New artifact dagger that, when thrown, teleports you to wherever it lands. Some attributes it might have:

• If it lands in liquid, you could be teleported to the nearest available land, or to the liquid square, where you promptly fall in, possibly drowning or burning up. A nicer implementation could prevent it from landing in liquid in the first place, teleporting itself elsewhere, since it would be tough to get out.
• If it falls to another level, you levelport to where it falls.
• If a monster somehow eats it, you teleport inside its stomach, killing it (unless it’s capable of engulfing you, in which case you teleport to being engulfed inside it).
• A side proposal is that instead of a dagger, this is an artifact gem.

Artifact helm of telepathy, neutral aligned, that either enhances or blocks telepathy level-wide based on whether you have it from some source other than the helm (or alternatively, it’s not a helm of telepathy, and just bases things on whether you are telepathic), and grants a Charisma-based bonus to your armor class.

If you do have telepathy, all other monsters get telepathy too and you can sense them, and they will be affected by telepathy-targeting effects, including yours if you have any psionic abilities.

If you don’t have telepathy, all other monsters will be treated as if they are not telepathic, even if they are; they will also be blocked from using any mind blasts or other psychic powers.

Remove the ring of levitation. This is because it is too good at solving interesting problems from the player: for the low cost of a ring slot used only situationally, the player can bypass water, lava, most traps, and wield cockatrices with almost total immunity. It can then be taken off when not wanted and put back on whenever situationally needed again.

As an alternative to removing the ring, add some cost to using it, such as requiring them to be invoked to get levitation, subject to a cooldown to use them again, although that is strange and unprecedented for non-artifact items.

The boots of levitation have more or less the same problems as the ring, only slightly less so because they are heavier and swapping out boots takes a little longer. These could also be removed, and replaced with an artifact pair of boots that confers levitation, themed after the talaria winged boots Perseus borrowed from Hermes. (This also has some potential for strangeness, because Perseus’s statue appears in the game and sometimes contains levitation boots; would the boots always be this artifact if it doesn’t exist already?)

Chaotic artifact weapon that has a 10 or 20 percent chance of randomly teleporting its target somewhere else on the level, assuming the level isn’t non-teleport. Possibly, enchanting it increases the chance of the teleport happening.

Add an artifact crysknife, which is nameable. Add a obj_resists call in the crysknife reversion process to make it so that artifact crysknives either never revert to worm teeth or do so very rarely.

The other properties of such an artifact are unspecified.

Artifact horn of plenty that gives slow digestion when carried and never needs to be recharged; however, it never dispenses potions because allowing the player to get infinite potions is obviously not a great idea.

It’s been noted that an artifact such as this makes it so you never need food again, removes that aspect of gameplay, and should therefore probably only appear very late in the game.

Artifact polearm of unspecified type The Ten-Foot Polearm. When wielded, it confers immunity to stoning from c corpses, artifact blasts, and special damage from bane artifacts that hate you, because “you don’t touch them with a ten-foot pole”.

Artifact suit of armor (type is unspecified, perhaps a ring mail or chain mail) that is unaligned and operates like magic armor in the Legend of Zelda. When worn, it drains your gold at a constant rate, and when you take damage, you lose a somewhat randomized amount of gold, in exchange for partially or completely negating the damage (perhaps the easiest way to do this is via half physical damage, since it doesn’t make much sense for armor to protect against e.g. poison damage from drinking a potion of sickness). Gold is consumed at some rate higher than 1 per turn, and it is lost for damage at some rate higher than 1 per hit point.

If you have no gold while wearing it, you become either very slow or very encumbered, and it ceases to reduce or negate damage.

Croesus may occasionally generate wearing this armor, along with some gold to supply it. Otherwise it generates like any unaligned artifact.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, a chaotic artifact silver war hammer which references the Beatles song. Its powers and details have not been specified.

An artifact, likely named “The Fast [something]”, which grants very fast speed, but also prevents you from eating because fast also means to refrain from eating.

A special container that can hold the invocation items, and only the invocation items. Has bag-of-holding-like properties (or else is an artifact bag of holding). It appears in some hard to reach place in the dungeon.

Artifact book (novel?) that when read teaches you one level of any skill. This may include skills you are restricted in (though it might only raise it to Unskilled) and skills past your role’s cap.

Artifact dart Safety Pin. It has no special benefits if used as a dart (other than being much harder / impossible to mulch because it’s an artifact), but instead has a passive carry effect of protecting all your scrolls in open inventory from burning or wetting.

Artifact unaligned pair of lenses The Lens of Truth, from Zelda, which grants see invisible when worn.

A new single-level “heaven” branch, reachable by levelporting to a negative level, that is filled with angels guarding the “Holy Scepter”, a new artifact with unspecified properties. There is an exit portal on the level, and the angelic guards are peaceful unless angered or the Scepter is taken. If you steal the Scepter, you can sacrifice it on Moloch’s high altar to get a bad ending to the game.

Artifact amethyst that when dipped into fruit juice turns it into booze, the reverse of what usually happens.

Artifact bronze plate mail The Pact Eternal. Autocurses when worn. When invoked, it summons a tame copy of you, with copies of your armor and wielded weapon (which only works on a wielded weapon), drains 1 level from you, and reduces your maximum HP by half.

