A Practical Guide to Nethack: The Whole Dungeon Catalog: Gems Version 2 by R2 Last updated 9-24-07 ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Contents Section I: About This Guide Section II: Gems and Glass Section III: Identifying Gems Section IV: Gray Stones Section V: Other Stuff You Can Pick Up Section VI: EoD/Copyright Notice ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section I: About This Guide So you're going into the Dungeons of Doom to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. Good for you! But just because you're on a holy quest for your god doesn't mean you can't get rich while you're at it. There are piles of gold and more gems than you can count down there, all for the taking. This guide assumes you're already familiar with Nethack, and was written for NetHack 3.4 for Windows. If you're hardcore enough to use Unix, you're probably hardcore enough to figure out what, from this guide, applies to you and what does not. In this guide, when I'm talking about specific commands, I'll wrap the keystrokes in square brackets. For instance, [t] means to press the "e" key (to eat an item). [E] means to hold Shift and press the "e" key, just like you were typing a capital letter. There are some long commands that are preceded by pound signs in the game, and will be transcribed as such. The #name command is good for keeping track of a gem's attributes as you work out what they are, so you may find yourself with a sackful of unidentified shiny objects with names like "Soft Red" or "Soft White Not Dilithium". ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section II: Gems and Glass Gems are basically little nuggets of portable money; they're good for very little except fast cash and increasing your score when you die or win. When you find a gem in the dungeon, you're told only its color. Is that green gem a valuable emerald or a chunk of worthless glass? Is that white gem a valuable diamond, a precious dilithium crystal, or (again) worthless glass? You'll have to identify the gem to be sure. Gems are considered either "hard" or "soft". The easiest way to figure out whether a gem is hard or soft is to try to [E]ngrave with it. Hard stones will scratch into the floor, soft stones will mark in the dust. All glass is soft. Therefore, every hard gem is valuable (although not every soft gem is worthless, the aforementioned dilithium crystal is the most valuable gem in the game, and it's soft). Gems are organized here by color: white, black, red, orange, green, blue, yellow, violet, or yellowish-brown. Some gems appear in more than one category; these gems have a random appearance in each game: Turquoise can be either blue or green. Aquamarine can be either blue or green. Fluorite can be white, blue, green, or violet. Also listed is whether the gem is hard or soft and how much you can expect to pay for an average gem. You'll get only a fraction of this cost when you try to sell the gem, but it sure helps your score out when your game ends. If a gem will not be randomly generated until a certain dungeon level, that level is listed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- White Gems Dilithium Crystal soft $4500 Level 28 Diamond hard $4000 Level 25 Opal soft $800 Fluorite soft $400 White glass soft That's a lot of white gems, although fluorite might be on a different list for your current game. The good news is, most of them are at least a little bit valuable. The bad news is, most of them are soft. It's going to be a little tricky to eliminate the worthless glass from the list and hang on to the rest. You don't want to throw away any dilithium or diamonds, they're the most valuable gems in the game! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Black Gems Black Opal hard $2500 Level 13 Jet soft $850 Obsidian soft $200 Black Glass soft Black opals are the only particularly valuable gems in this list, so don't feel bad if you need to make some room by throwing out soft black gems. I mean, obsidian is just a special kind of glass anyway, right? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Red Gems Ruby hard $3500 Level 22 Garnet soft $700 Jasper soft $500 Red Glass soft Rubies are the third most valuable gems in the game, so if you find one, it's worth keeping. As the only hard red gem, they're easy to pick out. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Orange Gems Jacinth hard $3250 Level 19 Agate soft $200 Orange Glass soft The two soft orange gems are either worthless glass or nearly-worthless agate. If you find a hard orange gem, it's jacinth. That's easy! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Green Gems Emerald hard $2500 Level 10 Turquoise soft $2000 Level 7 Aquamarine hard $1500 Fluorite soft $400 Jade soft $300 Green Glass soft An artificially-long list, simply because turquoise and aquamarine might be described in your game as blue and fluorite might be blue, white, or violet. Again, hardness is a guarantee of value, but turquoise means you might be holding on to some of the other green gems for a while. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blue Gems Sapphire hard $3000 Level 16 Turquoise soft $2000 Level 7 Aquamarine hard $1500 Fluorite soft $400 Blue Glass soft Again, turquoise is the only soft gem to worry much about, but its inclusion in two lists makes things difficult. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yellow Gems Citrine soft $1500 Level 4 Chrysoberyl soft $700 Yellow Glass soft Argh! There are no hard yellow gems. But even citrine isn't anywhere near as valuable as hard gems of any other color, so it's no big deal. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Violet Gems Amethyst soft $600 Fluorite soft $400 Violet Glass soft If you have a Potion of Booze handy, #dip your violet stones in. One of them will turn your Booze into Fruit Juice; that one's an amethyst. The rest will have no effect (the game will tell you it's "Interesting...") -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yellowish-Brown Gems Amber soft $1000 Topaz hard $900 Yellowish-Brown Glass soft Yellowish-brown gems seem like they're everywhere in the early dungeon levels. ========================================================================== Section III: Identifying Gems Okay, so you know what color a gem is and whether it's hard or soft. You might even remember which dungeon level you found it on, which might give another hint to the value of the gem. But how can you be sure? Well, all hard white gems are diamonds. Hard black gems are black opals. Hard red gems are rubies, orange gems are citrine, and yellowish-brown gems are topaz. Only hard green and blue gems have room for confusion because of turquoise, which is hard and can be either blue or green. If you've identified turquoise, the other hard green gem is an emerald