Talk:Naming artifacts

Is this just a forgotten relic?
Noting the existance of the oartifact field, I wonder if NetHack still uses the artifact's name for anything. Here's a trick I pulled off SLASH'EM that seems to indicate names are irrelevant:

The elven dagger will now be upgraded into a great dagger, keeping its name; thus you now have a 'great dagger named The Great Dagger of Glaurgnaa'. That is the the name and base item of the Necromancer quest artifict. But you didn't create an artifact! You do NOT get level drain resistance, magic resistance, or ENERGY_BOOST invokation.
 * 1) Start SLASH'EM (IIRC worked in 0.0.7E7 a yearish ago, I cannot test ATM since I've misplaced my binaries)
 * 2) ^Wish up an elven dagger and a potion of gain level.
 * 3) Name the elven dagger 'The Great Dagger of Glaurgnaa'
 * 4) Dip the elven dagger into the potion of gain level.

I also (just now) tested this in vanilla, using a hex editor instead of the upgrade exploit, and the Eye instead of the GDoG. Again, energy did not regenerate with the hand-named amulet, and did regenerate with the wished artifact. ^G summoned quest nemesis did not steal named amulet, but stole wished amulet.

It seems like the artifact naming trick could trivially be fixed by removing the name-restriction code.

--Stefanor 07:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)