If you die while the summoned copy lives, you get lifesaved, the max HP penalty becomes permanent, the copy is unsummoned and you are relocated in its place (to produce an overall effect of it becoming the “real” you.)

If you take off the armor, the copy is unsummoned.

If the copy dies or gets unsummoned by any means, its gear vanishes along with it, and your missing max HP is restored (though your current HP does not get restored).

Artifact chaotic helm Helm of the Underworld, modeled after Hades’ helm. Grants drain resistance, invisibility, magic resistance, and passive detection of buried objects (or phasing, if this is too difficult to implement) when worn. When invoked, it does a stronger version of the chaotic turn undead effect (rebuke or tame undead).

Artifact cloak of invisibility Death’s Embrace, which grants phasing, immunity to death effects, and half physical damage, but reduces speed.

Artifact quarterstaff Staff of Battle. Deals double damage to everything and grants very fast speed when wielded.

Artifact tooled horn Horn of the Wild that summons a number of difficulty-appropriate tame animals to fight for you. (They might untame or despawn after a while.)

Artifact ring of searching that protects you completely from triggering a trap you didn’t already know about.

Artifact dart that has a 100% break rate when thrown, but if it’s carried in main inventory, it will periodically replicate itself and increase its stack size, to a maximum of 50.

New artifact The Golden Knight, a gold small shield that has the following properties:

• Sets strength to 25 when worn like gauntlets of power.
• Cannot be invoked directly, but if you fall below 25% of your HP maximum when your invoke timeout is good, it automatically invokes itself to take half of your current Pw points and heal you for that much HP.

If this doesn’t seem powerful enough, remove its strength effect and make the base item a shield of reflection instead.

New artifact Staff of Agni, a quarterstaff with the following fire-based properties:

• Can be zapped if its enchantment is positive for the same effect as casting a spell of fireball.
• Invoking it sets its enchantment to 3 + your skill in attack spells. (No effect if the enchantment is already higher than this.)
• Grants fire resistance when wielded.
• Deals double fire damage in melee like Fire Brand.
• Acts like a robe for reducing spellcasting failure, but only for the spell of fireball (and fire storm, if that is a separate spell).

New artifact Bolt Boots, jumping boots made out of copper or metal. Conveys shock resistance when worn. Does double damage on kicks, which is treated as shock damage that may destroy rings and wands in a monster’s inventory.

When jumping with the boots, you may pass through monster’s squares (but still have to land on an open square); any monsters passed through will take damage as if hit by a wand of lightning.

Artifact crossbow Thunderclap, which fires either lightning or lightning-enhances the crossbow bolts it fires, and you can invoke it to create more bolts.

Parrying Dagger, an artifact dagger which when wielded may automatically counterattack an incoming melee weapon attack, deflecting it so it doesn’t hit and making an attack with itself that does sneak attack damage.

New artifact Gauntlets of Throwing: unspecified base type, adds +1 to the multishot cap for thrown missiles only (not ammo fired from a launcher). When multishooting, only one actual item is thrown; the rest are temporary summoned copies of the one thrown with the same stats, which vanish after their flight is complete.

Artifact towel that acts as a magic carpet: invoke it to start flying on it. Doesn’t work if you’re currently wearing the towel, and trying to wear the towel either doesn’t work or ends any flight.

Artifact lock pick Doorbane, which mostly works like a regular one but prevents doors from resisting when it’s carried.

This functionality should also probability extend to the Master Key of Thievery.

Artifact ring that provides a cocktail of basic resistances all at once (fire, cold, shock, poison, maybe sleep, maybe acid). This is interesting primarily because it is very useful early in the game and then becomes progressively less useful later on as the hero gets intrinsic resistances.

Could be named “The Ring of Everything Resistance” or “The Chromatic Ring”.

Piranhabane, an artifact rod that instakills piranhas (and possibly, turns them into tins of piranha meat in your inventory or at least out of the water).

An Alchemist role, revolving around potions and alchemy, and likely requiring overhauls of several systems.

• The main form of combat is to create phials of potion (where 1 potion splits into many phials), which can be tossed at enemies to cause potion effects on them. The main potions used are things like acid, paralysis, (lit) oil, and confusion.
  • Phials come in all the same types as normal potions but have somewhat weaker effects.
  • You can dip a stack of empty phials into a potion to fill them with that potion (up to some maximum).
  • Thrown phials have the same exact splash damage effect on things as throwing the potion would produce, but drinking it is a small enough dose to only cause the splash damage effects to the drinker. Requires some balance so that splash damage is useful against monsters but not useful for the player to drink for beneficial phials.
  • Phials can be dipped into potions, but nothing can be dipped into phials.
• The quest artifact is the Philosopher’s Stone.
  • The quest leader is Nicolas Flamel and the nemesis is an Avatar of Death (like Death, but weaker).
  • Fun possibilities for transmuting materials here if the object materials patch is in effect.
  • Its base item type could be a ruby (but perhaps not because dnethack makes the Heart of Ahriman a ruby) or a garnet, based on its color in Harry Potter, or an opal.
• Can also create alchemic gizmos: smoke bombs from potions of blindness, firebombs from potions of oil, all lighter and more numerous and useful than the base potions.
• Start with all potions identified.
• Could start with an alchemy kit, which is a rare tool find for other roles. NeroOneTrueKing proposed a set of mechanics for an alchemy kit:
  • Has 3 compartments. The first accepts only potions/phials of polymorph (or perhaps it just has charges and you can recharge it by using potions of polymorph).
  • The other compartments must each only contain items of the same material.
  • A success chance is displayed based on the amount of polymorph potion available, the weight ratio of the two compartments, and the materials themselves (metal can transform into metal relatively easily).
  • A successful use swaps all of the materials of the two compartments.
• Needs mechanics such that in an Alchemist’s hands, no potion is useless.