and the other hard blue gem is a sapphire. If you have two unidentified hard green gems, then any hard blue gem is a sapphire; if you have two unidentified hard blue gems, then any hard green gem is an emerald. The best surefire way to identify gems is the same surefire way you identify anything else: read a Scroll of Identify. While you probably have other items in your inventory that would be more important to identify, you might identify every item in your inventory when you read the scroll. So take all your gems out of your bag before you read the scroll, just in case. Any character can use the #rub command to rub a gem on a blessed Touchstone (more on this later). This will identify the gem. Archeologists and gnomes of any role have expert knowledge of jewelry, and will identify gems by rubbing them on uncursed Touchstones. If you have an uncursed Touchstone and are not an Archeologists or gnome, #rubbing a gem on the stone will result in a colored streak, while glass results in scratch marks. This will only identify glass, but you can still #name the glass and throw it out. You won't know precisely how valuable your remaining gems are, but you can be sure they're worth something. If you have a soft orange gem that makes colored streaks on a Touchstone, it's an agate. If you have a soft yellowish-brown gem that makes colored streaks, it's amber. When you kill a glass golem, it leaves behind shards of worthless glass. If the gems you pick up from the broken body of the golem stack with gems you already had in your inventory, you can #name them glass and throw it out. Like an uncursed touchstone, this only helps purge worthless glass and doesn't help identify what remains. Stone to Flesh affects gems but not glass, so if you don't mind losing out on the gems you've got, you can #name all of your stacks of gems "valuable", cast Stone to Flesh on them, then pick up the remaining gems and re#name them glass. Let your pet enjoy the previously-valuable meatballs. When you find any of the same gems later, they'll already be named "valuable" when you pick them up. Finally, you're just more likely to pick up glass than anything else. If you have a stack of ten white gems, a stack of two white gems, and a single white gem, it's likely that the stack of ten is worthless glass. This isn't a surefire method (and I've thrown away 11 citrine stones in one game), but doesn't require any special item, ability, or creature to use like every other way. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section IV: Gray Stones There are four kinds of gray stones, and until they're identified, it's impossible to tell them apart. Before you pick up any gray stone, kick it! If you get a "Thump!" noise, leave it alone; it's a loadstone. Anything else is safe to pick up. Luckstone The whole point of bothering with gray stones to begin with. Luckstones prevent your luck from timing out. When you do something to increase or decrease your luck, that change will eventually "time out" and your luck returns to normal. Uncursed luckstones prevent both good and bad luck from timing out. If blessed, any bad luck you have will time out, but good luck won't. If cursed, any good luck you have will time out, but bad luck won't. (If blessed, you stay lucky and bad luck goes away. Cursed is the opposite.) Touchstone Touchstones are used to identify gems. Take a particularly hard item -- an iron weapon is fine, a gem is not -- and #rub it on the stone. If you get a "Scritch, scritch" sound, the stone is a Touchstone. You may then #rub other gems to identify them if the Touchstone is blessed, or to determine whether they're glass if uncursed. Flint Stone Flint stones aren't used for much, but they make good sling ammunition. Cavemen start with a bunch, making it easier to identify the other gray stones through process of elimination. Loadstones Usually generated cursed, and re-curses itself if you ever manage to drop it. Loadstones don't do anything, and are stupidly heavy. But because they're cursed, you've got to schlep them around anyway. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section V: Other Stuff You Can Pick Up Gold Pieces It's money. What did you expect? Gold gets kind of heavy late in the game when you're carrying around enough cash to purchase a small kingdom. You can use gold to buy things in shops or donate it to priests. Rocks Rocks are... well, they're rocks. Just little lumps of stone. They make decent sling ammunition and can be turned into meatballs with a Stone to Flesh spell. They're extremely common, especially where tunnels have been dug through dungeon walls, boulders broken, or clay or stone golems have been slain. Boulder A bigger rock. If you're extremely big and strong, you can pick boulders up and add them to your inventory -- giants usually carry a couple to throw around at people they don't like, namely you. Otherwise you'll push them around. If you need to get past a boulder but can't push it, drop your gear (perhaps on a square with Elbereth). If your encumbrance is low enough, you can squeeze into the same space as a boulder (to kill the monster on the other side that prevents you from pushing it, for instance). Boulders may be destroyed by [a]pplying a pick-axe or dwarvish mattock, the Force Bolt spell, or by [z]apping a Wand of Striking. They collapse into a pile of rocks. Pushing a boulder into a pit will result in a panel of level dungeon floor. Anything in the pit will be destroyed (helpful for unpunishing yourself). Polymorphing a boulder might change it into a statue of a random creature. Statue Statues are petrified creatures. Many are randomly generated by the dungeon, but you can make your own by petrifying enemies. Statues can be destroyed the same ways boulders can. The deeper you go into the dungeon, the more likely it is that any statue that was randomly generated by the dungeon contains a spellbook. Break the statue (or animate it with Stone to Flesh and kill the monster) to claim the spellbook for yourself. Breaking a historic statue -- Perseus, the Gnome King, the centaur statues at Delphi, or any petrified unique creature -- carries a -1 alignment penalty for Archeologists. Polymorphing a statue will turn it into a statue of a different creature or a boulder. Iron Chain The most bloody useless item in the game. Heavy Iron Ball When you're punished, you're connected to one of these with an iron chain. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Section VI: EoD/Copyright Notice This guide was compiled with information from Nethack spoilers found on the world wide web, such as those by Kevin Hugo, Dylan O'Donnell et al, combined with my own research. This game guide is copyright 2007 Richard Rouse. Feel free to distribute this guide anywhere you like, but crediting me as the writer would be nice.