Pretty good find

[petefj]

I'm playing a Gnome Ranger, and on the first level I found:

The Dagger of Nimthanc ( 2d4) ( +9, +12) [+10] Special

I'm sure it's a pretty useful tool as it kills every damned thing I come across at the moment.
Can someone decipher the codes for me. As a newbie this baffles me.

petefj

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by petefj

I'm playing a Gnome Ranger, and on the first level I found:

The Dagger of Nimthanc ( 2d4) ( +9, +12) [+10] Special

I'm sure it's a pretty useful tool as it kills every damned thing I come across at the moment.
Can someone decipher the codes for me. As a newbie this baffles me.

petefj

2d4 is the base damage, so when you hit things it does between 2 and 8 damage. Then you add the 12 ("to-dam bonus") to that, so your actual range is 14-20. The +9 makes you more accurate ("to-hit bonus") in a hard-to-quantify way. The +10 improves your armor ("to-ac" bonus), making you harder to be hit and take less damage, again in a hard-to-quantify way.

Also, nice find. That'll carry you to 1500' or so.

[luneya]

Originally Posted by petefj

I'm playing a Gnome Ranger, and on the first level I found:

The Dagger of Nimthanc ( 2d4) ( +9, +12) [+10] Special

I'm sure it's a pretty useful tool as it kills every damned thing I come across at the moment.
Can someone decipher the codes for me. As a newbie this baffles me.

petefj

'Thancs are pretty much the best weapon that you'll ever find in the first few dungeon levels without getting insanely lucky; I've gotten them on DL 1 I think three times in all of my experience playing the game (which is not as much as many other denizens of this forum have), but at least one of those was on a repeat visit to DL 1. So congrats on your good fortune, but be careful to remember that it doesn't make you a superman. It's a great weapon in the early going, and viable through the midgame, but eventually you'll need something better. And it won't keep you from getting killed even on DL 2 if you do something sufficiently stupid.

So, the labels. (2D4) is the base damage-roll for each blow; note that this is better than the 1D4 of an ordinary dagger. Most artifact and ego weapons won't have that sort of boost, but this one does. The (+9, +12) in standard parentheses are bonuses to accuracy and damage respectively, while the [+10] in square brackets is a bonus to AC; this bracketing style will be used consistently across all equipment types. The {Special} is a pseudo-ID tag, indicating that the item has magical properties that you haven't discovered yet. For the 'Thanc daggers, those properties are that it confers resistance to one element, and can be activated (shift-A) to fire a bolt of the same element; IIRC, Nimthanc is the ice-elemental version. There are also two other 'Thanc artifacts, identical except for element: Narthanc for fire, and Dethanc for lightning. Once you formally discover the extra properties of the weapon (either with an ID scroll/staff/spell or by using the activation and getting attacked by a monster with an ice attack), the pseudo-ID tag will go away. But there's no hurry to do that, since I've told you what the thing does, so don't bother IDing it.

[Gwarl]

Gnome ranger is pretty hard though. I managed to lose one that found Ringil on DL20 or so. Probably because I thought I was a warrior afterward.

[Pete Mack]

It's worth pointing out that there's also a 'brand' on the various *thanc weapons, that add 2d4x2 in damage against most monsters. So if it's a fire brand, it does 12+6*2.5 average damage, or 27 damage per blow against most monsters. Bit against fire resistant monsters like Fire Hounds, it only does 12+2.5*2= 17 damage per blow. Of course, of you get more blows, you'll do more damage. It also reduces damage of the same type against you by 3x.
You'll know soon enough which brand it is, just by seeing where it does the most damage, and where you take less damage in response.

[Gwarl]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

You'll know soon enough which brand it is, just by seeing where it does the most damage, and where you take less damage in response.

Plus the damage verb burn/freeze/shock gives it away and identifies the brand for the character.

[Nick]

Just in case you didn't know, too - hitting 'I' (for inspect) will show you details of everything you know about the weapon.