The invoke effect of the Philosopher’s Stone is heavily debated.

• It creates potions of the Elixir of Life. This potion cures disease and restores lost attributes, but most importantly it grants temporary intrinsic lifesaving. If you die with intrinsic lifesaving, you lose the remaining time for the intrinsic.
• Creating potions is way too powerful since the player will be able to bank them, so nerf this: perhaps you can only get Elixir of Life by dipping the Stone into a potion of full healing, or something. Or Elixir goes bad after a while and reverts to water, making it usable for before a fight but not for stashing.
• The Elixir should not be more powerful than a potion of full healing, or the invoke effect of the Staff of Aesculapius - healers should be the best at actual healing. Probably, getting lifesaved from intrinsic lifesaving will only restore enough HP to stay alive a little longer.
• The Elixir gives a large temporary boost to HP regeneration.
• No Elixir of Life; it instead turns potions of sickness into (extra? full?) healing.
• The Stone can turn metal objects into gold or can turn rocks into gold pieces when rubbed on them.
• When dipped into gain level or gain energy, transforms the potion into polymorph.

A really great Alchemist implementation would probably involve a full alchemy overhaul which adds herbs and fungi, harvesting ingredients from corpses, cooking, and interesting ways to combine everything. The challenge with making this is how to make it useful for other roles and not just the alchemist, and at the same time not overcomplicating the game with the new additions.

An artifact weapon that makes everything it kills explode (for not very much damage).

A Rogue-aligned artifact (either a first gift or a crowning gift) that is some sort of small blade whose invoke effect allows you to teleport behind nearby enemies and attack them, perhaps with bonus backstab damage for a short time. Or more powerfully, you instantaneously warp behind and backstab several different enemies within a radius of 10 or 12 from you all at once.

Consolidate Fire and Frost Brand (or allow them to be combined in-game) into a new artifact named something like “Frostflame Brand”. This weapon deals either fire damage or cold damage alternately on every hit.

Horror Brand, an artifact weapon whose stats (including presumably its base item type) are randomly generated each game or even combines random aspects from various artifacts, like shambling horrors.

The Helm of Terror: an artifact which is some unspecified type of helm, which automatically frightens all living creatures that have eyes.

An artifact amulet of magical breathing which also completely protects your inventory from water damage when worn.

An unaligned artifact amulet versus poison which also confers sickness resistance, half physical damage, and raises Constitution to 25 when worn. Tentatively named “The Eye of [something]”.

Amulet of Storms, an artifact amulet of flying that additionally grants shock resistance when worn, and allows you to pacify true v monsters (i.e. not alternative forms of other monsters that happen to be turned into a vortex as a defined alternative form, such as vampires and the Wizard of Yendor, but counting shapechangers such as chameleons) when chatting to them.

A helm of darkness artifact, inspired by the one from Perseus’ myth; when worn it confers invisibility and produces darkness in a radius around the wearer.

A new artifact weapon (possibly wielded by a demon lord) that causes you to drop items when it hits you. Possibly it can even knock a couple items out of bags from time to time.

An artifact weapon (possibly wielded by a demon lord) that drains a charge from every chargeable item in your inventory when it hits you.

Artifact sapphire Ice-9. When it is dropped into water, it freezes the square and all adjacent squares into ice, and remains on top of the new ice.

Artifact club The Pool Cue: it has the same damage as a regular club but causes several tiles of knockback to anything it hits.

“The Amulet of Vitality”, an amulet of drain resistance that provides poison resistance and hungerless regeneration when worn and also increases your HP maximum by 20%.

Note: this could be implemented in a game that doesn’t have the amulet of drain resistance by instead making its base item the amulet versus poison and giving it drain resistance when worn.

An artifact magic marker that can be used normally, but also allows you to engrave the name of a monster species on the ground and make a monster of that species appear as a pet. This is subject to an invoke-style cooldown so it can’t be used rapidly in quick succession.

A new object or, more likely, an artifact which is a ring of enlightenment. Wearing it increases Intelligence and Wisdom by 1. Additionally, when you perform the #attributes command, you are shown your fire, cold, shock, poison, and sleep resistance statuses. Possibly it can be invoked for full enlightenment.

New artifact Apiarist’s Veil, a cloth hat, perhaps an elven helm or fedora, that gives warning of all insects and pacifies nearby bees.

New artifact Regicider (or Regicide, Usurper or Royalbane): a sword of some type that isn’t already overrepresented in artifacts that has bonuses and warns to monsters with the M2_LORD and/or M2_PRINCE flags. Maybe it would also work on demon lords, depending on if they are considered nobility, or just overlords.

On a somewhat sillier note its attributes could also extend to queen bees and also have some ability to detect royal jelly on the map (invoke effect?)

