The Scorpion Carapace
| [ The Scorpion Carapace | |
|---|---|
| Base item | scale mail |
| Affiliation | |
| When carried | none |
| When worn |
|
| When invoked |
|
| Base price | 3000 zm |
| Weight | 39 |
The Scorpion Carapace is an artifact that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. It is unaligned, and its base item is a set of scale mail made of chitin.
Generation
Scale mail randomly generated on the ground has a base 1⁄20 of being made into an artifact, which will always be The Scorpion Carapace if it has not yet been generated.
A scorpion has a base 1⁄20 chance of dropping The Scorpion Carapace upon death, which is reduced to 1⁄400 if the scorpion was revived: scorpions killed on the Ranger quest will never drop the Carapace, and Cavepeople have a higher 1⁄3 chance of obtaining the artifact this way (or 1⁄60 if the scorpion was revived).
Description
While worn, The Scorpion Carapace grants 2 base AC and 2 base DR and poison resistance, and gives the wearer an additional 1d4 poison sting attack when fighting in melee combat like that of a scorpion. It can be safely enchanted to +7.
Artifact experience
The Scorpion Carapace is a very unique artifact that gains experience while worn: whenever the hero gains experience in any way other than level gain while wearing the artifact, it gets that same amount of experience and gains one upgrade point per level earned—The Scorpion Carapace effectively starts at level 10 for the purposes of experience required, and can gain only 20 levels worth of upgrades, which is less than the total cost of all possible upgrades. Invoking The Scorpion Carapace opens the upgrade menu that the hero can apply their desired upgrades in, and these upgrades can be "refunded" by zapping the Carapace with the drain life spell or a wand of draining.
Upgrades
The list of upgrades for The Scorpion Carapace are as follows, with higher-level upgrades placed in a bulleted list entry under their required upgrades:
- Hard scales (1 point): Upgrades the base AC and DR of The Scorpion Carapace to 3 each, reversing the AC downgrade from being chitin instead of iron.
- Plates (2 points): Requires the hard scales upgrade to be purchased. Upgrades the base AC and DR of The Scorpion Carapace to 7/7.
- Flexible links (1 point): Becomes light armor.
- Whipping stinger (2 points): Gains a poisonous stinger, which auto-attacks up to 1 adjacent target per game turn for 1d4 poison damage (identical to the one added to the hero's normal attacks).
- Swimming (2 points): Grants the hero the ability to swim and protects the hero's inventory from water damage while The Scorpion Carapace is worn.
- Acid resistance (1 point): Requires the hero to see a soldier ant. The Scorpion Carapace grants acid resistance while worn.
- Fire resistance (1 point): Requires the hero to see a fire ant. The Scorpion Carapace grants fire resistance while worn.
- Shields (2 points): Requires the hero to see a giant beetle, and cannot be applied if they are wearing a shield (though it does not require a free hand). The Scorpion Carapace counts for 1 base AC as from a worn shield, including any bonuses from the hero's shield skill, and blocking attacks with the artifact trains and uses the shield skill.
- Teleportation (1 point): Requires the hero to see a phase spider. The Scorpion Carapace grants teleportitis while worn.
- Teleport control (1 point): Requires the hero to see a phase spider. The Scorpion Carapace grants teleport control while worn.
- Drain resistance (1 point): Requires the hero to see a demonic black widow (the spider form of a yochlol). The Scorpion Carapace grants drain resistance while worn.
- Impurity (2 points): Requires 5 insight. The hero's natural DR and the DR of their pets is increased by 3—natural DR stacks as root-sum-of-squares with DR from armor, so a hero's effective DR becomes
sqrt(natural² + armor²), which is almost always a negligible increase. - Wings (2 points): Requires the hero to see a vermiurge, which in turn requires 30 insight. The Scorpion Carapace grants flight while worn.
- Claws (2 points): Requires the hero to see a vermiurge. The Scorpion Carapace grants two additional vermiurge claw attacks while worn, which each deal 3d10 physical damage in melee and are considered unarmed attacks.
- Crown of vermin (3 points): Requires both the hero to see a vermiurge and for a vermiurge to die regardless of if the hero was the one to kill them. The Scorpion Carapace grants a weaker version of the vermiurge's insect aura while worn, which stores up to 333 points of damage and deals up to 6d6 damage per turn to nearby monsters—stored damage recovers at a rate of 10 points per turn, and it applies an additional amount of DR equal to the stored damage divided by 100 to the hero's head/helm slot.
