invoking the Card can charge objects like a scroll of charging, with different effects based on the Card's beatitude: Tourists can invoke the blessed Platinum Yendorian Express Card to charge objects in the same way as a blessed scroll of charging, while the artifact only charges like an uncursed scroll for non-Tourists.[1] Unlike the scroll, the Card has no special effect if invoked while the hero is confused.
Strategy
- For optimized invocation, see Invoke#Optimum invocation schedule.
The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is considered one of the best artifacts in the game due to its unique invoke, incredibly light weight and valuable properties, making it an enticing and somewhat common artifact wish for neutral players - be sure that you can survive the ensuing artifact blast, and wish for it fireproofed! The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is a powerful aid for various purposes, such as altar farming using a bag of tricks or wand of create monster, or polypiling for certain weapons and/or magical tools - players eating jewelry often use the Card to charge any applicable rings.
Tourists completing their Quest are in a particularly good position, as the Master of Thieves lacks any other resistances beyond stoning resistance and the magic resistance from picking up the Card, making him one of the easier nemeses to defeat. Tourists also get the most out of the artifact by far, and can use blessed charging from the Card's invoke to efficiently recharge their wand of wishing or magic markers where any other role would require a blessed scroll of charging.[2] The artifact also grants more mileage from various wands and certain stat-boosting rings, as well as practically-infinite use of charged tools, without using scrolls or marker charges; this makes uncursed charging and artifact blasts worth dealing with for non-Tourists far more often than not, and can save a lot of inventory space for the weight-conscious player.
With all the above perks in mind, The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is a luxury for neutral non-Tourists (albeit an excellent one): they should prioritize wishes that increase survivability where possible, though lucky players (especially ones that get early wishes) may find themselves with a spare wish that can be spent on the Card if so desired. Any role using the Card should have other sources of magic resistance and telepathy available alongside the Card—the Wizard of Yendor can swipe it from you with his Amulet-targeting attack and becomes far more troublesome to deal with if he does, so it is typically a good idea to bag it during the late game and ascension run.
Conducts
Neutral conduct play opens up several other considerations for using The Platinum Yendorian Express Card:
- For illiterate conduct players, The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is the only method of charging available, particularly for various wands such as the wand of wishing and wand of death.
- Liquid-diet foodless players may seek the Card in order to sustain their stock of nutrition-giving potions, usually by invoking it to recharge a horn of plenty.
- Pacifists are more reliant on wands than most, and will want to wish for it in order to charge essential wands and other objects: wands of fire and lightning for engraving, teleportation wands for escaping, and The Orb of Fate as an unlimited-use crystal ball that has no risk of exploding (on top of its valuable defensive properties).
- Eating jewelry as mentioned above can overlap with one or more conducts in other ways (e.g., obtaining resistances for pacifists, or boosting AC for nudists).
History
The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is introduced along with most of the other quest artifacts in NetHack 3.1.0. From this version to NetHack 3.4.3, including variants based on those versions, the Wizard of Yendor would only steal the quest artifact of the hero's current role with his covetous attack, making the Card a much stronger artifact wish.
Origin
The artifact's name is derived from the Commodore 64 version of the game Wizardry, whose manual states that players start with limited gold because "few adventurers have a Platinum Yendorian Express Card". The name is based off the American Express suite of credit cards - certain types of credit cards are also known as charge cards, hence the artifact's ability when invoked. Incidentally, the tiles representation of credit cards is modeled after a Mastercard, which is a credit card but not a charge card.
Variants
Some variants based on NetHack 3.4.3 and earlier versions may retain that versions rules for the Wizard of Yendor's artifact theft attack, which affects the viability of The Platinum Yendorian Express Card as an artifact wish.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, the Wizard of Yendor follows NetHack 3.4.3 rules for his Amulet-stealing attack, making The Platinum Yendorian Express Card a more enticing artifact wish - however, artifact blast damage is heavily buffed to 8d10 damage (or 6d10 if the hero have magic resistance), generally requiring the wish to be put off until a hero has enough HP to survive the blast.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is silvered and its material is changed to actual platinum.
Like most other quest artifacts in dNetHack, it cannot be obtained by wishing, and can only be found outside the Tourist quest in the appropriate bones; however, the Wizard of Yendor's Amulet-stealing attack no longer targets quest artifacts, making it an even more valuable resource for Tourists and a stellar bones find for any other role.
xNetHack
In xNetHack, The Platinum Yendorian Express Card has its object material changed to platinum, but is otherwise unchanged.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, if The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is wished for by a non-Tourist hero, there is a 1⁄x chance (where x is the amount of previous artifact wishes) of it being created successfully, and an effective x⁄(x+1)² chance of a hostile Twoflower generating adjacent to the hero with the artifact in his possession.
This makes spending a very early wish on the artifact a Bad Idea - all the quest leaders are significantly buffed and possess sleep resistance and poison resistance, and while Twoflower on his own is not as difficult to defeat as some of the others, he will also have half spell damage, telepathy and magic resistance from carrying the Card.
SlashTHEM
In addition to SLASH'EM details, SlashTHEM introduces the Gourd of Infinity, another quest artifact that can be invoked to charge items - this makes The Platinum Yendorian Express Card somewhat less unique, though it is still the lighter of the two charging artifacts.
The charging provided by The Platinum Yendorian Express Card can enable more practical long-term use of lightsabers for Jedi and other players that unrestrict the skill via crowning.
Encyclopedia entry
This is an ancient artifact made of an unknown material. It is rectangular in shape, very thin, and inscribed with unreadable ancient runes. When carried, it grants the one who carries it ESP, and reduces all spell induced damage done to the carrier by half. It also protects from magic missile attacks. Finally, its power is such that when invoked, it can charge other objects.