A chaotic artifact axe (or battle-axe, not specified) The Executioner’s Axe: has a small chance of beheading on every successful hit like Vorpal Blade.

A fake Fire Brand artifact, which looks and acts like Fire Brand but burns out in a couple thousand turns and thereafter works like a regular sword. It could be generated with gnome royalty in the Mines.

An artifact cloak (the base type is unspecified, likely a normal nonmagic cloak) that you can apply towards an adjacent monster. If that monster has less HP than your current experience level, it dies and is consumed by the cloak, which can grant the cloak extrinsics it confers to the wearer. Every additional extrinsic added may remove out one or more existing extrinsics on the cloak.

Not specified whether you need to take the cloak off to apply it at things.

An artifact mask Mask of Many Faces, neutrally aligned. When invoked, you are prompted to target an adjacent creature. If that creature fails a monster magic resistance check, or a d(its maxHP) roll is lower than its current HP, it is instantly killed, dropping its possessions but no corpse or other special drops, and the mask changes to that creature’s form.

Subsequently donning the mask, or having it worn when invoking it, merges it into your skin and polymorphs you into that monster’s form, starting a timer (not the usual polymorph timer) after which the mask will turn blank and the polymorph ends. Lower level monsters than the player will produce a longer timer, and higher level monsters and uniques will produce a shorter timer. You can also invoke it again while wearing it to end the polymorph early.

New artifact The Stage Magician’s Gloves: some form of gloves, possibly special-cased to appear white. They allow you to use wands like a stethoscope, with one free zap per turn, and also confer magic resistance when worn. When invoked, if you are wearing a non-cursed hat or helm, you pull a random item or small or tiny monster out of your hat. If not wearing a hat you get YAFM.

Add a quiver item. Ostensibly in the tool class, could either take up a new equipment slot, or take up the shield slot to prevent you from wearing a shield at the same time the quiver is equipped. It’s not actually a container, and just “holds” whatever is in your existing in-game quiver. While equipped, it adds +1 to your multishot, possibly +2 if it is blessed but this may make it too powerul.

Also change the Ranger quest artifact to the Quiver of Diana, a quiver which gives telepathy and reflection when equipped and possibly also prevents ammo from breaking, though it can still erode. When invoked, all projectiles on the level that you threw or fired are magically returned to your inventory, even if they’re being carried by monsters or buried or whatever.

An artifact luckstone which increases or decreases Luck by 5 rather than the ordinary 3 for a luckstone when carried. (Luck might still be capped at -13 and +13 for technical reasons, rather than being allowed to go to +15 and -15.)

Artifact sword Galatine, which is the sword of Gawaine in Arthurian stories. It has a damage increase depending on the time of day, after how Gawain’s strength waxed until the hour of noon and faded afterwards. +1 from 9 to 10 AM, then +2, +3, +3, +2, +1, +0, -1, -2, -1. Then from 7 PM to 9 AM, +0.

Because Vorpal Blade delivering random, unpredictable instadeath is not fun to be on the receiving end of, replace it (or just replace its instadeath effect) with a “chaos blade” that has a bunch of random unpredictable effects, including some that may backfire on the user.

Such a new artifact would almost certainly be chaotic rather than neutral.

Artifact pear that gives you +2 current and maximum Charisma when eaten.

Artifact whose main purpose is to soak up water and apply it to other things. It removes a pool or moat square or dries up a fountain when applied to one (moats may refill), gaining a charge each time. You can apply it to spend a charge blanking a scroll, erasing an engraving (any type, not just dust), cleaning your face or hands, and extinguish fiery monsters such as a flaming sphere (possibly instakilling them).

The initial idea was to create a “sponge” object as the base item type, but since it’s undesirable to make a new object just to be the base of an artifact, it could instead either be a “spongestone” gem, or just an artifact towel, since towels can already soak up water. (If implemented as a towel, the towel would only gain one charge of wetness when immersed in water, and could attempt to dry up that square immediately.)

Artifact luckstone Somebody Else’s Problem that confers invisibility and stealth while carried.

Upon reaching the Astral Plane while crowned and with very high alignment record, you are granted a free artifact pair of gloves that give you an additional touch or weapon attack when worn.

Artifact bow that acts like an infinity bow in Minecraft: if you have bow-compatible ammo in your quiver, it shoots a phantom copy of that ammo (never multishotting) without using up the real ammo. When this phantom missile hits the floor, it disappears.

Minor artifact ring of regeneration whose main ability is not making you hunger any faster than normal while wearing it.

Artifact magic lamp that behaves like normal until after the djinni is released: then, it does not turn into an oil lamp, it remains as a “cancelled” magic lamp that will produce no more djinni but is still an infinite light source.

Turn the wand of cold Asmodeus has into a special souped up artifact wand of cold, perhaps one that can cast cone of cold when zapped and does not lose charges if Asmodeus is the one zapping it.

Tins dropped by / generated with hobbits are biased towards high-nutrition preparation methods. Additionally, there can be some high-nutrition preparation methods which only appear on hobbit tins: “wild mushroom foo”, “second breakfast of foo”, “foo for elevenses”, “luncheon foo”, “foo tart”, “foo porridge”, “foo stew”. If hobbit is a playable race, they are capable of making these tins with a tinning kit in addition to the regular “homemade”. And possibly an artifact tinning kit that allows anyone to produce hobbit-style tins.

Artifact key that creates a door in a wall wherever it’s applied. (Unless the wall is nondiggable?)

Artifact blindfold Mask of Hypnos: provides sleep resistance and detection of sleeping monsters when worn, and can be invoked for a sleep ray.

Artifact wooden flute that makes humanoid monsters within range begin doing a multi-step dance when they hear it; they can’t escape from the dancing until it finishes, they are unable to take their next step (bad terrain, a trap they know about, etc) or they are hit by something.

Artifact tinning kit that makes special tins out of corpses; the tins when eaten polymorph you into that monster.

Artifact can of grease, the power of which is to grease your entire open inventory when applied (consuming a charge like normal), in zero turns. Or for a slightly less greasy effect, allow the player to pick any subset of their inventory they want to grease in one go.

Artifact The Poisoner’s Chalice, a chalice that can be dipped into types of potions that form poisonous coatings on weapons. When this happens, it gains charges and additionally gains the ability to coat weapons in that type of poison indefinitely. When a weapon is dipped into the chalice, it expends a charge and coats the weapon in the current type of poison. Invoking it switches the poison type to any of the ones it already has.

Artifact gloves that allow you to shoot your fists in a direction when you F-attack in that direction, letting you do your normal barehanded melee attack at a distance. This does not harm you; they automatically return afterwards.

Some way to make riding effective in the endgame (mainly addressing the problem that no steed can wear an amulet of reflection and usually dies to too much HP damage from ray attacks). This could be an artifact saddle that either gives your steed reflection or makes monsters focus only on the rider, or simply have the player’s reflection extend to their steed similar to how magic resistance does.

New artifact Dark Candle, of which there are seven in the game, carried by Medusa, the priest of Moloch in the Valley, Asmodeus, Baalzebub, Juiblex, Orcus, and the Wizard of Yendor. They are intended to be attached to the Candelabrum (and possibly don’t do anything when applied on their own), but attempting to do so warns the player “You feel cold and hollow”. When you attach the seventh one and complete the Dark Candelabrum, you are blasted, level drained, lose all divine protection and possibly crowning and a permanent intrinsic. When lit (requires an #invoke), it casts an “eerie shadow” but provides you “intense clarity of vision”, which is effectively a radius 4 light source. It never runs out of light on its own, but if you are targeted by curse magic, it is disrupted and shuts off.

Artifact leash that always makes the pet it’s attached to slightly faster than the player so that it won’t lag behind.

Artifact whistle Nightingale, based on the Nightingale Robber from Russian folklore. When blown, it causes various effects to monsters in a sizeable radius: stunning, confusion, scaring, possibly even instadeath if they are weak monsters or have low HP (or just HP damage). Any of those effects can also happen to the player. The player is guaranteed to become deaf for several dozen turns from blowing the whistle.

As a limiting factor, it will only cause these effects if blown when its invoke timer is ready, and blowing it will internally set its invoke timer as if you invoked it. If blown when its invoke timer is not ready, it will just behave like a regular whistle (and no “ignoring you” message will be shown).

Artifact ring of warning that, in addition to providing warning, has some of the properties from UnNetHack’s Clarent. When worn, it shows all pets on the level, wherever they are, and can be invoked to increase tameness of all pets in line of sight.

Artifact cloak Mantle of the Manta Ray, inspired by a similar D&D cloak. It confers magical breathing and swimming when worn.

Artifact wand of fire which casts fireballs instead of rays. (Where a normal wand would zap a ray, this instead casts the Basic form of the fireball spell without needing Pw or knowledge of the spell.)

Artifact magic candle (requires magic candles to have been implemented) which casts a version of the fireball spell (at Basic level, with a single explosion) when invoked.

New artifact Pandora’s Box, a large box that, whenever it is opened, ungenocides all genocided monsters and spawns one of each genocided species somewhere on the level.

New artifact The Scorpion Carapace, a suit of scale mail (made of chitin in any variant that has that material) that grants a 1d4 poison sting to the wearer’s attack chain and confers poison resistance when worn. Enchantable to +7 safely.

A minor artifact that turns water into booze. Potentially has an affinity to Priests and they receive it as a sacrifice gift somewhat more often.

Artifact wand that causes monsters trying to zap wands at the wielder to drop them instead.

New minor artifact, a weapon with either no or minimal bonuses, but which acts as a curse lightning rod rather like Magicbane: a curse items effect will hit only it and cause it to become cursed, unless it is already cursed in which case the curse items effect happens normally. Invoking it removes the curse from itself.

Artifact saddle, that when invoked creates a “spirit steed”, which is automatically wearing the saddle and which you can ride.

New side branch, which is extremely difficult. At the end of the branch is an artifact crown, which causes you to become crowned when you wear it. Since crowning titles are bestowed by your god, it is unclear whether this should force the god to crown you and thus break atheist, or merely confer all the effects of being crowned without actually granting you the title.

A Wand of Orcus artifact, no longer an actual wand of death but now a quarterstaff or mace. It can be invoked to shoot death rays (perhaps with some limitations to avoid overpowering it). Orcus can use it to shoot a death ray at will, without any sort of invoke cooldown.

Artifact blindfold The Double Eyepatches, which has the normal effects of a blindfold plus radius 2 astral vision.

An artifact wand of nothing or wand of cancellation which has no special powers other than that it will absorb curses like Magicbane.

New artifact “Darkenstone”, which acts like the Arkenstone except that it’s a black opal, and carrying it provides radius 2 darkness. If drow are in the game, this is often given to them as a gift.

The Dark Soul, an artifact that, if it is in your possession when you die, saves your level as a bones file and respawns you in a new copy of the dungeon with the same seed and no gear. If you reach the level you died on, you are guaranteed to load the bones file.

New artifact, The Dwarf Bread, or possibly, The Battle Bread of B’hrian Bloodaxe. It is a cram ration, and if the object materials patch is present it is made of stone. It cannot be eaten; if you try you get a YAFM about how you really aren’t that hungry. Its main effect is that while carried with no other apparent food available, your nutrition will not decrease if it is at or below the threshold of going from Hungry to Weak.

You are considered to “have food available” if:

• You are carrying any food in your inventory or in containers.
• There is any comestible, anything at all, that you can see on the map.

Possibly, it acts as a club when wielded, though being a cram ration it can’t be enchanted.

New artifact The Never-Ending Doughnut, an unspecified-comestible base type artifact that can only be eaten when Hungry or worse, but will never get fully consumed unless the eater is a purple worm. After eating it the first time, it is perpetually “partly eaten”. You cannot become satiated by eating it.

New artifact, the Ears of the Underworld. They enable you to hear even if you’re deaf and block all sound-based attacks.

A “druid staff” artifact, which can be invoked to create a patch of grass similar in size to a stinking cloud, radius 4-5. Enemies within the grass radius become rooted to the ground, making them unable to move (but still able to fight, shoot, etc) for some time. While wielding it, you can chat with trees, which causes them to give you some food, mana, or rarely a pet (possibly an ent).

New artifact short sword, which is the first sacrifice gift for Rogues. It does extra damage based on the amount of gold carried in your inventory (or possibly your opponent’s inventory, though this would make it no better than a normal short sword on many monsters). The damage bonus eventually runs into diminishing returns so that the damage bonus doesn’t get too ridiculous.

A magical type of mummy wrapping (or maybe an artifact mummy wrapping) that provides curse resistance when worn.

Artifact figurine, the gimmick of which is that it will always turn into a pet if not cursed, and the monster it turns into will fight anything without fear and maybe also has some extra buffs. When it dies, it reverts to the figurine, which immediately has its artifact cooldown set and can’t be applied again before the cooldown ends.

The inspiration for this idea was the Guenhwyvar panther figurine from the Legend of Drizzt, so possibly this artifact could just be named Guenhwyvar and be a figurine of a panther, which already exists in NetHack.

Helmet (or possibly blindfold) slot artifact named The Masque of the Read Death. Has some mechanic related to sickness.

New artifact The Spear of Mars, an unaligned spear that can be invoked to “charge” it, dealing massive damage (on the order of +100ish) on its next hit, but only works if you’re male. Will only be gifted to a male character.

(Intended as a counterpart to the Mirror of Venus, #2125).

Merge Sunsword and Trollsbane like NetHack Fourk does (a single artifact that emits light, instakills gremlins and instapetrifies trolls, with bonuses to undead), except keep it a morning star and name it Sunflash (because a lot of these consolidated effects have nothing to do with trolls). Having it stay a morning star makes it an attractive choice for Priests, and raises the appeal of training morning star.

Artifact magic lamp that gives 3 wishes instead of 1.

This might be a useful addition to NetHack Fourk’s Aladdin’s Palace level.

Artifact morning star, chaotic aligned, with an allusion to Lucifer.

An artifact often gifted to Barbarians which provides magic resistance and half spell damage but prevents Pw from regenerating. Or assign these properties to the Heart of Ahriman, which makes it good for Barbarians as they rarely cast spells.

New artifact Mirror Brand. It is an artifact short sword that grants reflection when wielded and when it hits an opponent, takes the higher of its own base damage roll and the other weapon’s (then adds its own enchantment to the result).

It is based on dNetHack, though it’s more akin to a generic mirror blades than the actual Mirror Brand artifact in dNetHack.

New artifact The Mirror of Venus, a mirror that confers slotless reflection. If you are female, you can invoke it to charm monsters; otherwise, invoking it will only pacify monsters. Will only be gifted to a female character.

(Male counterpart artifact is the Spear of Mars, #2756).

New artifact Fishing Pole, some sort of polearm that deals double damage to all sea monsters and can hit squares as if you were Expert (in the full 2-square-wide ring around you), regardless of your polearm skill.

Artifact brass lantern that gives light in a radius of 4. Invoking it recharges it.

New artifact The Silver Shoes, silver low boots that levelport you when invoked. They are the shoes worn by Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

New artifact The Captain’s Hook, artifact grappling hook that never fails to do what you want it to do and has zero chance of hooking yourself, regardless of skill. Deals double damage to crocodiles.

New artifact Green Thumb, neutral/unaligned gauntlets of dexterity, or gauntlets of defense if implemented. (Ideally made of wood, if possible). Invoke to create a tree. While you have them equipped and you are near a tree, you get some extra damage reduction.

New artifact Sinsword, a chaotic two-handed sword. If your alignment is positive, it behaves just like a regular two-handed sword. If negative, it gains a bonus to to-hit and damage (capped at 6) based on how negative your alignment is. Deals double damage to angelic beings.

New artifact Gungnir, an unaligned spear (spear of Odin from Norse mythology). Confers nothing, but has +20 to hit (or whatever is necessary to make a hit basically guaranteed) and +d8 damage.

Note that SpliceHack implements Gungnir, but not as described here.

Artifact whose carry effect deflects incoming status ailments onto nearby monsters. If there are no other monsters around (or if there is one monster who is causing the ailment and is ineligible), you take the status effect like normal.

Artifact instruments that are actually useful.

Non-weapon artifact which, when carried, adds bonus fire damage to all of your physical attacks, regardless of what you’re using to make the attack.

As part of artifact weapon rebalance, there should be at least one Ranger-friendly non-bladed weapon that’s available through sacrifice (and therefore available pre-Quest.) Doesn’t necessarily have to be a bow.

New artifact Elfrist, a chaotic orcish dagger which can be named. It has bonuses against elves, of course, but also a smallish flat damage bonus versus any monster, so it might actually be useful to name it early.

Artifact magic marker Scrivener. It generates with 3 charges and cannot be recharged. Instead of using the charges normally, a single charge will write any scroll or spellbook without fail.

Artifact ring Nenya (Galadriel’s ring from Lord of the Rings): a mithril ring of warning that also confers unchanging. If possible, its warning should apply level-wide, not in a specific radius.

Add one or two artifacts or modify artifact base types such that there is more than one good blunt artifact you can obtain through sacrifice. (The current three are Mjollnir, which is decent, and Ogresmasher and Trollsbane, which are not.)

Artifact shuriken The Silver Star: deals +d8 damage to all targets. Like Mjollnir, it returns to the player’s inventory after being thrown, but doesn’t have any chance of hitting the player. Since there is only one of it, it cannot be multishot.

This would be a good first sacrifice gift for Monks.

Add a non-wielded-weapon non-quest artifact that is a guaranteed first sacrifice gift for Monks.

New artifact dagger The Barrow-blade of Cardolan: has some flat bonuses, some additional bonuses versus undead, and instakills all W, ghosts, and shades. It is either lawful or unaligned. Could also be a short sword, since there are currently no artifact short swords, but for flavor it should be a dagger.

Artifact large box Pandora’s Box: it contains a ton of good loot, but opening it (or destroying it, or tipping it) alters several overarching gameplay mechanics that all make the game tougher.

Since it’s not as straight up beneficial of an artifact as most others, perhaps it shouldn’t count as a generated artifact for gifting/wishing purposes.

The Staff of Necromancy: an artifact quarterstaff that deals double damage to non-drain-resistant creatures (but doesn’t life-drain them as the Staff of Aesculapius does), grants cold resistance and curse resistance when wielded, and can be invoked to raise one vertebrate corpse on your square as a tame skeleton.

An artifact T-shirt that provides free action when worn, but only if no armor is worn over it.

An artifact that occasionally polymorphs the monsters it hits.

Artifact unaligned touchstone called Grinder: rubbing it on or applying it to an object repairs one level of rust or corrosion but decreases enchantment by 1 (which can go negative). Invoking it cancels a single object.

Add Acid Brand and Storm Brand (lightning damage) artifacts. Ideally make these all different base weapon types.

Artifact Shade Cloak: cloth cloak that is always tattered (has 1 level of unfixable erosion), confers (not-very-fast) speed and drain resistance. Invoke effect is temporary phasing and the incorporeality of a shade.

New artifact Imaginary Widget: The base object is randomized among non-polearm melee weapons each game. Deals double damage to monsters that don’t exist in real life (e.g. foxes and mastodons and giant eels are real; wargs and mumaks and krakens are not).

Artifact blank spellbook that guarantees success when writing in it and can be read infinitely without blanking. However, it can never be blanked or cancelled. Or possibly it generates as a random type of spellbook, and can only be blanked if not yet read.

Artifact wand of striking whose damage increases with its recharge count. Its odds of exploding on a recharge are lower than usual for wands.

Artifact weapon that creates a shockwave upon hitting a monster, dealing minimal damage to other monsters behind it.

Artifact flail or short sword, the Debugger. Deals double damage to all a-class, s-class, and x-class monsters.

Artifact figurine Doppeldoll: when applied turns into a tame clone of yourself with copies of all your weapons and armor.

Object property “frost walker”, which only generates on boots. When worn, lava cools into solid floor and water freezes into ice in a radius 1 around the wearer. Optional if they unfreeze afterwards. Alternatively, make this an artifact pair of water walking boots.

If Aeglos/Aiglos, the Spear of Gil-galad, is ever implemented, it should have cold-related effects, because it means “Snow-point”.

New artifact: The Trident of Poseidon. Chaotic (only because Poseidon is in-game). While carried, grants magical breathing, swimming, and protects items from water damage. When wielded, confers water walking. Double damage versus aquatic monsters, and gets a damage bonus versus all that scales with the amount of water squares adjacent to you. Invoke to get an UnNetHack-style flood.

New artifact Callandor, a glass long sword or crystal sword in dNetHack. Lawful, provides double spell damage when wielded. Possibly only gifted to male characters (based on its source mythos, the Wheel of Time, where it is a male-magic amplifier).

Artifact weapon Rodneybane: has a giant bonus against the Wizard (only) and negates the Amulet’s extra Pw drainage. Located in some heavily guarded location.

Rings carried by Nazgul are all artifact rings of invisibility. They autocurse and also confer telepathy, see invisible and aggravate monster.

Artifact whose invoke power creates attack wands.

New artifact spellbook Akashic Records:

• Read for enlightenment
• Can be applied like a stethoscope to probe adjacent enemies, doesn’t cost a turn
• When carried, gives extrinsic monster detection. Farlooking reveals enemy HP.
• Invoke for precognition: for the next 100 turns, your attacks never miss, and enemies roll twice against you and use the lower result.
• If you would be killed from HP damage from an attack during precognition, you will dodge the killing blow and all subsequent attacks on that round. Immediately ends the effect.
• Might mesh well with the other encyclopedia idea, using it as a base item type.

An artifact boomerang which is a guaranteed first sacrifice gift for Archeologists.

Very powerful artifact armor that cannot be removed without dying. If you take it off, polymorph out of it, or have it removed by a monster, you die.

Artifact shield of reflection that reflects thrown or fired projectiles.

Role-specific artifacts given to you only when you are crowned.

Artifact bullwhip that grants extra damage against tigers and other animals, and grants better passive pet-control effects.

New unaligned artifact dagger Almagest: uses the powers of scrolls to augment itself, and bears a scroll label signifying which scroll ability it is imbued with. Opinions vary on whether this label should be randomly generated by the dagger (and the player may choose to read it, upon which it gives the uncursed scroll effect and disappears for 1000 turns, eventually returning with another label) or whether the label should be deliberately imbued by the player by rubbing it on a scroll. It gains +d4 to damage and +d4 to hit when it has an inscription.

There are additional special effects if the player has formally IDed the scroll whose label is on the dagger:

• Identify: 25% chance of probing
• Light: +d6 to undead, light source
• Enchant weapon: +d4 damage
• Enchant armor: gives 3 points of AC when wielded
• Remove curse: Protects fully from all curses when wielded
• Confuse monster: 25% chance of confusing
• Destroy armor: Ignores enemy armor when calculating to-hit
• Fire: +d8 fire damage
• Food detection: Enemies are much more likely to leave corpses
• Gold detection: Enemies may drop small amounts of gold when killed
• Magic mapping: 5% chance of activating clairvoyance on hit
• Scare monster: 15% chance of scaring on hit
• Teleportation: 10% chance of randomly teleporting on hit
• Amnesia: Extra mindflayer tentacle attack, no effect when read
• Create monster: 5% chance for create familiar effect on hit
• Earth: 5% chance of creating boulder over enemy
• Taming: 5% chance of charm monster effect on hit
• Charging: Does 2x Pw damage and adds it to your own, 5% chance of cancellation
• Genocide: Instakills as Tsurugi, +1 damage
• Stinking cloud: Permanently poisoned
• Punishment: Weighs 100, deals +d12 damage. Autocurses and triples alignment losses.

Artifact chaotic amulet Amulet of Splendor: provides every single amulet effect, as well as unchanging-ignoring controlled polyself when invoked. Wearing it conveys life saving (this WILL disintegrate the amulet if triggered), magical breathing, unchanging, poison resistance, ESP, reflection, strangulation (doesn’t kill you due to magical breathing but maybe it makes it so you can’t eat food or something while wearing it, or it autocurses), restful sleep, and gender change for as long as you wear the amulet. Base type is a cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor.

Artifact pickaxe that blows up the wall instead of simply digging it.

New artifact The Phial of Galadriel. It is a potion of water (potion of starlight in dNetHack) that acts as an infinite light source which scares giant spiders and Nazgul that come into it, and can be invoked to bless 1 item. May need more powers to make it better, and behavior for what happens when you drink it, but these are unspecified.

A priest-friendly artifact that is a potion or tool that acts as a “holy water well” - maybe it slowly but infinitely fills up with holy water, up until it is full.

Change the Knight quest artifact to be the Holy Grail. When quaffed from, something good happens; perhaps it needs to have charges or invoking it fills it up so you can drink from it (and you don’t have to drink from it immediately, allowing strategic choices). Should give magic resistance when carried. Possibly gives the effect of a random potion when quaffed: always a “good” potion when blessed, a random one if uncursed, and a “bad” potion if cursed. Or it blesses items dipped into it.

New artifact Aegis: is a bronze roundshield (which is supposed to have Medusa’s or another gorgon’s face impressed on the front). Can be invoked sideways at a monster, which petrifies it or, failing that, causes it to flee (regardless of difficulty or monster MR). Can be invoked downwards to burn a Gorgoneion in the floor. Possibly grants stoning resistance or gaze resistance while equipped.

You can invoke a ring of hunger to make yourself more hungry immediately so you can eat dragon or giant corpses. (You have to be wearing it and have it identified.)

Maybe rather than having all rings of hunger capable of doing this, have it be a single artifact ring of hunger. Suggested names for this artifact include Overeater, Bottomless Pit, Cookie Monster, Glutton, and The Hungering.

Artifact arrow that auto-returns to your pack and cannot break. But there is only one of it, so it can’t be multishot.